IEA

Chaire "Université de Nantes"

Période de résidence à Nantes : janvier à juin 2009.

Projet de recherche :

"Knowledge and Development. Technology and Science in the Postcolonial Culture of Development".

Résumé :

This project seeks to reconstruct a historical narrative of the post-colonial development endeavour. It focuses on the role of science and technology in development discourse and practice. Particular emphasis is put on economists and their abstract modes of knowledge. The aim is to go beyond the alternative of failure or success. Instead, the persistence of developmental interventions since the 1940s is explained in the terms of a cultural analysis. By making use of recent insights of science and technology studies it is being asked, how certain assumptions concerning global economic inequality have been shaped, stabilised and put to work in the North and in the South and what were the consequences of these specific knowledge claims. Three case studies are considered to describe the role of scientific and technical knowledge in the perception of post-colonial socioeconomic change. Areas of study are an international organization (UNDP), a recipient country (Kenya) and a donor context (Switzerland).

CV et bibliographie