Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
... This moral aspect relates to the "will to improve" (Li 2007) that is a central concern in development discourse and practice. It refers to the imagined responsibility, held by Northern states and aid organizations, to foster development and peace in regions in the Global South deemed underdeveloped and unstable (Ferguson 1990, Escobar 1995, Heron 2007. ...
... It is our contention that environmental peacebuilding can only begin to create space for non-Eurocentric and non-colonial epistemologies and practices through a fundamental reckoning with, and separation from, the discourse and apparatus of security-development. Yet it has not only become an integral part of this apparatus, it is increasingly important for its reproduction and expansion. Almost two decades ago, Escobar (1995) observed that development discourse needs to constantly reinvent itself to mask its own failures. This drive leads to a constant search for new approaches, such as the "participatory turn" or "human development." ...
... Despite vigorous and constant critique, mainstream development discourse has consistently avoided problematizing deeper issues related to global power relations, including over-consumption in the Global North; the historical responsibility for pollution and climate change; the disastrous effects of extractivism and economic crises; the political economy of arms production and exports; and the destabilizing effects of Global-North led military interventions. These processes and issues unquestionably shape dynamics of conflict and violence in the Global South (Latouche 1993, Escobar 1995. ...
In this article we critically analyze the emerging academic field and practice of environmental peacebuilding. We claim that both are saturated by a particular “technomoral imaginary” or a set of beliefs, normative assumptions, and views on desirable futures that betray unwavering faith in the power of science and technology to bring peace and development to the Global South by transforming environmental governance. This imaginary informs particular rules of knowledge production that work to establish environmental peacebuilding as a conceptually narrow and self-referential field. Zooming in on an environmental peacebuilding project in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, we demonstrate how the self-referentiality of knowledge production within the field leads to inadequate analyses of key drivers of conflict and violence. Moreover, it blinds scholars and practitioners to the broader power-knowledge effects of environmental peacebuilding, including its complicity in conjuring up “dangerous environments.” By the latter, we refer to the portrayal of environments in the Global South as potential security threats due to various lacks and deficiencies ascribed to these regions, which contributes to the reproduction of a “global environmental color line.” The conjuring up of dangerous environments embeds environmental peacebuilding within a Global-North dominated, colonially influenced apparatus of security and development whose interventions integrate places more firmly into circuits of global capitalism and global governance. To reckon with these power-knowledge effects, environmental peacebuilding must display more self-reflexivity regarding the politics of knowledge production on the Global South.
... Complicated land-energy-food planning nexuses are not unique to Puerto Rico (see Frimpong Boamah et al., 2020), especially given the global intensification of extractivism by colonial capitalism (Escobar, 1995), particularly under protracted undemocratic governance and militarism (see Raja et al., 2022). However, the case of Puerto Rico explained in this paper illustrates the potential consequences of ill-designed, selectively permissive zoning districts on irreplaceable farmlands, within the context of long-standing policies and practices that treat places as corporate playgrounds (Onís and Lloréns, 2021). ...
Zoning regulates which land uses belong on land. Also, zoning ordinances signal the local government's intent for land use regulation and its consequent exclusion of land uses, activities, and people. Exclusionary zoning has been well studied in urban settings, but less is known about its impact on farmlands. The archipelago of Puerto Rico serves as an important case to examine recent land-use policy changes and the government's intent on agricultural lands. This paper examines the 2010, 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2022 Joint Permit Regulations to ask: What rhetorical work do these five regulations employ for agricultural land? What insights do each of the Joint Permit Regulation offer about the government's intent for agricultural land? How do these regulations shape Puerto Rico's agricultural landscape and whose interest do they serve? To answer these questions, I employ two policy analytical methods, policy archeology and genealogy, along with five key subject-matter experts' interviews to assess how municipal-level zoning policies articulate territorialized politics of belonging on agricultural land zoned as productive agriculture (agrícola productivo, in Spanish). Theoretical thematic analysis from interviews with subject-matter experts shows how the official planning discourse in Puerto Rico uses the cover of disaster recovery and sustainable development to foster land dispossession and exclusion of farmers on Puerto Rico's most valuable agricultural land.
The landscape of heritage on the African continent is the product of neoliberal economic and social interventions from the 1980s–2000s: the prevalence and influence of heritage NGOs; aid for cultural programmes contingent on government reforms; the use of national heritage policies and projects to signal ready capital; experiments in custodianship and private enterprise that balance conservation with consumerism; and so on. This Element synthesises literature from anthropology, archaeology, history, and geography to describe a significant period of heritage policy and discourse on the African continent – its historical situation, on-the-ground realities, and continuing legacies in the era of sustainable development and climate crises.
