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Power and dominance in intercultural communication 403

3.2. Dominant knowledge – a productive failure of intercultural
science transfer

The relationship between first world donor countries and third world recipients
of foreign aid is – for obvious reasons – highly asymmetrical. Foreign aid can be
used as an instrument of power (for the complex interrelation between political
and economic interests behind foreign aid see Schmidt [2003]). It is even more
disturbing, however, when measures undertaken “within a responsible and con-
structive approach to the question of development aid” (Schmidt 2003: 507)
seem to backfire. The steel plant at Rourkela, India, which was built with Ger-
man aid, is a case in point: While this technology transfer has generated growth
and employment, its impact on the region has resulted in substantial environ-
mental and social problems such as the displacement of tribal populations
(Meher 2003).
Science and knowledge transfer to developing countries is technology
transfer’s silent companion. Science transfer appears to be devoid of the interests
behind foreign aid, and – because it involves scientists on both sides – to be some-
how even immunized against intercultural communication problems. Yet the fol-
lowing brief case study may show that intercultural science transfer has the poten-
tial of being a silent instantiation of dominance in intercultural communication.
In the late 1960s, Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh – on whose book
(Yunus and Jolis 1998) this section is based – completed his doctorate in Econ-
omics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1972 he returned to
Bangladesh as a lecturer for economics at the University of Chittagong. The
great famine of 1974 made him aware of the limits of his knowledge: “I re-
member very well the enthusiasm with which I taught my students the solutions
economic theories provided for all sorts of economic problems. I was enthralled
by the beauty and elegance of these theories. But all of a sudden I realised the
futility of my efforts. What was their point when everywhere, on the pavements
and in front of the doors, people were dying from starvation?” (Yunus and Jolis
1998: 17). Yunus stopped teaching equations of economic theory. Instead, he
and his students began to study empirically the reasons for poverty in their
country. They soon found out three things: Most of the poor of their country ran
small businesses. They stayed poor because in order to set up their businesses
they had to borrow money from money lenders who charged ursurious rates.
The poor would not be eligible for a bank loan, however, because they had noth-
ing to offer as a material collateral. Yunus realized that the concept of “collat-
eral” could be reinterpreted: “Collateral” did not have to be anything material, it
could also consist of the clients’ economic potential within their social network.
This was the principle upon which Yunus developed his – profit making – Gra-
meen bank, which meanwhile operates successfully in more than fifty thousand
villages in Bangladesh.