One of the items in the self-assessment report dealt with the thematic orientation of the units’ development research. The respondents were presented with four thematic areas and asked to identify in which of these areas their research could be placed (see Table 2.15). The responses to this question comprise the main basis of this section. The specificity of the answers provided differed, although the majority offered helpful information. There are two problems with the data. One is that some institutions reported broad programmatic orientations while others listed individual projects. The other problem is that the
boundaries between the four categories are inevitably arbitrary, and some respondents had difficulty placing their research activities into just one box. This is almost inevitable since a great deal of development research is interdisciplinary and thus tends to transcend boundaries not only between individual academic disciplines but also between broader thematic boundaries such as those used here.
In order to deal with these problems, it has been necessary to check the information provided in response to this question against additional information listed in the self- assessment reports, e.g. lists of publications. It has also been necessary to do some editing in order to clarify obscurities. With these checks in place, the following picture of the respondents’ main research orientations emerges:
Table 2.15 Number of respondents active in the various thematic areas Thematic Area
Number of research units
Resource Management (Natural Resource Management; Global and Regional
Governance for Sustainable Development; Environmental Values and Social Change; Agricultural Development & Livelihood Security, and similar topics)
17
Rights, Security and Democracy (Rights, Conflicts & Resources; Rights and
Development; Security and Peace Studies; Governance; Democratisation; Decentralisation, and similar topics)
19
Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction (Development Economics and Development
Geography including: Rural-urban Relations, Small Town Development; Technology and Entrepreneurship; Small Business Development, and similar topics)
17
Culture and Gender (Cultural Studies; Gender and Development; Indigenous Peoples;
Internal Displacement and Migration, and similar topics) 16
Other topics in development research 9*
Source: Self-assessment reports from the 25 research units which answered this question.
Note: *This figure includes 9 units that filled in projects under this heading in the self-assessment report. We found that all the projects listed could be related to one or more of the above categories. The next table shows the
Evaluation Committee’s categorisation of the projects without the “Other” category.
With the exception of a slightly stronger concentration in the area of “Rights, Security and Democracy”, the development research conducted by the evaluated units is quite evenly distributed among the four themes.
Of the 28 respondents in the self-assessment survey, seven are independent research institutes, four are centres or programmes at universities, and 17 are regular academic departments. The departments of economics and political science are generally more specialized than the departments of sociology and geography. Anthropology is mixed.
Even among the institutes there is variation. The Fridtjof Nansen Institute and the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research (NINA) are quite focused on one thematic area, while the other five independent institutes are extensively involved in at least three of the four areas.
Many of the programmes or projects listed in the self-assessment reports include the words “poverty” or “peace”. Since 2005, poverty and peace have been the focus of a major research funding programme at RCN, but the interest in these two important development research themes predates the new programme. A more detailed list of all the research activities under each thematic heading is presented in the table below.