The endless pursuit of economic growth produces spatial problems which are critiqued
by geographers, economists, artists, political ecologists, psychologists, historians, and
philosophers alike. What is the spatial impact of economic growth? How does space promote economic growth to negative effect, and how have critiques materialised? This chapter offers an introduction to the many ways in which questions regarding the spatial implications of economic growth have been explored, by outlining how critiques of this dynamic have been presented in academic literature, as well as art and the built environment. It ofers a broad overview of key issues rather than a comprehensive account in the hope of providing a strong starting point from which the reader can explore these issues in greater depth.
Si le rôle important des sciences économiques est souvent évoqué par les historien·nes du développement, l’apport de l’histoire de la pensée économique à cette littérature est resté surprenamment limité. Cet article propose une piste d’explication par les pratiques archivistiques : le recours aux archives des bureaucraties (post-)coloniales nationales européennes (relativement peu utilisées par rapport à celles de chercheurs et de chercheuses individuel·les ou d’organisations internationales) pourrait permettre de mieux comprendre les enjeux de l’expertise dans la décolonisation et, en bout de chaîne, l’émergence de l’économie du développement comme forme de savoir spécifique dans ces pays. L’exemple proposé est celui de la Mission d’assistance économique créée en 1955 au sein du ministère de la France d’Outre-mer, et de sa transformation en 1958 en un bureau d’études – la Sedes – qui fut l’un des principaux acteurs français du déploiement d’économistes au Sud dans les décennies suivantes.
This ethnographic research offers a thorough examination of the metamorphosis undergone by the Rongmei people in Northeast India as they shift from tradition to modernization. It examines the complex dynamics of how modernization has transformed the traditional Rongmei lifestyle. This research, using a detailed anthropological approach, elucidates the intricate relationship between tradition and modernization in Rongmei society, providing significant insights on cultural preservation and socio-economic change in indigenous groups. This research provides an in-depth analysis of the intricate alterations inside Rongmei society during modernization and religious change.
Rekindled passions and revival of indigenous beliefs and practices have become one of the emerging conversations on African Religions (AR). This paper draws upon an ethnographic study of the Nsukka-Igbo communities to negotiate the impetus for the increasing dibia (broadly defined as medicine man/priest/diviner/healer) practices among the Igbo of Nigeria. Despite the informed school of thought contemplating African Religions and their attendant agencies as being in retreat, evidence from this study portrays a rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and practices dealing with health concerns particularly as found in dibia practices. As discovered, this new trajectory, among other constructs, is shaped by the youth’s reawakening trust in local knowledge systems. This account maps into the discourse on the resurgence of indigenous health agencies in the midst of the dominant Western medium of seeking wellness in postcolonial conditions.
This research explores the dynamic intersection of sustainable design, cultural heritage, and community enterprise, focusing on the innovative utilization of post-harvest sugar cane leaves in bamboo basketry production from various provinces in Thailand. This study aims to investigate how design anthropology principles can enhance community enterprises’ resilience and sustainability by employing a qualitative case study approach. Findings reveal that while traditional bamboo basketry reflects the region’s rich cultural heritage, a shift towards sustainable practices offers environmental benefits and economic opportunities. Design anthropology informs the development of culturally relevant products, fostering market competitiveness and preserving traditional craftsmanship. Moreover, government policies play a pivotal role in supporting or hindering the growth of community enterprises, with soft power initiatives holding promise for promoting cultural heritage and sustainability. Collaboration between policymakers, design anthropologists, and local stakeholders is essential for developing inclusive policies that empower communities and foster sustainable development. Overall, integrating sustainable design practices and cultural insights holds significant potential for enhancing the resilience and effectiveness of community enterprises, ensuring a prosperous and sustainable future for both the industry and the communities it serves. This study is a testament that design anthropology provides a powerful framework for addressing complex social and environmental issues through the lenses of culture and design.
