Letters | Global South must shape its own development, starting with knowledge production

Readers discuss the need for former colonies to forge their own path to development, and the plight of Hong Kong’ unemployed and homeless

Reading Time:2 minutes

Vendors sell fruit under lights lit by batteries in Lahore, Pakistan, during a blackout on January 23. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 2:30pm, 5 Feb 2023

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification.

Many former colonies remain constrained by colonial dominance in their ways of knowing, seeing and envisioning the world. From the academy that hinges development on cookie-cutter indicators, indices and theories to statesmen who equate progress with exogenous assistance and acknowledgement – such as removal from grey lists, “favourable” conditionalities, donor-funded projects and capacity-building programmes – development in the Global South is largely shaped, controlled, monitored, penalised and incentivised by entities other than itself.

A nascent body of post-development literature contends that borrowed development prescriptions create an artificial form of development that triggers tensions, uncertainties and social conflict.

In his article, “Reflections on Development”, post-development theorist Arturo Escobar highlights the surge in grassroots movements and powerful critiques of development being articulated by scholars in the developing world. The growing realisation that development has failed to resolve the problems of these countries in the post-war era has led to indigenous initiatives that aim to redefine development through local knowledge and culture. What we see now is a new problematisation of knowledge and politics set to replace the post-war problematisation of poverty and development.

The Global South faces a knowledge production crisis. In the absence of indigenous pedagogical tools and knowledge frameworks, policymakers cannot craft contextually relevant policies without exogenous technical assistance engineered to safeguard hegemonic interests.

On a global level, hegemonic knowledge production is sustained through, for instance, the underrepresentation of academics from developing countries, as illustrated by researchers Sarah Cummings and Paul Hoebink’s analysis of the affiliations of authors and editorial board members of 10 well-known journals.

On a local level, hegemonic knowledge production is sustained through the coloniality of knowledge in academia, as evidenced by scholar Felix Mantz’s analysis of an international political economy programme’s syllabus.