Processes, patterns, practices, and perspectives: What we talk about when we talk about “development”

Abstract

“Development” is a central term in an interdisciplinary discussion that brings together a diverse range of more conventional disciplines, including economics, politics, anthropology, and history. While this word is often used in highly specific ways within each of these contributing fields, the use can vary widely between them, leaving explicitly interdisciplinary discussions of “development” open to unnecessary semantic confusion. This paper breaks this multifaceted term down into the individual facets and constructs a descriptive typology that can be used to interpret individual uses in a text. This typology is then applied to four classic works that attack conventional understandings of “development” and a selection of articles in the journal World Development from 1973, 1993, and 2013. This analysis appears to document a maturation of interdisciplinary discussions of “development,” as evidenced through observation of increasing rigor, specificity, and a now nearly standard reliance of adjacent qualifying terms when “development” is used in an interdisciplinary text. However, it also finds that while these qualifiers are a semantic aid, they are not a satisfactory replacement for careful use of the term and clear presentation of the underlying ideas.

Keywords:

• development
• philosophy of language
• development studies
• interdisciplinary
• semantics
• literature review

Public Interest Statement

It is common for a single word to refer to multiple ideas or concepts, but the intended meaning is usually shared among discussion participants or clear from the surrounding context. However, some discussions are intentional efforts to bring together people with diverse perspectives, who may use words in different ways and interpret the context quite differently. This interdisciplinary approach is often productive, but it can also easily result in avoidable misunderstandings if semantic issues are not addressed. This is particularly likely in the field of development studies, which relies on the word “development” to bring together diverse disciplines, each of which have a precise but unique understanding of the term. This paper surveys the literature of this field and describes the variety of ways in which the word is used within the interdisciplinary discussions. In doing so, it also documents the emergence of development studies as a coherent field of study and an increasingly careful discussion.

1. Introduction

Bringing diverse perspectives to bear on shared problems or interests is an increasingly popular intellectual strategy that is being applied a wide range of issues, such as those relating to social and environmental concerns (O’Rourke, Crowley, & Gonnerman, 2016). This approach is explicitly central to the trans- and inter-disciplinary literature and is foundational to many recently emerged fields, such as environmental and international studies (Repko & Szostak, 2016). Even many academic fields that are now often considered to be coherent disciplines in themselves, such as ecology, were founded as intentionally integrative studies and retain high internal heterogeneity (Odum, 1977). However, these discussions among diverse participants can easily be hampered by unnecessary confusion resulting from semantic differences among the participating intellectual disciplines (O’Rourke, Crowley, Eigenbrode, & Wulfhorst, 2013). The need to develop a shared language is often identified as critical for cross-disciplinary communication, but there has been limited application of this idea to practice or discussion of what such semantic inquiry should look like (Repko & Szostak, 2016).

This study focuses on the use of the word “development” in the field of “development studies,” which is a particularly tricky example of the more general semantic problem. Whereas some interdisciplinary discussions have a central word that is broadly understood in a common way, such as perhaps “international” in “international studies,” this is not the case in this field. Instead “development” is used in diverse but highly specific ways that vary widely among the interacting disciplines, yet it is also relied upon to bring those disciplines together and provide coherence to the resulting discussions (Thomas, 2000). In this case it is not likely that the participants would settle for a single shared concept, nor any reason why they should. Rather than arguing that a specific understanding of “development” should be given priority, this study presents a summary of the diverse but related ways in which the word is used and how that use has changed over time.

This paper begins by introducing the semantic issues surrounding the use of “development” in development studies then discusses the philosophical foundations of semantic inquiry, with a focus on Socrates and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Prominent literature in development studies is then surveyed to produce a classification scheme, or descriptive typology, of the diverse ways in which the word is used in these interdisciplinary conversations. This typology is then used to perform textual analysis on certain influential and provocative texts and on select publications in the journal World Development from 1973, 1993, and 2013, an analysis that allows for the identification of general changes in use over time.

2. Development studies

The final chapter of the seminal book Doctrines of Development is entitled “The Jargon of Development” and is focused around the question “what is development?” (Cowen & Shenton, 1996, p. 407). The authors Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton conclude, “development defies definition,” (p. 407) and support this claim with a wide-ranging critique of diverse attempts to provide a positive answer to this seemingly straightforward question. This conclusion and the method of inquiry echo the first sentence of the book, which is “Development seems to defy definition, although not for a want of definitions to offer” (p. 2). The authors’ intent with such statements is clearly not to argue that the term is therefore meaningless, but rather to encourage a more subtle investigation, one that requires the reading of the several hundred intervening pages. This line of questioning and the resulting ambiguous conclusion are not uncommon in semantic discussions of “development” within the field of development studies. For example, James Ferguson begins his preface to The Anti-Politics Machine with the same question and concludes that while it is “almost nonsensical to deny that there is such as thing as ‘development,’ or to dismiss it as a meaningless concept … it seems almost impossible to question it, or to refer it to any standard beyond its own” (Ferguson, 1990, p. xiii). He then proceeds to focus in on a specific interpretation of “development” and critique it from a standard of his own.

Ferguson and many other modern commentators, such as Amaryta Sen in Development as Freedom (1999), Caroline Moser in Gender Planning and Development (1993), and Arturo Escobar in Encountering Development (1995), take issue with some conventional understanding of “development” and seek to expose unappreciated implications (Ferguson), define new goals (Sen), demand expanded dialogues (Moser), and encourage the transition to a “post-development” future (Escobar). However, while each author attacks some conventional interpretation of “development” and presents an alternative understanding, their views of “development” have little in common. Escobar is clearly not seeking to move beyond Sen’s concept of expanding human freedoms, nor is Moser explaining how to conduct gender planning within what Ferguson describes as a political vacuum. While all of these authors make careful and diverse arguments attacking some understanding of “development,” they also rely heavily on the word itself to support their divergent positions. For example, Escobar uses the word over 150 times prior to the first chapter of the book that has since defined him as a “post-development” thinker. The result is the ironic intellectual situation where a central term apparently cannot be defined, yet it continues to define the discussion itself.