The contemporary Hawaiian literary landscape provides a profound lens for deconstructing the pervasive paradise trope associated with the islands. This deconstruction reveals a postcolonial Hawaii marked by environmental shifts and tourist-driven development exploiting the paradise myth. This paper reads contemporary Hawaiian literature, Alan Brennert’s Moloka’i, Honolulu and Kristiana Kahakauwila’s This is Paradise, to contextualize the consequences of modernity and exploitation of Native Hawaiians and immigrant populations. The narratives juxtapose the idealized perception of Hawai’i as a tropical paradise with the harsh realities faced by plantation laborers, lepers, and marginalized Indigenous within the tourist industry. This analysis highlights the disparity between the idealized portrayal of Hawai’i and the challenging conditions marginalized groups face. These narratives serve as critical instruments in dismantling the paradisal myth, delineating the historicity of Hawai’i as a postcolonial space.
Background
Previous studies showed that lay people see modernization as a threat to social fabric because it will make people less warm and moral. The purpose of this paper is to describe lay people’s understanding of the effects of different types of modernization. Specifically, we checked how social, economic, technological and conventional development are expected to influence communion, agency and well-being in the future society.
Methods
We conducted three cross-sectional studies using online surveys. Prolific participant pool users over 18 years of age that held Canadian citizenship and resided in Canada were eligible to take part in the study in exchange for financial compensation. T-tests and linear regression analyses were conducted using SPSS statistical package.
Results
Participants expected that people in future society will have lower well-being than today. Technological modernization was expected to decrease communion and well-being but increase agency in the future, while social modernization was expected to strengthen societal communion, agency and well-being.
Conclusion
Lay people believe that different types of modernization will have different effects on society. Whereas technological progress is viewed ambivalently, social development is seen as uniformly positive for well-being of society. In order to counter pessimism about the future, policy makers should focus on social development while striving to mitigate negative social aspects of technological advancements.
Este escrito adopta un enfoque cualitativo y reflexivo, examinando las perspectivas de reconocidos autores como Theodore W. Schultz, John W. Mellor y Robert Chambers. Estos expertos coinciden en destacar la importancia de la agricultura para el desarrollo económico y la reducción de la pobreza, pero sus énfasis varían, abarcando desde la eficiencia económica hasta la inclusión social y la valorización del conocimiento local. Además, se presentan críticas de autores contemporáneos sobre el modelo convencional y las implicaciones de las estrategias promovidas por organismos internacionales. Palabras clave: Desarrollo rural, perspectivas, alternativas.
This paper examines the relationship of sovereignty with development and national identity in the violently hierarchized multinational, multireligious, and multilingual Iran. Drawing on the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly Sara Roy's theory of "de-development," in this paper, we study how the sovereign ethnonation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextualizing de-development theory within the broader discipline of developmental studies and elucidating the operatives of de-development, we compare the politicoeconomic circumstances of Rojhelat (eastern Kurdistan/Iran) with that of Palestine NEXT ARTICLE ⮞ $ Abstract Full Text & ' to underline the key similarities and differences between these two cases. Our research will illustrate the shortcomings of developmental studies in explaining the ethnoracial and religious undercurrents of economic disparity and reveal the noneconomic objectives of economic exploitation in the Middle East.
The text describes a consideration of activist anthropology, which the author treats as an extension
of participant observation. It stems from and builds upon the methodological eclecticism of anthropology/ethnology. For the author, activist anthropology is the closest to the original premise of
participant observation because in its view the researcher’s participation is possibly closest to that
of the research partners. The author present the theoretical foundations on which it is based and the
circumstances of his research-activist practice from which the author’s interpretation of it was developed. Its features that reinforce the need to distinguish the term of activist anthropology as a specific
practice of participatory observation and anthropology itself are also showcased in the article.
There is an increasing call for the need to "integrate" Indigenous and local knowledge systems in ocean governance processes, on national and global scales. However, the knowledge systems, epistemes, and practices of different Indigenous and local coastal communities, whose stewardship of the planet sustains and protects marine ecosystems, pre-date the institutionalised ocean sciences and governance with which they are meant to be integrated. The concept of integration often perpetuates othering and devaluation of various ocean knowledges that should not be subject to these problematic practices. Much of the current knowledge informing ocean governance is underpinned by colonial, military, and financial projects, in direct juxtaposition to epistemes and practices that are deeply interconnected with marine life. Writing from a marine social sciences perspective, we explore the inherent problems and limitations of integration approaches and propose reversing how we frame "knowledge" and its othering by suggesting that our scientific and governance practices are, in fact, "other" to longstanding ways of coexisting with the ocean. Without attempting to represent Indigenous knowledge systems or categorise these as unaware of scientific developments, we argue that researchers and scientists need to actively unlearn what is taught in prominent ocean sciences. By focusing on global governance through the International Seabed Authority and national ocean governance in South Africa, respectively, we explore knowledge othering and the process of unlearning what ocean governance teaches as knowledge integration to better critically consider how the ocean is, has been, and should be valued.
