Crispin and list 1. Since we are a few days away from the ETHOS meeting, and there will be some funders there, I hope you can elaborate on this phrase from below:
> “…. the major pathologies have been excised …” 2. We have discoursed on your not measuring char production in the proposed test procedures for Indonesia. Is char-production still a “pathology” that you have “excised", or do you now measure char production when testing stoves designed to intentionally make char? 3. My question includes all possible “major pathologies”, not just char-production (my meme). Just hoping for a list we should be considering at ETHOS. Ron On Jan 21, 2014, at 10:06 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Samer > > It is my hope that Cecil Cook will wander through here one day because we > spent a great deal of time looking into these problems > > >In particular I will be keen to explore more deeply the ramifications for > >testing, actual fuel use, and the memes that relate these to problems of > >deforestation and health. > > By that I mean the problems related to the use of information generated by > the specialists who do not individually have much administrative control over > project design and management (in a lot of cases – there are exceptions). > > I recall some years ago at ETHOS expressing a view that we really needed more > input from professional marketing people – input to the stove designers, > backyard inventors and hardly-ever-do-wells who are trying to make the world > a better place with what little they have. > > The value of this input is to separate developers of technology from their > egos. No kidding. It is very disciplining to have in-your-face feedback about > one’s preconceptions for a product. Marketing people have enough power in the > relationship to make the message stick. If the speaker is an individual > objecting to a stove product, they (although the customer) are often > dismissed as not realising what a wonderful device I have created for you if > you would just learn to use it properly it will do wonderful things and make > your life better and your whole family will celebrate. > > The next cold shower that brings benefit is professional traders who are the > middlemen in the value chain. Sometimes we can stimulate their enthusiasm > with storied stoves with creative claims attached, piggy-backing on their > existing distribution systems and sneak a ‘better product’ into their display > of wares. Let’s say you can always do that once, but it had better work for > them. They are pretty callous about viability and their depth of view is > often not what is needed to launch a transformative stove product. They can > make a living selling other things too so the product has to be viable, > income-wise. > > Another group that has had sterling success in attaching themselves to the > wonderful world of stoves (Disney Kitchen?) is the health community with > their agenda(s). The clear link between cooking and health is easily shown in > any community and the health sector has been a major proponent of improved, > especially lower-smoke stoves. > > So these groups all have the capability to generate messages, and to receive > and store them. They can create, store, modify, refute and extrapolate memes > arising from ‘things they heard’ about stoves. > > The significant parallel I see in these collections of memes about what > stoves do, can do, should do and really do and the significant paper you and > Saeed have produced is that the complex world of stoves needs this sort of > analysis in order to avoid falling into a variety of traps. These traps are > the (often quite separate) agendas of a huge number of power centres always > on the lookout for the Next Big Thing they can manage, prosper from, ride, > lead, and ultimately benefit the generality of humankind through their good > efforts. > > I have drawn attention to external forces and interests, but there is, were > one doing the same type of analysis as you have done, an internal group of > forces or interests that produce their own memes and circulate and evolve > them entirely within the stove community. One easy example is that ‘gasifiers > are inherently cleaner burning than other combustors’. In fact all fires are > gas fires. Teasing out the intended meaning from these words gets one into a > repetitive semantic discussion that doesn’t really mean much except to the > participants. The meme continues, sailing along on the current of > misunderstanding that there might be ‘other fires’ that do not burn gases and > that those ‘other fires’ are inherently ‘dirtier’ that gasifier fires. > Consider the remarkable examples (with hundreds of thousands of citations) of > fuels themselves being given the attributes of ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’! > > These curiosities are fun and harmless unless they start to impact policy and > that policy impact is driven by a power centre that lies outside the > influence of the stove making community that create the meme in the first > place. That power centre is now ‘misinformed’ and begins allocating the > distribution of resources based on their understanding. > > The result, in short, is that the projects which create, disseminate and > promote improved stoves (however defined) and fuels (ditto) can be quite > severely skewed towards goals that may actually be ephemeral. An alternative > is that the goals are real, but low priority in the community of interest. > > So, what to do about it. That is where Cecil Cook and Tig Tuntivate, Veronica > Mendizabal, Helen Carlsson, Simon Bell, Iwan Boskoro, Prianti Utami, > Christina Aristanti, Yabei Zhang plus too many others to mention come in. > Taking a comprehensive view of what happens in the community (behaviour and > resources), the market as it really exists, finance models that avoid as many > pitfalls as possible, producers and distributors who are or want to be in the > formal sector a new approach to the construction of a stove programme has > been taken and is being piloted in Indonesia. > > This approach includes significant changes in the way resources are allocated > to those who ‘cause better stoves to be purchased’ (which is the ultimate > goal of a viable stove industry). It includes upgrading the level of input to > the point of power sharing from social scientists (social anthropologists and > sociologists, social workers etc). It includes developing new and affordable > test methods for making comparative evaluations that allow meaningfully > accurate lab tests to realistically predict performance when the stoves are > used in a target community. It includes careful programme design so that the > system is scalable to Really Big if the spend is justifiable. > > If you, Samer, were to study this initiative from the outside I think you > would find the sort of critique you present in the paper has been done on > multiple levels by this team, and as far as we were able in the time > allocated, the major pathologies have been excised and hopeful innovations > substituted. My hope is that they are well-considered! > > I will provide more details related to the technical side of the project when > it is appropriate. > > Regards > Crispin freezing (again) in Waterloo > > Technologizing Humanitarian Space: Darfur Advocacy and the Rape-Stove Panacea > Samer Abdelnour and Akbar M. Saeed > https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259104849_Technologizing_Humanitarian_Space_Darfur_Advocacy_and_the_Rape-Stove_Panacea/file/5046352d950ca6cfdf.pdf?ev=pub_int_doc_dl&origin=publication_detail&inViewer=true > > _______________________________________________ > Stoves mailing list > > to Send a Message to the list, use the email address > [email protected] > > to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page > http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org > > for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: > http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
_______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
