Science and Technology Studies meets development geographies

Enlightenment notions of science and technology have been crucial to imperial and colonial endeavors. They have come to stand for modernization and progress in a Eurocentric development agenda; later on, they have turned into the central objects of post-development and post-colonial critiques. While post-development approaches tend to romanticize indigenous and local knowledges, some of the most recent development initiatives return to a glorify (global) science and technology as the solution for development. This paper critically engages with these narratives about science and technology and introduces (postcolonial) science and technology studies (STS) as a perspective that challenges such binary ways of dealing with science and technology in development contexts. By doing so it contributes to recent debates about the role of science and technology for development and gives new inspiration for a theoretically inclined development geography.