social development as knowledge building: research as a sphere of policy influence

Journal of International Development

J. Int. Dev. 15, 911–924 (2003)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jid.1043

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AS KNOWLEDGEBUILDING: RESEARCH AS A SPHERE

OF POLICY INFLUENCE

ELEANOR FISHER* and JEREMY D. HOLLAND

Centre for Development Studies, University of Wales Swansea, Swansea, UK

Abstract: The value of using social development knowledge as a tool for building develop-

ment policy was promoted by the British bilateral donor in the late 1990s. This article takes

the case of a capacity building initiative that sought to build social development knowledge as

a resource for policy formulation in ‘southern’ countries. Situating knowledge as a develop-

ment resource presents difficulties for intervention processes that have historically developed

to provide access to economic and social assets. This article highlights some of the problems

involved in trying to build social development capacity and questions the suitability of this

style of intervention. Inappropriate and short-term support for knowledge capacity building

carries the danger that the traditional separation between the academic and practice spheres

will be reinforced, making the process of democratising social knowledge more difficult.

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

1 INTRODUCTION

An important preoccupation for those writing on social development has been how to

relate theory to practice (Schuurman, 1993; Booth, 1994). The academic and practical

worlds are often divided over how to incorporate new knowledge within social develop-

ment. At the end of the 1970s, Scott and Shore (1979) contributed to this debate by

distinguishing two types of knowledge, ‘knowledge for understanding’, and ‘knowledge

for action’. This way of dichotomising understanding and action was later criticised on the

grounds that theoretical and practical issues and activities are so closely interwoven that

one cannot have one without the other (Long and Long, 1992). This led to the suggestion

that a ‘theory from below’ could be developed through methodological exploration of the

knowledge interfaces between different actors (Long and Villarreal, 1993).

While Long and Villarreal’s criticism represented a valuable contribution at the time,

we have since become aware that there are difficulties with an actor-oriented view of

knowledge interfaces. In particular, actor-oriented studies have tended to focus on policy

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

*Correspondence to: E. Fisher, Centre for Development Studies, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park,Swansea SA2 8PP, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

implementation as the point in which diverse knowledge responses start to emerge,

without giving due regard to policy processes that take place within and between

institutions and a diverse set of actors prior to implementation (e.g. Long, 1989; Long

and van der Ploeg, 1989; Long and Long, 1992; see Lewis et al., 2003, p. 544 for similar

concerns). Thus little attention has been paid to the ways in which different actors come

together to constitute a policy sphere around knowledge and its institutionalization within

policy processes.

In the context of debates about the role of knowledge in a globalized world, there is

renewed interest in ‘bridging the divide’ between research and development policy (Crew

and Young, 2000). This has revived old questions in fresh guises, related to issues such as:

the character of the relationship research should have to policy making; the role public

funding should play in knowledge creation or capacity building; and, the way in which

particular research capacities can effectively be strengthened (Newman and de Haan,

2001; Killick, 2001).

Exploration of these and related issues has emerged in a number of recent overviews on

research and policy linkages (Crewe and Young, 2002; Lindquist, 2001; Nielson, 2001;

Nutley et al., 2002; Ryan, 2002; Vibe et al., 2002).1 Through critiquing ‘lineal’2 and

‘incrementalist’3 models of the policy-making process, these overviews congregate

around conceptual models that view policy processes as multi-faceted and non-linear,

situating researchers in relation to a multitude of other actors with influence on the policy

process. To do so they draw on conceptual frameworks that emphasize the idea of policy

networks and knowledge communities (e.g. Grindle and Thomas, 1991; Stone, 1996;

Haas, 1992).

The use of knowledge as a tool for building development policy is a notion that acquired

particular strength in the 1990s.4 It draws on long-standing ideas about the role of

knowledge in development—education and information sharing being seen as important

for developing human capital and improving productivity—and links to more recent

participatory thinking about using peoples’ knowledge for development.5

The shift towards viewing social development knowledge as a policy resource in the

context of development in ‘southern’ countries has placed emphasis on the need for

research capacity building (Newman and de Haan, 2001; Surr et al., 2002). However,

generating social development knowledge is a complex process, and trying to build

capacity for knowledge generation is by no means easy (e.g. Toye, 2002; RAWOO, 2001;

ITAD and ODI, 2000; West and Shackleton, 1999; Weber and Mujica, 2001), particularly

when the aim is to generate ‘policy-relevant’ knowledge.

