Paper short abstract:

The production of knowledge for development has been highly contested. This paper reframes the field as an interstitial and transnational ‘space of social relationships’ between the media, politics, business and academia, and takes research contexts as negotiated sites of public intellectual participation.

Paper long abstract:

Research is crucial in addressing complex global challenges around poverty and inequality. Yet, the production of knowledge for aid and development has been highly contested. Although historically produced within the walls of academia, knowledge is now created, shared and utilised by interconnected networks of diverse transnational actors. Although these broad changes have been well-documented, existing studies have primarily focused on distinct institutional sites of production, such as universities, think-tanks or government agencies. As such, there are largely discrete literatures on different development research contexts, each bound up with definitional challenges and contests over the form and function of knowledge. This paper intervenes in this setting by unpacking the presumed divisions between research contexts and considering the ways in which they are borne out in the discourse and practice of 'looking good' whilst 'doing good'. Drawing on mixed-methods fieldwork with 12 leading development organisations, it reframes international development as an interstitial and transnational 'space of social relationships' between the media, politics, business and academia, and takes research contexts not as self-contained units, but as negotiated sites of contemporary public intellectual participation. It reinterprets the apparently discrete contexts as an interconnected public social space of struggle where knowledge is created. Development researchers are reconceived as 'intellectuals' in order to consider how these actors position their public intellectual practices and products according to personal conceptions, institutional cultures, and wider social worlds, and particularly the media. These contributions provide new directions for the empirical study of the role of the media in development knowledge production.