1979: Volume 10
Volume 10 Number 4 October 1979
Edited by: John Oxenham
Development studies have become academically many-sided, a fact not unrelated to the possibility of earning a living from them. Hence in titling this guest issue of the IDS Bulletin "Development Studies at Birmingham" we make no claim of comprehensive coverage, even if Birmingham is understood to mean our own University. Interests in development could undoubtedly be located in numerous departments of that University. All we offer is a selection of current work in two institutions that may be said to have a primary concern with matters of interest to readers of this Bulletin a Centre which is charged specifically with the promotion of knowledge about one part of the developing world, and a Group within the Institute of Local Government Studies that is professionally engaged in training, research and consultancy work relating to development administration.
1980: Volume 11
Volume 11 Number 1 January 1980
Edited by: Susan Joekes and Chris Stevens
UNCTAD Conferences have aroused scepticism in previous editors of the IDS Bulletin. The issue devoted to UNCTAD III begins with the words 'Those who still entertained fond hopes that UNCTAD, in its present form, could help bring about a more equitable distribution of income among the world's nations should have few remaining illusions after the third Conference in Santiago' (ÏDS Bulletin 1973: 1).
Three years later, in the run-up to the fourth Conference, the editorial began with a spoof dictionary definition of UNCTAD as 'a gathering at which hostility is veiled by expression of highminded sentiment, and constructive action thwarted by passage of elusive resolutions' (IDS Bulletin 1976: 2).
How pleasant it would be to strike a more optimistic note in this, the third issue to concentrate on an UNCTAD assembly. And how encouraging. both for the ldcs and for those of us in the industrialised world whose work assumes the feasibility of negotiated change in the international economy.
Volume 11 Number 2 May 1980
Edited by: John Oxenham
Why is educational reform so difficult to achieve in developing countries?1 In particular, why do programmes of vocational education or attempts to make education relevant to the kinds of lives which the majority of pupils will have to lead, meet with such depressingly small success?
Volume 11 Number 3 July 1980
Edited by: Dudley Seers
When, in 1964, a conference in this field was held in Manchester,1 not many courses on development were being taught. The conference was in fact not so much about problems of teaching as about the subject itself especially whether growth models, derived from the dominant neo-classical school, were appropriate. Since Thomas Balogh, Nicholas Kaldor and Joan Robinson were among those present, the discussion was lively and iconoclastic. The conference was, perhaps in retrospect something of a landmark, the first major occasion on which the then current orthodoxy in 'development economics' was on the defensive.
By the end of the 1 970s, teaching about development had proliferated in Britain. Most universities had established at least optional units on subjects such as 'economics of underdeveloped countries' for undergraduates studying economics or social science, and East Anglia had pioneered a complete undergraduate degree in the subject. Several universities had also established graduate courses. Meanwhile, the subject itself had been changing.
Experience was revealing the limited significance (even dangers) of economic growth in the sense of an increase in some income aggregate. This was becoming sharply distinguished from 'development', which was increasingly seen as a largely political and social process. Consequently,those teaching development economics began to pay more attention to 'social factors'; courses on the 'sociology' of development, etc appeared, and some expressly interdisciplinary ones were established.
Volume 11 Number 4 October 1980
Edited by: Richard Jolly
The collapse of white domination and the emergence of a freely-elected government in Zimbabwe have brought home the rapidity with which change has occurred in Southern Africa.
It is only five years since the break-up of the Portuguese empire in Africa that led to the independence of Angola and Mozambique, and indeed to a fundamental re-drawing of the political map of the region. These events, too, have shown how baseless were the expectations of those who, until recently, held political power. It was, after all, Ian Smith who said that black majority rule would never come in his lifetime. It is of course dangerous to draw conclusions about the future from the past. We cannot say how long the South African government will be able to continue to temporise about the future of Namibia. And there are innumerable possible scenarios about the future of South Africa itself, ranging from the reinforcement of the existing repressive system, through a process of peaceful change by mutual agreement, to a period of bloody confrontations and violent revolution.
IDS as a development research institute is concerned with the broader impact of these political changes on the pattern of development in the region, particularly as it affects the welfare of the majority of the African population. Our concern is with trying to understand the processes at work.
Our particular emphasis in this number of the Bulletin is on recent changes in a number of Southern African countries - and how they have affected a long-standing preoccupation - one could say, the dominant characteristics of economic and social development in Southern Africa: inequality how has it changed? How is it now maintained? How do those concerned with combating it see the problem? What constraints do they face?
