Enacting “Technology” and Everything Else: Gendered Practices and the System of Crop Intensification
Date of Award
December 2017
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Social Sciences
Advisor(s)
Susan S. Wadley
Keywords
Agrarian Studies, Anthropology of Development, Gender Studies, Science, Technology and Society
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
This dissertation is a qualitative examination of the functioning of a rural
development project in a Himalayan region of India, with a special focus on a
particular project activity centred around an agro-ecological method of crop
production, the System of Crop Intensification (SCI). Environmental changes and
disasters along with rapid transformations in the rural economy in Uttarakhand has
engendered a renewed interest in non-mainstream farming practices. However, the
success and/or failure rates of adoption of new agricultural methods and technologies
remains a poorly understood phenomenon. Studies of adoption rates tend to focus on
the aspects of the technology itself, rather than its social life.
Drawing from science, technology and society studies, agrarian studies, scholarship
on rural livelihoods, political ecology, gender studies and practice theory, this
research study examines how the discourse of SCI is articulated differently in
different spaces, and the implications of these variations for extension and adoption
practices. Beginning with the construction of knowledge at the institutional level, the
research study first traces who articulates what, and how and why this process takes
place, in both the national and regional contexts. Second, it examines how
contestations in discourse translate into mediated practices and outcomes. Finally, the
study focuses on the embodied identities of field development workers and the
inhibitory as well as emancipatory effects of the structuring elements of the
organisation. The study finds that SCI, and rural development projects more broadly,
are co-produced both discursively and in practice, by project planners, development
workers, and beneficiaries.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Koshy, Natasha Susan, "Enacting “Technology” and Everything Else: Gendered Practices and the System of Crop Intensification" (2017). Dissertations - ALL. 801.
https://surface.syr.edu/etd/801