An emphasis on ‘policy relevance’ implies not only that traditional process of research

capacity building within academic institutions should be pursued, but also that capacity to

1For more detailed case studies on aspects of this topic see Molas-Gallart et al., 2000; Puchner, 2001; Ryan,1999a, 1999b; Weber and Mujica, 2001.2‘Lineal’ refers to those models that view policy-making as taking place in a series of logical, sequenced steps,based on rational decision-making processes (see Lasswell, 1951). This approach has been heavily criticized forbeing too static, simplistic, and holding an unrealistic view of policy-making processes.3As a criticism to linear models of the policy process, the ‘incrementalist’ model was put forward, in whichincremental or marginal changes are made over time in order to reduce uncertainty, conflict, and complexity inprocesses of policy change (see Lindblom, 1980).4This perspective on knowledge as a resource contrasts starkly with one that starts with an extended concept ofknowledge as embedded in people’s sense of being and emerging from experience, being part of the totalrelationship between the person and the world they inhabit (Kettler et al., 1982).5For discussion in relation to participatory thinking see Richards, 1985; Chambers, et al., 1989; Warren et al.,1995; Scoones and Thompson, 1996; Sillitoe et al., 2002.

912 E. Fisher and J. D. Holland

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 15, 911–924 (2003)

form new relationships and linkages across institutional boundaries has to be built in order

to generate a field of action across divides between social research and development

practice. This in itself raises many different questions about what constitutes this field of

action, about the authority that different actors have, and how this authority shapes

knowledge building processes.

Against this background, the recent shift towards locating research within wider

‘knowledge systems’ through conceptualising knowledge as a resource for development

policy and practice (see DFID, 1997c; Surr, et al., 2002), raises new issues. These relate

particularly to how research has come to be viewed as a policy instrument that can be used

to generate a sphere of influence, or form the basis of ‘evidence’ upon which policy can be

formed (see Nutley et al., 2002; Walter et al., 2003).

Focusing specifically on social development, the use of social knowledge as a resource

for policymaking has become a means to mobilize researchers and policy makers in new

political alliances, over and above ‘old’ ideological and partisan differences that have

separated academia from engagement with practice. Alliances formed across this divide,

seek not only to understand social reality, but also accept that these understandings must

be acted on—whether for the collective good or private gain. In this respect, social

development knowledge becomes situated as a means to influence policy in the south; an

influencing process based on the idea that information from social and participatory

research can be used to enhance the achievement of development goals.

This leads us to suggest that there is a need to scrutinize knowledge capacity building

processes in social development in order to appreciate both the potential and the

shortcomings of research capacity building as a form of social development intervention.

This article seeks to contribute to these issues by taking the case of a social development

research capacity building initiative, ‘Project Magnolia’ financed by DFID in the late

1990s and early 2000s.6

Trying to capture the trajectory of a project and to explain the involvement of different

institutions and individuals is by no means easy in methodological terms. After only six

years institutional memory is beginning to be lost; also, more pertinently, those who were

involved had different roles and experiences within the Project, which inevitably

contribute to a range of perspectives, points of view, and potential contestations concern-

ing what the Project was about and its various achievements and failures. This means that

in spite of trying to handle complexity, in order to reflect on the nature of knowledge

building in social development, the following discussion represents one additional

perspective to the existing ones held by each of the participants and the UK institution

that financed the Project. This extra perspective constitutes a picture pieced together from

project documents, records of formal discussions, and project meetings.

2 THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT FOR RESEARCH CAPACITY BUILDING

In 1997, a change in UK government led to a shift from the Overseas Development

Administration as an agency to the Department for International Development (DFID) as a

ministry. This transformation was marked by a new policy orientation, which stressed the

6‘Project Magnolia’ is a pseudonym. Three institutions involved in the project are mentioned in this article: theDepartment for International Development, the Centre for Development Studies (University of Wales Swansea),and the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). Beyond this, the identity of individualsand southern institutions has been deliberately omitted, as have references to internal project documents.

