Journal of International Development

J. Int. Dev. 15, 815–818 (2003)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jid.1036

EDITORIAL

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT: BRIDGINGTHE THEORY—PRACTICE DIVIDE

PAST AND PRESENT

ELEANOR FISHER*

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

A group of overseas students attended the first United Nations course in Social Welfare

held at Swansea in 1953. To mark the 2003 50th Jubilee of the beginning of social

development courses at the University of Wales Swansea, this Special Issue considers the

changing face of social development, past and present. Most of the contributors have been

connected to the Centre for Development Studies at Swansea over the years, and all have

considerable experience in seeking to relate theory to practice. They were asked to reflect

on social development but given a broad remit, which included the possibility of

considering the various intellectual forms that social development has taken, how

development thinking has been shaped by different concepts and ideas at different periods,

and how their personal experiences with social development research have been applied to

development practice. To our delight an insightful collection of papers has emerged, which

complement one another and illustrate the breadth of a complex field of intellectual

endeavour and practical engagement.

The first contribution is by Ray Bromley, Professor of Geography and Social Planning at

the University of Albany, State University of New York, who lectured at CDS Swansea

between 1971 and 1983. In keeping with the anniversary that prompted this Special Issue,

Bromley reflects on the history of social planning by elaborating on a pioneering Masters

Programme in Social Planning that was established at Swansea in 1973. Bromley argues

that the Centre for Development Studies at Swansea made history in the transition from

social policy to development studies, and that the ambitions and ambiguities of social

planning are an important part of this history (see Lochhead, 1985). He suggests that

focusing on social planning helps to reveal where social development ideas have come

from, and why we think the way we do about contemporary development issues.

Examining the intellectual heritage of social development is a theme taken up by James

Midgley, Dean of the School of Social Welfare, University of California, who explores the

historical contribution that different intellectual ideas have made to social development.

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: e.fisher@swansea.ac.uk

Midgley suggests that the social development field is dominated by pragmatism, with

those engaged in practical activities making little reference to normative theories. He

argues that this approach can obscure implicit value assumptions and so undermine the

potential contribution that well articulated normative theories could make to the disci-

pline. By documenting this intellectual heritage, Midgley hopes to promote a greater

awareness of theoretical issues and, to foster the conceptualization of new social

development ideas.

Alberto Arce, Senior Lecturer in Development Sociology at the University of Wageningen

in the Netherlands also reminds us of the role of theory in social development. He suggests

that in our attempts to make social development ‘relevant’ to practical problems, we

should not forget the value of seeking new theoretical understandings. This leads him to

focus on how ‘the social’ is framed within development, and to argue that for too long

social development has been shaped by neo-liberal economic thinking. Using the

metaphor of the ‘middle ground’ between social life and policy processes, Arce proposes

that there is a need to start considering how we can conceptualize ‘the social’ as a field of

enquiry independent from economic development in order to generate a new social

development agenda.

David Booth was Professor of Development Studies at CDS Swansea during the mid

1990s and works today as Co-ordinator of the Poverty and Public Policy Group at the

Overseas Development Institute. Drawing on recent comparative research on poverty

reduction strategy processes in Africa, Booth revisits social development debates of the

early 1990s, as discussed in a book called Rethinking Social Development (edited by

Booth, 1994), to make a case for relevance in social development by considering the

potential for generating practical theory.

Rethinking Social Development was the outcome of a conference held at the University

of Hull in 1991, which drew together a group of academics from the UK, the US, and the

Netherlands who were anxious to challenge the accusation that development studies was

largely irrelevant to development practice. This retrospective reflection on debates made in

the 1994 book, provides an opportunity for Booth to identify shared positions and points of

disagreement between the different contributors, arguing that there is still a need for

compelling illustrations that show the relevance of some of the views held in the 1994

volume. Research on Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers in Africa provide such an

illustration, leading Booth to argue that research designs in the form of ‘co-ordinated

comparisons’ enable the identification of patterns of difference, making applied theory

possible.

At much the same time as the academic debates detailed by Booth were taking place in

the 1980s and 1990s, social development was becoming institutionalised as a sphere of

policy practice within bilateral and multilateral development organisations. In this respect,

the United Nations World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen in 1995

played a notable role in signalling the importance of social development to the interna-

tional development community. The Summit set the sights of the international develop-

ment community beyond economic growth, towards social goals around poverty

eradication, employment, equality, and human rights, recognising the contribution social

development has to make to planned development (United Nations, 1995).

