The fiction of development: knowledge, authority and representation

David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This article introduces and explores issues regarding the question of what constitute valid forms of development knowledge, focusing in particular on the relationship between fictional writing on development and more formal academic and policy-oriented representations of development issues. We challenge certain conventional notions about the nature of knowledge, narrative authority, and representational form, and analyse these by comparing and contrasting selected works of recent literary fiction that touch on development issues with academic and policy-related representations of the development process, thereby demonstrating the value of taking literary perspectives on development seriously, based on the fact that certain works of fiction are better than academic or policy research in representing central issues relating to development, that they also frequently reach a wider audience and are therefore more influential, and finally because the line between fact and fiction is a very fine one. The article finally provides a list of relevant works of fiction that we hope academics and practitioners will find both useful and enjoyable.

Keywords: Development knowledge; representation; narrative authority; fiction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2005-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:379

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