Decolonizing Knowledge: From Development to Dialogue

by Frédérique Apffel-Marglin (Editor), Stephen A. Marglin (Editor)

Development failures, environmental degradation and social fragmentation can no longer be regarded as side effects of 'externalities'. They are the toxic consequences of pretensions that the modern Western view of knowledge is a universal neutral view, applicable to all people at all times. The very word 'development' and its cognates 'underdevelopment' and 'developing' confidently mark the 'first' world's as the future of the 'third'. This book argues that the linear evolutionary paradigm of development that comes out of modern Western view of knowledge is a contemporary form of colonialism. The authors - covering topics as diverse as the theory of knowledge underlying the work of John Maynard Keynes, what the renowned British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane was looking for when he migrated to India, the knowledge of Mexican and Indian peasants - propose a pluralistic vision and decolonization of knowledge: the replacement of one-way transfers of knowledge and technology by dialogue and mutual learning.

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[KT · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thought-provoking and refreshing set of essays on the negative impact on privileging western-imposed thought over local, native knowledge

I particularly enjoyed the essay using a case study of NORAD's failed fisheries in Kenya during the 70s, which was an attempt to implement western expertise to the detriment of ignoring local, native expertise and the essay on JBS Haldane, one of the leading population geneticists at the time travelled to India in an attempt to escape from the dominant paradigm of evolutionism and undertook to develop local modes of scientific research in India