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Grassroots innovation movements: challenges and contributions

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 13:37 authored by Adrian SmithAdrian Smith, Mariano Fressoli, Hernán Thomas
Technologies for social inclusion in Latin America are a recent manifestation of grassroots innovation movements whose activities go back to appropriate technology in the 1970s and earlier. Common to these movements is a vision for innovation processes more inclusive towards local communities in terms of knowledge, processes and outcomes. A comparison in this article between movements for technologies for social inclusion now and appropriate technology in the past reveals three enduring challenges for grassroots innovation: attending to local specificities whilst simultaneously seeking wide-scale diffusion; being appropriate to existing situations that one ultimately seeks to transform; and, working with project-based solutions to goals (of social justice) whose root causes rest in structures of economic and political power. Each challenge effectively frames grassroots knowledge creation differently: local ingenuity; local empowerment; and structural critique. Overall, these movements’ contribute valuable plurality and reflexivity to innovation policy and politics.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Journal of Cleaner Production

ISSN

0959-6526

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

63

Page range

114-124

Department affiliated with

  • SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2013-03-15

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