Thank you for your piece on development knowledges, with many important insights. The contrast between aid money and bank money is striking indeed; the flip side of this financial crisis is, however, that the believe in the "self-regulating market" has been undermined quite severely. Let's hope that the idea of directed state intervention will sustain and get a wider social applicaton. I tend to be optimistic in this; even the IMF is reversing its anti-social policies to some extent. Evidently, market stalls are not shelters; they act as shops but do not provide the security of housing. Security in a unsecure market environment with its "invisible hand" requires a visible hand and in our days that visble hand is most naturally provided by an accountable state serving its people.
The use of English in policy circles surely diminishes the capability to listen to messages formulated in other languages. This should change. Remarkably, the use of English is still on the rise, replacing, for instance, French in former French-occupied East-Asia. But such replacement does not change the (im)balance of languages in the world (the language market, so to speak) in so far as they represent historical and actual political relationships. This may influence interpretations of the world. For example, Two African (Akan - Ghana) philosophers have written about Akan forms of democracy in precolonial times; they are Kwame Guekye and Kwasi Wirefu. They are against the idea that democracy is only a Western invention; it is only that practical elaboration of democracy has materialized differently, and this should be studied. This implies studying local languages as vital instruments in people's lives, and promoting their use as vehicles of ideas of people who, as you remind us, are the stated target groups of international cooperation.
Market stalls and shelters
Market stalls and shelters
Dear Shobha,
Thank you for your piece on development knowledges, with many important insights. The contrast between aid money and bank money is striking indeed; the flip side of this financial crisis is, however, that the believe in the "self-regulating market" has been undermined quite severely. Let's hope that the idea of directed state intervention will sustain and get a wider social applicaton. I tend to be optimistic in this; even the IMF is reversing its anti-social policies to some extent. Evidently, market stalls are not shelters; they act as shops but do not provide the security of housing. Security in a unsecure market environment with its "invisible hand" requires a visible hand and in our days that visble hand is most naturally provided by an accountable state serving its people.
The use of English in policy circles surely diminishes the capability to listen to messages formulated in other languages. This should change. Remarkably, the use of English is still on the rise, replacing, for instance, French in former French-occupied East-Asia. But such replacement does not change the (im)balance of languages in the world (the language market, so to speak) in so far as they represent historical and actual political relationships. This may influence interpretations of the world. For example, Two African (Akan - Ghana) philosophers have written about Akan forms of democracy in precolonial times; they are Kwame Guekye and Kwasi Wirefu. They are against the idea that democracy is only a Western invention; it is only that practical elaboration of democracy has materialized differently, and this should be studied. This implies studying local languages as vital instruments in people's lives, and promoting their use as vehicles of ideas of people who, as you remind us, are the stated target groups of international cooperation.
André van Dokkum
Researcher & scientific editor
Singapore