Read book Pathways to Sustainability: Grassroots Innovation Movements by Adrian Smith FB2, EPUB
9781138901216 1138901210 Grassroots innovation involves movements and networks of academics, activists and practitioners who seek to experiment with alternative forms of knowledge creation and processes for innovation. These alternatives harness local ingenuity directed towards local development. Emerging economies such as India and in South America are currently and historically the sites for notable and internationally visible, though understudied, attempts at alternative innovation. Meanwhile, the UK and Europe conjure a post-industrial, wealthy nation setting, and offers a contrasting location where activist groups and communities are similarly mobilizing around issues such as community energy, other sustainability issues, and around maker/hacker-spaces, reclaiming high-technologies for commons-based peer-production in open community workshops. These movements have arisen in response to different dynamics, including negative consequences of mainstream growth patterns (e.g. unsustainable production and consumption patterns). This book presents and critically analyses six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts, and explaining the emergence of movement framings or perspectives on innovation and development. The historic movements studied include the movement for socially useful production (UK), the appropriate technology movement (South America), and the People s Science Movement (India), the latter still active currently. The other contemporary movements studied are community workshops for grassroots digital fabrication (Europe), Social Technologies Network (Brazil/Argentina), and the Honey Bee Network (India). The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have built, or attempted to build, pathways for developing grassroots innovation, but also the challenges and limitations they have confronted. The book provides some timely and relevant lessons and recommendations activists, policy-makers, students and scholars of grassroots innovation movements. ", Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these grassroots innovation movements identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements. "
9781138901216 1138901210 Grassroots innovation involves movements and networks of academics, activists and practitioners who seek to experiment with alternative forms of knowledge creation and processes for innovation. These alternatives harness local ingenuity directed towards local development. Emerging economies such as India and in South America are currently and historically the sites for notable and internationally visible, though understudied, attempts at alternative innovation. Meanwhile, the UK and Europe conjure a post-industrial, wealthy nation setting, and offers a contrasting location where activist groups and communities are similarly mobilizing around issues such as community energy, other sustainability issues, and around maker/hacker-spaces, reclaiming high-technologies for commons-based peer-production in open community workshops. These movements have arisen in response to different dynamics, including negative consequences of mainstream growth patterns (e.g. unsustainable production and consumption patterns). This book presents and critically analyses six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts, and explaining the emergence of movement framings or perspectives on innovation and development. The historic movements studied include the movement for socially useful production (UK), the appropriate technology movement (South America), and the People s Science Movement (India), the latter still active currently. The other contemporary movements studied are community workshops for grassroots digital fabrication (Europe), Social Technologies Network (Brazil/Argentina), and the Honey Bee Network (India). The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have built, or attempted to build, pathways for developing grassroots innovation, but also the challenges and limitations they have confronted. The book provides some timely and relevant lessons and recommendations activists, policy-makers, students and scholars of grassroots innovation movements. ", Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these grassroots innovation movements identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements. "