11 results
Search Results
2. "Millet" as a postcolonial-masculinist sign of difference: tracing the effects of ontological-epistemic erasure on a food grain.
- Author
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Chandrasekaran, Priya Rajalakshmi
- Subjects
- *
MILLETS , *GREEN Revolution , *SEED exchanges , *WOMEN farmers , *FARMERS' attitudes , *RAGI , *INDIAN women (Asians) ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
In this paper, I use deconstructive theory to analyze the category of "millet" and the endangerment of food grains in India. I argue that "millet" cohered as a sign of difference from the 1960s through India's Green Revolution, which created a national infrastructure for the materialization of colonial and masculinist ideology. In the hills of Uttarakhand and through the food grain regionally known as mandua, we see how India's postcolonial success relied on the ontological-epistemic erasure of women's food/land practices and assaulted the intertwined "rootedness" (place-making faculties) of women and the crops they cultivate. Reading mandua as "millet" under erasure (millet) reveals how mixed crop systems and practices of socio-ecological reciprocity eroded in the face of Green Revolution ideology and functioned as a bulwark against it. I turn finally to the counterhegemonic potential of "millet," as Uttarakhandi seed activists link with decentralized third world networks, which are exchanging seeds and building power across and from marginalized places. This opens a potential space of visibility and belonging for Uttarakhandi women farmers in the national arena at a time when the ecological and alimentary value of "millet" has entered national and global conversations, infusing the sign of difference with new meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. Between metis and techne: politics, possibilities and limits of improvisation.
- Author
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Kumar, Ankit
- Subjects
- *
PRACTICAL politics , *POWER (Social sciences) , *PARTICIPANT observation , *POSSIBILITY ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
Geographers, especially those working in developing country contexts have often encountered improvisation because it plays a critical social and cultural role. Engaging with anthropologist James Scott's conceptualisation of metis – contextual, practical and flexible skills and knowledge – and techne – universal technical knowledge – this paper furthers the geographical scholarship on the politics of improvisation. The paper makes three main contributions. First, using metis and techne, it provides a new conceptual repertoire for making sense of improvisation. The paper places improvisation at the nexus of metis and techne. Second, it pushes the understanding of the morality of improvisation by attending to the role of relationships of power in morally and materially legitimising improvisations. Third, although states and experts celebrate and actively engage with improvisation, this paper demonstrates that they also create limits and boundaries for improvisation. These limits demonstrate a contradiction in experts' actions. This paper is based on a nine months ethnographic research on two energy projects carried out in 2012–13 in five villages in Bihar, an eastern state of India. It used participant observations, home tours, interviews and group discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. Development finance 2.0: do participation and information technologies matter?
- Author
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Singh, J. P.
- Subjects
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INFORMATION technology , *PARTICIPATION , *FINANCE , *BUSINESS enterprises ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
This essay critically examines the discourse of participation in development finance directed at the poor in the Global South from national and international development agencies. This discourse, often termed financial inclusion, posits the ability of development actors to reach the poor involving them in important economic decisions affecting their lives, provides access to products that improve their material conditions, and ensures their credit worthiness through highly nuanced information technology and social media tools. The paper presents evidence from two ethnographically inspired studies undertaken by the author in India and Kenya to ascertain the ways in which the participatory discourse in finance is understood among societal participants themselves. The paper presents relevant epistemes for analyzing what 'grassroots' actors understand as their participation in development-oriented financial inclusion projects. The study forwards two major conclusions: (1) 'habits of authority' among various development actors thwart effective participation; (2) technology platforms that allow for successive innovations and interconnections from businesses and other organizations encourage financial inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. An Attitude Model of Environmental Action: Evidence from Developing and Developed Countries.