As labor in the capitalist system practically tripled to some three billion workers, solidary organizations of labor simultaneously dwindled in relative size and power. This is true globally but also for the historical core countries. While this is a paradox, it is not a contradiction. Capital is a (spatialized) social relationship. The globalization of capital since the 1970s has shifted the power relations with localized labor fundamentally in favor of capital, as Charles Tilly noted in this journal almost thirty years ago. Over time, power balances within capitalist states, and between capitalist states and transnationalizing capital, have reflected that basic class-relational shift. This article explains why the globalizing cycle of weakened labor may now be reversing.
Purportedly in line with the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) commitment to end poverty and gender inequality by 2030, conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) provide poor households with cash contingent on parents making human capital investments in their children. Advocates claim CCTs empower and so benefit women and girls. Critics worry the programs reinforce gendered expectations by tying social protection to “good mothering.” The aim of this paper is to assess whether CCTs are compatible with the SDGs’ stated aims with regards to Goal 5 on gender equality and empowerment. I argue that CCTs run contrary to the stated aims of SDG 5. CCTs rely on and perpetuate sexist ideology about women while simultaneously policing women’s behavior to ensure they fulfill the state’s conception of a “good mother.” Notwithstanding the potential benefits women receive from CCTs, the programs prevent the disruption of power relations by reinforcing norms that incentivize women to engage in self-subordinating ways in exchange for cash. Given that the programs re-entrench and police gender norms, CCTs thwart progress towards SDG 5 and so move us no closer to a gender equal world.
The internationalisation of higher education, and indeed, initial teacher education (ITE), has burgeoned in recent years, often involving short-term international study experiences (STISE) for outbound domestic students. Research into the outcomes of such programs has largely focused on the pre-service teacher (PST) experience rather than other aspects, including academics’ leadership of these programs. As four teacher educator authors with extensive experience of leading STISE programs, we have worked dialogically across different institutions in Australia to present a multi-perspective examination of the under-researched area of STISE leadership. We present four case writings that we each authored separately, and from these cases we distil the enablers and barriers for effective leadership of STISE in ITE. Findings identify four key contributors to quality leadership of STISE programs, which are underpinned by social justice principles. They are: (1) Stakeholder partnerships; (2) Cultural fluidity; (3) Personal and professional leadership attributes; and (4) Advocacy within institutions. We hope this chapter helps policymakers, senior leadership in institutions, and potential leaders of STISE programs to understand and appreciate what quality STISE leadership involves.
This last substantive chapter develops, deepens and extends the critical perspectives in Part III by extrapolating the principles specified in the previous chapter to the long-term and global scale. This significantly re-spatialises flow by insisting that flow is increasingly becoming instrumentalised not only with respect to individual performance and wellbeing, but also with respect to wholesale hegemonic agendas that threaten to undermine the positive psychological foundations of flow by weaponising flow in the service of economically and politically motivated objectives. I first explore the Janus-faced nature of flow as being simultaneously a steppingstone toward twin goals of individual wellbeing and planetary sustainability, and ripe for co-option into broader structures of power that reinforce rather than reset current hegemonic interests and inequalities. Subsequently, this is elaborated through ecotourism initiatives that are discursively targeted towards sustainability outcomes, but which conscript flow into the perpetuation of neocolonial power asymmetries through international development agendas. Hence, the commodification of both flow and Nature are framed as twin neoliberal accumulation strategies and the need for flow research to be informed by an explicitly critical moral geographical understanding is proposed, with implications for all flow researchers and practitioners.
In an era marked by global economic challenges, an increasing array of non-traditional security threats, and a proliferation of conflicts and issues, China has put forth the building of a community of shared future for mankind as a way to address this question of the times. The theory of the community of shared future for mankind offers a framework to address contemporary issues by promoting equality, mutual benefit, security, justice, openness, innovation, multicultural exchange, and green development. This paper innovatively quantifies the five core principles of the theory of the community of shared future for mankind using the entropy method. It calculates the proxy variable for sustainable development, green total factor productivity, using the super-efficiency Slack-Based Measure model in Data Envelopment Analysis. Baseline regression is conducted on this basis. The Principal Component Analysis method and another Data Envelopment Analysis method, the Malmquist index, are utilized to recalculate the indicators, followed by another round of regression analysis. The results are consistent with the baseline regression. Additionally, Ordinary Least Squares, Partial Least Squares, Maximum Likelihood Estimation, Ridge regression, and Lasso regression are employed to ensure the robustness of the results. The findings indicate a significant positive relationship between the community of a shared future for mankind and the sustainable development of human society, with consistent conclusions drawn from different calculation methods and regression techniques. Through value recognition, international cooperation based on benefit-sharing and mutual reciprocity can guide humanity towards a harmonious coexistence with nature, irrespective of regional and economic disparities. This study provides quantitative evidence of the impact of the community of a shared future for mankind on the sustainable development of human society, filling a gap in existing research. Based on these findings, feasible policy recommendations are proposed to promote sustainable development in human society.
