First,
‘development’
as
conventionally
understood
and,
second,
‘critical
agrarian
studies’.
They
are
published
as
part
of
two
series,
one
in
the
Development
Insights
series
of
articles
in World
Development and
the
other
the Key
Concepts
series
in the
Journal
of
Peasant
Studies.
They’re
short
essays
with
some
Zimbabwe
focused
case
material,
but
hopefully
of
wider
interest.
Both
draw
on
my
book, Navigating
Uncertainty:
Radical
Rethinking
for
a
Turbulent
World published
by
Polity
in
2024.
But
they
take
the
arguments
further.
Let
me
highlight
some
of
the
themes.
Why
embracing
uncertainty
means
rethinking
development
Responding
to
our
current
age
of
uncertainty,
the World
Development essay asks
whether
‘development’
(broadly
understood) should
be
seen
as
a
project
of
management
and
control,
drawing
on
formal
expertise
and
creating
order
through
top-down
intervention,
or
one
of
flexible,
responsive,
adaptive
caring.
“A
rethinking
of
development
is
necessary
because
the
top-down,
controlling
version
of
development
has
not
improved
our
capacities
to
address
the
major
challenges
of
our
time,
including
climate
change.
One
consequence
of
the
failures
of
liberal
development
has
been
that
“populist
–
often
authoritarian
–
voices
take
hold,
offering
to
‘take
back
control’
in
the
name
of
‘the
people.’
Presenting
misinformation,
sometimes
conspiracy
theories,
to
justify
their
positions,
authoritarian
politics
can
be
imposed
in
the
absence
of
an
effective
alternative
from
the
liberal
state-market-society
consensus.”
The
essay
in
turn
asks,
what
should
the
response
be
given
the
failure
of
conventional
liberal
notions
of
development
and
the
ascendancy
of
populist
and
authoritarian
narratives?
How
can
the
political
terrain
be
redefined?
I
argue
that:
“The
default
is
often
to
argue
for
the
reconstruction
of
liberal
democratic
values
and
strong
state-based,
expert-led
institutions
with
greater
electoral
appeal.
A
more
effective,
efficient
liberal
state,
supported
by
markets
and
with
strong
evidence-based
expertise,
is
supposed
to
come
to
the
rescue.
But
we
have
to
acknowledge
that
such
approaches
to
statecraft
and
knowledge-making
have
failed,
and
in
the
face
of
accelerating,
intersecting
uncertainties
–
what
some
parse
as
‘the
polycrisis’
–
are
likely
to
fail
more
frequently…..
A
new
approach
is
needed
that
is
more
humble
and
ultimately
more
effective,
where
diverse
knowledges
come
into
conversation
and
can
deliberate
on
critical
but
uncertain
questions
such
as
climate
change,
co-constructing
responses
that
are
rooted,
democratic
and
accountable….
Instead
of
returning
to
an
idealised
past,
therefore,
a
new
democratic
politics
is
needed
that
engages
with
complexity
and
uncertainty…
This
requires
us
to
go
beyond
narrow
expert-led
elite
institutions
that
once
defined
liberal
development
towards
new
approaches,
where
adaptive
improvisation
and
deliberation
around
uncertain
futures
is
central.”
I
conclude:
“If
uncertainty
is
genuinely
embraced
–
and
alongside
this,
a
more
fundamental
commitment
to
a
radical,
hopeful
ethic
of
care
–
then
development
(and
its
politics)
will
look
very
different.
And
so
will
the
state
and
expert
and
legal
institutions
that
support
democratic
processes.
Rather
than
relying
on
technical
interventions,
financial
fixes
or
other
top-down,
authoritarian
responses,
a
reimagined
form
of
collective,
deliberative
democracy
can
emerge
as
an
alternative,
one
that
truly
embraces
complexity
and
uncertainty.”
Not
easy
for
sure,
but
our
current
politics,
bureaucracies
and
policymaking
processes
are
not
fit-for-purpose.
A
return
to
a
technocratic,
liberal
ideal
will
not
address
the
challenges.
So
new
ways
of
thinking
and
acting
politically
are
needed.
Embracing
uncertainty
really
does
mean
reinventing
what
we
mean
by
‘development’.
Uncertainty:
a
key
concept
for
critical
agrarian
studies
Uncertainties
–
where
we
don’t
know
the
likelihoods
of
future
outcomes
–
suggest
a
politics
of
knowledge,
where
we
interrogate
how
we
know
what
we
know,
and
what
possible
futures
might
look
like.