A partial explanation for this situation lies in the semantic history of the term. The deep etymology of “development” is uncertain, but one prominent theory is that it comes from the Latin words “dis,” to open or part, and “volvere,” to roll (Klein, 1971). In support of this, the modern English word can be traced more immediately to the Old French term “desveloper,” which appears in texts starting in the mid 1700s where it carried the literal meaning of “to unfold or unfurl” (Klein, 1971). By 2017, however, the Wikipedia entry for the word was a “disambiguation” page with over 60 links to more specific entries. Eleven of these are classified under “Social Science,” eight under “International and Regional,” and three under “Land Use,” all of which are major overlapping themes in the interdisciplinary field of development studies. (Wikipedia, 2017). This pattern suggests a semantic radiation, where the historical root word differentiated over to time to lead to a variety of highly specialized uses. While this word may have once related to a single concept, this is no longer the case.

The diverse perspectives that contribute to development studies represent a wide range of these specialized understandings of “development.” By and large, economists use it to imply economic growth, politicians recognize it as referring to policies and deliberate interventions, anthropologists imply the side effects of colonization and globalization, and historians interpret it as some specific result of interacting historical forces. Within each of these fields, the occurrence of “development” in a text or conversation is unlikely to cause significant semantic confusion. However, when these communities interact, the interpretation of even a seemingly well-qualified phrase, such as “the process of global economic development,” is highly dependent on the specific background of each reader.

“Development” is therefore not an ambiguous term because it has not yet been adequately defined, but rather because it has been rigorously defined in diverse but related ways. As Cowen and Shenton point out, “development” in such discussions “comes to be defined in a multiplicity of ways because there are a multiplicity of ‘developers’” (Cowen & Shenton, 1996, p. 3). This presents a semantic situation that is unlike terms that are ambiguous due to the lack of any specific use, and it increases the odds that discussants depending on the word “development” might be talking rigorously but entirely past each other.

This semantic investigation of the term “development” may seem to lack the moral and political overtones that are common in development studies, but no less than Confucius identified this “rectification of names” as the appropriate first step to take in pursuing normative goals. “If names be not correct,” he writes in the Analects, “language is not in accordance with the truth of things,” and the resulting confusions will undermine subsequent efforts (translated by Waley, 1938). The philosopher Henry Bergson takes a similar but more general position when he says that the common “first error” in trying to understand a system of thought is “to take for the constitutive element of doctrine what was only the means of expressing it.” (Bergson, 1946, p. 91). Given the importance of the larger human issues that come to the surface in discussions of “development” and the benefits of drawing from multiple perspectives, it would be a shame if the conversations were then undermined or inhibited by avoidable semantic misunderstandings. This paper therefore leaves it to others to explore the concepts associated with “development,” and instead addresses the less glamorous work of shoring up the semantic framework that supports these conversations.

3. A philosophical foundation for semantic inquiry

The aforementioned semantic inquiries into “development” pose the question “what is ‘development?’” and expect that it be answered in the positive with “‘development’ is ________.” When it cannot be, the authors then conclude that “development” cannot be defined. However, this approach rests on a common but naïve philosophical view of semantic inquiry that equates meaning with an explicit denotative definition. As a result, the seemingly nihilistic conclusions, while useful as a rhetorical tool, should not be understood as the result of a rigorous semantic investigation.

The “what is X?” form of questioning was widely popularized by Socrates and other early Greek philosophers as a fundamental method of inquiry, and they considered a failure to supply a satisfactory response to this question as an indication that either the term was meaningless, the respondent was ignorant, or both. However, such a conclusion was in fact often the point of their questioning, and Socrates repeatedly states that recognizing the extent of his own ignorance (and the ignorance of others) is sufficient consolation for not answering the original question. When he would accept a positive response from an opponent, it was typically as a set-up for then undermining some larger edifice with a well-timed “okay, but if X is Y, then what is Y?” Socrates in fact often directly ridiculed the notion that he could answer his own questions of this form, such as when he replies to a student, “you come to me as though I professed to know about the questions which I ask” (Charmides, 165b in Hamilton, 1961). As the Greek scholar W. K. C Guthrie describes it, “the essence of the Socratic method is to convince the interlocutor that whereas he thought he knew something, in fact he does not” (Guthrie, 1968, p. 127). Despite the original negative application of this method, this form of direct questioning has since been widely adopted with the expectation that it should lead to a positive definition of a term.

Socrates liked to point out that seemingly satisfactory articulation does not necessarily imply knowledge, and more recent thinkers have argued that the converse is also true and some knowledge simply resists articulation. This latter insight is well captured in Henri Bergson’s statement that “philosophical systems are not cut to the measure of the reality in which we live” and Michael Polanyi concise declaration that “we can know more than we can tell” (Bergson, 1946, p. 1; Polanyi, 1966, p. 4). The implication here is that while a seemingly satisfactory answer to “what is X?” does not guarantee knowledge, an unsatisfactory answer or even none at all does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding or meaning. This point is implied by Cowen, Shenton, and Ferguson when they use their seemingly defeatist response to “What is ‘development?”’ as a rhetorical device to introduce their more subtle investigation of the term. That approach does not, however, offer a framework for understanding how this central term is used in interdisciplinary discussions or suggest a strategy to avoid or unravel semantic confusion when the term is used.

This potential disconnect between understanding and articulation revolutionized the thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who began his career in the philosophy of language with an exceptionally linear and positivistic view, to the extant that he wrote his first major work as a numbered list of declarative propositions. In his preface to this work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he claimed that the “whole meaning [of the book] could be summed up somewhat as follows: What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent” (Wittgenstein, 1921, p. 27). With this view, Wittgenstein became the champion of many “analytic” philosophers, but he re-emerged decades later with a competing and radically tacit view of language that is exemplified in his statement, “For a large class of cases ... the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (Follesdal, 1996; Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 43).

The conventional approach of asking “what is X?” and expecting a positive “X is _____” response suggests a straightforward association between the word “X” and some unified concept or common essence. Wittgenstein directly counters this assumption in an oft-cited passage from Philosophical Investigations:

Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games”. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? – Don't say: “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’”-but look and see whether there is anything common to all for if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 66)

This contrasting “look and see” approach demands a survey of the diverse uses of “X” to empirically assess whether the word can be strictly associated with a single concept or if there are multiple categories of use that would imply multiple related concepts.

This task of characterizing and categorizing individual instances is common to many intellectual fields, with this descriptive survey providing the foundation for the study of relationships among types. In the biological sciences, for example, the current interest in ecological and evolutionary relationships only became possible after centuries of observational surveys and taxonomic classifications identified relevant groupings of individuals, such as populations, species, and communities. Once established, a descriptive typology of individual instances can support a wide range of questions about relationships, such as epistemological or pragmatic associations that might be informative of disciplinary or personal interests. Identifying which specific categories that an author references can help to clarify what sorts of games they prefer, what types of organisms they study, or what they mean when they talk about “development” even if they do not state this focus directly. In some cases, such as biology, this inquiry into relationships can also focus on historical associations or other ontological relationships among types. A simplified conceptual example of categorizing individual instances and exploring relationships among general types is described in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A conceptual schematic describing the construction of a descriptive typology (1) and application of it to explore relationships among types that are based on interest, values, or purpose (2) or hypothesize an empirical relationship (3).