This paper highlights how researchers are subjugated through hegemonic academic norms and how they simultaneously recognize the privileges attached to their subject positions. I illustrate difficulties in negotiating my privileges, particularly of caste, and my experiences of marginalisation as a ‘third world woman’ in the European academy. Such competitive insecurity is illustrative of both neoliberal logics of enterprise and responsibility as well as caste-based logics of merit and deservingness. Academia as a field of knowledge production historically consolidates power in the hands of a shrinking set of elites. Attitudes of competition and uncertainty produce subjects that turn to selfinterested modes of acquiring and analysing data, thereby producing hegemonic knowledges, which ignores the situatedness and politics of the research context. Caste is addressed together with gender, coloniality, ability, sexuality and ethnicity (among other subjectivities) as an intersectional co-producer of exclusion. Invoking caste-based imperialist logics is essential for unpacking the privileged subjectivities that produce elitism and exclusion in academia and in knowledge production.
This article lingers in the suspended time of Justin Torres’s We the Animals (2011), a story of loss, alienation, and an errant desire to remain underwater. Written in the long durée of US coloniality, Torres’s novel resists the narrative conventions of the bildungsroman to contend with the ways Latinx literature is bound to narratives of forestalled self-development and failed incorporation. Such uneven relations are traced back to the ethnographic frameworks emplotted in the Insular Cases—which are a set of Supreme Court decisions that have suspended Puerto Rico into statelessness since 1901. This article argues that Torres’s refusal of narrative convention reveals how the dictates of the Insular Cases have seeped into ethnographic understandings of Latinx as suspended from normativity at large. However, Torres’s tactical use of suspension refuses to move toward legible subjecthood or linger in despair. Rather, the novel tarries with the irregular conditions of Latinx life to posit shared alienation as the groundwork for a larger, vibrant brown sociality in the ongoing muck of the Insular Cases.
Cet article s’intéresse à la fabrication des données spatiales via l’utilisation de drones et de satellites en se focalisant particulièrement sur la sphère civile et humanitaire. Pour ce faire, une analyse de l’utilisation des drones et satellites principalement par l’aide humanitaire a été réalisée, avec une attention particulière au terrain syrien. Elle a été menée dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire en sciences sociales, en s’appuyant tout particulièrement sur les apports de la géographie et de l’anthropologie, et s’appuie tout autant sur la revue de la littérature que sur une série d’entretiens qualitatifs menés avec des personnes au profil varié dans le champ humanitaire, militaire, de l’ingénierie et des agences spatiales. Avec l’objectif de contribuer aux recherches sur les données spatiales grâce à une enquête anthropologique de la fabrique même de leurs outils, il s’agit 1) de montrer comment se fabriquent ces données dans la sphère civile et humanitaire, 2) d’en offrir un panorama d’usages pour l’analyse de l’espace politique, notamment en matière d’information, de surveillance, de prévention des risques et des crises, puis 3) de s’interroger d’un point de vue critique sur la nature même de ces données spatiales, faux miroirs du réel et vécus comme tels par leurs utilisateurs, mais devenus de redoutables outils de pouvoir et de contre-pouvoir, voire des armes de guerre.
In a crises-ridden time where life is under threat due to human activities whichexceed planetary boundaries, Indigenous women conceptualize such activitiesas terricide (Latin terra: ‘the world’ and cadere: ‘to kill’). A case study of the‘Indigenous Women’s Movement for Buen Vivir’ in Argentina shows that itsparticipants offer a conceptualization of terricide that condemns crimesagainst humanity and nature alike. They establish an ecocide-genocide-epistemicide nexus. Firstly, terricide frames human activities as destroyingnature through ecocide (Greek oikos: ‘home’). Second, terricide results ingenocidal phenomena because it harms humans by threatening ordestroying their physical and socio-cultural existence. Third, terricide isepistemicide because it destroys the relational knowledge systems thatoppose the human and culture/nature divide inherent in ‘modern’ thinking.From a relational perspective, everything that exists, humans, ecosystemsand other-than-human subjectivities, form part of a dense web of relationsconstituting an interdependent, symbiotic community of life.
