Knowledge in development: epistemic machineries in a global context
Hans‐Dieter Evers, Markus J. Kaiser, Christine H. Müller · International Social Science Journal · 2009
Knowledge has become a decisive and competitive resource for local and global development, especially since the paradigm “knowledge for development” was initiated and promoted by the World Bank in 1998–1999. Through the use of novel management structures and technologically supported social networks, development organisations and development experts are central actors in producing and steering global knowledge. In the various regions of the world development experts have established a powerful transnational epistemic community and play a strategic role in knowledge sharing. In the process of electronic modification, knowledge is moderated, codified and standardised to facilitate distribution and possible acquisition. We will portray the emergence of this particular global knowledge architecture and its modes of knowledge engineering. The article indicates that these new efforts of development cooperation, with their ambitious aim of closing the North–South knowledge gap and the digital divide, reproduce exactly those disparities that they seek to overcome. Strategies conceived with the best of intentions end up creating a knowledge trap. The article will give empirical evidence from South‐East and Central Asia as well as from West Africa. We plead for a strategy of diversity in development cooperation and for a new constellation in valuing global and local knowledge in the creation of substantial, strong and dynamic knowledge societies.