4: Theory and practise

Some interesting comments I heard at the seminar were:-

"Communities should be the subject, not the object of development"

"There's nothing so practical as good theory"

"There is no integrated theory of community development"

Theory helps by providing confidence and broader understanding of processes, plus it can help to expose the implicit as well as the explicit theories of the relevant actors in any situation in ways that allow evaluation and self-learning processes. One problem, however, is that social science has become abstracted from local particulars, and can be 'imposed', becoming itself a structure of power. Imposed theory blunts the ability to listen, in order to hear meaning and to honour the people who provide the information that supports theory building.

Indeed, there are inherent contradictions within the theory-practise bundle. The over-reliance on abstractions, objectivity and scientism mitigate against practicing true bottom-up research and actively divides theory - with its neat logics - from practise, with its messy contexts and the need to see human subjects as independent actors rather than ciphers for the hypothesis.

When studying policy, theory is often tacit and unarticulated, and this can lead to difficult situations. There is a need to be conscious of theory for ethical and practical reasons, and because theory needs to be tempered by context. Policy theory, in particular, needs to be tempered by context. Without this, the local subjects become mere objects and social justice concerns go out the window.

Another ethical concern about the role of theory in local development studies, is that the research is often driven by the priorities of funding bodies - which generally are political or practical, not theoretical. This is acceptable if the project provides things the community itself needs and wants. However, the danger is that overarching theory is applied to the work like a cloak, disintegrating or disguising both the practise and the theory. Whilst the institution may get what it wants from the experience in the end, the local community or the community of scholars may not.