Note: Two alternative formulations are given for each type of relationship (a-c), which are only in competition for the latter ontological category (3).

The beginnings of a descriptive typology of “development” can be seen in the dichotomies that are sometimes made in the interdisciplinary literature. One such common distinction is between “immanent development,” as the general process of societies changing over time, and “intentional development,” as the deliberate practice of intervening in an attempt to influence this change (Bebbington, 2004; Cowen & Shenton, 1996). Another is between “development” as a set of social ideals or goals, and either the immanent process of change (Ingham, 1993) or the intentional practice of intervention (Sen, 1999). These dichotomies are typically used to clarify an author’s interests, as in “this meaning, not that meaning,” and are not intended to represent a survey of the field. One exception is Alan Thomas who, in a response piece to Doctrines of Development, describes three general categories of use: immanent processes, intentional practices, and social ideals (Thomas, 2000). His justification for extending simple dichotomies into a descriptive typology echoes Wittgenstein’s observational approach as he writes, ‘the question is one of usage … rather than of trying to show which meaning is the “correct” one’ (Thomas, 2000, p. 774).

A well-developed classification scheme provides a starting point for additional semantic inquiries and can immediately reduce the confusion surrounding “development” in several ways. The first and most direct is that it provides a formal framework for interpreting individual uses of “development” in interdisciplinary literature, which is particularly helpful when the uses are surprising to a reader. Second, many authors make complex arguments that weave among alternative uses of “development,” and the ability to trace the change in the meaning among individual uses can provide additional and potentially nuanced insights into their broader argument. Third, it allows for the quantitative assessment of texts, which can be used to compare and contrast among diverse authors and works in order to clarify conceptual differences. Finally, while a descriptive typology cannot offer normative prescriptions of how “development” should be used, it can provide authors with a guide of how a use might be interpreted by an interdisciplinary audience, which can help them to avoid ambiguous or misleading language. Options to do so include explicitly stating their intended meaning and contrasting it with other uses, adding adjacent qualifiers to clarify an individual use of “development,” and replacing the term entirely with a more specific phrasing.

4. Methodology

This formal survey of the use of “development” in development studies combined depth, through focused analysis of critical texts, and breadth, through a broader sampling of journal articles across a 40-year period. The previously identified books by Sen, Ferguson, Moser, and Escobar were selected to meet the depth requirement, and the textual analysis focused on the prologues or introductions where the authors explicitly wrestled with semantic issues. The journal World Development was selected to meet the breath requirement, as it is a leading publication in the interdisciplinary field and has been semantically self-conscious from the first issue in 1973, when the editors introduced the journal by identifying the diverse concepts that they associate with “development” (World Development Editorial Board, 1973). Textual analysis was limited to journal articles from 1973, 1993, and 2013 that used the word “development” in the title. As all articles published in this journal are presumably about “development” in some form but it is also possible that they might not use the word itself, this filter was applied to ask the more specific question, “when an author prominently and explicitly associates their text with ‘development’ in an interdisciplinary context, how do they then use the term?” This selection was further restricted to original research articles of greater than 3 pages, and excluded all book reviews, speech transcripts, and short comment articles. The selected articles are listed in Appendix 1. The final descriptive typology used for classification emerged as the result of an iterative learning process and does not presume to be exhaustive or authoritative within the field.

This resulting typology was then reapplied to the same texts to quantify patterns of use within and across the selected works. All individual uses of the term were classified within each text, with the exception of keywords, legends, footnotes, and references. All acronyms containing “development” were interpreted as full uses of the term and classified accordingly. Proper nouns and direct quotations containing “development” were recorded but not classified within the typology, as they did not represent the author’s word choice. Uses that were considered to be outside of the common interdisciplinary discussion of “development” were also recorded as “unrelated.” These were primarily uses that referred to the emergence of a specific product, idea, or activity, such as the “development” of a new technology. Occurrence of related terms such as “developing” and “developed” was also recorded and classified as referring to societies, not referring to societies, or within proper names or quotes. Immediately adjacent qualifiers, such as “economic [development]” or “[development] plan” where recorded during the analysis. Where multiple qualifiers were used, such as “land development banks” and “regional development policy,” only the more specific qualifier was recorded, which was usually the one following “development.” The final textual analysis of all selected journal articles was performed over three days with the articles analysed in a random order.

The interpretation and categorization of each individual use was based primarily on the immediately surrounding text, as this is what a reader would first turn to when faced with a surprising use of the term. However, the “principle of charity” was also used to ensure that the local contextual interpretation was consistent with or at least not contradictory to the author’s larger stated interests. This approach, which was popularized by W.V.O. Quine, maintains that effort should be made to interpret a text or argument in a way that is rational, internally coherent, and as viable of an argument as is possible (Follesdal, 1982; Wilson, 1959). This general strategy helps to avoid oversimplified interpretations and straw-man arguments, and is particularly appropriate for “development” owing to the diverse and sometimes rhetorical or even sarcastic use of the term in the literature. However, some individual uses of “development” resist classification, such as when an author’s broader position is not straightforward and there are no adjacent qualifiers or the individual uses are highly variable. Rather than demand classification of every use and thereby sprinkle ambiguity throughout the analysis, such rare instances were simply marked as “unclear.”

5. Results and discussion

The results are presented in three sections, with focused discussion following each set of results and the more general discussion reserved for the conclusion. The first section is a summary of the four general and 22 specific categories of use identified in the final descriptive typology. The process of categorizing individual uses within this framework is described in detail in Figure 2. The second section is the application of this typology to the interpretation of the four provocative and semantically self-aware texts, which combines the textual analysis of uses of “development” with a broader interpretation of these selections and authors. The results of this textual analysis are summarized in Appendix 2. The final section is the survey of articles from World Development from 1973, 1993, and 2013. This analysis focuses exclusively on the use of the word “development,” and does not attempt to balance this with the broader interests of each article, as the goal is instead to track patterns of use over time within this interdisciplinary field.