Within this context, Rosalind Eyben, the first Chief Social Development Advisor of the

British Overseas Development Administration (later called the Department for Interna-

tional Development) and now a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies,

University of Sussex, describes the process of institutionalizing social development within

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Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 15, 815–818 (2003)

British development aid in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, she considers how it was

that a new specialist group of social analysts became established as part of the agency’s

bureaucratic machinery. This description of the politics of organizational change, by an

individual with first hand experience of working at a senior level within a development

agency, provides an invaluable insight into the difficult process of integrating social ideas

into institutional thinking and practice. Why was the social dimension mainstreamed at

this particular time in ODA? This question is all the more pertinent, she argues, given that

other organizations were not so successful, and given also that it took place when a

conservative government was in power in Britain and neo-liberal economics had become

the dominant paradigm shaping development planning. Eyben offers several explanations

but emphasises the importance of a small group of agents of change able to exploit the

altering policy landscape from within the organization.

In an after-word to the description of the growth of a professional cadre of social

development advisors, Eyben mentions how the Department for International Develop-

ment (DFID) has now become more subject to target driven management systems with less

collective scope for social development innovation than in the past. This links well to the

contribution of Brocklesby and Hobley, which focuses on the design of a DFID

programme and underlines the difficulties of trying to generate innovative instruments

for development action within the constraints of a bureaucratic planning process.

Mary Ann Brocklesby, a lecturer in the Centre for Development Studies and Mary

Hobley, a governance and institutions specialist, were part of a team employed by DFID

Bangladesh to design a large scale, multi-sector programme of support for people living in

the Chars of Bangladesh. They describe how the design team confronted the challenge of

trying to embed the concepts of ‘citizenship’, ‘voice’ and ‘responsiveness’ within the

realization of the Chars Livelihoods Programme. A substantial part of the programme

design rested on enabling those involved in the delivery of aid to recognise the political

processes this implicated, and to start building relationships with one another in ways that

could contribute constructively to citizenship participation in programme delivery.

Standard bureaucratic practices—such as dividing the programme into different

phases—constrained the political process of relationship building, which leads them to

argue that programme design needs to focus around the making of space to allow actors to

analyse, reflect and take action. This has major implications for the management of such

processes by overseas development organizations wishing to be innovative and to have

influence in shaping international development thinking.

While DFID was busy creating demand for social analysis and building a professional

cadre of social development experts, it also underwent a process of decentralisation. A

challenge it has since encountered is that of finding good social development expertise in

the countries where it holds bilateral interests. One way in which it has sought to address

this issue is through attempts to transfer social development skills—a process found to be

fraught with difficulty particularly when little cognisance is paid to the long timeframe

needed to help people gain the new skills and knowledge. In this context, Eleanor Fisher

and Jeremy Holland, both lecturers at CDS Swansea, present the case of a research

capacity building programme financed by DFID in the late 1990s in order to explore

experiences of social development knowledge building. The case highlights some of the

problems entailed in conceptualising social development knowledge as a resource to be

built and used in development.

Moving from an emphasis on social development within the organizational sphere to

consider policy relevant social research, Alan Rew, Professor of Development Policy and

Social Development 817

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 15, 815–818 (2003)

Planning at CDS Swansea and a social anthropologist who has pioneered attempts to link

anthropology to development practice, provides the final contribution to this Special Issue.

Rew presents the findings of research conducted in Northern Orissa to explore processes of

communication, which he suggests can be understood through the principle of ‘self-

organising collectivity.’ He uses this principle to argue that significant social development

gains are at risk through an over-concentration on universal targets established by global

Millennium Development Goals, adding the potential for illusions of worldwide omnis-

cience to the existing delusion of precision targeting in national development planning.

Social development gains achieved during the 1980s and 1990s through learning process

approaches to planning and documentation risk being side-lined, a process that suggests,

in Rew’s words, that ‘we might have got where we are now more speedily by remaining

radically sceptical about global goals largely devoid of cultural context and actual

community demands.’

REFERENCES

Booth D (ed.). 1994. Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research, and Practice. Longman

Scientific & Technical: Harlow.

Lochhead A. 1985. The Origins of the Centre for Development Studies at the University College

of Swansea. CDS Newsletter, No 11. http://www.swan.ac.uk/cds/events&news/history.htm

[19 August 2003].

United Nations. 1995. Copenhagen declaration on social development. United Nations, New York.

818 E. Fisher

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 15, 815–818 (2003)