- Author
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Davino, Cristina, Esposito Vinzi, Vincenzo, Santacreu-Vasut, Estefania, and Vranceanu, Radu
- Subjects
- *
ATTITUDES toward the environment , *U.S. states , *NONPROFIT organizations ,DEVELOPED countries ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
This paper analyzes the determinants of stated individual support towards environmental action. The analysis is realized by means of an original Partial Least Squares Path model of Environmental Awareness-Social Capital-Action and it is based on survey data provided in the fifth wave of the World Values Survey (2005–2009) regarding 34.612 individuals from 42 different countries. Besides the global estimates obtained on the whole set of countries, the paper proposes a subsample analysis for developed and developing countries, as well as country analyses for four major economies: China, India, Germany and the United States. We find that environmental awareness and trust in not-for-profit organizations are important determinants of individual action in support of environmentally friendly policies. In general, trust in science and technology does not crowd-out individual support towards the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
6. The backroads of AI: The uneven geographies of artificial intelligence and development.
- Author
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McDuie‐Ra, Duncan and Gulson, Kalervo
- Subjects
- *
ARTIFICIAL intelligence , *DIME , *GRAND strategy (Political science) , *POOR people , *NETWORK hubs ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
Artificial intelligence is being reconfigured as a set of technologies that can address poverty with precision. The impacts of AI will both exacerbate and ameliorate the conditions of uneven development. Recent debates focus on the disruptive effects of AI, particularly to replication of development trajectories that have had success in reducing poverty. In this paper we further these debates by analysing the backroads of AI. The backroads serve as a metaphor for understanding the ways AI will travel from the sites of incubation to the frontlines of uneven development. We explore dialogues between AI and development in two arenas: the World Bank's Development Impact Evaluation initiative (DIME) and the Government of India's national AI strategy, #AIforAll. We argue that both these arenas serve as hubs from which AI will travel out along the backroads to remote, poor, and fragmented polities. While the World Bank utilises AI as technology to empower experts and mobilise a techno‐political authority, what we refer to as precision AI, India seeks to function as a second‐tier AI hub, making AI cheaper and more accessible domestically and for other developing countries, what we refer to as populist AI. We conclude by discussing the interrelations of precision and populist AI along the backroads, and the potential of backroads research for mapping AI, uneven geographies of development and technology and the impacts of AI's disruptions at different scales. Artificial intelligence is being reconfigured as a set of technologies that can address poverty with precision. We further these debates by analysing the backroads of AI in two arenas: the World Bank's Development Impact Evaluation initiative (DIME) and the Government of India's national AI strategy #AIforAll. While the World Bank utilises AI as technology to empower experts and mobilise a techno‐political authority, what we refer to as precision AI, India seeks to function as a second‐tier AI hub, making AI cheaper and more accessible domestically and for other developing countries, what we refer to as populist AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
7. Are we Building a Better World with ICTs? Empirically Examining this Question in the Domain of Public Health in India.
- Author
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Sahay, Sundeep
- Subjects
- *
INFORMATION & communication technologies , *PUBLIC health , *BUILDING trade employees , *SOCIAL scientists , *INFORMATION technology research - Abstract
As social scientists engaged in Information Technologies for Development (IT4D), a question we need to necessarily engage with is “are we building a better world with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)?” This question, first posed by Professor Geoff Walsham in the IS field, was the topic of my plenary discussion at the IFIP 9.4 meeting in Jamaica 2014, and had now been further developed to this “view from practice” paper for this journal. A first step in this paper has been the reformulation of the question which Professor Walsham raised: “What distortions and obstacles are created by the historical, material, and institutional conditions, and how these shape our efforts of ICTs creating a better world?” This reformulation is done to bring in more explicitly the political dimension into the question, and to nuance the technological deterministic argument implied in the question of technology (always) creating a better world. Taking an empirical example of an ICT intervention from the public health sector in India, deliberately chosen to emphasize distortions typically seen is similar Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) projects, the analysis focuses on understanding the conditions of distortions, why they occur, and what can be done differently to contribute to our notion of a better world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