Table 2.16 Research topics of the research units/institutions reviewed A. Resource Management
I. Biodiversity Conservation ”Peoples and parks” Bioprospecting
Intellectual property rights
II. Climate Change
Alternatives to the Kyoto Protocol Climate change and poverty Clean Development Mechanism Shifting impacts of El Nino III. Land, Water and People
Relationship between water and poverty River basin management
Fisheries (freshwater, marine) Drylands
Forest management
IV. Environmental Governance Role of the United Nations
Adaptation strategies of local peoples
Natural resources, conflict and economic growth
B. Rights, Security and Democracy
I. Democratisation
Corruption, governance and development aid Taxation, aid and democracy
Human rights, democracy and legitimacy Democratisation processes
Social movements
Global trade union strategies Minorities in a globalised world Human rights in China
II. Role of the State
Poverty, human rights and the state Corruption, crime and political reforms
State formation and the politics of regime survival State failure
Decentralisation and local governments Human rights and citizenship
Role of courts
Role of ICT in national development III. Conflict and Peace
Globalisation and marginalisation
Forced migration and displacement of people Conflict resolution
Peace building
Geography of armed conflicts Health effects of civil wars
Human rights in conflicts – the role of civil society
Role of international development assistance History of Norwegian Development Assistance Global child programme
HIV/AIDS programmes and decentralised governance
C. Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction
I. Trade and Finance Trade and industrialisation Regional economic integration
Effects of economic liberalisation on agriculture and industry Role of multilateral lending
Trade policy
World Trade Organisation Micro credit
Women in border trade
II. Poverty
Demography of poverty Land markets and poverty Globalisation and inequality
Effects of global food trade on poverty Politics of poverty
Best practices in poverty reduction Poverty production
Impact of infectious diseases on poverty III. Urbanisation
Urbanisation and development
Entrepreneurship and business development Role of small towns in development Migration and entrepreneurs Slum dwellers in India Remittances and development Internal migration
Forest income and poverty Child malnutrition
D. Culture, Education and Gender
I. Indigenous Peoples Poverty and indigenous people Marginalisation of indigenous people Indigenous organisations
Local knowledge systems
Rights of minorities and indigenous peoples Indian Ocean Programme
II. Gender
Reconceptualising gender in a globalised world Gender and rights
Women’s land rights Human trafficking Female and child soldiers
Women in international peacekeeping III. Cultural Identity and Education
Politics, identity and culture Education and Languages
Honour, respect, and self-respect in South Indian villages
Urbanisation and gender
Gender perspectives on political participation and leadership
Source: Answers from the 25 research units which listed projects in their self-assessment reports.
Notes: The table provides a map of the general distribution of research topics according to the principal categories used in this evaluation. The “coding” is done by the Evaluation Committee based on the information provided by the various institutions – this information was sometimes general rather than specific, making it difficult to understand the full content of a programme or project. Moreover, it should be noted that lists like this are never complete, but change as researchers embark on new projects and complete others. However, the list should be fairly
A closer look at this long and varied list of research topics and themes suggests that there is a concentration on issues that relate to governance (corruption, decentralisation, courts, human rights and related institutional issues), marginalisation (forced migration and displacement of people, exploitation of indigenous peoples, effects of global trade, rights of minorities), natural resources (relationship between land, water and people,
management of natural resources, and local responses to environmental vulnerabilities) and gender (rights issues, effects of involvement in conflicts, women’s political participation). The Committee notes that global health issues will be researched in greater detail in the future.
Changes and balances
The units in this evaluation were also asked to comment on possible changes in their research orientation. On the one hand, such changes may be affected by struggling to obtain a balance between researcher-initiated research and commissioned research. On the other hand, changes in orientation may be affected by ambitions and difficulties
concerning interdisciplinary research.9 It is difficult to extract general
conclusions/information from these parts of the self-assessment reports. In most cases, these items have been left blank, or only sporadically filled in, possibly indicating only limited interest in these topics. This seems to be more often the case for the smaller units or those units with only a limited amount of development research to report on. In general, however, it may be concluded that the issues raised by these questions are not regarded as the most serious problems, and if problems do arise, the institutions are generally able to handle them. This conclusion contrasts somewhat with interviews conducted with some of the stakeholders (see Chapter 7 for further elaboration on this point).
Commissioned research is not seen as a threat, as most institutions report that they
primarily conduct researcher-initiated research, or that when they undertake commissioned research, this is accepted as fitting into a longer term researcher agenda. Exceptions to this situation are found at the institutions that are more or less obliged to generate income from commissioned research, such as Noragric, CMI (and to a lesser extent SUM). Changes in research themes and/or directions in research seem to occur more as a result of changing international scenarios and priorities, new opportunities that arise, or simply through the recruitment of new researchers to the units. Commissioned research per se is not a problem. Rather, it may provide insights and data that are otherwise difficult to access. With regard to problems associated with inter-disciplinarity these are generally not seen as pushing researchers into a new and unwanted research orientation, rather to the contrary.
9
Questions in the self-assessment reports concerning interdisciplinarity are dealt with in Section 2.4, and questions on funding are addressed in Section 3.2.