Social Development as Knowledge Building 913


importance of focusing on the goal of poverty eradication. With the new ministerial status

came a large budget increase, and a commensurate financial boost to the Social

Development Division. Emphasis on poverty reduction and consequent demand for social

development expertise by both the London office and country programmes, underlined the

need for good local social development skills and high quality social research data (DFID

1997a, 1997b; see also Eyben, After-word, this Issue).

DFID’s new policy orientation was put forward in the white paper ‘Eliminating World

Poverty’ (DFID, 1997c), in which the Ministry set out its overall priorities. Of particular

importance for this article is the emphasis that was placed on the significance of

knowledge for contributing to poverty reduction. This position on knowledge as a resource

to achieve the international development goals of the British government, opened the door

for new investment in social research and research capacity building in developing

countries, under the expectation that this could help improve access to knowledge and

technology by poor people and by policy makers (DFID 1997c, p. 2.42). This perspective

situated knowledge as a product, for which capacity could be built and access could

be democratised, an emphasis that resonated well with social science debates conc-

erning the role of knowledge in a globalized society (e.g. Strathern, 1996; Moore, 1996;

Harris-Jones, 1996).

In fact 1997 marked the first time the Social Development Department of DFID gained

its own research budget to complement other forms of social development research

funding.7 The budget was intended for policy-focused social development research in

developing and transitional countries, which was seen to have the potential to strengthen

local capacity within developing countries, and to orientate researchers and policy makers

to produce and use knowledge for policy influence towards poverty-reduction objectives

(DFID 1997a, 1997b).

Funding for Project Magnolia was part of this new research budget. As such it marked a

rather experimental venture into social development capacity building based on a broad

commitment to the need to support researchers and strengthen policy links (Rew, 2002).

Viewed in retrospect, despite this commitment, there was apparently little in-depth

consideration of what social development capacity building might entail and the time-

frame needed for a research capacity building process to start to lead to anything other than

short-term experimental outcomes.

3 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF PROJECT MAGNOLIA

In late 1997, the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) at the University of Wales

Swansea and the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and

African Studies (SOAS), University of London, won a bid to co-design Project Magnolia.

The teaming up of CDS and SOAS drew on existing relationships between individuals

within the two institutions, all of whom were reputed academics recognised for their social

development expertise. Most had acted as consultants for DFID in the past; they were

therefore familiar with the bilateral donor’s organizational culture and operational

practices. As is typical, for a DFID project ‘out-resourced’ to external consultants, the

UK-based academics were considered to be ‘hands-off supervisors’ to ensure the Project

was run ‘appropriately’ with good financial accounting practices; in principle this left the

7This research funding came under ESCOR [SSRC], the Innovation Fund and bilateral programmes.



southern partners to engage in the content of the social development knowledge building

process.

A key question when initiating a project that involves the inputs of a relatively large

group of experienced social development experts/academics is whether diverse expecta-

tions and capacities would be channelled together to focus productively on knowledge

building goals, or whether differences would manifest themselves—and if so what the

implications of these differences will be. We can see from the outset of the Project how

social researchers within academic institutions were trespassing across the traditional

boundaries of academia to redefine their role as ‘social development specialists’. To do so

they established their ability to bring together diverse academic capacities and contacts

with networks of researchers who represented a potential pool of knowledge in southern

countries. However, these capacities also generated different ideas about how to engage

with the Project—i.e. whether engagement should be in terms of research ideas, or

mentoring, or a ‘hands-off’ managerial role? An important concern was how these

different emphases would pan out in the Project process and what influence this would

have for Project outcomes.

4 DESIGN, PLACES AND KNOWLEDGE

In designing Project Magnolia, the UK team identified ‘southern’ countries, institutions,

and individuals who could act as focal points for the Project and with whom a capacity

building strategy could be developed. Stretching across different continents and academic

experiences, Tanzania, Bolivia, India, Vietnam and Russia were proposed as possible

project sites.

