Abstract

Abstract Understandings of socially distributed expertise as being key to living, interpreting and intervening in the world, are increasingly used in development narratives, referring usually to knowledge sharing across multi-stakeholder partnerships. This movement towards the democratisation of expertise challenges the ideological claim of science to be the exclusive source of objective information, evidence and discovery on which informed decisions and technological developments should be based. But if we reject that claim, what are the implications for the way stakeholders learn, organise and transmit knowledge and skills, and resolve problems? And how do science and expertise come together in development narratives and practices? We address these questions through an examination of the changing relationship between scientific, professional and non-professional expertise in rural development. Firstly, we examine the evolution of models of rural development and knowledge generation over past decades and introduce the concept of vernacular expertise – the expertise that people have and develop that is place-based but crucially nourished by outside sources and agents and which underpins neo-endogenous development models. Secondly, by drawing empirically on qualitative research with rural advisory professionals who support farmer decision making we unpack the composition of vernacular expertise as a fusion of field/place generated and field/place focused knowledge, and consider how it may be better recognised and enhanced in development processes and policy agendas.

Highlights

  • We are experiencing an enormous growth in knowledge and in access to knowledge that challenges prevailing models of how knowledge is produced, circulated and used

  • In this paper we have considered a shift in emphasis in development policy and practice from science to expertise, and the role of expertise in supporting a democratisation of knowledge

  • We provide an account of the changing way that knowledge and technical skills are developed and extended, moving away from the notion of one-way knowledge transfer to a more extensive and equal collaboration between scientific, professional and non-professional sources of expertise

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Summary

Introduction

We are experiencing an enormous growth in knowledge and in access to knowledge that challenges prevailing models of how knowledge is produced, circulated and used. This paper addresses these questions in the context of rural development, by examining the role and future of expertise and its potential to provide an alternative rhetoric that challenges the exclusivity of science. We find rural development an insightful case to conceptualize expertise because of its well documented, shifting – and at times experimental – governance and knowledge exchange models (Gkartzios & Lowe, 2019). We discuss the notion of expertise and its role in providing an encompassing frame for considering the democratisation of knowledge and skills. We consider how science and rural expertise have come together in the past, and been framed, within prevailing models of rural development in developed world contexts, thereby exposing the underlying epistemology beneath development models. Lowe et al / World Development 116 (2019) 28–37 agents and which underpins networked models of development – and ask how it may be better recognised and enhanced

The democratisation of expertise
Models of rural development and knowledge generation
Research design
The vernacular expertise of rural advisory professionals
Rural professionals learning from their farmer clients
Conclusions
Findings
Conflicts of interest
Full Text
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