Stories from the Landscape- Part 1

Last Sunday, I went walking along the Olentangy river trail. I walked for two hours, roughly for around 9 kms. I met a couple of rabbits along the way, and some geese who hissed at me. The river was dirty grey in colour. I saw some people fishing in the river, and I assumed they were doing it for recreation. Later on, I was informed that people use the fish in their river for their consumption. Unfortunately, the river is anything but clean. It looks diseased, and it seems to be totally uncared for. And this is the state of most of the rivers everywhere too.

The Olentagy Trail

Rivers have always interested me. The banks of the rivers are the foundations of cities, and are a major reason for the building and breaking of civilizations. The existence and functioning of cities depends on water. This is one reason why I chose to study practices of water management. Though I study water management in rural areas, I am increasingly drawn towards water management in urban areas. I decided to walk along the river was to understand the drainage pattern of the river, to view the neighbourhoods that have sprung up along the river, and find out the uses of the river. I'd previously read that flooding was a common phenomenon, and a flood wall built around 10 years back has now contained the wild waters.

I began my trail from here- King Avenue and Olentangy River Road

Along the way, I came across historical markers that I used to look at from the bus, and was always curious to find out what they said, and what they marked. This is what I found:

The first road way along the Olentangy River

A steel truss was constructed across the river in 1863, and was the first roadway across the Olentangy River. In 1912 arches were built across the river, which were later to become into a bridge. 1913 saw the most devastating floods in the Olentangy and the Sciota Rivers, which destroyed the false arches built across the river. (At this point, I hadn't any clue that floods were going to become a larger part of what I was studying!) In 1999, The King Avenue bridge was rebuilt, and was the first precast-post-tensioned, field spliced, segmented arch bridge with an integral post-tensioned, high performance concrete deck. Now, I don't know what all that means, but it sure sounds impressive. 

First Modern Streamflow Measurement in Ohio 1892-1893

This was another first that I came across just a few steps away from the King Avenue Bridge Marker. Engineering students from the Ohio State University, in 1892 and 1893, were the first to make streamflow measurements in Ohio.

Dirtty Water!

There is an organization called FLOW (Friends of the Lower Olentangy) who undertake river clean up programs to improve the quality of the water. Sadly, the water is still murky and grey.

Stand-up Canoe Paddling

I can't make out whether he is fishing or just contemplating about life

I discovered this hidden trail

And then suddenly, from being a grey and green murky stream, the river turned wide and bigger at the confluence. The Olentangy and the Sciota Rivers meet at Downtown, and turn into a big river. I saw a lot of people fishing here, despite the water being unclean. Initially, I thought that they were indulging in some simple recreation, but on second thoughts, I realized that they were actually fishing for food. A conversation with my advisor corroborated this fact. 

The Confluence of the Olentangy and the Sciota

The Santa Maria (the most authentic replica of Christopher Columbus' Ship) is also anchored here.

The Santa Maria

About the Santa Maria

This is where the story of reading landscapes begins. After this trail, I discovered a very interesting link to the floods and a neighbourhood called Franklinton, just across the river from Downtown. Stay tuned for more!

Proposal Reviewing

I am supposed to be reviewing proposals by Masters and Doctoral students as a reviewer for a panel of graduate students. Despite of the fact that the proposals are all from the hard sciences, I am finding the process deeply rewarding, albeit momentarily punched with instances of sheer boredom. And there are a couple of proposals that are playing the truant. Well, to be truthful, its not really their fault. These proposals are entrenched in big fat genetic engineering jargon, which sees me looking at the proposal with a murderous look in my eye (when I'd rather be playing on Twitter). Because I don't understand what they are proposing in their study, I am unable to provide correct feedback, which is a pity for those students.

I have to submit these proposals by the end of this week. With 6 proposals to review, I'm keeping up a pace of 2 per day. This is great experience for when I will write my own proposal and submit it for a grant. I'm looking at it as a process of learning, but I cannot stop wishing for it to all get magically done.

People's Place in Development

The role of people in development programs has undergone many transformations since the beginning of the development project. From being viewed as undifferentiated, passive recipients of goods and services in the 1970s, their role, in the 1990s, shifted to that of influencing and controlling development initiatives, decisions, and resources (McGee, 2002 pg. 93, 96). Earlier, people were divorced from the development process, and both, the people in the agency as well as the project beneficiaries were considered as non-existent entities (McGee, 2002 pg. 93). This later on, gave way to a people-centric approach, which has led to varying levels of success. In this paper, I analyze the role of people in development projects, and then explore how people’s role is contingent upon the type of participatory approach used.

