Introduction: problematising knowledge as a driver of development

Knowledge is power. From the Enlightenment and Francis Bacon’s 1624 articulation of a common purpose between hitherto ‘separate notions of scientific knowledge, power, and progress’ (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 Truman’s Inaugural Address on 20 January 1949, ‘two billion people became underdeveloped’ (Esteva, 1992: 7), as he launched early post-war development efforts by suggesting that the US could share what he cited as its ‘imponderable resources in technical knowledge’, which ‘are constantly growing and . . . inexhaustible’ (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 ‘development’ 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 ‘inexhaustible’ Northern knowledge and expertise with ‘primitive’ 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 Bank’s annual meeting of 1996, Wolfensohn proposed a ‘New Knowledge Partnership’, arguing that ‘[d]evelopment knowledge is part of the “global commons”: it belongs to everyone, and everyone should benefit from it’. But not

just any knowledge would do. The World Bank had a responsibility to ensure that people acquired ‘the right kind of knowledge’ (my emphasis) and to support ‘clients [to] build the capacity to use it’. 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 ‘right’ knowledge was extended as the key explanatory variable for the world’s development challenges. In this worldview it is the Global North that is endowed with the ‘right’ 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 South’s development potential. In response to the Bank’s report, and reflecting historical beliefs that a ‘lack of information has been an obstacle to development planning’ (Davies, 1994: 3), other bilateral and donor organisations established their own knowledge-fordevelopment (K4D) initiatives with the aim of addressing inadequate and/or ‘imperfect’ information within developing countries. Bilateral and multilateral donors ‘embraced the idea of becoming “knowledge agencies” ’ (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 report’s 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 ‘knowledge society’ that had not just economic development but also social justice at its core. The notion of the ‘knowledge society’ 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 ‘portals, gateways, resource centres and related services’ (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 ‘whose knowledge counts’ (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 ‘Theories of Change’, whilst international collaborations such as ‘The Big Push Forward’ (https://bigpushforward.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 ‘paucity of knowledge’ 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 ‘whose knowledge counts’, 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 Bank’s 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 ‘exclusion of individuals, groups and organizations in the global South from the production of development knowledge, decision-making processes and project implementation’, which, they argue, ‘is of course well known’. 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 ‘woman at the grassroots’. 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 ‘Southern woman’s NGO’, which claims to be able to both reach and represent the needs and interests of its disempowered, disenfranchised, poorer ‘sisters’. 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 women’s 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 women’s NGOs in particular, as they are widely upheld as antihegemonic 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 book’s 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.