This book addresses the role of knowledge in economic development and in resistance to development. It questions the conventional view that development is the application of superior knowledge to the problems of poor countries, and that resistance to development comes out of ignorance and superstition. It argues instead that the basis of resistance is the fear that the material benefits of Western technologies can be enjoyed only at the price of giving up indigenous ways of knowing and valuing the world, an idea fostered as much by present-day elites, who have internalized colonial elites who ruled before them. A prerequisite to decoupling Western technologies from these political entailments is to understand the conflict between different ways of knowing and valuing the world.

This book differs from previous critiques of development because it addresses neither the strategy nor the tactics of development, but the very conception itself. Its focus is on knowledge and power in the development process. The book argues that `modern' knowledge wins out in the conflict with `traditional' knowledge not because of its superior cognitive power, but because of its prestige, associated both with the economic and political ascendancy of the West over the past 500 years and with the cultural history of the West itself.

Readership: Economists and sociologists in development studies and the sociology of knowledge.

Edited by Frédérique Appfel Marglin, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Smith College, and Stephen A. Marglin, Barker Professor of Economics, Harvard University

"`highlights the clash between traditional and modern knowledge in a number of highly illustrative cases ... In a brilliant study on ways of dealing with small-pox, Frederique Apffel-Marglin confronts the hardest piece of Western arrogance - medical knowledge' The Ecologist"

"`is there something in these essays which other than providing stimulating intellectual thought, has some bearing on how we can live and shape our lives better. I believe there is' Times of India"