[Stoves] Forestry, Fuel, Memes and Testing

Samer Abdelnour samer.abdelnour at gmail.com
Fri Jan 17 10:25:23 CST 2014


Hi Crispin,

I like the notion of 'meme' and will need to do some thinking around
it. The organizational studies space are now exploring the
'socio-materiality' of objects (incl. technologies), which would
certainly include cultural practices such as routines, but also ideals
and related ideologies that also can serve to structure social action.

You are also touching upon the path-dependencies of having committed
to specific technical designs and related procedures. This is
certainly central - perhaps more so for developing designs and testing
procedures - but also for marketing rhetoric. Could anyone imagine any
of the Darfur stoves NGOs turning around and saying "oops, we can't
actually causally link reduced fuel use to reduced violence"? But as
the global-local debate suggests, there are alternative groups working
in different directions.

I've been in contact with some of those on this list, to discuss
testing platforms: to explore how they evolve, diffuse, and what they
actually accomplish. It seems to me that testing not only serves a
technical function, but in the case of Darfur has been used as a means
to 'legitimate' particular designs over others. For example, some
in-lab tests on Darfur promoted stove designs showed that X stove
performs better than Y stove, however, in the field women clearly
preferred Y stove over X stove. Rather than assume a) Darfuris don't
know anything about stoves or b) there was ineffective field training
or monitoring on X stove, I think we'd need to explore those
socio-cultural factors that create great variations between control
tests and field use.

*Challenge: Women and NGO officials I had spoken with in Darfur were
frustrated that multiple stoves were handed out (free) to them by
different organizations. One woman claimed to have been given 8
stoves. A field test in a humanitarian setting (and other I imagine)
would certainly have to explore what alternatives users had to choose
from as part of the experiment.

Thoughts?

Samer




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