Figure 2. A schematic of the process that was used to classify textual occurrences of “development” within the final descriptive typology.

Notes: The solid lines and bold categories indicate the route of classification of the uses that are the primary interest in this analysis. For the 2nd and 3rd levels, the classification proceeded left to right, such that “Deliberate” and “Unclear” were everything that wasn’t classified in the alternatives to the left of each.

5.1. Categories of use

5.1.1. Processes (immanent)

A foundational assumption to interdisciplinary discussions of “development” is the idea that societies are not static entities waiting for policy decisions to have their intended effect, but rather dynamic complex systems. It was in this sense that the philosopher Georg Hegel, who greatly influenced Karl Marx and through him countless modern thinkers, claimed in 1830 that “the history of the world … is the process of development” (as quoted in Arndt, 1981). While Hegel, Marx, and many of their intellectual descendants have tended to view this as a successional transition through distinct states, the more general conception is that societies are in a process of continuous change. “Development” might be used in this sense to refer to (1) a general process of immanent social change, (2) the historical path that led to a specific social condition or situation, (3) a theoretical process that leads to a specific state or outcome, or (4) an idealized process of general social improvement.

5.1.2. Patterns (immanent)

Investigations into immanent social trajectories often focus not on the overall process, but on the observable patterns that emerge and can be used to characterize and compare ever-changing societies. The uses of “development” in this sense is often in reference to (5) general economic growth, (6) an increase in industrial activity, physical infrastructure, and the exploitation of natural resources, (7) an increase in access to health and human services, or (8) some other observable improvement in well-being. It may also be used as (9) an unspecified or integrative measure of society that allows for them to be assessed and compared, such as when societies are classified as being “developed,” “underdeveloped,” or “developing.”

5.1.3. Practices (intentional)

An understanding of immanent processes and observable patterns is often used to direct intentional practices that seek to influence the larger social trajectory, and “development” in this case refers to these practices themselves. Such use might focus on (10) the general practice or global institution of such social interventions, (11) specific policies, plans, or projects, (12) financial investment to support such efforts, (13) interventions targeting specific patterns, (14) interventions targeting specific social groups, (15) types of intervening organizations, or (16) the practitioners themselves.

5.1.4. Perspectives (intentional)

Attempts to understand the interaction of the processes, patterns, and practices associated with “development” has led to a fourth general use that references the perspectives that are associated with these reflective discussions. This might include (17) public conception of processes, patterns, or practices, (18) the broad and often implicit institutional vision behind interventions, (19) general strategies or theories guiding interventions, (20) general intellectual discourse on the topic, and (21) formalized knowledge and associated commentators that emerge from this discourse. It may also be (22) rhetorically undefined, such as in asking, “what is ‘development?’”

In theory, these four general categories relate to each other very neatly. Societies are always changing (Processes) and these changes can often be observed (Patterns) and influenced (Practices), and this interaction of processes, patterns, and practices can also be studied and assessed (Perspectives). However, the actual use of “development” is far more complicated. While some authors may restrict their discussion to a single general or even specific category of use, many others will deliberately build more complex arguments that use “development” in multiple ways. For example, it is common to criticize specific practices as being dissociated from the underlying processes or inspired by unrealistic patterns. Other authors may wander from one category of use to another in a single text and in ways that are not always immediately clear in context or necessarily deliberate.

These categories of use should not be considered exhaustive of the development studies literature, and necessarily reflect the limited scope of the survey and the subjectivity inherent in this single author approach. For example, while there is significant interest in studying institutional change, such as the emergence of property rights, court systems, and financial regulations, there were no instances of “development” used in this sense, or at least they were not interpreted as such by this author. In addition, this typology of uses of “development” should also not be confused with a typology of the concepts that are discussed in this literature, which would be the more ambitious project of trying to understand and categorize “what people think about when they think about ‘development.’”

5.2. Interpretation of provocative texts

5.2.1. Development as freedom (Introduction)—Amartya Sen

In his introduction to this 1999 book, the Nobel-prize winning economist Amartya Sen introduces an alternative view of “development” as not growth in GDP (#5, Pattern) or the industrialization of an economy (#6, Pattern), but rather as “the process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” (#4, Process, p. 3). He explicitly recognizes potential semantic ambiguity surrounding this term and describes the former understandings as “narrower views of development” (p. 3–4). He also explicitly avoids common economic connotations by stating that his understanding of “development” is “relevant even for richer countries” (p. 6). While this process of expanding freedom could be measurable, only two individual uses were classified in this way (#9, Pattern), while 27 of the 39 individual uses in the Introduction refer to an idealized process of general improvement (#4, Process). This interplay between processes and patterns is recognized throughout the introduction, such as through his repeated statement that human freedoms are both the “constituent components” (#4, Process, p. 4) and “principal ends” (#9, Pattern, p. 4) of his understanding of “development.” Interestingly, while Sen’s larger interests and legacy concern the global institution of interventions (#10, Practice) and the stated goals of idealized interventions (#18, Perspective), he does not in fact make any specific reference to even the general category of Practice in this introduction. Instead, the ten remaining individual uses are classified under the general category of Perspectives, with most concerning the public conception of the term (#19, Perspective). This textual analysis helps to identify Sen’s Introduction to Development as Freedom as a deliberate attempt to place his subsequent discussion of interventions within the public understanding of the general process of societal improvement. While 24 of the 39 individual uses of “development” in this introduction lacked adjacent qualifiers, none of these uses were found to be ambiguous or falling outside of the typology that was constructed for these interdisciplinary discussions.

5.2.2. The anti-politics machine (Preface)—James Ferguson

This 1990 book by James Ferguson is an attack on the conventional design of and justification for deliberate interventions (#20, Perspectives), along with the colloquial understanding of the term (#19, Perspectives). In sharp contrast to Sen’s normative discussion of how these interventions should be designed and justified, Ferguson makes it clear in his preface that he “does not aim to rectify or to correct ‘development’ thinking” that is driving these interventions (p. xv). Rather, his intention is to elucidate the difference between what these interventions say they are doing and the actual effects that they often have. In particular, Ferguson points out the tendency of such interventions to be detached from the local reality of their target regions, and while they often fail to meet their professed goals, they nonetheless have unintended and unavoidable consequences within those region. He argues that this situation undermines local political forces and creates a chaotic power vacuum that seems to necessitate further intervention. Using the country of Lesotho as a case study, Ferguson claims that the global institution of deliberate interventions acts as “an ‘anti-politics machine’ … everywhere whisking political realities out of sight, all the while performing, almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of expanding bureaucratic state power” (p. xv). As with Sen, Ferguson recognizes that his is a specialized use of the term “development” and he clearly states, “most of the grander and global questions about the origin and meaning of the modern figure of ‘development’ are bracketed and laid to one side here” (p. xvi). This focus is clear in the textual analysis, as 30 of the 35 individual uses fall within the Perspectives category, with 13 of those relating to public conception of “development” (#17), 10 in the broad institutional visions behind interventions (#18), 6 rhetorically undefined (#22), and 1 referring to the general intellectual discourse (#20). Four of the remaining five uses were classified as the general institution of intervention (#10, Practice), and the final use described a “stage of development” as a theoretically teleological process (#3, Process). As with Sen, Ferguson did not have any ambiguous or outside uses of “development.”

