Global Poverty: the Co-Production of Knowledge and Politics

Abstract

This article argues that insights from the field of social studies of science and technology are relevant for assessing the highly politicized and contested knowledge for development and the eradication of global poverty elaborated by the World Bank. The World Bank, which has become a transnational expert institution, is best characterized as a 'site of co-production', producing both knowledge and social orders. Such a perspective helps in unveiling problems related to expertise and problems of delegation fundamental in relations between politics and knowledge. At the same time, applying insights from the social studies of science and technology provides an explanatory framework for knowledge-based science advice and suggestions for increasing the salience, credibility and legitimacy of such knowledge. The article calls for institutional innovations that may lead to dialogue and a more transparent and accountable debate among competing knowledge claims and political visions within and outside transnational expert bodies.