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Resources for Knowledge & Media: Books, Reports & Newsletters

Books:

1. Within the world of food collection by Madhu Ramnath describes the daily engagement that the adivasi of central India has with the forest and which rewards him with a knowledge unattainable in any other manner. It would be fruitful to see how adivasi practices can help better our knowledge about lesser known aspectsof the natural world, aspects that are missed by mainstream science. (checked on 26 Feb. 2018)
2. Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and BioCultural Ddiversity: Constructing and Contesting Knowledge critically explores the changes in organisations research paradigms and professional practice that could help transform and co-create knowledge for a new modernity based on plural definitions of wellbeing. (checked on 29 Dec. 2017)
3. Everyday Experts: How people’s knowledge can transform the food system by The People’s Editorial Collective. The chapters in this book reflect on a diverse range of knowledge processes underway in the food movement and chart the various dynamics, impacts, politics, implications. (checked on 5 Sep. 2018)
4. Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability, and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India by Andrew Flachs, shows how rural farmers come to plant genetically modified or certified organic cotton, sometimes during moments of agrarian crisis. Farmers’ evaluation of development is a complex and shifting calculation of social meaning, performance, economics, and personal aspiration. Only by understanding this complicated nexus can we begin to understand sustainable agriculture. (checked on 12 Nov. 2019)
5. Lokavidya Perspectives: A Philosophy of Political Imagination for the Knowledge Age is a collection of articles that discuss the new ways of thinking that do not take European reference, and instead root themselves in the ways of thinking and doing of the people. (checked on 29 Dec. 2017)
6. ट्रांसपैरेंसी इंटरनेशनल इंडिया द्वारा प्रकाशित ‘सूचना एवं जनसेवाओं के अधिकार (एक मार्गदर्शिका)‘ को संतोष कुमार अग्रवाल ने संपादित किया है. Transparency International India has published this booklet (in Hindi) to spread awareness and guide people in the use of the Right to Informaion. Their website has some info. on this right in English too. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)

7. Self-Sustainability Of Community Radio: Stories From India by Ashish Singh. This study looks at types of innovation done or being used by two organizations running Community Radio Stations – Deccan Development Society’s Radio Sangham at Pastapur village of Medak district, Telangana and Mumbai University’s campus community radio – MUST Radio.  (checked on 14 Sep. 2016)

8. Open Space, Pune has a library with over two thousand books that deal with diverse topics from globalisation to  sustainable development; from culture to politics. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)
9. Pedestrian Pictures, Bangalore, Karnataka has a library of documentary films in different languages and also screen films regularly in Bangalore and across Karnataka. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)

Articles & Reports:

1. TN’s unique community of weather-watchers helps people ride out the storm by Sweta Akundi. To create a weather-wise community, which can only happen through repeated observations of which weather models work for which regions, and knowledge of the local infrastructure. (checked on 11 Nov. 2021)
2. Knowledge Swaraj: An Indian Manifesto on Science and Technology: The “Knowledge Swaraj” Manifesto is the outcome of efforts spread over two years, starting from a workshop at the Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh, Gujarat (November 2008). “Thought Pieces” and other notes from the Tejgadh workshop helped to make a first draft that was discussed at a second workshop at Hyderabad (March 2009). (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)
3. Making Smallholder Farming Climate-smart: Integrated Agrometeorological Services has been published by WOTR. This paper is about the need to make agriculture more resilient to climate risks has been recognised and weather forecasts as well as advisories to farmers on how to cope with the attendant risks are being increasingly made available through various information and technology channels. (checked on 2 Dec. 2017)
4. Award winning map shows a more accurate world by Teodoara Zareva a new way to represent our spherical world on a rectangular surface by keeping faithfully the proportions of all oceans and continents. (checked on 22 Jan. 2017)
5. Landscapes of Renewal – Jukajoki, Linnunsuo and the Finnish Boreal by Tero Mustonen on how the Finnish community of Selkie has successfully revived lands and waters damaged by the extractive industries, using a blend of traditional knowledge and science. (checked on 29 Nov. 2019)
6. Media Studies Group, New Delhi is a media watch group which regularly publishes its studies and surveys. It has several publications both in English and Hindi on the state of both print and electronic media in the country. Some of its publications that can be good resource material particularly for students of journalism, mass communication and academics are – ‘TRP and paid news; Communalism of Media; The condition of Indian journalists’, etc. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)
7. First Person: A day with Sangham Radio by Pete Tridish (chief engineer at International Media Action, a non-profit community radio engineering crew), describes how the Zaheerabad-based community radio station, the first such station to come up in India, is being supported and run by its 6000 members, all farmers and labourers. (checked on 29 Feb. 2016)
8. On Sangham Radio – an article in Telugu on India’s first community radio station (based at Zaheerabad in Telangana). (checked on 26 Feb. 2016)