8. Social capital and child nutrition in India: The moderating role of development.
- Author
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Vikram, Kriti
- Subjects
- *
NUTRITION , *SOCIAL capital , *SOCIAL conditions of children , *FOOD habits , *CHILD development , *CHILD nutrition , *COMPARATIVE studies , *FAMILIES , *GROWTH disorders , *RESEARCH methodology , *MEDICAL cooperation , *NUTRITIONAL requirements , *RESEARCH , *RESEARCH funding , *RURAL population , *SOCIAL support , *SOCIOECONOMIC factors , *EVALUATION research ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
Empirical studies of social capital rarely take into account the socioeconomic context of the region in which it operates, indeed as most of this research has been located in high income countries. It is imperative to investigate how development may influence the impact of social capital, especially in developing countries. This paper examines the relationship between social capital and child nutrition using the India Human Development Survey, 2005-2006. Using a multilevel framework and a sample of 6770 rural children under the age of five, it finds that household based bridging social capital, expressed as connections with development based organizations, is positively associated with child nutrition. Bonding social capital, expressed as ties with caste and religious based organizations, has the opposite impact. At the village level, contextual measures of social capital are associated with nutritional status of children, but their influence is conditional on local development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
9. Client-driven biotechnology research for poor farmers: a case study from India.
- Author
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Clark, Norman, Reddy, Pakki, and Hall, Andrew
- Subjects
- *
BIOTECHNOLOGY , *HIGH technology , *POVERTY , *ECONOMICS ,ECONOMIC conditions of farmers ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
This paper explores an attempt to bring biotechnology more directly within the ambit of civil society in general and resource-poor farmers in particular. The Andhra Pradesh Netherlands Biotechnology Programme (APNLBP) was one of four country programmes initiated by Dutch aid in the early 1990s. It is coming to an end as an aid project next year. The broad objective of the programme was to contribute to poverty alleviation through biotechnologies but to do so in a rather unique way. Instead of having R&D laboratories develop a raft of new technologies and then ‘disseminating’ these to farmers, the emphasis was put on direct interaction with farmers and related stakeholder groups such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The paper describes the programme's inception and evolution, outlines key governance aspects and sets the analytical discussion within the context of modern ‘innovation systems’ discourse. Two aspects in particular are emphasized. The first is the degree of connectivity among the different stakeholders that are part of the system. It is now well recognized that it is the flow of information across stakeholder groups that often determines the degree of technological development that occurs, although clearly there are other factors also involved. The second is the importance of institutions and institutional change in enabling successful innovation to take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
10. Gravel in the Shoe: National ism and World of the Third.
- Author
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Chakrabarti, Anjan and Dhar, Anup
- Subjects
- *
NATIONALISM & economics , *UTOPIAN socialism , *POLITICAL science ,ECONOMIC conditions in developing countries ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
This paper examines nationalism as the ‘modern idea of a collective’ or the ‘ideal of a modern collective’ that struts out universally and that ceaselessly tightens its footwear in the face of recalcitrant gravels, gravels that are representative of either extant or possible ideas of alternative collectivity. Against this background, we show how a new nationalism in India encapsulated by the economic Utopia of ‘inclusive development’ is emerging in the contemporary landscape of global capitalism under neoliberal conditions. This Utopia is shown to be marked by a fundamental split that helps secure and facilitate the reorganization of India's national cartography into the ‘expanding circuits of global capital’ and its constitutive outside: ‘world of the third’. Highlighted are the encounters with flashpoints of conflict emanating from nationalism's intricate encounter with the contemporary ‘gravel in the shoe’: world of the third. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
11. RMT Identification of Risk-Sharing Networks: Structures and Shocks in the Political Economy of Development.
- Author
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Alexander, Marcus and Harding, Matthew C.
- Subjects
- *
RISK management in business ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
We investigate risk-sharing networks in order to better understand the high volatility experienced by many developing countries. We introduce a new methodology based on random matrix theory to study how networks between companies in Asia, the Middle East, and South America propagate idiosyncratic volatility and aggregate the shocks at the level of an industry sector, country or region. Our evidence uncovers dense regional networks that cross national boarders and enable risk-sharing on the regional level; and we are able to identify the central roles played by regional economic powers such as China and India in Asia. The extent of overlap in the networks we identify suggests that idiosyncratic shocks may be a much larger determinant of volatility in the developing world than previously thought. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
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