Science and Technology for Development

James Smith

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781848137776
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How can science realize its potential and help us tackle global inequality, environmental change and crippling poverty? How can more appropriate technologies be developed for those most in need? Science has long promised much -- new crops, new medicines, new sources of energy, new means of communication -- but the potential of new technologies has frequently bypassed the poorest people and the poorest countries. In Science and Technology for Development, James Smith explores the complex relationship between society and technology, and the potential for science to make sustainable contributions to global development. Drawing on case studies from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the author argues that we need to think carefully about science and development, otherwise the perpetual promise of future technological breakthroughs may simply work to distance meaningful development from the present. This book is essential reading for all students of development.

1 | Rethinking Technology for Development

The role of technology as an engine (or perhaps more accurately the driver) of development has been a constant since colonial times. There are striking parallels between science and colonialism and technology and modern development – a coupling of science and technology and economic development to forge change, to generate new connections within the world and transform societies into facsimiles of an idealized social order in the name of ‘progress’ (Ferguson, 2004). Within these ideas is a strong sense of the certainty and inevitability of change, a feeling that the future can be mapped out, and implicit within this is the notion that past histories and context are somehow unimportant. Only the future counts.

More explicitly in the case of modern development, theory holds that technology and economic development can generate new connections within the world, and transform ‘developing countries’ into their modern, industrialized, developed counterparts; this would advance humanity ‘from kinship to contract, agriculture to industry, personalized to rational or bureaucratic rule, subsistence to capital accumulation and mass consumption, tradition to modernity and poverty to wealth’ (Edelman and Haugerud, 2005: 2). The idea of a linear trajectory from one stage to another, from pre-technological to technological, from traditional to modern, from indigenous to scientific is implicit within most mainstream development thinking, and was implicit – if perhaps considered less of a priority – in most colonial thinking. Colonial and development thinking, so different in terms of aim and ideology, are stitched together by the shared idea of the application of technology.

The introductory chapter quoted Harry Truman’s inaugural address as an illustration of how closely the relationship between technology and development was conceived: global poverty would be solved by vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge (Truman, [1949] 1964). Development remains as bound up and enamoured with science and technology as colonialism was, and certainly as Harry Truman was. Indeed, if anything, a series of recent high-profile initiatives, reports and policy documents have signalled a renewed belief (and calls for renewed investment) in the role science and technology should play in development. For example, the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Science, Technology and Innovation reiterates the need to harness science and technology sustainably to accelerate development (Juma and Yee-Cheong, 2005). The October 2004 UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report on ‘The Use of Science in UK International Development Policy’ drew on a wide range of expert knowledge to illustrate the importance of generating real capacity through development, partnerships, and science and technological innovation. Building science and technological capacity is seen as a lever to draw together the ‘yawning divide between North and South’ (House of Commons, 2004: 44). The Commission for Africa report, Our Common Interest, juxtaposes our ability to map the human genome and ‘clone a human being’ with our inability to prevent African women from dying in childbirth. Africa’s lack of investment in science and technology is contrasted to Asia’s investment. The document calls for a series of centres of science and technology excellence to be set up across the continent (Commission for Africa, 2005).

This chapter seeks to examine why science and technology are regarded so universally as the lever through which development can be ratcheted up a notch or two, and in doing so will discuss ways in which we can undertake a more critical exploration of the relationship between science, technology and development. Case studies of trajectories of development in various countries, seed breeding in Southern Africa, information and communication technologies, and science policy, amongst others, are used to illustrate some of the thinking and narratives that have driven science and technology as the key to development.

Modernization, linear progressions and ‘technological determinism’

Rostow, in his highly influential Non-Communist Manifesto (1960), elaborated a ‘take-off’ that all countries would eventually achieve (note the technological metaphor). Rostow characterized countries as passing from one stage to another of a five-stage model; from ‘traditional society’ characterized by ‘pre-Newtonian’ technology and little rational decision making, through a pre-take-off stage, then ‘take-off’ in which ‘traditional’ impediments to economic growth are overcome, to a ‘drive to maturity’ which is marked by technological innovation and enlargement of the industrial base, and finally to the ‘age of mass consumption’, exhibiting widespread affluence, urbanization and the consumption of ‘consumer durables’. In all these stages Rostow was careful to couple advancing technology and new knowledge (in giving up ‘traditional’ ideas) to economic development and industrial modernization.

