From SciDev, Nick Ishmael Perkins in conversation with “innovation critic” Langdon Winner:
More hereSo you are criticising an ideology rather than all innovation. How might this critique inform global development?
image courtesy of Wikipedia
There is a centre at Stanford where they say: “what about these poor people in the South, let’s have some innovation for development”. They have programmes in Africa and they send out their students with solar cookers.
But the problem with that, as the anthropologist Arturo Escobar points out, is that it has a kind of missionary quality. Once it was the Bible that would change your life for the better, and now you are bringing the great new technology. The problem with this is that is discounts whatever local knowledge there might be.
This missionary stance comes with a tendency to broadcast, rather than to listen to local people.
I think it would be good to have more careful reflection on what developing countries need. When I talk to my students, I say: “you shouldn’t start designing something until you have done at least several months getting to know the people, the situation and the real needs, rather than helicoptering in and plopping down some innovative device.”