Country selection was largely driven by the bilateral strategic interests of DFID.8 The

geographical positioning of resources, influences and contacts was part of a negotiation

achieved through the language of existing knowledge resources and regional expertise,

matched by personal and institutional connections within the two university institutions.

While the experience of working in the country contexts was clearly needed to support the

knowledge capacity building process, some individuals evidently hoped the project could

be used to perpetuate existing research connections.

Following identification of appropriate countries, ‘scoping exercises’ were conducted in

1998 with the objective of providing a context for the Project while identifying the

institutions and individuals to work with. Following meetings and discussions in the UK, a

common ‘narrative’ was built up as the basis of a social development capacity building

strategy. This narrative proposed that process issues should be emphasized over and above

the need to follow a ‘cookie cutter’ approach that reproduced the same capacity building

model in different contexts. By emphasizing process it was intended that as much

importance would be given to the means for capacity building (e.g. relationships,

interactions between institutions or with junior researchers) as to the physical outputs

(e.g. written academic papers or policy briefings) and in so doing the emergent properties

of local diversity would become manifest in the capacity building strategy.

8This was illustrated by some early negotiations between CDS/SOAS and DFID Social Development Advisors:the possibility of including Russia within the Project was swapped by CDS/SOAS for another ‘transitional’country, Uzbekistan. However, although a clear rationale existed for building social development knowledge inUzbekistan, DFID did not see the country as ‘particularly suitable’ because ‘it is and most likely will remain avery small part of our [bilateral] programme’.



Within the strategy itself, central importance was given to building knowledge skills for

policy-relevant research. The dimension of policy relevance was seen as the crucial

element that gave Project Magnolia a niche and distinguished it from ‘traditional’—and

long-term—research capacity building within existing systems of learning. Three issues

were highlighted as the basis for the capacity building strategy. First, the need to build

capacity in terms of network strength amongst social development research ‘suppliers’;

second, the need to train researchers (and possibly policy makers); and, third, the need to

create and improve links between research and policy, placing emphasis on dissemination

and building demand amongst policy makers.

It was decided by CDS/SOAS that this strategy would be flexible, incorporating

combinations of the following approaches: investing in institutions with the strongest

existing capacity to play a ‘focal point’ role; forming a network out of a number of NGOs;

supporting individual research projects through a focal point NGO; and targeting young

researchers. With many of the UK team members sharing a background in anthropology or

related disciplines, and having worked on donor-funded policy research that emphasised

the experiential dimensions of poverty, several components of the Project included what

was termed by one project member, the ‘British value added’ of building capacity in

qualitative research methodologies.

In the design of the strategy, the notion of social knowledge became more clearly

defined as part of the process of implanting financial resources within local research and

policy networks in order to develop social development knowledge as a resource. In this

respect, we can see that the design grappled with how, in a practical way, a new social

development knowledge economy could be embedded within the interface between local

research and policy institutions. This process in itself raised many fresh challenges in

terms of how policy could be channelled in new directions, and how new relationships

could be developed between different institutional actors.

5 BUILDING SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE: THE MAIN PHASE

OF PROJECT MAGNOLIA

The implementation of Project Magnolia finally started in January 2000,9 with team

leaders having to take up the tricky business of re-establishing relationships with southern

partners in Uzbekistan, Bolivia, Tanzania and India10 after a seven-month bureaucratic

hiatus between ‘design’ and ‘implementation’. A brief description of each country

component of the project follows. Here we should remember that the main flows of

interaction within the Project were between the northern project managers, CDS/SOAS,

and each southern institution. By implication each component of the Project took place in

relative isolation, a feature reflected in the account below.

In Uzbekistan, two key challenges were identified: the first was the need to help

establish a body of social knowledge that did not use a planned economy or administration

as its starting point; the second was the need to introduce new methodologies for

9This implementation phase of the Project took place over eighteen months, although some components wereextended for a short period.10At this stage it was decided that the Project would not take place in Vietnam, a preferred location at the start.Reasons for this were never fully understood by CDS/SOAS, although behind the bamboo curtain it would seemthat political interests were involved, with the World Bank prevailing on DFID not to pursue this componentbecause the timing was inappropriate.



examining poverty. The local institution that managed Project Magnolia held a close

relationship to the Cabinet of the Government of Uzbekistan and its involvement in the

Project came in the context of the Cabinet commissioning it to develop new methods and

indicators for income assessment, linked to World Bank financing of a living standards

measurement survey. Within Project Magnolia it was felt that a focus on a single issue,

poverty reduction, was likely to achieve the greatest impact for capacity building since the

need for the development of new methodologies was explicitly recognised within

government and donor policy circles.

