This book demonstrates how technology and society shape one another and that there are intrinsic connections between technological experiences and social relationships. It employs an array of theoretical concepts and methodological tools to examine the technology–society nexus among three urban groups in India (traditional caste-based handloom weavers, subaltern Dalit communities, and informal female labour). It provides evidence of how innovations such as industrial technologies, communication technologies, and workplace technologies are not only about strides in science and engineering but also about politics and sociology on the ground. The book contributes to the growing research in innovation studies and technology policy that establishes how technological processes and outcomes are contingent on complex sociological variables and contexts. The author offers an inclusive, holistic, and interdisciplinary approach to understanding the field of innovation and technological change and development by involving various methodologies (network analysis, archival work, oral histories, focus group discussions, interviews). The book will serve as reference for researchers and scholars in social sciences, especially those interested in development studies, science and technology policy and innovation studies, information and communication technology (ICT) policy, public policy, management, social work and research methods, economics, sociology, social exclusion and subaltern studies, women’s studies, and South Asian studies. It will also be useful to nongovernmental organisations, activists, and policymakers.

A history of how India became a major player in the global technology industry, mapping technological, economic, and political transformations.

"e;The impressive advances of information and communication technologies (ICT) in some Asian countries have led some people to proclaim a fundamental change in the world economy. It is essential still to study the experience of developing countries thoroughly and critically. The authors and editors have made an admirable contribution to make such an evaluation and fill a big gap in our knowledge. But it is still relatively difficult to find reliable information about the changes taking place in China or any other developing country. One of the many good features of this evaluation is that it takes into account the specific relationship of ICT with the wider social and economic system and the national system of innovation of each country."e;

Recognising that these issues are addressed quite differently in the Global North, Suddhabrata Deb Roy connects flooding in northeastern India to the context of the broader politics surrounding climate change and climate justice in the Global South, making this book important and powerful reading for countering today’s climate emergency.

Globalization is a multidimensional concept that encompasses the politico-economic, socio-cultural and educational spheres of contemporary societies across time and space. The ideological convictions and methodological subscriptions of social scientists guide the discourse on globalization to unravel the meanings and implications for institutions, individuals and social groups in shaping and changing their everyday life experiences. Globalization unleashed major lessons and has played a key role in shaping the educational systems of developing countries, including India. In this context, this book: (1) maps the multiple epistemological traditions to approach the conceptual formulations of the globalization of education; (2) examines the socioeconomic context of the globalization of education in India; (3) analyzes the local responses to processes associated with the knowledge discourse; and (4) examines the relation between the globalization of education and its implications on the functioning of institutional structures, such as caste, class, gender, marriage in general, and the education system in particular. The book proposes various secondary readings and empirical observations of the global political and regional social economies that have, in fact, been guiding the Indian education system. The institutional engagement with globalization needs to be located within the framework of social mobility either to extend or retain the social position of groups within the current social hierarchy. This book proposes that the globalization of education not only hegemonizes the nature and direction of education, but also hierarchizes the production and consumption of knowledge systems. The hierarchical knowledge system tends to legitimize market-driven education by simultaneously marginalizing the other multiple streams of knowledge systems. The marginalisation of liberal knowledge creates a one-dimensional pedagogy which tends to erase the tradition of critical reasoning which questions the oppressive elements of the state and suppressive values of the civil society.

Juxtaposes the global discourse on ICT-D with in-depth case studies on the pattern of access and use of telecentres to draw implications for the possible development trajectories induced by the provision of ICTs in rural hinterlands of India.

How have social media in emerging economies evolved differently from the rest of the world? According to studies and anecdotal evidence, innovations in the use of social media tools occur more frequently in emerging economies than they do in developed markets. The aim of this volume is to show that in emerging regions (such as China, India, and South America) where the participation of stakeholders in the circuit of social media is more active (i.e., greater frequency of contacts and creativity in the elaboration of contents), organizations not only are involved in a set of exchange relations with other social actors but are also embedded in a network of dynamic relationships. The authors utilize social network analysis to determine how entrepreneurs in emerging economies identify their most beneficial social contacts and use those contacts to leverage the resources needed for their enterprises, revealing new insights on the process of business creation and economic development in the networked age.

This book considers the current domestic and global political and economic landscape and will show that there are three different but related kinds of leverage that together have emerged as the dominant strategy in economics, politics and international relations. The economic crisis of 2008-09 was called by most economists a crisis of “over-leverage.” Yet no one has argued that there has also been a leverage crisis or at least a “leverage challenge,” in other aspects of life. The This book argues that there is a “leverage mean” in between the extremes of too little leverage and too much leverage that provides the basis for resolving the various crises and challenges. This book, which grows out of a Brookings Institution paper “The Age of Leverage,” will analyze bargaining leverage, resource leverage and economic investment leverage and should draw the attention of students and teachers in political and economic philosophy.

This book critically engages with the idea of decentralization as empowering cities and their residents to act innovatively and creatively. The contributions thus highlight how the term ‘empowerment’ in the context of decentralization regimes masks a competing array of intentions and agendas. Who and what are ‘empowered’, given a ‘voice’ and allowed to ‘participate’ via the processes and structures of decentralization (and to what ends) are too frequently assumed in normative conversations about ‘bringing government closer to the people’ and ‘community driven development’. Creating an illusion of a shared language and common set of priorities therefore obscures more complex realities, particularly when there is a disconnect between the official goals of decentralization and civil society aspirations that reinforces politics of exclusion at the grassroots. Equally, official processes of decentralization can, and often are, accompanied by less visible processes of ‘recentralization’ through the reassertion of central state control over putatively autonomous jurisdictions. Through studies in six Asian countries (India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand and Japan) the essays in this book examine cases whereby a range of urban actors and institutions have been ‘empowered’ via decentralization, and how this realignment of local power relations impacts upon the dynamics of urban governance, albeit not always in socially progressive ways. This book was published as a special issue of Space and Polity.