Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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Different practices of talk happen not merely as a result of cultural or
ethnic distinctions of language, but also and largely in relation to different
approaches to knowledge, or to recognize their plurality, knowledges (Spink,
2001 b). As such, these differences happen as much within specific cultural
or societal boundaries as between them, turning the search for the ‘converse’
into a challenge of spaces and places. Take for example all the various
social epistemologies present in the extended family of sciences; each with
its own set of assumptions and views about what can or cannot be said, or of
how knowledge claims can be effectively judged.
We can add to this the many traditional knowledges that are around, not as
knowledges that can be surpassed and included within a more mature and
scientific understanding, but as knowledges in their own right that include
practices and innovations. What is traditional about traditional knowledge,
as a recent document produced in relation to indigenous peoples’ property
rights pointed out, is not its age-old appearance “but the way in which it is
acquired and used” (Cunha, 2001). It is a way of producing innovations and
transmitting knowledge through specific practices that continues to be active
and actual, even though in a very different way from other knowledges.
Traditional knowledges, whilst having their epistemological specificity, nevertheless
open the door for the recognition of other forms of situated local
knowledges; those knowledges that grow up around the mid-range of places
and questions, including what is often referred to as common sense. All are
lived-in sources of explanations about ongoing events and ways of changing
them; here practice and expediency is as much a language within which to
talk, as is that of theory and strategy. All are talked into being by people in
their everyday life-worlds who, in turn, become their explanations; be these
scientific, local, common sense or traditional. Different practices of talk can
also be a result of counter-hegemonic and counter-ideological positions, assumed
explicitly in relation to locally seen attempts at domination rather
than in relation to specific themes and issues; they are the discourse practices
of resistance and are counter in that they are produced in relation to
power.
With so many different knowledges around, so many different positions
from where to be, it seems fair to suggest that dialogue – apart from in the
very basic manner of the disposition of humans to find each other in language
within a moral commonwealth of some form (Selznick, 1992) – is
never likely to be a pre-given; on the contrary it is somewhere that you
might eventually get to if you are lucky. Indeed, in development assistance
with its overlay of scarce funds and resources it is probably fair to say that
the cards are firmly stacked against dialogue and that this has been a steadily
worsening rather than improving situation. It takes tremendous courage to
stick to your collective local knowledge doubts when the opposing arguments
are packaged in several million dollars of front loaded program support
expressed in a power point presentation.