Is Development Studies Still Irrelevant?
It was 1989 when Michael Edwards shook the academe and sparked a debate when he wrote the critique “The Irrelevance of Development Studies”. Fast forward to almost three decades later, whatever happened to his criticisms? Is the irrelevance of Development Studies still relevant today? Or did it become obsolete over time? When Edwards published his work, he pointed out salient points about how development studies is being carried out inside and outside the academe. According to him, there is still a gap between research and development. Development studies fails to solve the problems it was supposed to. It ceases to serve its purpose to bring progress in most areas especially the underdeveloped countries. One of the points he expounded was that development studies scholars are still victims of the banking style of education where there is a passive reception of ideas and inputs from professors to students. In turn, this a...