ABSTRACT
This chapter advances key issues related to the analysis of science, knowledge, and technology in development from a critical perspective. It is argued that analysis of the role of technology in the capitalist development process takes two fundamental forms. On the one hand, we have what we might call the neutral or instrumental position that emphasises the use of technologically superior capacities for international development. On the other hand, there is the critical development approach, which is to dissect the role of social relations in the advancement of science and technology within the capitalist mode of production. Here, the emphasis is on the social context within which technologies are researched and developed, produced, used, adapted, and transferred. From this standpoint, technologies are not simple and neutral instruments but social constructs, artifacts that materialise social relations of economic interests and political power, values, and other social factors. In other words, they are socially constructed and conditioned. The chapter analyses the diverse permutations of these two approaches, with an emphasis on the ways in which the fruits and benefits of technology and science, research and development, and accumulated productive knowledge are appropriated by the capitalist class.
