The Importance of Recognizing Biases

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I think it's the importance of recognizing biases and deliberately offsetting them. This goes for much more than development. It goes for across the board in terms of who learns from who, who is a malacist. I've particularly gone to town on this have been the biases of rural appraisal. There are very strong biases built into those processes. We need to recognize the blind spots. The relationship between undernutrition and stunting and fickily transmitted infections remains a blind spot. When sanitation improves, people are taller. But not because of a bad diet. You can change the diet and people will still be short but because of infections from the feces. So when sanitation improves,people are taller

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What is the field of development? What are the differences between rapid and participatory rural appraisal? Under what conditions should qualitative surveys be preferred over quantitative and vice versa? What is participatory mapping? How has the field of development changed over the last few decades? Why do people get taller when sanitation improves?

Robert Chambers is a British academic and development practitioner. He spent his academic career at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. In 2013, he became an honorary fellow of the International Institute of Social Studies. He has been one of the leading advocates for putting the poor, destitute, and marginalized at the center of the processes of development policy since the 1980s. Learn more about him here.

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