Rethinking development as knowledge: implications for human development

The idea that knowledge is critical for development is neither new nor controversial. However, the full implications of the role of knowledge in development cannot be assessed unless we clarify at least two sets of issues:

• how exactly knowledge is conceptualised or, what constitutes knowledge
• the conditions under which such knowledge is produced, evaluated and ‘exchanged’ or ‘transferred’

This paper attemprs to provide some tentative answers to these two questions, with the ultimate objective of identifying the conditions under which knowledge can help materialise the goals of human development. In this exercise, the paper draws heavily upon documents produced by the UNDP, the UNRISD and the World Bank.

The broad general thesis here is as follows: unless consciously seized upon and harnessed to serve the goals of social and human development, the knowledge paradigm will only aggravate existing levels of exclusion, inequality and disarticulation.  In developing this thesis, the paper examines not only at available theoretical approaches but also relevant examples from the North and the South.

The emphasis here will be to identify strategies/conditions under which tranfers of knowledge have facilitated human development (and by implication, identifying those under which human development has suffered). Drawing upon these explorations, the paper will attempt to identify training needs for development workers of the future. Indeed, if the knowledge paradigm is to translate into human development, a new genre of development workers - imbued with a new kind of professionalism - would have to be the central agents of that process. [author]