Looking back from 2046: Thoughts on the eightieth anniversary of an Institute for Revolutionary Social Science

Abstract

As a result of a hostile external environment and its own internal weaknesses, social science is rarely important to social transformation, and this diagnosis perhaps applies especially to development studies. This article lays out an alternative framework for knowledge that attempts to close this gap. Three fundamental shifts are recommended: from a 'development' to a 'social transformation' frame of analysis, from producers and consumers to 'co-creators' of knowledge, and from research as a private activity to engagement with the public sphere. Taken together, these changes would lay the basis, not just for a reinvigoration of development studies, but for a new paradigm of 'revolutionary social science'. © Institute of Development Studies.