[Stoves] Response to Ron (about Leaping)- role of stove anthropologists in empowering stove users/producers to form & ask own questions

Sun May 28 11:54:52 CDT 2017

Crispin:

There is nothing God-given about ten days’ wages being the limit of cash
expenditures – for new stoves or anything. (I tried to figure one out for
solar LED lanterns and failed miserably. All theories of need and
affordability were flushed down.)

Theories of “affordability” are rather nonsensical. All you have to do is
roam around the markets in African or Asian cities and towns, or village
fairs, to discover that different classes of retail goods have different
“price points”. New products keep coming in all the time – the traditional
Bania under a Banyan tree is now reincarnated in a hundred forms with
thousands of products, ranging from combs to mattresses to chairs and
aphrodisiacs.

If "These sorts of 'limitations' or 'assignations of ‎purchasing capacity'
are hard for inventors to swallow. " they should be doing something else.
Many inventions pile up collecting dust or rusting, as well they should.

Whether "stove marketers should be interposed between the designers and the
vendors" is contextual. For as long as there have been "fixed" homes in the
parts of Indian sub-continent I have seen - i.e., wood, mortar, bricks in
buildings - there have been built-in stoves. I doubt there were any
marketers of stoves. Again, this mythical "baseline" of three-stone fire
and any alternative being an invention, an "improved cookstove", has no
basis in the reality of stoves for many of the world's poor. (Nobody has
counted users of three-stone fires, but stove experts go on and on about
it, perpetuating a nightmare of emissions and exposures.)

Large heating stoves have a different economic and cultural context than
small cookstoves.  The way people have gone on and on about TSF (Three
Stone Fires) as the “baseline” for Inadequate CookStoves, I am no longer
prepared to accept any two-bit notions about affordability and usability.
There has been just too much unbearable pop theorizing, pop sociology, pop
psychology, and now pop health about “better biomass stoves”. Enough is
enough. We don’t need Cecil’s rule-of-thumb about ten days’ wages. (In the
part of India I am in, daily "take home" for adult street vendors and
wage-earners in rural areas about $6-7 minimum. With two adult workers,
that comes to $150 over ten days. That class of families does have many
such expenditures over the course of the first 15 years of married life. An
ICS comes last because nobody thinks spending money to save wood is a great
idea.)

I am grateful, though not at all surprised, that "Cecil uncovered a network
of some 300,000 producers, distributors and vendors in Indonesia making a
living in 'our sector'." Go explain GACC and WHO the social relations of
stoves and fuels among the poor.

If you take offense, please keep it. Do not be surprised if your call -  "to
ask if we should upgrade local products or replace them with much higher
performing imports, given the effectiveness of the traditional stoves and
the economic and social impacts of a replacement strategy" - goes unheeded.
I remember such calls back 35 years ago. But EPA/PCIA have spread such
smoke and noise,few people can see or hear anything any more.

