Slow Knowledge (1996)

Abstract

B etween 1978 and 1984, the Asian Development Bank spent $ 24 million to improve agriculture on the island of Bali. The target for improvement was an ancient agricultural system organized around 173 village cooperatives linked by a network of temples operated by “ water priests ” working in service to the water goddess, Dewi Danu, a deity seldom included in the heavenly pantheon of development economists. Not surprisingly, the new plan called for large capital investment to build dams and canals, and to purchase pesticides and fertilizers. The plan also included efforts to make idle resources, both the Balinese and their land, productive year-round. Old practices of fallowing were ended, along with community celebrations and rituals. The results were remarkable but inconvenient: yields declined, pests proliferated, and the village society began to unravel. On later examination (Lansing 1991), it turns out that the priests’ role in the religion of Agama Tirtha was that of ecological master planners whose task it was to keep a fnely tuned system operating productively. Western development experts dismantled a system that had worked well for more than a millennium and replaced it with something that did not work at all. The priests have reportedly resumed control.