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192 On the Way from the Forum: A Future Research Agenda
universities, e.g. in post-independence Africa (Rostow, 1960; Cowen and Shenton, 1996; Leys,
1996; Ake, 1996; CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos. 3-4, 2005).
The global crisis caused by oil price increases in the 1970s, which paved the way for the ascendancy
of market ideologies, marked another phase in the history of development discourses,
bringing different emphases and indicators to the meanings and modalities of human development.
These reshaped the discourse in a way that made the fundamentals of economic growth
almost synonymous with social development, leaving the broader political, normative and cultural
dimensions of development to being more symbolic than substantial. Hence, the market “solution”
is advocated in the 1980s and 1990s as much for social development in the LICs as for
global economic competitiveness in the HICs. In that continuing history, the advent of the Information
and Communications Technology (ICT) revolution and changes in the nature of postindustrial
societies (Bell, 1973; Mansell and When, 1998; UNCTAD, 2008) in the last two decades
of the last century have brought the issue of knowledge and its social and economic benefits
firmly into the orbit of twentieth century development discourses. Such discourses have been
used to represent (as well as contest) the engine of social change and human progress, as well as
to reconfigure the link between the fate of LICs/MICs and the powerful interests of HICs. The
knowledge society/knowledge economy and innovation discourse has become the dominant contemporary
political and economic formula for hypothesizing the causes and conditions of social
and economic development and human progress, not only in OECD member countries but in
the developing world as well. Higher education institutions and public research institutes are,
together with other private sector knowledge-producing enterprises, now routinely represented as
constituent parts of “national systems of innovation” whose defining mandate is the advancement
of economic growth and the competitive positioning of national economies within regional
and global economies (OECD, 1997; Edquist, 1997; Patel and Pavitt, 1994).
The knowledge society framework was accepted in broad terms by the Forum as the conceptual
platform on which to stimulate research and debate and to support knowledge and research
systems for the purposes of social and economic development in LICs and MICs. However,
the knowledge society and innovation discourse has also become part of the macroeconomic
policy thinking and policy-making of the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank,
2002; 2008), gaining immense power and global influence through, for example, the World
Bank’s support of development projects in the form of loans and technical assistance and
through its research and policy advice. The strong connection to economic competitiveness is
also clear in the European Union’s Lisbon Agenda which uses the innovation and knowledge
economy discourse in its policy platform for maximizing the economic power and competitiveness
of the EU (European Council, Lisbon, March, 2000). The Forum signalled its difference
from the earlier “rate-of-return” position of the World Bank on the role and value of universities
in developing countries, but did not engage further on possible key differences in approach to the
commonly held knowledge society platform for development. In speaking of “knowledge-based
development”, the Forum invoked the requirements of sustainable development and stressed the
importance of links with society as well as industry (see Chapter 2, Olsson and Mkandawire in
this volume). Nevertheless, a theoretically and politically substantial alternative position on the
“broader social, ethical and political dimensions” of knowledge-based societies (UNESCO, 2005)
did not emerge under the umbrella of its work. Thus, the Forum remained ambivalently within a
knowledge society discourse which has become generalized across different ideological perspectives
regarding the constituent ingredients for development success.