In the course of the project, research was conducted on poverty linked to the themes of

youth, unemployment, and social safety nets; the research then fed into consideration of

how to improve existing quantitative tools for assessing living standards. Training was

conducted in qualitative and participatory methods, technical papers on methodology were

produced, meetings were held with political decision-makers, and a website helped to

disseminate results.

Bolivia presented an interesting case for social development research and capacity

building. It is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with a weak state and huge

socio-economic conflicts; it is also amongst the most loyal Latin American countries in

following neo-liberal policies and processes of political decentralization. Within this

context, the local research institute where Project Magnolia was based identified four

research themes for building social development knowledge capacity: education and

sustainable development, territorialism and indigenous use of natural resources, mobility

and social integration, and decentralization and social development. Capacity building of

allied research outfits and of junior researchers took place as part of the research, followed

by communication of results to different audiences through large-scale dissemination of

newsletters and research bulletins.

In the case of Tanzania, project finances were channelled into a small research NGO to

which The Netherlands was already providing financial support. The NGO had poverty

reduction as a core research objective, and apparently good links were held to policy

makers through the NGO Director’s representation within a number of policy fora.

Therefore, the NGO was seen as well able to lead an effective programme in policy

relevant social development research. In line with the NGO’s existing programme of

managing a competition-based research fund, Project Magnolia funded small individual

pieces of research organized around four core themes: the impact of social policy on

poverty, rural policy and poverty, urban poverty and the measurement and definition of

poverty. Funding for research projects were based on a peer review and mentoring process.

Various pieces of research were produced, with varying degrees of success in terms of

research quality and dissemination to policy circles. Training in methodological skills was

also conducted as part of the programme.

India presented a very different situation to each of the three other countries: India is

geographically vast, with a well-developed tertiary education sector, extensive capacity

for conducting social research, and established links between the research community and

policy makers. The India component of Project Magnolia was divided into two ‘models’

with their own geographical identity: the first in Orissa and West Bengal and the second in

Rajastan and Tamil Nadu. The first model built a research network linked to three

independent research institutes, which were used as the basis to conduct extensive social

research. The second model sought to bridge the gap between three constituencies—NGO

researchers, policy-makers, and bureaucrats—by forming a network between different

NGOs, running a training programme, and conducting field research on a number of



‘risky’ and often unexplored topics, such as prostitution. The main orientation was to

facilitate contacts and exchange of experiences in order to use knowledge for advocacy.

6 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT RESOURCE BUILDING

In Uzbekistan, Project Magnolia fuelled new methodological ideas was a means to

influence local ways of framing development problems and, in so doing, of changing

the orientation of research to feed policy makers’ ‘consumer’ demand. In this respect,

engagement with social development knowledge was seen as an entry point for work with

government and international development institutions, serving to strengthen the consti-

tution of an alliance between policy makers, researchers, and the international develop-

ment community. The Uzbekistan component of the Project was widely regarded as

successful. Part of this success was linked to its deliberately modest ambition of

influencing one specific donor-led project (the World Bank led Living Standards

Measurement Survey) and therefore avoiding the greater complexities of the national

policy process. This appeared to situate the Project in ‘the right place at the right time’;

different actors were open to the potential opportunities it offered, while strong mentoring

from the UK consultant helped to fully capitalise on these opportunities.

In Bolivia, as elsewhere, the Project acted as a means to keep funding continuing

research with little change in direction prompted by the project process. Researchers

produced interesting pieces of work that were largely self-standing rather than being part

of a more strategic approach to social development knowledge generation. Attempts to

influence policy were typically opportunistic and based on existing relationships, rather

than being set against a strategic assessment of the institutional context for policy making.

