Language as a middle ground: Using grammatical reading to ‘find’ theory in development practice

Abstract

It has been noted that development literature has overlooked theoretical issues, largely because theory and practice are viewed as separate. This separation is produced in language and can be collapsed. Pin-Fat's grammatical reading offers a way of thinking about development by 'staying on the surface of language'. Debates about naming development practices are not purely semantic; they reveal implicit theoretical understandings of what can and should be accomplished by those practices. grammatical reading allows us to interrogate these assumptions. Thus, enabling reading theory from practice, to challenge how possibility has been constructed, opening space for new approaches to be explored.

Re-conceptualizing Development Terminology from a Relational Approach: Perspectives from Two Case Studies in South Africa

“…Over the past few decades, there have been significant changes in methods of research and practice in development toward more contextually relevant studies (Chambers, 1997; Read, 2014; UNDP, 2018). Research and development practices have become more sensitive to how individuals and groups within development communicate, interpret, and construct knowledge as part of sensemaking and in understanding and shaping their lives and social realities.…”