This book describes community ophthalmology professionals in South Asia who demonstrate social entrepreneurship in global health to help the rural poor. Their innovations contested economic and scientific norms, and spread from India and Nepal outwards to other countries in Africa and Asia, as well as the United States, Australia, and Finland.
This feminist postcolonial global ethnography illustrates how these innovations have resulted in dual socio-technical systems to solve the problem of avoidable blindness. Policymakers and activists might use this example of how to avoid Schumacher’s critique of low labor, large scale and implement Gandhi’s philosophy of good for all.
Preface.- Acknowledgments.- List of Tables.- List of Figures.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Origins of an Autonomous Global Network to Eradicate Blindness.- 3. Balancing the Scales: Appropriate Technology and Social Entrepreneurship.- 4. Witnessing Rural Blindness: Standardizing Benchmarks from Eye Camps.- 5. A Lab of Our Own: Technology Diffusion from Incumbent Regime.- 6. The Hard Case Of White Cataracts: Appropriation of Surgical Science.- 7. Training The New Cadre: Translation of Interlocking Innovations.- 8. Evidence-Based Medicine: Contesting the Phaco-Regime.- 9. Conclusion: Innovation from Below.- 10. Appendix A: The Extended Case Method and Global Ethnography.- 11 Appendix B: The Robin Hood Model.- Organizational Charts for Four Community Ophthalmology Units.- Glossary of Common Ophthalmology Surgical Terms.- Index.
Logan D. A. Williams is the principal of Logan Williams Consultancy Services, LLC, and an Associate Editor of Science as Culture. Formerly she was an Assistant Professor of History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science in the Lyman Briggs College and the department of Sociology at Michigan State University, USA.
This book describes community ophthalmology professionals in South Asia who demonstrate social entrepreneurship in global health to help the rural poor. Their innovations contested economic and scientific norms, and spread from India and Nepal outwards to other countries in Africa and Asia, as well as the United States, Australia, and Finland.
This feminist postcolonial global ethnography illustrates how these innovations have resulted in dual socio-technical systems to solve the problem of avoidable blindness. Policymakers and activists might use this example of how to avoid Schumacher’s critique of low labor, large scale and implement Gandhi’s philosophy of good for all.
The first book to study the development of innovative ophthalmological science, and technology and social entrepreneurship in South Asia, and its circulation throughout the Global South
Uses multi-sited, empirical data from four eye hospitals (in India, Nepal, Kenya and Mexico)
Offers a feminist postcolonial multi-level perspective analysis by pairing an explicit attention to the imposition of power through modes of science and technology circulation with new insights into the multi-level perspective on socio-technical system change
Advances theoretical understanding of innovation ‘from below’, science and technology circulation and appropriate technology choice in a global field of science—ophthalmology
“It is fascinating to read this story of pioneering innovation in low-cost, high-volume cataract surgery in the Global South, starting with the Aravind Eye Care System in India and then the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology in Nepal. And about the systemic approach, for example, including a “Robin Hood” business model. Thus, it also illuminates how alternative approaches to innovation are viable, provided the entrepreneurs take the full context into account.” (Arie Rip, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Netherlands)
“Williams’ account of “innovation from below”, here from Nepal and India to elsewhere around the globe, and in the field of ophthalmology’s cataract surgeries, is both startling and exciting. Good-bye to the imperial West-to-Rest dissemination model. Welcome to more useful strategies for charting diverse cross-national appropriations, co-optations, resistances, negotiations, and progressive transformations. A must-read for understanding today’s science and technology transitions.” (Sandra Harding, Distinguished Research Professor, Departments of Education and Gender Studies, University of California Los Angeles, USA)
