Postcolonialism and Development
strategies that do not coincide with the traditional Eurocentric viewpoint.
Due to a disparity between the language used by subalterns (indigenous
and non-scientific) and the language of development theory (that of
western science or philosophy) attempts by indigenous people to transfer knowledge must first be translated into a form that is compatible with
development theory. Spivak claims that this translation process leads to
indigenous knowledge being situated in a language dominated by western concepts, leading to an ‘epistemic violence’ towards indigenous
knowledge and its trivialisation in western development (Spivak 1988).
Pretty (1994: 38) observed that the problem with normal science is that
it awards credibility only when opinion is defined in scientific language.
Indeed, scientific language may be inadequate when describing intricate factors such as dealing with farmers in rural development. Richards
(1985) demonstrated that West African farmers used local knowledge
as the basis for their rural development agenda, even though it may not
have been fully utilised, due to the western scientific worldview.
Indigenous knowledge is not however perpetually disregarded, occasionally it is in fact used to help set development agendas. Postcolonial theorists would nonetheless take issue with not only if indigenous
knowledge is being used in western development, but also with how it is
being used. Postcolonialists would argue that there has been a tendency
to view indigenous knowledge as complementary to established western
knowledge, as opposed to an ontological challenger. Sharp and Briggs
(2004) argue that this dynamic can have two important and damaging
consequences. First, shaping indigenous knowledge to fit with an already
established western view of development will only serve to dilute indigenous knowledge and practices and weaken the potential for it to deliver
sustainable and relevant development. Second, the incorporation of indigenous knowledge to traditional western science could be at the cost
of theorising about the processes and systems through which countries
of the ‘third world’ came to be vulnerable to poverty. Such discourse
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