Nikhil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(India +91) 909 995 2080
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 2:01 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Ron
>
> There are two reports of the type described below that I think are
> available from the World Bank website. I do not have links because they are
> made available after ‎I see them. The two projects to look for are the WB's
> 'CSI - Indonesia Stove Pilot' project and 'Central Java'. The report was
> produced by Helen Rex Carlsson and her team which included Cecil. There is
> a second one that is a survey, quite large, from the social team and one of
> the authors is Tig Tuntivate.
>
> For the Kyrgyzstan Stove Pilot there is a large user survey and a small
> producer survey. The former might be available on line (it is a bit soon)
> and the latter is not available yet as far as I know. Should be eventually.
>
> For Cecil's earlier work (which is not surveys, it is field studies) there
> should be reports on the ProBEC website which was probec.org. The one for
> Zambia is particularly interesting because at the time he was ‎flexing his
> anthropological muscles by saying that 'If a stove costs more than 'x' and
> can't do 'y' people will not buy it in significant quantities.'
>
> The limitation on cash expenditures he discovered was ten days wages.
> Anything that cost more than that required funding in some manner such as
> 'stokvel', lay-away, loan or subsidy.
>
> These sorts of 'limitations' or 'assignations of ‎purchasing capacity' are
> hard for inventors to swallow. That is why stove marketers should be
> interposed between the designers and the vendors.
>
> Cecil uncovered a network of some 300,000 producers, distributors and
> vendors in Indonesia making a living in 'our sector'. It is a legitimate
> question to ask if we should upgrade local products or replace them with
> much higher performing imports, given the effectiveness of the traditional
> stoves and the economic and social impacts of a replacement strategy.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
> ‎
>
> Crispin,  cc list
>
> Same question.  How do we see these questionnaires and reports?
>
> Ron
>
>
>
> On May 27, 2017, at 12:41 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Ron
>
> There are dozens of stove-related questionaires. They are develop when we
> have a solid understanding of how the community functions and what the
> needs, risks and benefits are.
>
> Cecil has a set of principles which guide his investigations. That is how
> anthropologists work. Once he has comprehensively understood the context,
> he writes a report. That report is used, usually by sociologists and
> technologists and program designers, to develop a questionnaire which can
> be applied to the general population in the target region.
>
> Until the community is understood, there isn't much point in drafting a
> questionnaire because one can only ask questions ‎related to what one
> understands are 'issues'.
>
> It is during the initial unrestricted investigation when one finds out
> about such things as why the floor under a Mongolian ger stove is kept very
> clean, or that the legs of a Kyrgyz heating stove must be tall enough for
> the cat to rest comfortably.
>
> We don't learn much about a society by making assumptions that 'they are
> pretty much like everyone else.'
>
> ‎Close as they are, Thais and Indonesians don't much appreciate how the
> other cooks rice, nor what it is cooked in and the firepower used. A
> generic 'rice cooker' has only culturally limited market.  After all, whose
> culture is 'generic'?
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
>
>
> Cecil, list,  Crispin:
>
> My conclusion on whether any stove-related questionnaires or reports by
> you are available is:  “No”.
>
> Ron
>
> On May 25, 2017, at 11:28 PM, Cecil Cook <cec1863 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Ron and list,
>
> Something went wrong with my post to the bio-energy list. Here it is
> cleaned up. Excuse me!
>
> I do not typically use questionnaires when I work because I find that they
> tend to generate false data which often  ‎does not tell us about what stove
> users and operators hold dear to their hearts. So anthropologists do their
> best to observe the behavior of stove users while operating their
> traditional stoves to heat their homes, cook food and perform other kinds
> of income generating work. My role is not one of asking questions. My role
> is to figure out what questions are foremost in the minds of the stove
> operators and buyers and to gradually assemble an overview of what the
> stove using/buying public  perceive to be important, what they most
> appreciate about their stoves or - what is the hierarchy of values which
> guide their judgments about good or bad stoves.
>
> So my methodology is to accompany stove users and households through a
> series of meals or discrete stove tasks which includes gathering, preparing
