Transformations for the market: Science, technology and power in the South Indian silk industry

This anthropological dissertation documents how the artifacts and discourses of science & technology were utilized in two specific development projects funded by the World Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (from 1980's through 2001) in the silk industry of South India. Among the official aims of the project were the promotion of increased privatization within the silk industry and a concomitant lessening of the cost to India's public sphere. Major findings of this study include: deskilling and increased stratification among both poor and middle-level workers; as well as conflicting policies that promote low-cost imports which could undermine or destroy the very same sectors of silk production supported by development. The methodology used involved 18 months of fieldwork archival research, and interviews among lab scientists, technocrats, development workers and sixty families from a silk producing town and its surrounding villages. Differences and disjunctions in the understandings of investments in new silk technologies are central to both the descriptive and analytical findings of this study. Conclusions are drawn from documenting a specific instance of global change in development from a people-centered to market-centered approach, utilizing a renewed and invigorated emphasis on science and technology projects versus community based projects, and quantitative versus qualitative means of accounting and assessment.