Development in this context becomes a macro-economic drive towards modernity, ‘an expression of modernity on a planetary scale’ (Berthoud, 1991: 23). Rostow sought to develop a rejection of the inevitabilities that Marx portrayed in Capital but in the process succeeded in producing something similar in the narrative of the ‘inevitability of take-off’ it portrayed. In some respects it projected something even grander, an inevitable transformation of every country, if they were to follow the rules. From a different perspective this can be seen in terms of a discourse of the ‘non-existent’: developing countries may desire to become developed, but cannot because something is missing (Sorj, 1991). Rostow’s ideas, and the concept of modernization they influenced, represent a highly temporalized historical sequence: poor people and poor countries ‘were not simply at the bottom, they were at the beginning’ (Ferguson, 2006: 178). From this perspective, development would be the ‘black box’ that would enable take-off, while the poor, the ‘less developed’, were expected to be passive receivers of development, of Western values, knowledge and technology (Rist, 1997).

The UN Millennium Report on Science and Technology for Development echoes Rostowian and modernization theory: ‘Economic historians suggest that the prime explanation for the success of today’s advanced industrial countries lies in their history of innovation along different dimensions: institutions, technology, trade, organization, and the application of natural resources’ (Juma and Yee-Cheong, 2005: 27). The report goes on to discuss the economic development of Finland, asserting that since the 1980s it has transformed itself from a country dependent on natural resources to one at the top of the list of most indices of global competitiveness by investing heavily in research and development and reformulating its support for education, research and innovation (ibid.: 28). Finland – economically, developmentally, geographically, and perhaps in any way one can think of – is clearly very different from the average developing country. Nevertheless, it is offered as a blueprint. The report cites a World Bank-funded study that developed four categories of countries: scientifically advanced, scientifically proficient, scientifically developing, and scientifically lagging countries (Wagner et al., 2001). In this formulation, the role of technology is foregrounded as the determining factor that drives development. Where development has not occurred or has been slow, the limiting factor has been a lack of technology, a lack of access to technology, or a lack of the knowledge necessary to use technology. To invest in the promise of technology is to profit in progress. Not investing in technology means lacking a fundament of progress, development and modernization.

Asian Tigers and the role of technology

The idea of ‘technological catch-up’ is frequently referred to as a means by which poorer, ‘follower’ countries can catch up with and even, in some respects, overtake richer, ‘leader’ countries (Forbes and Wield, 2002). Much of this work is derived from a different economic tradition than the neoclassical economics of Rostow and modernization theorists (for example, Juma and Clark, 2002). Evolutionary economics argues that rather than converging towards the economies and levels of productivity of the more developed countries, countries may follow different paths. There are various factors that can allow countries to jump-start their economies, including the ability of governments to design and implement appropriate economic policies and the technological and skill level of the population. Many of these policies and the need to develop a country’s skill base are highlighted in research (Abramovitz, 1989; Makinda, 2007) and reports such as the UN Millennium Report (Juma and Yee-Cheong, 2005). New technologies, too, may offer the opportunity for countries to develop niches for themselves (Meier, 2000; Niosi and Reid, 2007). One important caveat is that it is generally the larger, more advanced economies that have the potential to harness and profit from new technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology or information and communication technologies. In many cases the Rostowian problematic of just how does one evolve from one stage to the next remains unsolved, and the narrative of progress remains central to alternative models of economic development.