Development projects started with a vertical approach between the donors and recipients, or in other words, the North and the South (McGee, 2002 pg. 103). I think that this divide between the developed and the developing nations reinforced the colonial approach of oppression, the only difference being that this approach was masked by aid. Development programs progressed with the idea that the outsiders knew best (McGee, 2002 pg. 94), and operated in a centralized, top-down, rigid and, bureaucratic planning approach. They operated with a fixed framework and agenda, which was shoved down the throats of project beneficiaries whether they liked it or not. Technical and financial aspects of development programs got more precedence than the people. There was also the childlike faith that technology could free the world of all its problems, especially poverty (McGee 2002).

By the 1980s, there was a growing sense of discontentment and dissatisfaction because the development projects were nowhere closer towards achieving any of the envisioned aims. Four concerns that led to a change in development approaches were the alienation of beneficiaries, paternalistic behavior by the developed nation-states, centralized control of planning, and the rise of monetarist economics that made developing countries tighten their restrictions on the social sector. This led to the emergence of the idea of people’s participation in development projects and planning in the 1990s (McGee, 2002 pg. 95). Given the fact that development projects were conceptualized as a means of alleviating poverty, it took nearly 40 years to figure out that people were essential for the success of projects. Concepts of bottom- up approaches, decentralization, power sharing, and partnerships gained acceptance whereas the ‘outsider knows best’ approach was frowned upon (McGee 2002).

However, participation still had ambiguous definitions, and different development practitioners constructed their own meanings of what place people would occupy in development programs. For example, the World Bank emphasized information sharing and consultation, and took on a conservative approach by separating itself from the issue of democratization. The Department for International

Development’s (DFID) objectives were empowerment and efficiency, while the United Nations Development Programs (UNDP) had political leanings, which focused on the role of the civil society and strengthening local governance (McGee 2002 pg. 97, 98). Participation became a nebulous concept and each agency adopted a method of eliciting participation that was compatible with its own goals and objectives. Official agencies relied on developing pre-identified initiatives, and then recruiting stakeholders for their programs by using rapid rural appraisal (RRA), whereas certain NGOs relied on

participatory rural appraisal (PRA) that enabled people to develop their own programs, and plans (McGee, 2002 pg. 99). Thus, two different schools of participation emerged where on one hand, the ‘participation in projects’ orthodoxy designed methods to get people to participate in their projects, and on the other hand, the participatory development school sought to define development as conceived by stakeholders (McGee, 2002 pg. 101).

Additionally, the notion of a community being a homogeneous body with common interests, values, and concerns came to be contested. An appreciation of the splits in communities based on class, caste, gender, and spatial location drove home the fact that power relations play a major role in empowering certain social groups (McGee, 2002 pg. 105). Participation was critiqued on the grounds of further marginalizing weaker groups, preventing them from registering their opinion, and having any substantial influence in the community’s decisions (McGee 2002, pg. 106, Cornwall 2003). In India, watershed development is promoted as a tool to alleviate rural poverty. Here, I had a chance to observe the meetings of a watershed committee. The people who had the most influence in the group were landowners, while the landless and the herders were marginalized and had no role to play in the decisions of the committee. They were expected to contribute as labor for the construction phase of the

watershed program. The NGO, on the other hand, claimed that they had achieved 100% participation from the village community, and the project was termed as a ‘success’.

Cornwall and Brock (2005) paint a picture of how words such as participation, poverty alleviation, and empowerment have become commonplace in the development vocabulary insofar as they have lost all their value. These words promote action, but I think that they are still cloaked with the agenda of funding agencies, or of the influential people in the community. Certain sections of people are still viewed as objects that passively accept what is given to them, resulting in charity and token participation, the total opposite of empowerment. I believe that ignoring the traditionally marginalized

sections is a disservice to the community because it reinforces notions of inequality among them. This is not to discount the entire approach of participation, but just to keep in mind that a new fuse of life in needed to approach the problem of inclusion of the marginalized in the planning and decision making process (Cornwall 2003).

Cornwall (2003) notes that the obstacle to equitable development lies in the power disparities that objectify and subjugate people. Communities have their own notions of equity and fairness, and participatory approaches have to approach these issues with sensitivity. Cornwall (2003) argues that only by changing the rules of interaction in public spaces and by letting the marginalized don influential roles can a transformation in power relations be achieved. This translates into addressing personal

behavior and attitudes of the people (McGee, 2002), but not by imposing the outsider’s assumptions of what is right behavior and perceptions of reality (Goulet and Wilber, 1992 pg. 470). People’s right to define development needs to be secured, rather than forcing people to change just because an outsider thinks that they are old-fashioned. Development, then, does not need an all-encompassing definition, but has to evolve according to people’s priorities, at that point in time.

