Research on morality and development showcased in Japan

Dr Willem Fourie, senior lecturer in the Faculty of Theology’s Department of Dogmatics and Christian Ethics, recently made his contribution on the theme of morality and development at the Doshisha GRM International Conference 2015, held in Japan.

This conference, which was opened by SA’s Ambassador to Japan H.E. Mohau Pheko, brought together leading international scholars in economic development, innovations studies, other relevant social and natural sciences, as well as practitioners from international development organisations and private sector actors working on inclusive innovation products and services.

It is notable that modern technology has the potential to contribute much to human security: more knowledge and mobility, citizen journalism, enhanced information for political decision-making, better disaster prediction and response, improvements in medicine and food security for example. The conference therefore covered the theoretical underpinnings of inclusive innovation and interrogated the concept of inclusivity of innovations.

The conference offered new and ground-breaking ideas regarding inclusive innovations and its relationship to human security, such as Dr Fourie’s contribution, entitled ‘Innovation or impediment? On morality and development’.

In this paper Dr Fourie asked the question: What is the link between morality and development? He started by documenting and interpreting current research on the topic, as disseminated by the most prominent development journals. The existing research was used to reconstruct a working definition of morality, which formed the basis for a reconstructed hypothesis of the governing hypothesis on the link between morality and development. He argued that this approach to the link between morality and development is based on an internally inconsistent and conceptually flawed understanding of morality, which can be corrected by a social theory-based definition of morality. He used this definition to formulate a further hypothesis on the link between morality and development, whcih seems to be at odds with the current operationalised definition of morality in development studies. He use three cases of development innovation to illustrate this approach.

The final outcome of the conference will be an edited published work from all the contributors.