> and storing firewood, igniting and operating their stoves, dousing and
> turning off their stoves (how is the retained heat of the stove used?). The
> timing and duration of discrete tasks may be critically important.
>
> You notice what kind of biomass is used as fuel at different times of the
> year and how much work is involved in gathering and preparing these fuels,
> igniting them, and what kind of fire is produced. For example what is the
> ethnoscience of stove users about different kinds of biomass? What are the
> preferred fuels for particular stove tasks and you ask the stove operator
> to explain his or her fuel preferences in situ while face to face with a
> traditional stove
>
> So, not to waste time on the obvious, stove ethnographers try to discover
> what stove functions and performances are considered to be mandatory (and
> why these particular stove functions and attributes are demanded or
> preferred). Once these perceptions and preferences are understood from the
> perspectives of different types of stove users  - or the perspectives of
> the stove buyers, fuel gathers and preparers, stove makers, or stove
> sellers, then it becomes possible to construct a questionnaire that asks
> meaningful questions from the perspective of these different role players
> within the dominant stove - user- fuel - fabricator system(s).‎<br/><br/>I
> have only been hired by GIZ, WB, UNDP, etc for short periods of time to
> reconnoiter the domain of stoves and the many different tasks that stoves
> are called upon to perform. I used those brief periods when functioning as
> a stove anthropologist to advise Crispin about what I observed stove
> operators doing in  kitchens, houses, kiosks and pushcarts, small
> restaurants, etc.  And remember I was trying to piece together a very
> provisional overview of "culture" of stoves which embodies (1)
> Foods and cooking, (2) Family context, (3) Fuels & Forests  and (4)
> Fabrication (the 4 F's) . I decided my job was to understand the
> perceptions and performance preferences of "indigenous" stove users and to
> communicate their expectations and demands to the stove developers and
> fabricators, testers, funders, standard setters, and strategists.
>
> It is obvious I have not pushed the boulder very far up the hill -
> thinking here of the punishment of Sisyphus - and I admit to my several
> short comings as a stove anthropologist but it is not my fault that I have
> never been offered an opportunity to carry out enough ethnographic field
> work in a particular stove culture and system to understand its integrating
> patterns  and most powerful drivers. But for better or worse I have been
> privileged to work closely with one exceptionally receptive stove innovator
> who understood the importance of permitting the stove using public to tell
> stove engineers and testers and funding agents and economists and air
> quality experts what stove-fuel performance functions they want from their
> stoves!
>
> Like you Ron I am old and drooping in my saddle so the best use of my
> limited time is probably to work closely with the younger generation of
> stove experts to encourage them to realize that culture "trumps"
> technology ever time and therefore the first step on the path to innovating
> a better stove requires developers to discover what targeted stove users
> and customers  identify as non-negotiable performance characteristics of a
> traditional stove. That is the starting point.
>
> My contribution is to encourage stovers to deeply appreciate what the
> users of traditional stoves demand from their stoves. Once you have teased
> out the functional preferences of the stove using/buying public you want to
> serve (what size is the cooking surface and pot holes, what is the
> preferred height off the ground, what are the main dishes cooked and in
> what cooking vessels and what are the range of different fuels used for
> cooking and stove work at different seasons, and how long does a
> traditional stove last, how much does it cost, etc) then you know what the
> challenge is. If you can introduce additional benefits like faster cooking,
> smoke reduction, less fuel collection or lower expenditures on fuels, cell
> phone charging and led lighting, warmer indoor temperatures less inside
> pollution, water heating, additional cooking or stove work functions,
> greater durability,  reduced clean up work, etc then such innovation will
> surely speed up the displacement of the traditionally dominant & "old
> faithful" stoves.
>
> To repeat: all the stove anthropologist does is appreciate the many ways
> old stove are integral parts of old cultural systems and environments  and
> encourage stove users to truthfully communicate the performances they
> demand from their traditionally dominant stoves. What are the customers'
> non negotiable expectations of the dominant stove? The aim of stove
> anthropology is to discover what are the deep questions stove users ask
