…categories and linear analysis, and allows us to work with complexity, rather than denying it. It encourages us to dive into the work of intersectionality and silo-smashing, placing greater faith…
Programming in Chaos. Why I think we’ve been getting it wrong.
…Response? Staunch the bleeding/fight the fire/stem the panic. Try and get back to islands of complexity. The aid business (along with academia, businesses, think tanks, government departments etc) mainly sees…
Religion and COVID-19: Four Lessons from the Ebola experience
…vividly demonstrated, the complexity extends to the wide range of vital roles religious communities play in many aspects of life. Health is one, but so is education, care of the…
How to write about development without being simplistic, patronising, obscure or stereotyping
It’s all very well writing for wonks, but what about the poor comms people who have to make all those clever ideas about nuance, context, complexity etc etc accessible to…
Evidence and results wonkwar final salvo (for now): Eyben and Roche respond to Whitty and Dercon + your chance to vote
…and contested meanings that generate change and are in constant flux. New inter-relational processes are constantly being generated that in turn affect and change those already in existence. Complexity theory…
Reshaping Economic Geography – the latest World Development Report
…should be applied depends on the complexity of the development challenge: Complexity of challenge (Geographic scale) Challenge Institutions Infrastructure Interventions One dimensional (L) Areas with only incipient urbanisation (N) Nations…
What’s New in Development? Introducing the Second Edition of ‘From Poverty to Power’
…from social protection to food reserves to ‘circuit breakers’ in financial markets, have become a much more central part of the development debate. Accounting for complexity: shifts in thinking and…
The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development: a big new book by Matt Andrews
…reality. Political science, complexity theorists, aid veterans, Cash on Delivery proponents, the Development Leadership Program, the Africa Power and Politics Programme and many more are all challenging linear/blueprint thinking and…
$15bn is spent every year on training, with disappointing results. Why the aid industry needs to rethink ‘capacity building’.
…in English – to address complex social transformations, such as local justice and peacebuilding. In all of these cases, the complexity, power and politics of the changes sought are sidestepped…
How can big aid organizations become Fit for the Future? Summary of my new paper
…sky reports, I decided to approach the topic from a different angle: what does all the stuff I’ve been reading and writing about systems thinking, complexity, power and politics mean…
Book Review: Can We Know Better? by Robert Chambers
…participatory methods (his life’s work) and then a set of heuristics for knowing better. In reclaiming rigour, Chambers sets up a crude but effective contrast between linear ‘Newtonian’ and ‘Complexity’…