5.2.3. Gender planning and development: theories, practice, and training (Introduction)—Caroline Moser

In this 1993 book, Caroline Moser summarizes her experiences over years of working within deliberate interventions to incorporate gender issues into the design of specific projects. As the title suggests, her interest here is to convey what she has learned and support others who are taking this same approach with the goal of making gender planning a regular component of the design of interventions in the way that, as she notes, environmental planning had recently become standard. Both the conventional understanding of “development” that she is attacking—one that doesn’t include gender planning—and the alternative that she is proposing fall within this theme of deliberate interventions, and this focus is clearly reflecting in the way in which she uses “development” in the introduction. Nearly 75% of the individual uses in this introduction fall within the specific category of the explicit strategies, theories, and policies guiding interventions (#19, Perspective), with the majority of the rest (16% of overall) falling within the specific category of an idealized processes of social improvement (#4, Processes), which is the stated intent of such interventions. Of the 61 total uses, only two were considered ambiguous, and of the remaining, only two where found that did not contain adjacent qualifiers. The sharp focus of Moser’s writing and the rigor with which she uses “development” leaves little room for confusion or misinterpretation of her interests or argument.

5.2.4. Encountering development (Preface and Introduction)—Alberto Escobar

This 1995 book by Arturo Escobar is a direct attack on the related assumptions that (1) the industrialized nations of North America and Europe are appropriate models for the rest of that world, (2) that these former countries are justified to intervene in the latter to encourage this similarity, and (3) that these interventions are in the best interests of the targeted populations. This broad objection explicitly references the general categories of processes, patterns, and practices, and Escobar also recognizes the general category of perspectives in his preface by expanding his far-ranging understanding of “development” to include “the forms of knowledge that refer to [development] and through which it comes into being and is elaborated into objects, concepts, theories, and the like; the system of power that regulates its practice; and the forms of subjectivity fostered by this discourse, those through which people come to recognize themselves as developed or underdeveloped.” (p. 10) While his analysis touches on every general category identified in the descriptive typology and he notes that “an entire constellation of usages…is beginning to surface,” (p. 23) he also writes, “to sum up, I propose to speak of development as a historically singular experience” (p. 10). In addition, while he expresses interest in “the end of development,” (p. 29) asks “whether we can unmake development,” (p. 20) and has popularized the term “post-development,” he also defines his ideas through heavy use of the term itself, with a total of 10 individual uses in the preface and 143 in the introduction (Escobar, 2007). The ambitious scope and integrated intent of this work makes it quite unlike the other three texts, which are all explicit in the narrowness of their attacks on some conventional understanding of “development.” This approach may lend itself to semantic confusion making this textual analysis particularly useful for elucidating Escobar’s larger objectives.

Escobar’s initial uses of “development” in the preface cover a wide spectrum of categories, beginning with the global institution of deliberate intervention (#10, Practice) and followed by a general but observable measure of progress (#9, Pattern), an unrelated use in “the development of a framework,” (p. vii) and a return to the general global institution with the addition of the apparently original qualifier “development apparatus” (p. vii). His broader focus and larger goals are better reflected in the overall analysis where, of the 139 individual uses that are classified within the four general categories, 33.8% fall within Practices and 62.6% within Perspectives. Of these, the general institution of intervention (#10, Practice) constitutes 28.1% of the classified total and the institutional vision behind these interventions (#20, Perspective) constitutes 27.3%. In contrast, the immanent general categories of Processes and Patterns make up only 1.4% and 2.1% respectively. Escobar also included 14 uses of “developed” with respect to societies, 8 of which were of his own choosing, although this analysis did not further identify when he was in fact criticizing the practice of characterizing societies in this way.

5.3. Deliberate uses within World Development

When the journal World Development began publishing in 1973, the editors explicitly described their use of “development” as referring to the global institution of deliberate intervention (#10, Practice) with a hope that these activities can generate observable increases in social well-being (#9, Pattern). They wrote, “much has been written about aid and trade, but few writers have treated development as part of a total relationship between rich and poor countries, encompassing much more than tariff policy and development assistance…Development must be redefined as an attack on the chief evils in the world today: malnutrition, disease, illiteracy, slums, reemployment and inequality.” (World Development Editorial Board, 1973) After 40 years of publication, the editors’ explicit understanding of “development” had expanded to also include Processes and the Perspectives that had grown around the term during the intervening decades. The description of the journal in 2017 reads, “World Development recognizes ‘development’ as a process of change involving nations, economies, political alliances, institutions, groups, and individuals” (#1, Process: WD editorial board, 2017). The editors continue by recognizing the increasingly broad and interdisciplinary discussion surrounding “development” when they write, “Our goal is to learn from one another, regardless of nation, culture, income, academic discipline, profession or ideology” (#22, Perspective: WD editorial board, 2017). This careful handling of “development” by the editors of World Development and their explicit recognition of the diverse and expanding uses of the term suggests that they are trying to capture the breadth of use within the field of “development studies.” However, these editorial directives are of course no guarantee of how the term is actually used in the articles contained within this journal, or how that use might have changed over this time-period as the interdisciplinary discussions surrounding “development” increased and gathered momentum as an emerging theme in itself (Cowen & Shenton, 1996).

