Knowledge is power. From the Enlightenment and Francis Baconâs 1624 articulation of a common purpose between hitherto âseparate notions of scientific knowledge, power, and progressâ (as paraphrased in Hart and Kim, 2001: 36), to the pursuit of, and control over, technical knowledge underpinning the philosophy and practice of empire, knowledge, or rather the absence of it, has been cited as the reason for a lack of advancement, wealth and status and provided sufficient impetus to educate, colonise and intervene. Then, in the wake of US President Trumanâs Inaugural Address on 20 January 1949, âtwo billion people became underdevelopedâ (Esteva, 1992: 7), as he launched early post-war development efforts by suggesting that the US could share what he cited as its âimponderable resources in technical knowledgeâ, which âare constantly growing and ⌠inexhaustibleâ (Truman, 1989 [1949]). Back then, as now, the application of technical knowledge to promote modernisation and thus economic growth was essential for developing countries, including former colonies, to experience progress or âdevelopmentâ in line with the countries of the industrialised North. Underdevelopment could be tackled, many believed, through education, training, support and programme funding. And so a development industry blossomed, seeking to pair this âinexhaustibleâ Northern knowledge and expertise with âprimitiveâ Southern recipients (Melkote and Steeves, 2001: 54) to target improvements in agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure and trade.
So how has a narrow emphasis on technology transfer to key economic sectors been translated into a broader and near-universal commitment to facilitate and strengthen Southern-owned knowledge societies as a source of empowerment and ultimately development? How, by whom and with what effects has knowledge become actualised as a key strategy to deliver development? It is in 1996, with James Wolfensohn as the recently appointed president of the World Bank, that we see the terrain beginning to shift, consolidating but also fundamentally reimagining the relationship between knowledge, development and progress at the global level. In his address to the World Bankâs annual meeting of 1996, Wolfensohn proposed a âNew Knowledge Partnershipâ, arguing that â[d]evelopment knowledge is part of the âglobal commonsâ: it belongs to everyone, and everyone should benefit from itâ. But not just any knowledge would do. The World Bank had a responsibility to ensure that people acquired âthe right kind of knowledgeâ (my emphasis) and to support âclients [to] build the capacity to use itâ. Underdevelopment, it was proffered, is neither an historical nor a postcolonial condition, nor simply a function of the unequal distribution of power or of financial or material resources. Instead, and as captured in the World Development Report of 1998 (World Bank, 1998), entitled Knowledge for Development, the lack of access to the ârightâ knowledge was extended as the key explanatory variable for the worldâs development challenges. In this worldview it is the Global North that is endowed with the ârightâ kinds of both intellectual and technical resources, whilst the South is portrayed as suffering a paucity of this knowledge, lacking the capacity either to absorb it or to create appropriate forms of new knowledge to promote its own development. This emphasis on a pervasive knowledge gap as an explanation for chronic underdevelopment represented a historical turning point in the evolution of development practice. It became a decisive point where knowledge provision itself became the intervention, where improving its availability to people in developing countries was presumed to have the capacity to spark change processes that would in turn unlock the Southâs development potential.
In response to the Bankâs report, and reflecting historical beliefs that a âlack of information has been an obstacle to development planningâ (Davies, 1994: 3), other bilateral and donor organisations established their own knowledge-for-development (K4D) initiatives with the aim of addressing inadequate and/or âimperfectâ information within developing countries. Bilateral and multilateral donors âembraced the idea of becoming âknowledge agenciesââ (King and McGrath, 2004: 130) and became key drivers of this agenda in relation to their own partners and constituencies.
