Assumptions, and the values on which they are based, are, arguably, the most powerful factors influencing behaviour and decision making. However, in a world driven by the logframe requirement for results, we are rarely required to consider our behaviour or acknowledge any problems that it may have created.

My concerns are in the first instance, but not exclusively, with the expatriates in the sector. They are so influential in so many ways, not least in shaping the attitudes and practices of the national staff of institutions and NGOs. Whether based in developing countries or in Northern headquarters, many expatriates don’t actually think of themselves as development practitioners in the broadest sense. The majority work in development on the basis of their technical skills – economics, agriculture, education and so on.

Specialist training and professional qualifications seldom, if ever, explore sufficiently the values and assumptions embedded in practising a discipline in a development context. Thus technical specialists, both expatriate and national, tend to have a relatively narrow focus. Few know how to assess the potential for their activities, and how they implement them, to create negative impacts.

Research shows that some national community development workers, despite their stated intentions, are not facilitating empowerment and change. Instead, on the basis of unexamined assumptions about the right way to solve other people’s problems, they work in ways that replicate and reinforce the social constructs and hierarchies that keep communities trapped in poverty and injustice. Given the complexity of living systems, it should be mandatory for all development practitioners to learn how to analyse their own behaviour and activities in ways that demonstrate the full impact of what they do and how they do it.

Development values

I once attended a workshop in which some Northern practitioners were bemoaning the failure of national partners to perform as expected. Part of the problem, they concluded, was that the national partners didn’t understand ‘development values’. When I asked about the values to which they were referring, no one could give me an answer. They had to admit that they had never taken any time to discuss what their values were, or should be, in the context of project partnerships. It was a clear example of powerful assumptions at work. I would have loved to talk to those partners about their experience in the relationships; I imagine it would have been a very different story.

It is a form of arrogance to justify intervening in other people’s lives without understanding how our assumptions will influence how we behave in our relationships with them. It is also arrogant to complain about the values and behaviour of others without scrutinising our own. We need to look beyond good intentions and assess all the implications, not only of what we do, but also of how we do it. With all that is now known about what can go wrong with development interventions, working on the basis of unacknowledged values and unexamined assumptions is no longer good enough. Without having articulated their own values and assumptions, Northern practitioners cannot address with integrity any problems or challenges arising in the ways that Southern practitioners approach their work.

There are no certainties that development interventions will be beneficial, and strong possibilities that some will be harmful. It is time for Northern development practitioners to confront the uncomfortable fact that, even in the unlikely event we do have all the right answers, there are times when our behaviour creates rather than solves problems.

Further reading

• O’Leary, Moira and Meas Nee (2001) Learning for Transformation: A study of the relationship between culture, values, experience and development practice in Cambodia. Phnom Penh: VBNK. http://www.vbnk.org