AAG 2015 CFP: Development as improvisation? Exploring the significance of improvisation in contemporary development contexts
Development as improvisation?
Exploring the significance of improvisation in contemporary
development contexts
Call for Papers, AAG
2015, Chicago April 21 – 25
Organisers: Ankit Kumar (Durham
University) and Jonathan Balls (Oxford University)
Idea behind the
session
Li (2005: 389) argues that “practical knowledge…
is at work everywhere, at all times. It is not concentrated in remote rural
areas, and it is not associated with the past or "tradition." The
knowledge a person needs to negotiate the bureaucracy or find a moment's peace
on an assembly line, a factory farm, or in a prison is just as localized, often
collective, transmitted informally, and continuously revised”. This is how
development programmes, their targets and technologies are often de-shaped and
re-shaped by various peoples in ways not imagined or intended by those
designing. This is the improvisation of development.
![]() |
Solar lantern improvised to charge mobile phones (Photo: Ankit Kumar) |
In
many contemporary situations we can see improvisation at play. In a village in
Bihar, an eastern state of India, a solar lantern designed and distributed to
bring light is hacked into to charge mobile phones. In another village in
neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, locally manufactured parts are soldered together
with low quality solar panels imported from China to assemble cheap solar home
systems, more popular than costly government promoted solar panels.
Improvisation helps Indian private news channels to create space for themselves
in a state dominated news landscape, but also democratises news channels,
giving opportunities to those previously considered below the “minimum
requirements of higher education and even literacy” (Roy 2011: 767). In a diamond-cutting factory
in Karnataka, south India, the workings of the factory and its spaces are
continuously re-shaped by improvisations and alternative dreams of planners,
managers and workers (Cross, 2014).
![]() |
locally improvised solar home systems (Photo: Jonathan Balls) |
Improvisation
is contextual, local, often informal and to be transmitted informally. However,
improvisation is not just about poorer people, it is as much about “elite
informalities” (Roy 2011). They can often involve systemic risk(s) and disruptive
innovation(s), a sign of resources being stretched too far (Birtchnell 2011). Improvisations are also
non-egalitarian, with those who have the “feel for the game” often better at it
(Jeffrey & Young 2014: 189). This may be because
improvisations are often based on Scott's (1998: 334) metis – knowledges that are
local and contingent – but “not democratically distributed”.
Questions that the
session would explore (inter alia):
1.
What are the conceptual/theoretical tools that
could help us unpack ‘improvisation’?
2.
How does improvisation reflect action(s) brought
about within contemporary development and economic situations?
3.
Is improvisation always local in scale, to
particular places, and of the moment? Or can a wider story of improvisation be
told?
4.
What issues of power and politics does
improvisation open up?
5.
Is improvisation too malleable a term, too vague
to be of much conceptual use?
6.
What other empirical accounts could be found
that explore improvisation 'at play', and its significance.
Submission Procedure:
Please send abstracts
(max 250 words) and contact details to Ankit Kumar (ankit.kumar@durham.ac.uk)
or Jonathan Balls (jonathan.balls@sjc.ox.ac.uk) by 31th October
2014. We will notify contributors of acceptance shortly after. Participants
will be expected to register, submit their abstracts online at the AAG website
and send us their PIN by October 3rd of November 2014, ahead of the session
proposal deadline of 5th November 2014. Please note a range of registration
fees will apply and must be paid before the submission of abstracts. For
general information on the conference: http://www.aag.org/annualmeeting
References
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