Works Cited

Cornwall, Andrea (2005). “Whose Voices? Whose Choices? Reflections on gender and

participatory development.” WORLD DEVELOPMENT 31, 8, 2003:1325-42

Cornwall, Andrea and Karen Brock (2003). “What do Buzzwords do for Development

Policy? A Critical Look at ‘Participation’, ‘Empowerment’, and ‘poverty reduction.”

THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY 26, 7, 2005:1043-60

Goulet, Denis & C. Wilber. “Human Dilemma of Development,” in C.Wilber & Jameson,

eds. POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT.

1992. Pp. 469-477

McGee, Rosemary. “Participating in development,” in U.Kothari & M.Minogue eds.

DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND PRACTICE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES. 2002, pp.

92-116

Archival Research using Twitter

One of the classes that I am taking this quarter is about Field Methods in Geography. In this class, we discuss the various approaches of collecting stories from the field. One important aspect that was introduced was that a 'field' does not necessarily mean a place that is away from the home organization of the researcher. A field can also mean the environment of the researcher, a library, or the archives. Any place where the researcher conducts research can be called as a field. I found this an interesting way to understand how research is conducted. Sometimes, research comes out of poring documents for long hours, and sometimes by spending hours in different locations.

One of the assignments for this course requires us to conduct archival research, and curating objects that are important for our research. Initially, I was not very happy with this assignment because I did not know how to access a suitable archive for my research. (My research deals with issues of governance and institutions in watershed management programs in India and the U.S.). Since the past few days, had been spending a lot of time on Twitter to kill some of my boredom. I had increasingly become fascinated with the viral spread of information by the re tweets (RT), modified tweets (MT), opinions, and the verbal diarrhea of 140 characters. That is when I thought that Twitter could be a perfect place to be used as an archive.

An archive is any place that holds a vast array of material with a lot of documents, pictures, videos, diaries, ledgers, journals, letters, newspapers, reports, and the list is endless. Twitter provides us with all this, and the best part is that it is accessible by all. I also came across a New York Times article here that says that in 2010, Twitter donated its archive of messages to the Library of Congress with continuous updates.

My Twitter Account of interest was the @Indiawater (India Water Portal), developed and run by Arghyam, which is based in Banagalore. India Water Portal is a digital commons initiative. I have always been a great fan of the India Water Portal Site because I have easy access to a lot of articles, information about watershed projects, conferences, workshops, research papers, and videos. My first thought was to use the India Water Portal Website, but I preferred using Twitter because it was more easy to sift through the information that I was particularly looking for.  And the best part was that I did not have to read through piles of information to get to what I needed. Because of the constraints of 140 characters, tweets were concise enough for me to decide whether I had hit my jackpot or not. At the same time, I was also learning about the different water sectors, which were not particularly relevant for my research, but topics such as hydropower, dams, urban sanitation, and privatization, which deeply interest me.

I was not disappointed. There was plenty of information for me to use, and I ended up finding very useful articles for my reference. The assignment needed us to curate 5 objects. I collected links to an article on water rationing through public participation in Rajasthan in the Hindu, a conversation about what determines access to water (power relations, which is the one of the parts that I will be studying), research papers, evaluations of watershed programs by non-profits, and a video and presentation by the Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom (who also happens to be my advisor's advisor :)). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the lecture had been organized by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), where I had conducted research for my Master's Thesis.

I ended up enjoying the assignment because of all the discoveries and the connections that I made. The feeling of scratching out another 'to-do' from the list is good. Another day in gradschool :)

Cultural Transformation in the Light of Modernization

My assignment for a very interesting course on Social Change and Development

The terms ‘underdeveloped’, ‘developing’, and ‘traditional’ gave the West the much-needed currency to continue their exploitation of the Third world countries. In the name of improving the standards of living of the Third world, they could legitimize their involvement in the affairs of these countries, and the ‘White Man’s burden’ became more pronounced. Rostow’s approach to modernization created a dichotomy where the West could feel comfortable in its position as an advanced and developed nation, while the Third world was relegated to the status of being poor and backward. Through this paper, I wish to examine the notion of cultural backwardness of the Third world, and how this justified the expansionist and exploitative nature of the modernization approach.

