Development failures, environmental degradation and social fragmentation can no longer be regarded as side effects of `externalities'. They are the toxic consequences of pretensions that the modern Western view of knowledge is a universal neutral view, applicable to all people at all times. The very word `development' and its cognates `underdevelopment' and `developing' confidently mark the `first' world's as the future of the `third'. This book argues that the linear evolutionary paradigm of development that comes out of modern Western view of knowledge is a contemporary form of colonialism. The authors - covering topics as diverse as the theory of knowledge underlying the work of John Maynard Keynes, what the renowned British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane was looking for when he migrated to India, the knowledge of Mexican and Indian peasants - propose a pluralistic vision and decolonization of knowledge: the replacement of one-way transfers of knowledge and technology by dialogue and mutual learning.

Both Stephen Marglin and Gustavo Esteva provide interesting insights on the introduction of the Green Revolution in Mexico ... the book is useful in calling for dialogue and mutual learning, lest the arrogance of Western rationality perpetuate the colonisation of minds. * Development Policy Review *
This volume takes a strong step in what strikes me as the right direction. - Ann Grodzins Gold. Religious Studies Review. April 1998.