To embrace the idea of generating new forms of social knowledge was somehow

unacceptable for some of the academics drawn into the programme. This appears to reflect

an academic culture in Bolivia where differences between social development theory and

practice are underpinned by a reality in which research is ideologically separated from

policy, a dichotomy that has helped to consolidate certain academic elites in powerful

positions as an important group in society, particularly in Cochabamba where the Project

was based.

In the last 30 years, both Bolivia and Tanzania have been countries that have built a

culture in which local intellectuals are very much linked to the role of consultants. Here we

can see the commoditization of social knowledge in an extreme form, whereby individual

researchers and their way of life is perhaps one of the main obstacles to the democratisa-

tion of knowledge, and to the generation of policy linkages as a way of manifesting

relevance for social development knowledge.

The Project found several difficulties in managing research capacity building in

Tanzania. In part this may be explained in similar ways to Bolivia, whereby the highly

commoditized nature of social expertise had already made difficult the Tanzanian

environment for encouraging capacity building in policy-relevant social knowledge.

The Director of the NGO himself was very anxious to stress that project shortcomings

were based on the fact that the topic areas identified for social development research at the

start of the Project were far too narrow—therefore eliciting a poor response and poor

quality proposals. However, this would ignore the conjunction of a number of factors:

conflict over the ‘managerial’ style of the relationship between CDS/SOAS and the NGO,

competing demands for the skills of the NGO director, and a very poor human resource



base from which to conduct a research mentoring process. These factors came together to

produce conflicts between individuals, which no doubt served to undermine the project

objectives.

The subject of research quality was raised on many occasions, not only in the case of

Tanzania, but also Bolivia and India. One issue is the fact that although quality is

considered important for a project to demonstrate effectiveness, a need for quality may

also serve to reproduce the existing intellectual elite. As such, emphasis on the quality of

policy-oriented research may become an obstacle to opening up capacity building to

institutions that do not have the professional skills and the minimal standards to be taken

seriously by the international community. In this sense, there is the danger that knowledge

becomes less a vehicle to influence policy makers but more a way to reinforce the role of a

few local experts in their powerful contact with embassies, international agencies, and

probably with DFID social development country advisors.

In India, the social development knowledge building process can be seen as having

performed the role of ‘filling’ knowledge gaps within a field rich with existing social

research knowledge and expertise. An issue here was less the need for information and

more for the bridging of status divides between different research communities (e.g.

within NGOs and universities) and for finding entry points through which to engage with

policy processes, whether positioning themselves as advocates or as part of the academic

establishment.

This is by no means easy and in the case of India we see a difficulty for researchers

trying to expand into the policy sphere when different actors occupy very entrenched

positions supported by strategic political interests. One implication this has is to make

extremely problematic the notion of democratizing research by drawing a greater range of

civil society actors into those research processes that have the greatest likelihood of

influence within society.

In addition to the capacity building experiences in southern country contexts it is

important to consider the role of two different actors: the DFID country social develop-

ment advisors and the UK institutions managing the Project. Considering the involvement

of DFID social development advisors in Project Magnolia and reflecting on the various

comments emerging in project documents, their role appears to have been extremely

varied, with important implications for in-country project processes.11

For the UK project implementation team drawn from the two academic institutions, the

project presented challenges that proved largely insurmountable. A function of managing

a complex process from the UK with limited time and resources is that ‘technical

assistance’ struggles to move beyond a limited managerial and monitoring function. In

this respect the UK team struggled to drive meaningful change in terms of extending and

sustaining new social development knowledge building processes into local contexts.