The negative implications of the terms mentioned above reinforced the belief that Third world countries are backward, and have primitive attitudes, customs, and traditions that are counter-productive to development. According to Rostow (1968 pg. 5), one of the barriers to increasing productivity was the value system of the traditional societies. Parsons’ Functionalist Theory says that having personal relationships or a collective orientation is a way to reduce profitability in the market (So, 1990 pg. 21- 22). One of the characteristics that Levy attributes to non-modernized societies is that they have cultural norms of tradition (So, 1990 pg 24). Smelser goes a step further and provides the example of the traditional family that is large and multigenerational. This multifunctional family takes care of livelihood, education, welfare, and religion, which make it less productive than modern societies who have undergone structural differentiation (So, 1990 pg 27). The classical modernization studies of McClelland, Inkeless, Bellah, and Lipset all had the assumption that Western values were superior and that Third world countries needed to be exposed to Western values to liberate them from the shackles of tradition (So, 1990 pg. 53). All of these studies ignored that much of the Third world had flourishing industries, before colonization plundered them, and were advanced in architecture, textiles, and arts and crafts.

Though the new modernization studies questioned the need to treat traditional and modern as a set of mutually exclusive concepts, and reexamined the notion that traditional values are a barrier to modernization, I think that it did nothing to change the attitude of the Western nations who imposed their model of economic growth on the Third world nations. The new modernization studies still operated with the assumption that all countries were inherently looking to modernize, and that only contact with the Western world could facilitate the process of modernization (So, 1990 pg. 60). Thus, it was relatively easy to thrust the Western model of development to nation states that were just emerging from the clutches of colonialism. By providing a model of development to follow, the U.S. was counteracting against the Communist threat by the Soviet bloc, and at the same time it was getting nations to commit to its modernization approach i.e. capitalism.

As the modernization studies had well established the backward nature of the Third world nations, the Western countries could embark on a rescue mission to deliver these nations from historic poverty, ignoring all along that poverty in the Third world was because of colonialism. Just as colonialism was justified on the grounds of improving the lives of the natives who were backward, development too was justified on the similar grounds of improving humankind (McMichael, 2004 pg.3). A new form of colonialism thus began, where, apart from expropriating resources such as land, labor, raw materials, and markets to profit transnational industries, a dependence on Western technology, aid, and consumer goods was created. To transform the economy of the Third world nation states, individualism, consumption, and privatization were necessary. This meant the breakdown of collective practices such as wealth sharing between communities (McMichael, 2004 pg. 27).

The West had a high economic growth rate, efficient technology, industries, self-sufficiency in food, etc. The lack of these advanced features in the Third world was impetus enough for the Third world to emulate the West because the Third world had to catch up with the high standards of living of the West. Economic policies such as import-substitution, use of capital-intensive technology were implemented to promote growth in the Third world countries. With an urban bias in the modernization approach, breakdown of the traditional farming sector came about. The lack of investment in the agricultural sectors led to mass migrations of the poor from the rural to urban areas in search of employment, which led to the breakdown of families. In modern industries, workers had to adapt to the rules and regimes that were foreign to them (Grabowski, 1989 pg. 511)

Aspiring to the Western model of economic growth, Third world countries felt that they too had to think and behave like their Western counterparts. Inkelles would have been proud of this because he had argued that exposure to the Western values of teachers, Western textbooks, and Western movies helps in acquiring modern values (So, 1990 pg. 43). This made me realize that anything that was attached to the Third world was seen as an obstacle to development. Even the people from the Third world saw it as an obstacle, and hurried to change their outlook to align with that of Western interests. With this notion of modernization, a system was created, where a few elites benefited at the cost of the poor who were the majority. A culture of subsidy and mechanized farming played a major role in the migration to cities, leading to a further decrease in wages, and in turn reinforcing inequality.

Another aspect of the modernization approach that interests me is the inability to recognize that alternate models of development can exist. Instead of creating a culture of dependence on the West, Third world nations could have evolved their own models of progress and development. Rather than blindly following what the West deemed to be correct, developing indigenous models of development that incorporated local values and customs could have possibly followed a different trajectory of growth. Modernization theorists also refused to entertain the notion that Third world countries could progress without Western support (So, 1990). The West could thus use this logic to expand their base in Third world countries for their profit, leading to the detriment of the labor force in these countries. This inherent assumption has led to a world order where the rich have become richer, and while the GDP of the developing nations continues to increase, the condition of the poor deteriorates even further, and this is still called progress.

A.Y. So. Social Change and Development: Modernization, Dependency, and World-System

Theories. Newbury Park: Sag, 1990.

Grabowski, Richard. Development as Displacement: A Critique and alternative. Journal of

Developing Area, 23 July, 1989

McMichael, Philip. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Pine Forge

Press. Third edition, 2004.

Rostow, Walter. The Stages of Economic Growth. Cambridge University Press, 1968