> about any and all candidate improved stoves. The question is the question!
> It is not the questions asked by the anthropologist that count. It is the
> questions asked by the end user and stove customer that count! At his best
> the anthropologist is a scribe who translates the preferences and demands
> of the indigenes into the languages of the modernizers and globalizers.
> Stove speak mostly speak local cultural languages!
>
> In search and service,
> Cecil the Cook
>
> From: Ronal W. Larson. Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 7:17 PM
> To: Discussion of biomass; Cecil Cook Cc: Nigel Pemberton-Pigott; Gosia
> (Biczyk) Malgorzata CIM-IF KG; Laurent Durix; Nikhil Desai; Xavier Brandao;
> Harold Annegarn<
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Leaping about
> List and ccs
>
> It would be a big help to this list to see the stove questionnaires and
> reports you produced. Are they available to this list?
>
> Ron
>
> On May 23, 2017, at 2:16 PM, cec1863 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Dear stovers, CPP's remarks have reminded me Subject that anthropologists
> deserve to be given equal standing with physical scientists, engineers, air
> quality experts, earth first environmentalists, gender rights advocates‎
> (feminists?), result based economist, and energy policy wonks when it comes
> to assessing performance of baseline stoves and figuring out what stove
> innovations are most likely to be well received and adopted by particular
> communities of stoves users, Anthropologists are almost essential when it
> comes to understanding the subtle dynamics of communities and households
> where biomass and/or coal stoves are widely used and often preferred -
> sometimes alone or together with electricity, LPG, kerosene, or even
> locally sourced renewable energies to perform cooking, heating, and many
> other agricultural and income generating functions.
>
> The unknown question for me is who is willing to listen‎ to me when I try
> to act as an advocate for different categories of the stove using public or
> when I have been hired as a member of a team which is composed of mostly
> western educated urban residing, upper middle class techno-centric
> professionals. Such professionals typically know best what needs to be done
> to promote improved stoves in particular target markets! When such
> professionals are hired to advise USAID, the WB, GIZ, DFID, etc. about what
> technological improvements should be considered, innovated, tested and
> incorporated into improved stoves for X, Y, or Z stove using publics it is
> my experience that we all have trouble listening to each other and we do
> not understand the stove culture and stove use practices of the target
> populations.
>
> My position as an over the hill anthropologist is that in the end the
> indigenous stove makers, users/operators, fabricators‎, sellers, and buyers
> of the world will have the last word on what kind of stoves they will
> welcome into their homes and communities. This stove list like the WB and
> USAID and most other stove development agencies is obviously stove
> technology centered. One must speak the language of the physical, natural
> and biological sciences to have standing in these discussions. People like
> myself who pay more attention to the cultural, social, economic and
> environmental functions of both traditional stoves or are asked to evaluate
> innovative stoves typically concentrate on the cultural matrix generated by
> the food, fuel/forest, fabrication,and family parameters (the 4 F's) of
> stove performance. Any proposed advance in stove hardware has to improve a
> candidate stove enough to substantially out perform the traditional stoves
> with respect to the 4 F's. Stove "techies" who apparently constitute the
> bulk of the members on the bioenergy list are not that interested in ‎the
> cultural and operator variables which are prerequisites for widespread
> uptake and quick adoption from the customers' point of view. Tragically,
> the stove customer is not a king. He or she is a subsidized
> "peon" who will receive the modern stove that we teckies and
> members of the cosmopolitan professorate deem to be the best for the:
>
> 1). world carbon balance,
> 2) the local and regional health of family and community,
> 3) the bio-dynamic health of the local and regional eco-system, and
> 4) the long term well being of the global economy,
>
> The pre-modern small scale and pre-industrial economies of the planet must
> be coercively straight-jacketed into the Euro American conception of
> modernity. And let's face it folks there are so many other wonderful way to
> be modern, most of them unexplored and "beckoning". For some strange reason
> Crispin takes my stove culture centered readings of village and urban stove
> users in Mozambique, Malawi, the DRC, Zambia, Namibia, Swaziland, Botswana,
> Xhosaland, Mongolia, Indonesia and Cambodia SERIOUSLY even when the