It might be argued defensively that these failures rest in constraints imposed by the UK

donor funding the project, in terms of resource inputs or the terms of reference the UK

institutions needed to fulfil. However, we shouldn’t underestimate the capacity of

11There is no DFID office in Uzbekistan, symptomatic of the country not being a bilateral priority, so no country-based advisor was directly involved in this component of the Project. In contrast, in Bolivia the socialdevelopment advisor wanted to ‘buy into’ (engage with) the Project through a steering committee but feltfrustrated that this committee did not function effectively. In India, there was also apparently ‘buy in’ from theadvisors, some of whom placed research capacity building as a high priority, with much more willingness on thepart of local project members to encourage this relationship than in Bolivia. While in Tanzania, the situation wassimilar although there appear to have been tensions with demands for other policy research the advisor wished theNGO to be involved in.



individual academics to shape the nature of their engagement with local researchers and

institutions in ways that made a significant impact on project outcomes—for some this

engagement was a largely managerial relation, for others a mentoring process, and for

others an opportunity to conduct personal research. Clearly this reflected the different

personalities, experiences and interests of the individuals involved although, unsurpris-

ingly, this remained implicit within project meetings and documentation (cf. Uphoff,

1996).

We can see that locating social development knowledge as a resource involves value

contestations and negotiations between different actors. It also involves trying to build

relationships between different knowledge and policy communities, relationships that may

well go against the grain of established practice and elite values. Particularly striking is the

fact that trying to build what was characterized within project documents as a ‘knowledge

infrastructure’ at the very least takes time and space to enable different groups to

communicate with one another in ways that hurdle existing institutional relationships.

There also needs to be the desire for this to happen by different actors, a dimension that

may be hard to come by when a knowledge-building project is but one more short-term

intervention carrying resources that can be used to fulfil a variety of objectives for

‘northern’ and ‘southern’ actors.

7 A PROCESS OF REVIEWAND REFLECTION

The Project finished with two events: an ‘Output-to-Purpose’ Review12 conducted in

January 2002 and a lesson-learning workshop held in April 2002. These ways of reflecting

on the successes and failures of the Project couldn’t have been more different: one

operated within the framework of the objectives established by the Project, the other

involved a brainstorming process where for the first-time members of the project from

southern institutions could meet with one another.

Given that the output-to-purpose review had been conducted and that the Project had

come to a close, quite clearly the Lesson-Learning workshop was a political exercise, from

the choice of location (Bubhaneswar in Eastern India) to the participation of individuals.

Some individuals/institutions were obviously hoping for donor funding, others wished to

be seen as engaging with the donor, and DFID itself wanted to demonstrate that it was

listening to southern actors and learning lessons from the experience.

Viewed as a whole, the output-to-purpose review suggested that the Project had

achieved or partially achieved most of the expected outputs (Angerrelli, 2002). This

way of evaluating Project Magnolia followed the standard DFID technical format. Perhaps

the question we need to ask, however, is: was a standard project assessment method, which

can also be applied to technical projects, the best way to evaluate and understand

knowledge-building processes? Is there another way, which could better draw out the

nuances of the process? An example would be the use of a methodology that documents

and generates a narrative about the project process, rather than ticking off points against a

log-frame. The experiences of a social development ‘process project’ such as Project

Magnolia suggest that there is a need for donors such as DFID to support the creation of

effective methodologies for institutionalising learning rather than falling back on project

12An output to purpose review (OPR) is an internal DFID management tool for monitoring progress within adevelopment initiative using the logical framework methodology and pre-determined technical formats.



planning tools. One can, however, be somewhat sceptical as to whether this would actually

happen given the change this would necessitate to bureaucratic planning practices.13

8 DISCUSSION

This article has explored the design and implementation of a social development research

capacity building project. Experiences emerging from the Project underline that the

institutional domain that seeks to build social development capacity and to link knowledge

generation to policy making is a complex field linking different research traditions,

relationships, and interests.

Analysing a capacity building project helps to bring into view the complexities and

ambiguities that exist between different actors trying to construct a social development

field of action. In this sense, social development knowledge building has been approached

from a very different angle to one that starts from a traditional duality of knowledge in

social development theory and practice (see Booth, 1994). This underlines the complex

processes that enter into attempts to link knowledge to a policy sphere, such that we have

to look at the different knowledge influences that shape policy formulation, rather than

assuming that it is a given until the point of implementation (see Long, 1989; Long and

van der Ploeg, 1989).

While in recent years there has been a push by development donors to locate social

development knowledge as a tool for building development policy, in keeping with wider

thinking on the role of knowledge in a globalised society, this is by no means easy.

