100 research outputs found
Travelling facts: a perspective from Indian agriculture
No full textStudying the Tamil Nadu Precision Farming Project, Peter Howlett and Aashish Velkar find that technology transfer occurs when facts associated with the process travel well
Markets and Measurements in Nineteenth-Century Britain
No full textMeasurements are a central institutional component of markets and economic exchange. By the nineteenth century, the measurement system in Britain was desperately in need of revision: a multiplicity of measurement standards, proliferation of local or regional weights and measures, and a confusing array of measurement practices made everyday measurements unreliable. Aashish Velkar uncovers how metrology and economic logic alone failed to make 'measurements' reliable, and discusses the importance of localised practices in shaping trust in them. Measurements and Markets in Nineteenth-Century Britain steers away from the traditional explanations of measurement reliability based on the standardisation and centralisation of metrology; the focus is on changing measurement practices in local economic contexts. Detailed case studies from the industrial revolution suggest that such practices were path-dependent and 'anthropocentric'. Therefore, whilst standardised metrology may have improved precision, it was localised practices that determined the reliability and trustworthiness of measurements in economic contexts
Emily Erikson, Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought
No full textTrade and Nation describes important changes that occurred in the economic literature in seventeenth-century England and explains why these changes occurred in this period. As the author, Emily Erikson, claims, ‘in the 17th century people began to frame and conceptualise economic matters differently. Growth replaced fair exchange as the standard by which economic activity was judged.’ (3). Her overarching argument is that English merchants, attempting to influence state economic policy, ‘bega..
Caveat emptor: Abolishing public measurements, standardizing quantities, and enhancing market transparency in the London coal trade c1830
No full textThis article evaluates efforts to standardize quantities in the London coal trade c1830, and traces the end of the public measurement system first introduced in the fourteenth century. Increasing traffic in coal, reduction of taxes on the commodity, inefficient public meters, etc., contributed to the demise of public measurements. This outcome was the result of extensive negotiations between merchants, the various levels of state bureaucracy, and the parliament. Switching measurement standards was difficult, if not costly, to coordinate. Abolishing public measurements and switching from volume to weight measurements was part of the efforts to strengthen governance along the commodity chain, secure property rights by making quantities predictable and alter a mechanism that powerful merchants considered had become inappropriate. © The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved
“Imperial Folly”: Metrication, Euroskepticism, and Popular Politics in Britain, 1965–1980
Get PDFEuropean integration policies inflamed anti-Europe sentiments in Britain and exposed the fragility of democratic institutions in the face of populist campaigning. This article demonstrates how Europe became the focus of British anxiety about globalization and activated concerns for national sovereignty. Using the example of metrication in the 1970s, the article situates the abstract notions of globalization and sovereignty in material and everyday terms. The very processes that sought to reconcile the impossible trinity of globalization, national sovereignty, and popular politics resulted in institutionalizing and legitimizing the deep ambivalence of inching closer to Europe. Negotiating with Europe to water down harmonization actually stoked and kept alive the fundamental issues rather than resolving them. The history of British metrication serves as an example of the profound significance of discursive framing on shaping policy as well as outcomes. The messiness with which metrication was handled by successive governments shows how dangerously and easily the knowledge gap between experts and popular opinion could be exploited. Populist framing of technical issues of metrication distorted the complex realities of globalization, rendered the consequences of European standardization more real in everyday terms, and verbalized populist opinions that forging closer ties with Europe would be a threat to Britain’s parliamentary sovereignty. Harmonization policies also heightened debates about British identity and compelled the country to seek ways to coexist between two extreme visions, one of “Deep England” steeped in tradition and another of a modern “efficient” Britain based on technocratic values
Measurement Standards and Market Governance:London Corn Trade Association and International Grain Markets (1880-1914)