The temporal context for this analysis is a dramatic increase in the publication rate of original research articles within the journal World Development, against which several other trends stand out (summarized in Table 1). First, there has been a decrease in the reliance on the term “development” to discuss the associated issues, with the per cent of articles that meet the selection criteria dropping from over 25% of the total published in 1973 to 17.0% in 1993 and 11.0% in 2013 (Table 2). Second, the term has come to be used more rigorously over this period, such as is evidenced by a decrease in the occurrence of unclear and unrelated uses and an increase in the use of adjacent qualifiers (Tables 2 and 3). Third, this increasingly rigorous use is also increasingly specialized, with a decrease in the number of general categories referenced within each article (Table 4). Fourth, a dramatic increase in the use of “development” within proper nouns and an increase in the use of qualifiers may indicate an increase in the official use of the term in related agencies and activities, and an increased formalization in the discussion of these official efforts (Tables 2 and 3). Finally, there has been a decrease in the use of “development” to refer to imminent processes and an increased focus on the perspectives found in the interdisciplinary discussions (Table 4). This is also reflected in a decrease in the use of “developed” and “developing” to refer to societies, which may have also been influenced by the criticism of Escobar and others (Table 5).

Table 1. Summary of the general temporal trends of use of “development” observed in selected articles from World Development, with evidence from multiple lines of textual analysis

Observed trend	Textual analysis
	# of articles (Table 2A)	Total uses (Table 2B)	Median uses/article (Table 2C)	Use of qualifiers (Table 3)	Categories represented (Table 4)
1. Decreasing reliance on “development”	Decrease in % articles meeting selection criteria
2. Increasingly rigorous use	Decrease in % articles with unclear and unrelated uses	Decrease in % unrelated and unclear uses	Decrease in % unrelated and unclear, increase in % clear	Increase in all measures of qualified use
3. Increasingly specialized use	Decrease in % with unrelated/unclear	Decrease in % unrelated and unclear uses	Decrease in % use for all general categories	Increase in % qualified	Decrease in # categories represented
4. Formalization of interdisciplinary discussion	Increase in % of articles using proper nouns		Increase in % use of proper nouns	Increase in use of qualifiers within all general categories
5. Shift away from discussing Processes		Decrease in % referencing Processes	Decrease in % referencing Processes		Decrease in weighted score for Processes

Table 2. Summary of the textual analysis of selected journal articles from World Development in 1973, 1993, and 2013, shown here as (A) the number of articles with representation (1+ uses), (B) the total uses across all articles, and the (C) median and (D) maximum use within each article

	A. # of articles			B. total uses			C. median uses/article			D. max uses/article
	1973	1993	2013	1973	1993	2013	1973	1993	2013	1973	1993	2013
Published articles	43	141	181
Selected articles	11	24	20
	25.6%	17.0%	11.0%
Selected uses				363	1,284	1,064	27	41.5	41	82	191	278
Proper nouns	6	19	16	40	111	236	1	3	3.5	22	25	143
	54.5%	79.2%	80.0%	11.0%	8.6%	22.2%	4.8%	6.0%	9.5%	27.3%	47.1%	51.4%
Direct quotes	4	13	5	12	73	13	0	1	0	5	26	4
	36.4%	54.2%	25.0%	3.3%	5.7%	1.2%	0%	2.2%	0%	11.6%	22.0%	7.1%
Unrelated	7	13	6	17	36	9	1	1	0	4	9	3
	63.6%	54.2%	30.0%	4.7%	2.8%	0.8%	2.7%	0.9%	0%	20.0%	23.5%	8.4%
Deliberate	11	24	20	294	1,064	806	25	37.5	33.5	58	180	135
	100%	100%	100%	81.0%	82.9%	75.8%	87.7%	86.9%	88.6%	97.3%	100%	100%
Unclear	7	15	8	19	71	18	2	1	0	6	20	7
	63.6%	62.5%	40.0%	6.5%	6.7%	2.2%	5.6%	3.0%	0%	25.0%	30.0%	18.4%
Clear	11	24	20	275	993	788	23	35.5	32	57	165	133
	100%	100%	100%	93.5%	93.3%	97.8%	94.4%	97%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Processes	11	22	15	82	138	128	6	2.5	2	18	56	58
	100%	91.7%	75.0%	29.8%	13.9%	16.2%	33.3%	13.2%	6.6%	78.3%	75.0%	82.9%
Patterns	11	20	16	82	192	263	7	4.5	8	14	34	68
	100%	83.3%	80.0%	29.8%	19.3%	33.4%	24.6%	15.5%	17.2%	55.6%	85.7%	100%
Practices	10	17	16	78	282	271	3	6.5	1.5	38	45	123
	90.9%	70.8%	80.0%	28.4%	28.4%	34.4%	16.7%	20.4%	8.3%	66.7%	76.1%	100%
Perspectives	9	21	14	33	381	118	2	5	1	9	94	41
	81.8%	87.5%	70.0%	12.0%	38.4%	15.0%	16.7%	25.0%	3.5%	30.8%	72.0%	74.5%

Notes: Each measure is broken down into hierarchical categories following the schematic in Figure 2, and presented as count and percentage (bold/italic). For A and B, the percentage is calculated from the adjacent count, while for C and D the percentage is calculated within each article and presented as the Median/Maximum percent use per article.

Table 3. Occurrence of adjacent qualifiers with textual use of “development” in the selected articles of World Development

Use of qualifiers	1973	1993	2013
% Articles with 100% qualified and no unclear uses	0%	12.5%	20.0%
Median % qualified uses within each article	72.7%	88.4%	96.8%
% Qualified of total clear uses	73.4%	84.1%	95.3%
% Qualified of total uses classified as Processes	61.0%	51.1%	82.8%
% Qualified of total uses classified as Patterns	64.6%	76.6%	96.7%
% Qualified of total uses classified as Practices	87.2%	94.0%	98.5%
% Qualified of total uses classified as Perspectives	93.9%	92.4%	98.3%

Table 4. Representation of general categories within World Development in the selected years, measured as the mean number of categories found in each article (out of 4) and the mean of a weighted score for each category

	1973	1993	2013
Mean # of categories represented	3.73	3.33	3.05
Mean weighted score
Processes	2.91	2.23	1.90
Patterns	3.05	2.31	2.55
Practices	2.09	2.02	2.03
Perspectives	1.68	2.48	3.05

Notes: The weighted score was calculated as follows: within each article, the highest use general category received a 4, the next highest a 3, etc., with a tie recorded as a split (3.5, 2.5, etc.) and a category that wasn’t used given a 0.