Experiences from Project Magnolia, like many other projects seeking to build research

capacity (Puchner, 2001; Weber and Mujica, 2001; ITAD/ODI, 2000; Toye, 2002; West

and Shackleton, 1999; Molas-Gallart et al., 2000) or to link research to policy (Ryan,

1999a, 1999b; Crewe and Young, 2002; Nielson, 2001) underline just how difficult is this

process. This is particularly the case when the premise of the bilateral donor is to locate

knowledge building as part of an assistance package that can lead to the development of a

resource, in the form of social analysis skills, to contribute unproblematically to a pool of

human resources to be drawn on for local pro-poor policy formulation (see Newman and

de Haan, 2001).

While the bilateral donor clearly wanted to play a role in building a new knowledge

society, based on democratic principles and civic commitment, this rather instrumental

view of knowledge in policy and poverty reduction processes cannot be mapped

technocratically onto political contexts in which research actors may not share the same

project agenda. They may prefer for example to respond to knowledge building as just

another opportunity to plug funding shortages or to maintain the traditional role of the

intellectual disengaged from the institutional practice of policy advisors.

Indeed from the start, despite many small successes, positive gains from Project

Magnolia were only ever likely to be extremely limited given the completely unrealistic

13Unfortunately internal organizational demands in DFID don’t lend themselves to critical engagement with theideas of external contractors (or indeed a wider range of actors) whose experience could be built on, as in this casewith the particular need for methodologies to adequately document process projects. In the period when ProjectMagnolia was initiated and implemented internal promotion in DFID was related to aid dispersal not theeffectiveness of aid. Indeed, by the time project assessments have been conducted individual DFID staff haveoften moved to new posts, so that in effect they cannot be held accountable. Project Magnolia, for instance, wasthe responsibility of three successive DFID Social Development Advisors.



timeframe that was employed for developing new social research skills and ideas. At the

end of the Project, participants agreed that for DFID a lesson from the experience should

be that capacity building initiatives shouldn’t be funded for less than seven years; indeed,

others (Toye, 2002) have suggested ten years is realistic.

Lack of understanding of what is involved in a knowledge capacity building project,

coupled with inevitable bureaucratic hurdles brings the danger that researchers are

identified most clearly in terms of a managerial role, rather than the role of intellectual

engagement as carriers of social development knowledge. Such knowledge building

processes inevitably throw up many questions concerned with how to relate practical

social development issues with social development theory in local contexts, and these

questions cannot simply be tackled in management terms.

Certainly it would seem that a project such as this has to be open to experimentation,

maybe to the extent of going ‘wrong’ if viewed through the lens of a tool such as the

output-to-purpose review, and to have time to build relationships, and the space to learn

from mistakes. Otherwise negative evaluations and feedback (or treading a conservative

course that avoids negative evaluation) carries the danger of closing doors to such

knowledge building experimentation. This in itself may reinforce a separation between

academic and policy roles, and between social development theorising and action, flying

in the face of calls to democratise research.

In this respect, we must ask whether locating knowledge building processes on the basis

of interests and relationships between academics and DFID social development advisors is

in fact the best way to build capacity to generate knowledge for evidence-based policy?

Experience tells us that despite best intentions the most likely outcome of a project of this

nature is that a group of local intellectuals can from now on better speak a donors’

language and therefore contribute to an increase in the commoditization of knowledge, as

they come to be ‘better’ social development consultants.

Capacity building in social development knowledge and skills needs to be carefully

reconsidered and improved from the form taken in this project if we are to generate strong

linkages between research and policy decision-making, as a sphere of contemporary

policy influence. However, this venture is not free of risks, which have to do with both the

complexity of context in the construction and use of knowledge and with existing

institutional blockages to evidence-based social policy. These risks are further increased

by an externally-generated conceptual separation between academic and policy making

spheres that threatens to reinforce their apparent incompatibility, thus making the process

of democratizing social knowledge ever so much more difficult.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Alberto Arce, Mary Ann Brocklesby, Trudy Harpham and an

anonymous reviewer for insightful comments on earlier drafts of the text. The views

expressed in this article are entirely the responsibility of the authors.

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