Contextualizing poverty and culture; towards a social economy of community centered knowledge based development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the critical interrelationships between poverty, culture and knowledge-based community development. Design/methodology/approach – The traditional approaches to the management of poverty such as infrastructure, literacy and economic aid have failed to deliver and ameliorate the lot of common people. The current paper engages in critical constructivist discourse on poverty as unfolding in the era of knowledge economy and seeks to propose a community focussed knowledge-based development model of human economic and social uplift. This model has three dimensions: community knowledge focus, interactions of local, regional and global knowledge shaping and influencing poverty management and finally collective responsibility (collective commitment) of groups to rid them of poverty trap. Findings – First, this paper looks at the social interconnections of poverty, culture and knowledge-based development in a critical discourse context. Second, it discusses the alternative worldviews of economic development. Third, it questions current epistemological and sociological assumptions of development paradigm. Originality/value – The paper looks at the issues of poverty, culture and economic development from a critical pluralistic epistemological standpoint. It also questions some of the prescriptive methods of development by poverty experts. It also proposes to effectively explore and integrate different cognitive styles in development discourse and their usefulness and relevance to global development discourse.