Get PDFThis article examines the work of the London Corn Trade Association (LCTA) in developing tools for measuring produce quality and resolving governance issues in international grain markets. LCTA standardised rules, practices, and routines for international grain traders to use. These rules, etc. aided commercial decision making, lowered transaction costs and facilitated dispute resolution between private economic actors. Its activities make an ideal case to study the dynamics of governance in the transformation, expansion, and globalisation of agricultural markets between c1880 and 1914. The article concludes that the organisation’s real significance lies in its ability to facilitate the acceptance of different quality conventions within the markets, which was predicated upon the measurement infrastructure and standardised contracts LCTA devised for the international grain markets centred around London after c1880
Imagining Economic Space in Colonial India
Get PDFThis article argues that the process of imagination is moulded by the intersecting notions of space, time, and measurements. It shows that economic spaces are shaped by notions of particular space-time held by historical actors and by imaginations of their past and future fictional spaces. The case study of colonial period South Asia examines how financial accounting and other measurements were co-opted to give form to future ‘fictional’ expectations. South Asian economic spaces are shown to be the locus for control and dominance of future economic relationships which were visualised in particular ways by the colonial rulers.A conclusion reached is that economic spaces are not just enclosed spaces within borders where economic activity occurs shaped by the dominant culture and economy of a state. The economic spaces in colonial India were sites of economic conflict and violence, where contesting notions of economic time collided, and where widely contrasting economic futures were imagined. Indian nationalists looked into the past to spur their imagination of a different future for India. In fact, the conflict or violence that was part of the recasting of India’s national economic space was not entirely between racial groups (European colonists and native Indians) or strictly between economic classes (bourgeoisie upper castes and proletariat lower castes). Contrary expectations amongst the nationalists themselves are apparent. The process of imagination reveals the ensemble of cultural, social and technical practices that actors use to in giving form to fictional expectations of the future and the spatialisation of economic spaces.<br/
Rethinking Metrology, Nationalism, and Development in India (1833-1956)
Get PDFWhen India adopted the metric measurement units in 1956, it concluded the project of standardisation initiated in 1833 by the East India Company administrators. Nationalists claimed victory after chastising the ‘failure’ of the colonial government. This paper argues that strict enforcement of standardised weights and measures was inextricably tied to shifting normative notions within India’s political economy. The intersection of Focculdian ‘governmentality’ with notions of planned economic development that germinated amongst the nationalists proved a more compelling environment for metrological reform. The case of India should lead to rethinking the links between measurement standards and the state, and in uncovering the different claims that various social groups make on measurement technology. To some measurements were a technology of economic coordination, to others it was a technology of governance: to others still it became a technology of planned development. The history of metrological reforms also sharpens the focus on how sites of calculation were shaped in culturally appropriate ways. Cultural appropriation of metrology was not limited to quantification within bureaucracies, but had to be framed in ways that made sense within social contexts that mediated everyday economic relationships. As the case of India shows, metrological reforms were possible when a nationalist state invoked ‘tradition’, in addition to quantification, to enforce measurement standards in the context of planned economic development: the technocratic rationale had to be bolstered with the cultural authority of Indian science. Weights and measures are a way of socially organising an inherently cognitive human activity. Governments in the past have used measurement systems to govern and rule, businesses use them to compete, and people depend on measurements to mediate a whole host of social and activities. India’s transition to the metric system occurred when this global technology of social exchange was reconstituted to address most of these contending claims.<br/
Transactions, standardisation and competition: Establishing uniform sizes in the British wire industry c.1880
No full textWhen science could not provide a solution to transaction problems in the British wire industry c.1880, market groups had to negotiate a business solution. This involved converging towards a 'one-size-fits-all' standard: a process requiring compromises and cooperation between competitive firms, and solving coordination failure through state intervention. This paper demonstrates how different groups held different notions of 'ideal' standards depending on the incentives they faced. Reconciling these differences was an institutional, rather than a technological, process. The paper also analyses why, historically, dominant producers cooperated to set industry standards when faced with an imminent lock-in on 'wrong' standards imposed on the industry.standardisation, competition, strategy, transactions, iron and steel, coordination failure, state intervention, mechanical engineering, technology, nineteenth century,
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