Table 5. Summary of use of “developed” and “developing” to refer to societies within the selected articles from World Development

“Developed” and “Developing”	1973	1993	2013
# Articles with both	8	12	9
% Articles with both	72.7%	50.0%	45.0%
# Articles with neither	1	3	6
% Articles with neither	9.1%	12.5%	30.0%
Developed
# Articles with 1+ use	8	14	10
% Articles with 1+ use	72.7%	58.3%	50.0%
Total # uses	125	69	45
Median	6	1	0.5
Mean when > 0	15.6	4.9	4.5
Maximum	85	17	16
Developing
# Articles with 1+ use	10	18	13
% Articles with 1+ use	90.9%	75.0%	65.0%
Total # uses	126	157	89
Median	5	2	1.5
Mean when > 0	12.6	8.7	6.8
Maximum	47	57	25

Together, these trends appear to show a maturation of interdisciplinary discussions of “development” and perhaps the emergence of development studies as an integrative discipline in its own right, rather than simply a conversation among other existing disciplines. This transition from an interdisciplinary discussion to being considered a coherent discipline is not without precedent, and a recent striking example is the emergence of ecology in the twentieth century out of the confluence botany, zoology, soil science, and other natural science disciplines (Moore, 1920; Odum, 1977). This process likely requires increasing interest, coherence, and self-identity among the intellectual participants, along with some more formal recognition in the academic setting. The trends observed in this survey of World Development provide some evidence of the first requirement, and the increasing number of degrees offered in Development Studies, International Development, and related topics is some evidence of the second (Woolcock, 2007). While it is impossible at this time to predict whether development studies will remain explicitly interdisciplinary and whether the word “development” will remain diversely multifaceted, it is clear that this field itself is in the process of changing over time.

This strategy of using a descriptive typology to analyse specific texts allows for such change to be monitored through the recognition of measurable patterns, an approach that compliments the more individual impressions of the participants. Recognition of these patterns might also help to intentionally direct this change, such as by offering new insights into the diverse ways in which “development” is used in practice and guidelines for how it might be most clearly used. For example, the use of adjacent qualifiers may not be as effective of a strategy in this interdisciplinary discussion as it is within the represented disciplines. This textual analysis found that each individual author was highly specific in their use of adjacent qualifiers, but that there was much less agreement among them. No author used the same qualifier of “development” in multiple specific categories, but as a group, 15 of the top 25 most common qualifiers were used in more than one of the four general categories, while nine of these were used in both immanent (Process/Pattern) and intentional (Practice/Perspective) categories (Appendix 3). This suggests that while qualifiers of “development” can be useful for reducing some of the ambiguity surrounding a textual use of the term, they should be used with care in development studies, as they may also be disciplinary relics that demand their own semantic investigations. This self-reflective perspective on this emerging intellectual field may therefore be both an indication of and an influence on the development of development studies.

6. Conclusion

This descriptive typology and the associated textual analysis can add rigor to the use and interpretation of “development” in interdisciplinary discussions and texts by identifying patterns of use that might be overlooked in more qualitative assessments or statements of disciplinary norms. The most critical conclusion from this survey is that there is no replacement for clear thought and careful writing when presenting complex ideas to a diverse audience. The authors of the books and articles analysed here have found a variety of ways to limit ambiguity while still making prominent use of “development.” These include explicitly addressing the question of what they mean when they use “development,” restricting their use of the term to selected categories of meaning, and making rigorous and extensive use of reliable qualifiers. These practices appear to be becoming more common in the interdisciplinary discussions surrounding “development,” while at the same time other authors on the same topics appear to be increasingly avoiding the term entirely in favour of directly addressing the concepts that “development” was once trusted to convey. These strategies and the trends found in this survey offer strong evidence that authors participating in interdisciplinary discussions of “development” do not think that the term cannot be defined, but rather are wrestling with this semantic problem on a regular basis whenever they use, or choose not to use, the term “development.” The observational and quantifiable approach applied in this project supports these efforts by providing tools for participants to hone their messages and avoid common semantic confusions.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Ben Crow (UC Santa Cruz), Dr Jessica Steinberg (Indiana University), and multiple anonymous reviewer for feedback on this manuscript. This work was not supported by any direct funding and the author has no financial interest in the results.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The author received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Jon Eldon

Jon Eldon trained in biology and philosophy (BS/BA, Stanford University), before moving into ecology and conservation biology (MS, University of Hawaii), and then the agricultural sciences with an emphasis on international settings (PhD candidate, University of California-Santa Cruz). This paper emerged from trying to understand how to use this word across these diverse disciplines and within emerging interdisciplinary fields.

Appendix 1.

