Introduction: the growth of ignorance?

Abstract

The relationship of Africa, Asia and Latin America to Europe and North America in the post-war period is often couched in the language of development. Something seems to be amiss, however. Granted the vast sums invested in trying to find a solution to what is described as the problem of underdevelopment, by the criteria of the development planners matters should be getting better rather than worse. Instead it would seem that development projects often contribute to the deterioration. A largely neglected aspect of such development is the part played by western scientific knowledge. Not only are indigenous knowledges ignored or dismissed, but the nature of the problem of underdevelopment and its solution are defined by reference to this world-ordering knowledge. Anthropologists have long been among those who have questioned whether such scientific knowledge is as all-encompassing and efficacious as its proponents claim. So it is apposite that the contributors to this collection, who are critical of the workings of scientific knowledge in processes of development, should be anthropologists. The aim is not to offer a solution to the problem of development, which has been notoriously elusive. Development is effectively a synonym for more or less planned social and economic change. So, defining development as a problem susceptible of a solution, or pathologically as a condition requiring a cure, may well be misplaced. In the essays which follow the contributors question the presuppositions which inform much discussion of development and explore the relationship between scientific knowledge and local knowledges in practice. As systematic knowledge grows, so does the possibility of ignorance.1 Ignorance, however, is not a simple antithesis of knowledge. It is a state which people attribute to others and is laden with moral judgement. So being underdeveloped often implies, if not actual iniquity, at least stupidity, failure and sloth.

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