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

Mon May 29 01:57:56 CDT 2017

Paul:

Thank you for your courageous opinion exposing the underbelly of stove
science funding. It has much more to do with the cycle of preconceived
notions generating failed recommendations than just whether or not
anthropologists are consulted or marketers placed between designers and
vendors.

First about anthropology. I remember the pop sloganeering  "observe and
report, but do not alter the society." prevalent at the time (40 years
ago). What seems to have happened - especially with anthropologists in what
is called "sub-altern studies" and some renegades from the academe - is, if
not "alter the society", at least alter the narratives about the history
and the future of societies. A whole new wave of re-interpretation of the
colonial experience has been going on for the last 30-odd years.

About stoves, I do think that "the people should design the stove" is
quaint romanticism of a generation gone by. We can keep the spirit of
inquiry without the baggage of teenage fancies. Social anthropologists have
probably recognized that the slogan shouldn't be "the people should design
the stove" but simply that "the people should be listened to, because only
when they feel heard they would accept your questions and dare to challenge
your questions and teach you what to ask."

All of it in vernacular languages, not in standard forms printed in English
or French.

It is the joule-counters - doing energy balances and not collective mass
balances or balance sheets -- who have continued to relish their infantile
fantasies of protecting forests, chastity, lives, and climate ad nauseum.

Why? Why is it that tens of millions of dollars are wasted on purported
"health impacts", secret contracts of UN Foundation, and advocating
billions of dollars of subsidies for LPG and electricity, even marketing
ludicrous "voluntary carbon" credits and aDALYs, but pathetically little on
basic engineering of usable biomass stoves for households and non-household
users?

We need to follow the money to understand how propaganda influences
research funding decisions. Why else would the WBT have survived as long as
it has, or ISO TC 285 work reduced to what Ranyee Chiang now calls "Living
with Diversity" (ETHOS 2017)?

Living. With. Diversity. Code for acknowledging that it is not possible to
force groupthink over scientists with an open mind.

How about that? :-)

Chiang shows three stages of alleged harmonization - "Discussions have led
to greater agreement", "Try to reach agreement, and live with areas that
can’t be aligned", and "When we have different priorities, be clear about
what each of us means."

These are code words, respectively, for "We can't get people to agree" to
"Give up trying to force slavish compliance to the indefensible", and "Some
renegades must have ulterior motives".

Nice progress at the TC after more than five years.

I think bureaucrats of the aid industry -- principal culprits are in the US
and European governments, with the make-merry charity foundations in the
wine-dine-and-shine parties -- need to be held accountable for fooling too
many people far too long.

With nothing to show.

Nikhil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(India +91) 909 995 2080 <+91%2090999%2052080>
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 8:02 AM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> Stovers,
>
> Relating to Ron's quest for questionnaires about stove research, he wrote:
>
>  I am NOT interested in standard stoves;  I want to know what was
> considered in the framework of TLUDs and biochar -both by Probec and World
> Bank (and anyone else).
>
> [Here is my OPINION, without much documentation.]   When the people (stove
> users) and the researchers do NOT have awareness of what are TLUD stoves
> and their char-making capabilities, neither the people nor the researchers
> will include in questionnaires the issues that are most relevant to TLUDs /
> char making stoves.
>
> Back in my student days (1964), I considered becoming an anthropologist.
> But I rejected that profession for me because the instruction basically
> said "observe and report, but do not alter the society."   I wanted then
> and still do want to alter societies in beneficial ways.  I would not have
> been a good anthropologist.
>
> When NEW material is intentionally not presented because the thinking is
> that "the people should design the stove", there is no way that a regular
> cook is going to say "I would like a stove that produces charcoal."   Too
> foreign a concept.  And if a questionnaire asked "Would you like a stove
> that *makes *charcoal while you are cooking?", there would certainly be
> puzzled looks, maybe a few laughs, and the researcher would need to be
> prepared to justify the absurdity of such a question.
>
> There are many die-hard knowledgeable Stovers (including those who
> administer stove projects) who resist every aspect of TLUD stoves.  Why
> would they want questionnaires with questions that touch upon TLUD issues?
>
> Even when research projects are being designed, for many years TLUD
> micro-gasifier stoves were not included in the stoves for consideration.
> And there are examples of projects that included (and spent money on)
> poorly designed stoves that are marginally TLUDs (Sampada is a leading
> example), and certainly did not include the strongest TLUD-ND design
> (Champion, from India).    Or they think that ACE / Philips or Biolite
> represent forced air TLUD-FA stoves.
>
> About the above paragraph, some readers of this message do not know the
> differences between those named stoves, and yet they will make decisions
> about what stoves to include in funded research.   And the results are weak
> because of poor decisions at the beginning.
>
> Ron, the questionnaires (if you find them) will not include many, if any,
> questions that relate to TLUD issues.
>
> As I said, that is my OPINION.
>
> Paul
>
> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
> Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <(309)%20452-7072>
> Website:  www.drtlud.com
>
>
>
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