Justice and Development

This chapter is focused on justice and innovation-led development contradictions. It argues that to understand normative and analytical intervention, we need the critical lenses of development theory. Key concerns of this theory are: power relations; agency; scale; and history. Approaches to development as a planned process (i.e. structuralism, dependency theory, interventionism) address each of these concerns differently than approaches to development as an unplanned process (i.e. liberalism, neo-liberalism, modernisation theory) and post-development (i.e. people-cantered development, post-development, alternative development). A non-ideal theory of justice in innovation needs to be complemented with a development theory so that it becomes aware of the role of power relations, agency, scale and history in creating relational injustice in production and distribution of new technologies.