> technologists, economists and the politicos promising & "happy days are
> here again" or just around the next corner do not want to take the time to
> understand the sophisticated systems of food, fuel/forest, fabrication, and
> family institutions of values, symbols, skills, ethno-sciences, and
> interdependence which such systems represent.
>
> From my perspective, it's the 4 F system that we must understand more than
> the stove technology. But what I do I know? I don't seem to fit into the
> WB's knowledge system and administrative processes very well or at all. So
> it is better for me to wait and watch patiently from the sidelines and to
> have off the record conversations with Crispin.Come to think of it thank
> you Crispin for listening to a backslide applied stove anthropologist. It
> has been a pleasure being part of your stove culture and ethno-science team.
>
> In search & service,
> Cecil Cook
>
>  Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.<br/>> Original Message
> <br/>> From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott<br/>> Sent: Tuesday, May 23,
> 2017 10:03 AM<br/>> To: 'Stoves (stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org)'<br/>>
> Reply To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves<br/>> Subject: [Stoves]
> Leaping about<br/>> <br/>> Dear Improved Biomass Stove Fans<br/>>
> <br/>> From<br/>> <br/>> LPG fuel subsidies in Latin America and
> the use of solid fuels to cook<br/>> Karin Troncoso, Agnes Soar
> es da Silva (Energy Policy 107 (2017) 188-196)<br/>> Pan American
> Health Organization/World Health Organization, 525 23 St. NW., Washington,
> DC 20037, USA;
>
> “In Mexico, despite the fact that most of the population has physical
> access to LPG, it has been documented that some people stop using LPG once
> they have an improved biomass stove (Masera et al., 2005; Berrueta et al.,
> 2007). From a health perspective, this is a leap backwards.” While the
> sources are a little dated now, the fact that people switch to biomass once
> it is made ‘acceptable’ is valuable information. I think it is a bit of a
> leap (false statement) to say ‘it is a leap backwards’. The ‘energy ladder’
> is an abstract construct that exists in the minds of the Development Set.
>
> First, there is no field assessment included in the statement that ‘health
> was negatively affected’ by using an improved biomass stove. In most cases
> the improvement includes a chimney, not so? Aren’t these 100% improved
> plancha stoves with a chimney? If all the ‘emissions’ are put out side,
> then the health impact between using LPG in an unventilated kitchen and
> wood fuel in a ventilated on are probably comparable (anyone have
> measurements?).
>
>  Second, there is nothing ‘backward’ about biomass as a fuel. There are
> some bass-ackwards implementations of burning it, but deprecating an entire
> fuel class?? We can do a lot better than that. So the old saw about ‘solid
> fuels cannot be burned cleanly enough to provide health benefits’ is once
> again on our table. Where does this nonsense come from? Who is sustaining
> this nonsense? In whose interest is this nonsense repeated and repeated as
> if it was true?
>
> There has to be some accountability. If measurements are not accompanied
> by uncertainties, and claims are not based on measurements, there should be
> no expectation that funding will follow.There is another aspect of this
> whole ‘cooking’ thing which is that many populations do not consider
> heating water to be ‘cooking’. A stove that is used to cook and heat water
> and heat the living space is a triple-function device, not doing
> double-duty. The separation of cooking from water heating is very obvious
> in many kitchens. I will be making a point of this in Warsaw. For stoves to
> be acceptable they have to perform the expected functions.
>
> Famously the 2011 (?) national census in Indonesia asked the question,
> “What is you main cooking fuel” and 40% selected ‘biomass’ as the answer.
> Another 40% marked, ‘LPG’ and the rest chose ‘kerosene’ or ‘electricity’.
> What this single question did not unearth (but the stove anthropologist
> Cecil Cook did) is that 70% of that first 40% use LPG some of the time for
> cooking food or making tea (a cooking function and a water heating
> function), and 70% of the LPG users heat water with wood. Wow!
>
> So 68% of the population uses biomass to heat water, not counting those
> using electricity and kerosene for cooking who were not asked about their
> wood fuel use. Certainly the total is above 75% using biomass. Is all
> biomass fuel use a step backwards?  Asked why the use wood, the universal
> answer is, ‘to save money.’ Is saving money always a step backwards? If
> fuel costs more is it a step forwards?
>
> There seems to be a smidgeon of arrogance in this matter of who is moving
> backwards.
>
> Regards Crispin _______________________________________________
>
>
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