Articles from World Development selected for textual analysis

Table

Year	Authors	Title
1973	Bass L	The role of technologic institutes in industrial development
	Bruton H	Economic development and labor use: a review
	Economides C	Earned international reserve units: the catalyst of two complementary world problems – the monetary and development
	Gaitskell A	Alternative choices in development strategy and tactics: the Mekong river project as a case study
	Griffin K	An assessment of development in Taiwan
	Helleiner GK	Manufacturing for export, multinational firms and economic development
	Hirschman AO	The changing tolerance for income inequality in the course of economic development
	Sinha RP	Competing ideology and agricultural strategy: current agricultural development in India and China
	Stever G	Impact of space on World Development
	Streeten P	Trade strategies for development: some themes for the seventies
	Streeten P	The multinational enterprise and the theory of development policy
1993	Adams WM	Development’s deaf ear: downstream users and water releases from the Bakolori Dam, Nigeria
	Bardham P	Analytics of the institutions of informal cooperation in rural development
	Clements P	An approach to poverty alleviation for large international development agencies
	Cole R	Economic development in the South Pacific promoting the private sector
	Dieke P	Tourism in The Gambia: some issues in development policy
	Doner RF, Ramsay A	Postimperialism and development in Thailand
	Farzin, YH	Importance of foreign investment for the long-run economic development of the United Arab Emirates
	Geisler G	Silences speak louder than claims: gender, household, and agricultural development in Southern Africa
	Haque, CE	Human responses to riverine hazards in Bangladesh: a proposal for sustainable floodplain development
	Hewison K	Nongovernmental organizations and the cultural development perspective in Thailand: a comment on Rigg (1991)
	Ingham B	The meaning of development: interactions between “new” and “old” ideas
	Jackson C	Doing what comes naturally? Women and environment in development
	De Janvry A, Sadoulet E	Market, state, and civil organizations in Latin America beyond the debt crisis: the context for rural development
	Kaminarides J, Nissan E	The effects of international debt on the economic development of small countries
	Kardam N	Development approaches and the role of policy advocacy: the case of the World Bank
	Morgan EA, Power GD, Weigel VB	Thinking strategically about development: a typology of action programs for global change
	Pack H	Productivity and industrial development in sub-Saharan Africa
	Quiggin J	Common property, equality, and development
	Rock MT	“Twenty-five years of economic development” revisited
	Roe EM	Public service, rural development and careers in public management: a case study of expatriate advising and African land reform
	Sofer M	Uneven regional development and internal labor migration in Fiji
	Taylor L	The World Bank and the environment: The World Development Report 1992
	Uphoff N	Grassroots organizations and NGOs in rural development: opportunities with diminishing states and expanding markets
	Zimmerer KS	Soil erosion and labor shortages in the Andes with special reference to Bolivia, 1953–91: Implications for “conservation-with-development”
2013	Branisa B, Klasen S, Ziegler M	Gender inequality in social institutions and gendered development outcomes
	Carr-Hill R	Missing millions and measuring development progress
	Cramb RA	Palmed off: incentive problems with joint-venture schemes for oil palm development on customary land
	Headey DD	Development drivers of nutritional change: a cross-country analysis
	Herzer D, Nunnenkamp P	Private donations, government grants, commercial activities, and fundraising: cointegration and causality for NGOs in international development cooperation
	Hickey S	Beyond the poverty agenda? Insights from the new politics of development in Uganda
	Hudson J, Minea A	Innovation, intellectual property rights, and economic development: a unified empirical investigation
	Humphrey C, Michaelowa K	Shopping for development: multilateral lending, shareholder composition and borrower preferences
	Leonard DK, Bloom G, Hanson K, O’Farrell J, Spicer N	Institutional solutions to the asymmetric information problem in health and development services for the poor
	Mersland R, D’espallier B, Supphellen M	The effects of religion on development efforts: evidence from the microfinance industry and a research agenda
	Nunnenkamp P, Ohler H, Schworer T	US based NGOS in international development: financial and economic determinants of survival
	Orihuela JC	How do “mineral-states” learn? Path-dependence, networks, and policy change in the development of economic institutions
	Pepinsky TB	Development, social change, and Islamic finance in contemporary Indonesia
	Permanyer I	Using census data to explore the spatial distribution of human development
	Rijkers B, Soderbom M	The effects of risk and shocks on non-farm enterprise development in rural Ethiopia
	Rousseau PL, d’Onofrio A	Monetization, financial development, and growth: time series evidence from 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
	Sesan T, Raman S, Clifford M, Forbes I	Corporate-led sustainable development and energy poverty alleviation at the bottom of the pyramid: the case of CleanCook in Nigeria
	Smith LC, Khan F, Frankenberger TR, Abdul Wadud AKM	Admissible evidence in the court of development evaluation? The impact of CARE’s SHOUHARDO project on child stunting in Bangladesh
	Verrest H	Rethinking microentrepreneurship and business development programs: vulnerability and ambition in low-income urban Caribbean households
	Wyndow P, Li J, Mattes E	Female empowerment as a core driver of democratic development: a dynamic panel model from 1980 to 2005

Appendix 2.

A summary of textual use of “development,” “developed,” and “developing” by Sen, Ferguson, Moser, and Escobar in the Prefaces and/or Introductions of the selected texts. The uses are reported following the hierarchical categories identified in Figure 2, with the total count at each level indicated in bold. “Q” indicates a qualified use of “development” that contains an adjacent clarifying term and “U” indicates an unqualified use of “development” that does not

Table

	Sen			Ferguson			Moser			Escobar
	Total	Q	U	Total	Q	U	Total	Q	U	Total	Q	U
Total	39			35			73			153
Proper nouns	0			0			6			2
Direct quotes	0			0			1			2
Unrelated	0			0			5			3
Deliberate	39			35			61			146
Unclear	0			0			2			7
Clear	39	15	24	35	20	15	59	57	2	139	83	56
Percent of clear		38.5	61.5		57.1	42.9		96.6	0.4		59.7	40.3
Processes	27	5	22	1	1		11	9	2	2		2
1. General immanent process
2. Historical path							1		1
3. Theoretical and teleological				1	1					2		2
4. Idealized improvement	27	5	22				10	9	1
Patterns	2	2								3	3
5. Economic growth
6. Industrialization
7. Health and human services
8. General well-being	2	2								3	3
9. Unspecified/integrated
Practices				4	3	1	2	2		47	21	26
10. General/global institution				3	2	1				39	13	26
11. Specific policies, plans, projects							2	2
12. Financial investment										3	3
13. Interventions targeting patterns
14. Interventions targeting groups										2	2
15. Types of organizations				1	1					2	2
16. Practitioners										1	1
Perspectives	10	8	2	30	16	14	46	46		87	59	28
17. Public conception	6	4	2	13	6	7				15	5	10
18. Broad institutional vision				10	10					38	26	12
19. General strategies and theories							44	44		14	14
20. Intellectual discourse	2	2		1		1	2	2		8	5	3
21. Formalized knowledge	1	1								8	8
22. Rhetorically undefined	1	1		6		6				4	1	3
Developed							1			14
With reference to societies										7
Other							1			1
Quotes and proper nouns										6
Developing	1						4			1
With reference to societies	1						2			1
Other							2
Quotes and proper nouns

Appendix 3.

The top 25 most commonly used qualifiers for deliberate and clear uses of “development,” in the selected articles from World Development, shown here as combined across 1973, 1993, and 2013 and classified to general categories only

Table

Qualifying term	Use in selected articles (n = 55)		Use with Reference to:
			Immanent		Intentional
	Count	Percent	Processes	Patterns	Practices	Perspectives
Policy (-ies)	26	47.3			14	12
Economic	25	45.4		24	1
Strategy (-ies)	18	32.7				18
Process (-es)	17	30.9	12		1	4
Rural	17	30.9	2	1	14
Women	15	27.3			5	10
Agency (-ies)	12	21.8			12
Project (s)	12	21.8		1	11
Agriculture (-al)	11	20.0		8	3
Program (s)	10	18.2			8	2
Community	10	18.2			8	2
Literature	9	16.4				9
Activity (-ies)	8	14.5			8
Effort (s)	8	14.5			8
Planning	8	14.5				8
Sustainable	8	14.5	5	2		1
Approach (-es)	7	12.7				7
Assistance	7	12.7			7
Capitalist (-ism)	7	12.7	3	4
Goal (s)	7	12.7		1		6
Industry (-ial)	7	12.7		7
Infrastructure (-al)	7	12.7		5	2
Problems	7	12.7	1	3		3
Outcomes	6	10.9		6
Plans	6	10.9			5	1