How and why history matters for development policy

Abstract

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. Winston Churchill Getting history wrong is an essential part of being a nation. Ernest Renan [M]odern social science, policy-making and planning have pursued a model of scientism and technical manipulation which systematically, and deliberately, neglects human, and above all, historical, experience. The fashionable model of analysis and prediction is to feed all available current data into some notional or real supercomputer and let it come out with the answers … [S]uch a-historical or even antihistorical calculation is often unaware of being blind, and inferior to even the unsystematic vision of those who can use their eyes. Eric Hobsbawm

Power analysis in health policy and systems research: a guide to research conceptualisation

“…The study of history can illuminate broad power-related themes that continue to be relevant, such as the interface between individual liberty and domestic governmental health objectives 113 ; medical experimentation, social control and scientific racism 114 115 ; corporate profit making, governmental interference and population health 116 ; and global health as a vehicle for state-craft, diplomacy, population control and Western-centric conceptions of charity. 8 97 117–119 Historical studies also offer broader explanatory value as ‘cases’ for the development of theory related to power 27 28 and as case studies for contemporary policy debates. Insofar as traditional historical approaches can privilege written work, it may omit the perspectives of historically oppressed groups.…”

Teaching complex time through pattern thinking and understanding

“…The temporal double bind is of another order of magnitude for Indigenous students. Indigenous culture is often imagined as an historical artifact, placing Indigenous students as anachronous, wiping their existence from the present, and the future (Deloria, 2004; Kothari, 2020; Rifkin, 2017). Subsequently, to be authentically Indigenous, claims to current agency are forfeited, and claims to current and future participation and agency often require leaving indigeneity in the past where it belongs .…”