This
is
essential
in
any
field
of
study,
but
in
the Journal
of
Peasant
Studies‘
Key
Concepts
piece,
I
ask
how
this
should
encourage
an
extension
of
debates
within
the
field
of
critical
agrarian
studies.
“A
politics
of
knowledge
and
so
an
appreciation
of
uncertainty
have
not
been
prominent
in
agrarian
studies.
This
reflects
the
intellectual
tradition
of
the
field,
rooted
in
materialist
analyses
of
change
based
on
frequently
deterministic
theories
that
suggest
predictable
outcomes.
Simplistic
interpretations
of
Marxist
thinking
for
example
often
highlighted
certain
‘paths’
of
agrarian
change
that
would
emerge
from
particular
conditions.
Equally,
patterns
of
accumulation
and
social
differentiation
would
result
in
predictable
class
formations
resulting
in
defined
forms
of
struggle,
with
the
‘peasantry’,
for
example,
doomed
to
extinction
when
confronted
by
relentless
capitalist
forces.
Yet,
as
most
empirical
analyses
quickly
show,
actual
dynamics
are
more
complex
and
outcomes
less
clear.
There
is
often
a
mismatch
between
the
grand
theory
of
predictable
process
and
the
diversity
of
contingent,
conjunctural
outcomes
seen
on
the
ground.”
As
discussed
through
several
cases
–
contract
farming
in
Zimbabwe
and
pastoralism
in
northern
Kenya
–
an
appreciation
of
knowledge
uncertainties
suggests
a
methodological
stance
that
shifts
between
understanding
‘the
multiple
determinations’
of
diverse,
variable
and
uncertain
livelihood
contexts
with
an
assessment
of
‘the
concrete’,
the
structural
factures
that
condition
local
possibilities.
This
is
what
Karl
Marx
recommended
in
his
treatise
on
method
in
political
economy,
the
Grundrisse.
Stuart
Hall,
the
great
cultural
theory
scholar
argued
strongly
against
a
vulgar,
deterministic
Marxism
too:
“The
paradigm
of
perfectly
closed,
perfectly
predictable,
systems
of
thought
is
religion
or
astrology,
not
science….
No
social
practice
or
set
of
relations
floats
free
of
the
determinate
effects
of
the
concrete
relations
in
which
they
are
located.
However,
‘determination
in
the
last
instance’
has
long
been
the
repository
of
the
lost
dream
or
illusion
of
theoretical
certainty.
And
this
has
been
bought
at
considerable
cost,
since
certainty
stimulates
orthodoxy,
the
frozen
rituals
and
intonation
of
already
witnessed
truth…”
These
lessons
are
crucial
for
critical
agrarian
studies,
which
must
always
connect
detailed
engagement
with
complex
livelihoods
with
analysis
of
the
structural
features
of
class,
intersecting
with
age,
gender,
ethnicity,
and
configured
through
diverse
processes
of
accumulation
in
capitalism,
much
as
I
argued
in
my ‘small
book’
on
livelihoods from
over
a
decade
ago.
I
conclude
the
essay
with
a
plea
for
methodological
recasting
in
ways
that
take
uncertainties
seriously:
“As
agrarian
contexts
change,
so
do
the
agrarian
questions
that
need
to
be
asked.
In
a
turbulent
world
where
non-linear
connections
and
diverse
relations
matter,
these
are
increasingly
around
responses
to
variable
and
uncertain
conditions,
where
both
contested
knowledge
politics
and
variegated
responses
to
uncertain
settings
are
central.
Such
perspectives
centred
on
uncertainty…
must
be
the
cornerstone
of
a
revitalised
method
for
agrarian
political
economy;
one
that
is
centred
on
knowledge,
complex
relations
and
so
multiple
uncertainties.
Embracing
uncertainty
and
its
politics,
both
through
the
framing
of
knowledges
and
the
consequences
for
diverse
people
and
places,
must…inform
critical
agrarian
studies
more
deeply
in
the
future.”
Embracing
uncertainty
therefore
requires
fundamental
shifts
in
methodological
stance
for
research
and
analysis,
and
in
turn
generates
new
political
imperatives
as
we
encounter
the
challenges
of
climate
change
in
an
increasingly
turbulent
world.
Download
the
articles
(and
the
uncertainty
book):
World
Development: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X25003420
Journal
of
Peasant
Studies: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2025.2591725
Post
published
in:
Agriculture