From the time of the reportâs publication, this knowledge paradigm has sustained heavy criticism. Concerns have been raised about the emphasis on capitalistic, market-driven, technical knowledge transfers from the so-called developed North to the underdeveloped South as a panacea for failing markets and the promotion of development (see for example Das, 2009; Kleine and Unwin, 2009; Mehta, 1999, 2001; Samoff and Stromquist, 2001). In recognition of these critiques, but drawing inspiration from the identification of a knowledge gap as a key impediment to development, the global-level discourse began to diversify away from a narrow, neoliberal focus on productivity and economic development towards embracing a broader, more inclusive, more egalitarian vision of a âknowledge societyâ that had not just economic development but also social justice at its core. The notion of the âknowledge societyâ was spearheaded by the UN, reflecting its historical emphasis on ideas, policies and practices promoting social justice and human development, messages that have frequently been at odds with the emphasis placed by the World Bank on knowledge that promotes economic development (see Deacon, 2007).
As a result of this emphasis on supporting the growth of knowledge societies, development stakeholders, through the provision of financial and in-kind support, have encouraged the proliferation of Northern and Southern knowledge-based initiatives that showcase research and activities linked to development. This burgeoning community of intermediaries providing âportals, gateways, resource centres and related servicesâ (Kunaratnam, 2011: 3) has sought to address concerns relating to the accessibility and diversity of available information. These efforts are designed not only to collate and freely disseminate Northern knowledge, but also to challenge âwhose knowledge countsâ (see Standing and Taylor, 2007) by locating and showcasing Southern knowledge as a new engine of both economic growth and social development.
Yet the proliferation of more inclusive, knowledge society-inspired K4D practices into the routine functions of civil society has been spared any sustained scrutiny, let alone criticism. Moreover, most K4D initiatives, as the analysis in this book will make clear, are noteworthy for the lack of any systematic and/or temporal data to support the claim that improving information supply facilitates development processes. Ironically, this proliferation of K4D initiatives has occurred in a context where there is a growing emphasis emerging out of both academic and practitioner networks on the need for any proposed policy or activity to be evidence-based. The notion of evidence itself is contested of course; on the one hand, bilateral agencies emphasise evaluation tools such as logframes or âTheories of Changeâ, whilst international collaborations such as âThe Big Push Forwardâ (http://bigpusÂhforward.net) raise important questions about the meaning and purpose of evidence-based policy. In relation to the present analysis this demand for evidence has a dual effect. Not only does it reinforce the presumed âpaucity of knowledgeâ underpinning the K4D narrative, it also then acts as a catalyst for a range of stakeholders to produce and disseminate increased volumes of information to address the evidence gap (see Hayman et al., 2016).
In response to these varied concerns related to a paucity of information and knowledge to facilitate development, the number of information intermediaries has continued to multiply, thus generating increased attention and with it increased funding. This trend has only been amplified by the unprecedented and rapid uptake of mobile and social media technologies and platforms in a range of developing-country contexts that have, at least in theory, increased the potential availability and accessibility of knowledge to fill this perceived gap.
The K4D explosion is further characterised by a supply-side emphasis. Ensuring the availability of greater volumes of information in non-specific or untargeted ways is considered a reasonable, even necessary, response, especially on the part of Northern organisations. As part of critiques around âwhose knowledge countsâ, there are many well-documented critiques of the monopoly on knowledge creation linked with the hegemony of the North in development knowledge systems (e.g. Baillie Smith and Jenkins, 2011). It is a critique frequently levelled in particular at the World Bankâs original K4D model (see for example Kleine and Unwin, 2009; Mawdsley et al., 2002; Mehta, 1999; Powell, 2006). As such, there is a shifting emphasis on being both strategic and hands-off about how information is both produced and disseminated in the service of development, with a resultant emphasis in practice that privileges the role of development-oriented non-governmental organisations (NGOs) acting as knowledge intermediaries, especially those based in the Global South. Creating platforms for Southern knowledge in particular addresses what Baillie Smith and Jenkins (2011: 168) remind us is the continued âexclusion of individuals, groups and organizations in the global South from the production of development knowledge, decision-making processes and project implementationâ, which, they argue, âis of course well knownâ.
