Devi Vijay

Frame Changes in Social Movements: A Case Study

Abstract We examine the emergence and evolution of collective action frames in the palliative care movement in Kerala, India. We do so by leveraging secondary data published over seventeen years as well as interviews with thirty movement actors. Our findings suggest two key themes: First, frames that emerge at the grass-roots level, and in many occasions from bystanders, can become dominant frames of a movement. Second, frame alignment processes may be directed by non-elites towards the elites. These findings diverge from prior literature which emphasizes roles of movement leaders and key actors in framing issues and strategies.

Technology Business Incubators (TBIs): A Perspective for the Emerging Economies

Technology and entrepreneurship are often reckoned to be the twin-horses pulling national economies towards their developmental destinations. Technology based enterprises (TBEs) are specially attractive to policy-makers because of their higher potential for job creation and wealth-generation through business growth as well as their lower disappearance rates compared to non-technology based firms. As new technologies are often developed in R&D institutions, it was such institutions in the Western nations that first took the initiative of providing incubation facilities to transfer these new technologies to the market. The model was later used by public and private agencies for facilitating technology development for new ventures. Such initiatives are now known by the common name of Technology Business Incubators (TBIs), some of which are focused on technology transfer and others on technology development for new ventures. Though TBIs are generally considered to be a major facilitator of TBEs, the experience of their effectiveness has been mixed, especially in the emerging economies’ context. It is against the background of such diversity of experiences that we have undertaken a comprehensive review of the literature on TBI performance. Our findings suggest that, while in the developed countries technology development drives the incubator movement, the process is reversed in developing countries, where the incubator movement is trying to push technology development forward. For this reason the success of TBIs in developing countries would depend largely on the public support available for them.

Dispossessing vulnerable consumers: Derealization, desubjectification, and violence

This article draws upon the work of Judith Butler to explain how violence is deployed against vulnerable consumers. It examines a site in which a commercial complex including a shopping mall is to be constructed in Ejipura, Bangalore (India), by displacing the poor from their slums. It offers insights into the mechanisms of violent dispossession that inhere liberal modes of governance of consumers. Moreover, this study attends to derealization that desubjectifies vulnerable consumers. It further helps to comprehend why violence remains in the zone of ellipsis without any popular revulsion against it.

Translation of a community palliative care intervention: Experience from West Bengal, India

Background: The community form of palliative care first constructed in Kerala, India has gained recognition worldwide. Although it is the subject of important claims about its replicability elsewhere, little effort has gone into studying how this might occur. Drawing on translation studies, we attend to under-examined aspects of the transfer of a community palliative care intervention into a new geographic and institutional context. Methods: Over a period of 29 months, we conducted an in-depth case study of Sanjeevani, a community-based palliative care organization in Nadia district, West Bengal (India), that is modelled on the Kerala approach. We draw upon primary (semi-structured interviews and field notes) and secondary data sources. Results: We identify the translator’s symbolic power and how it counteracts the organizational challenges relating to socio-economic conditions and weak histories of civil society organizing. We find that unlike the Kerala form, which is typified by horizontal linkages and consensus-oriented decision-making, the translated organizational form in Nadia is a hybrid of horizontal and vertical solidarities. We show how translation is an ongoing, dynamic process, where community participation is infused with values of occupational prestige and camaraderie and shaped by emergent vertical solidarities among members. Conclusions: Our findings have implications for how we understand the relationship between locations, institutional histories, and healthcare interventions. We contribute to translation studies in healthcare, and particularly to conversations about the transfer or ‘roll out’ of palliative care interventions from one geography to another.

Institutional Discourses and Ascribed Disability Identities

In the present study we asked: how do institutional discourses, as represented in mass media such as newspapers, confer identities upon a traditionally marginalized collective such as those with a ...