Decolonizing Knowledge: From Development to Dialogue

Development failures, environmental degradation and social fragmentation can no longer be regarded as side effects of externalities'. They are the toxic consequences of pretensions that the modern Western view of knowledge is a universal neutral view, applicable to all people at all times. The very worddevelopment' and its cognates underdevelopment' anddeveloping' confidently mark the first' world's as the future of thethird'. This book argues that the linear evolutionary paradigm of development that comes out of modern Western view of knowledge is a contemporary form of colonialism.

The authors - covering topics as diverse as the theory of knowledge underlying the work of John Maynard Keynes, what the renowned British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane was looking for when he migrated to India, the knowledge of Mexican and Indian peasants - propose a pluralistic vision and decolonization of knowledge: the replacement of one-way transfers of knowledge and technology by dialogue and mutual learning.