And the logic underlying this explosion and its supply-side tendencies is simple and seemingly infallible. Why should only the Northern technical expert hold knowledge? Why limit development programmes, partnerships and interventions to only one sector, geographical area or NGO? Why not harness the now vastly increased capacity created by new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to produce and disseminate information to a large, diverse and global audience? What stops us from using new ICTs in particular to widen participation in the creation and dissemination of information, thus democratising both its availability and its accessibility? Is it not preferable for users or recipients of this information, instead of following pre-determined Northern development paths, to instead take this information and do what they deem to be in their own best interests, of which they are surely the best judges? It is in the answers to these core questions that progressive K4D initiatives designed to facilitate and strengthen (Southern) knowledge societies now stake their transformative claims.
Moreover, on the basis that large swathes of developing-country populations are embedded in multiple, intersectional marginalities, Southern civil society, perceived as being more in touch with the marginalised in their own geographic locations than Northern agencies and more socially just than private interests, is elevated as the ideal interlocutor. The result has been an increased emphasis placed on partnership and co-production of knowledge as part of efforts to locate and strengthen Southern civil society intermediaries to leverage knowledge on behalf of marginalised groups that supports processes of empowerment and development.
And nowhere is the knowledge divide proclaimed to be as wide, or the transformative potential of knowledge trumpeted more loudly, than in relation to our understanding of gender inequality and the need to uplift the marginalised or proverbial âwoman at the grassrootsâ. And no singular stakeholder is more lauded for the perceived capacity to harness this potential to both address, as well as raise awareness of, gender inequality than the proverbial, decontextualised âSouthern womanâs NGOâ, which claims to be able to both reach and represent the needs and interests of its disempowered, disenfranchised, poorer âsistersâ.
This book sets out to reveal, and interrogate, the important and as yet unexplored gaps emerging from critiques of K4D that persist as a result of the proliferation of knowledge-based development initiatives that are underpinned by an on-going and almost unassailable narrative elision between access to knowledge and development. The analysis seeks to critically assess the transformative claims of the knowledge society through an interrogation of the capacity of Southern womenâs NGOs acting as interlocutors to leverage development knowledge through a range of print and electronic media in order to promote economic and social development. Theoretical and empirical insights critically analyse the role of Southern womenâs NGOs in particular, as they are widely upheld as anti-hegemonic in their subject position and thus exemplars in reaching and representing the needs of marginalised Southern groups, notably women. This problematisation allows us in turn to draw out the key implications of efforts geared towards actualising knowledge as a driver of development in both discourse and practice.
In order to understand the core issues at the heart of this book, this introduction sets out a brief overview of the historical trajectory of the ideas underpinning K4D, followed by an elaboration of the bookâs central argument. This chapter then moves on to consider the methodologies underpinning this study, and concludes with an overview of the structure of the book.
A brief historical background to K4D
K4D is rooted in the historical tendency to privilege science and technology education and knowledge as a means to foster development. K4D is inextricably linked with power. During the period of Enlightenment, science and technology became the dominant âway of knowingâ (Melkote and Steeves, 2001: 73) in Europe. This essential coupling of âscientific knowledgeâ with âpowerâ, âprogressâ and âcivilizationâ (see Escobar, 1995: 36) has changed little in the intervening period.
The pursuit of technical knowledge as the key to âprogressâ continued to find expression throughout the period of empire. Colonialism was underpinned by the argument that âdevelopedâ economies owed much of their wealth to their superior stores of technical or technological knowledge (Kleine and Unwin, 2009: 1050). New institutions were devised to increase the potential wealth that might be generated from the colonial enterprise for the benefit of the coloniser, including âthe introduction of European-style education, Christianity and new political and bureaucratic systemsâ (Gardner and Lewis, 1996: 5). Education in this instance was not about redistributing power but was instead meant to âciviliseâ populations in the imperial colonies through interventions promoted by organisations linked to either the church or the monarch (Amadiume, 2000; Kothari, 2005).
Early international development eff...