The democratisation of decision-making processes in the water sector II

The second part of this paper investigates one possibility of realising an inversion of the so-far established order of knowledge/power structures in that it corresponds to an inversion in power relations that is realised by an inversion in knowledge relations. The system proposed here by way of an example is then primarily a means of realising this inversion. The economic sustainability of such a system within a ‘third world’ context necessitates the consideration also of knowledge/value relations, and these are also briefly introduced. The system itself is essentially a knowledge self-management system, comprising three principal components:a knowledge centre connecting to (other) knowledge providers;an inner knowledge periphery that receives, processes and transmits knowledge passing between the centre and;an outer knowledge periphery situated primarily at the end-user level.The use of ‘scientific discourse’ at the centre and of ‘narrative discourse’ at the outer periphery sets the overall specification of the inner periphery.