Vivir bien is widely used by academics, activists, and governments of the Latin American ‘Pink Tide’ to refer to alternatives to conventional economic development based on indigenous worldviews claimed to oppose capitalist modernity. Through ethnography of local politics within a Bolivian Quechua community, this article explores how the term has been vernacularized and contested among local leaders, illustrating that their understandings of development and ‘living well’ do not reflect a binary opposition between ‘Western’ and ‘indigenous’ ways of being. Debates concerning vivir bien instead express varied notions of self‐government and aspirations for autonomy informed by centuries of struggle as colonized peoples.
This chapter introduces the second of our selected alternative approaches to innovation: ‘inclusive innovation’. This approach to innovation explicitly aims to address the grand challenge of poverty and inequality, particularly in the Global South (or so called ‘developing world’) contexts. It aims to address recognised failures in approaches to ‘international development’ relying on state aid and contextually insensitive ideas of technology transfer from ‘North to South’. In the chapter we outline conditions giving rise to and antecedents of inclusive innovation. These include the failures of state-sponsored international aid, as well as the fact that advances in science and technology and mainstream innovation did not straightforwardly ‘trickle down’ and contribute to better standards of living worldwide as originally hypothesised. The chapter introduces and unpacks the diversity of terms and practices associated with inclusive innovation, which variously include ‘bottom-of-the-pyramid innovation’, ‘value chain innovation’, ‘grassroots innovation’ and ‘frugal innovation’. The chapter delves into the importance of capacity building and introduces philosophical perspectives on inclusion and difference, which point to the importance of forms of inclusion which are not based on tightly integrative or homogenising logics, but which are alert instead to the value of different ontologies or ways of being, doing and knowing from beyond the Global North and industrialised world.
The megaprojects paradox is still there: while large investments, infrastructures, facilities, and variegated ventures are more in demand than ever, scientific criticism and public opposition are increasingly strong, and difficulties to formulate alternative policies and development patterns are notorious. The impossibility of getting out of the paradox is due to the managerial and activist traps in which the scholarship on megaprojects is caught. This paper advocates for a more direct and conscious cross-fertilization between managerial and activist approaches on megaprojects in order to overcome their respective traps. It identifies 10 axes for further future collaboration which will serve as a basis for a shared research agenda. In this research agenda, the study of megaprojects appears as an autonomous research field in which the relationship between megaprojects and development patterns is systematically assessed and the analysis of policy alternatives to megaprojects becomes pivotal.
This paper critically examines the neo-liberal conceptualization of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD), which imposes the linear and simplistic notions of empowerment and development on the users from the global South. Using the rapidly growing EdTech segment in India as a case, this paper observes that EdTech has been touted as a magic multiplier and a savior for countries like India that aspire to educate their large populations. This has prompted EdTech companies to pursue platformization and templatization to accomplish scala-bility and standardization in EdTech use. Based on immersive ethnographic research with youth from low-income families in three Indian cities-Ahmedabad, Delhi, and Vadodara-we argue that the practices of young people concerning EdTech resist standardization. Our analysis reveals that three major factors-challenges of access and autonomy, continued relevance of place-based learning and in-person interactions, and uneven quality and rigor-influence low-income students and families to not completely buy the promise of access, equity, and quality that EdTech companies and governments advance. We explore the significance of the socioeconomic and cultural contexts of young learners in the global South context and argue that they aspire for personalization, place-based experiences, guidance/mentorship, high grades, and in-person interactions instead of standardization. They do not fully benefit by the experimentation, DIY practices, and tech-lead learning opportunities and resources offered by EdTech platforms in their current state.
Recent work in the field of economics expands our understanding of economic development, especially its social dimensions. This literature offers new possibilities for the field of the study of the ancient Greco-Roman world, where historians have also become increasingly interested in non-elite and sociohistorical narratives. In the last several decades, while ancient economic history has seen vigorous interest, this research has tended to focus on quantifying economic performance with less consideration of growth’s societal effects. The current volume responds to this situation by promoting a more socially attuned and moral economic history of the ancient Mediterranean. This chapter lays out the volume’s scope, framing its contributions around both a critique of recent work in the field of ancient economic history and around the goal of pointing out avenues for future work.
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