This paper discusses relevance in development studies. We argue that current debates
around relevance assume a hegemonic view of development, which is bolstered by the
high levels of research funding from key policy-making institutions. We feel
relevance can be pluralized and radicalized, but that this requires us to be
ideologically transparent and to examine other ways of undertaking and validating
knowledge production. This involves first, acknowledging the material and ethical
connectedness, but not sameness, of people; secondly, a relational tension between
discipline and interdiscipline; thirdly, that problem-framing and influencing
involves ‘researchers’ and ‘users’, whereby
‘users’ include students, practitioners, decision-makers and
‘the poor’. Further, we argue that such dialogic approaches
require alternative criteria for rigour. Positivistic criteria imply a distinctive
form of rationality, but if rationality is also pluralized then alternative
epistemologies and methodologies of working with multiple rationalities is necessary.
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