‘Technological catch-up’ remains an idea that many countries aspire to, a condition that much policy is developed to support, and an enterprise many institutions are set up to develop. Unfortunately, it seems the capacity and resources needed to harness technology as a driver of economic growth are in themselves manifestations of economic growth. Progression seems intuitive in theory, but much more complex in practice; effectively harnessing technology to aid economic growth remains the capacity of well-developed, modern economies and these disparities have not proved easy to short-circuit. Evolutionary economics presents an alternative perspective on economic development to Rostow, but in tying technology and economic growth tightly together it presents another take on modernization theory. Huge disparities in wealth, resources and capacity to innovate and utilize technologies mean that ‘catch-up’ is difficult to achieve on a broad scale and we risk falling back into simple narratives of technological determinism.

However, the four East Asian ‘Tiger’ economies are frequently cited as examples that offer hope to developing countries and a model they should aspire to in terms of economic development, modernization and ‘catch-up’.⁷ Until the stock market crash of the late 1990s, the Asian Pacific was considered to be the world’s success story of economic development and technological modernization. Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan enjoyed average annual growth rates of GNP of between 8.9 per cent and 7.5 per cent between 1965 and 1996 (during which time the growth rate for the world at large was 3.1 per cent) (Castells, 1998). Manuel Castells has provided a detailed comparative analysis of the causes and trajectories of development of the four countries, and what is most striking are the differences.

Different stripes: the four Asian Tigers

Superficially, the four Asian Tigers state a good case for modernization theory: each economy was able, to varying degrees, to adapt to the changing pattern of the global economy through technological upgrading, market expansion and economic diversification, and in doing this relied on an educated, highly productive and flexible labour force. In addition, all these countries developed a focus on the exportation of manufactured goods, whilst to varying degrees protecting their own economies through state control and economic barriers. Yet they achieved their undoubted success in quite different ways. Singapore’s industrialization was centred on the state’s relationship to multinational companies; in South Korea industry was heavily controlled and nurtured by the state; while Taiwan blended small and medium family business networks with a few large, national firms. Hong Kong’s economic growth, by contrast, was engineered through small, local manufacturing firms, supported by a state that provided protective infrastructure and subsidized collective consumption. Each country focused on expanding and then diversifying different sectors of its economy. The city states of Hong Kong and Singapore provided a welfare state of sorts. This was not the case in South Korea, where some workers’ needs were catered for by industry, or in Taiwan, where education was provided by the state, but the trickle-down effects of economic growth were left to cater for other needs (Castells, 1998). It is clear, as Castells states, that:

[E]ach case was dependent upon the specific set of relationships between the state, economy and society. Thus, we need to explain, at the same time, why each economy developed. … It is in the interplay of internal social dynamics and external financial flows, both mediated by the institutions of the state, that the explanation for the contradictory process of Asian Pacific development and crisis lies. (Ibid.: 219)

The cases of the four Asian Tiger economies are useful in two ways. First, they stress the role technological development can play in economic growth and development: their success was based on investing in technology integrated into their economies. By contrast, many Latin American countries invested in science and research, for example in building excellent universities, but this did not translate into economic gains on the scale the Asian Pacific enjoyed.⁸ Second, they underline that societies are not global and uniform, but profoundly historically and culturally rooted. Simple narratives of modernization are often guilty of not appreciating this diversity. What worked for European countries is not what worked for the Asian Tigers – and neither is it likely to be what will work in Africa and South Asia. Within these histories it is important to recognize that the role of technology is contingent and not unitary.

Claims for technology and the knowledge to create it also risk a-historicizing development. There is almost a sense that all developing countries lack is science, knowledge and technology: ‘the entire international system of stratification has come to be based not on “who owns what” but on “who knows what”’ (Mazrui and White, 1988: 359), or ‘Africa’s poverty and lack of global influence appear to stem from its weak technological and knowledge base’ (Makinda, 2007: 973). No serious historian of African or Third World underdevelopment would attribute global inequalities solely to ‘who knows what’. Wiping away the context in which technology can play an important role in development is not likely to ensure its effectiveness or help us understand what roles science and technology can play. Indeed, it almost serves to divorce science and technology from society and the economy, which, as we can see with the Asian Tigers, is where it is effective. Ultimately, i...