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The concept of basic human needs can be employed for avoiding a danger that arises from the perspectivity of development knowledge, namely, the use of overly narrowing cognitive and evaluative frameworks that obscure relevant contextual realities. Drawing on existing literatures, the paper proposes to use three features of needs satisfiers as a tool for discovering such narrowing effects: (a) satisfiers for the same needs vary across groups and over time; (b) a candidate satisfier can enable or hamper the fulfillment of a need, depending on which other potential satisfiers it connects with; (c) a satisfier can simultaneously fulfill some needs and fail to fulfill other needs, and this holds both for the needs of one person and of different groups. In order to illustrate, the paper analyses three development reports, addressing needs for food and physical security as well as identity and recognition, and taking African land-tenure regimes as empirical example.

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