9. Public contributions to science increasingly common – The phenomenon of Citizen Science can be found in both the natural and the social sciences, according to the largest systematic analysis to date on the topic, the results of which are published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. (checked on 1 Feb. 2016)

10. Blog of Prof. Simon Batterbury with some open access references in the field of political ecology and social science. (checked on 6 Dec. 2015)
11. Linguistic Diversity in the Knowledge Commons by Giridhar Rao. To achieve the aim of a high-level multilingualism in society,especially in the case of children of minorities and indigenouspeoples, recommendations include: 8 to 10 years of education mostly in the mother language,accompanied by graded and high-quality teaching of the main language of the region, taught by bilingual teachers in non-fee-paying, government schools. (checked on 19 Nov. 2019)

12. Imagining the “open” university: Sharing scholarship to improve research and education by Erin C. McKiernan sees that open scholarship, such as the sharing of articles, code, data, and educational resources, has the potential to improve university research and education as well as increase the impact universities can have beyond their own walls. To support this perspective, he presents evidence from case studies, published literature, and personal experiences as a practicing open scholar. (checked on 15 Nov. 2017)

13. Media For the Masses: the Usage Patterns and Social Consequences of a Mobile-Phone Based Citizen Journalism Platform in Madhya-Pradesh by Sarah Corsa (on CGNet Swara, a citizen journalism initiative). The program impacted the village by making the community stronger and more trusting, as well as empowering women. As a whole, participatory media in rural communities can give citizens more agency and control over their lives. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)
14. Adivasi Media in India: Relevance in Representing Marginalized Voices by Uttaran Dutta. Scholars have opined that community driven media can aid marginalized sectionsof the society to raise their voices in defending and protecting their cultural identities, whichessentially questions and challenges the hegemonic misrepresentations. This study responds to Wilson and Stewart’s call by presenting descriptionsand illustrations focused on the Adivasi media in India. (checked on 19 Nov. 2019)
15. How Indigenous Nomadic Pastoralists in Iran are using GIS Maps to Defend and Conserve Their Territories, by Cenesta and Global Forest Coalition – Participatory GIS is enabling local communities to make their own maps and models, and using these for their own research, analysis, assertion of rights and resolution of conflicts over land. (checked on 13 Aug. 2017)
16. World Charter of Free Media adopted by communicators and activists committed to multiple emancipatory communication practices across different regions of the world, assembled in March 2015 in Tunis, at the 4th World Forum on Free Media, organized in the framework of the World Social Forum 2015. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)
17. मनीपोतवाली औरतों का व्यवसाय : पुकार यूथ फेलोशिप के जरिये युवा लडकियोंने पाये हुए प्रशिक्षण के वर्णन के साथ साथ मनीपोतवाली औरतों के (याने अपनी मां के) व्यवसाय के बारे में उन्होंने किये हुए रिसर्च पर आधारित रिपोर्ट. Manipotvaali auratonka vyavasay is a report written in Hindi by a team of barefoot researchers trained by Pukar under their Youth Fellowship Programme. Their Community Based Participatory Action Research on the work of women selling strings of beads, tikaas, etc. in the streets (the barefoot researchers’ mothers, in fact) is reflected in the report, in which their own training under the programme has also been described. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)
18. Gharats of Uttaranchal: Harnessing Natural Energy by Manikant Shah reports findings of a detailed study of this traditional water-driven flour mill technology: how it could bee upgraded to fit in with the modern times and requirements, as also for the benefit of the poor people of the Himalayan region. (checked on 30 May 2016)

19. Who Maps the World? by Sarah Holder. About a team of OpenStreetMap users that is working to draw new cartographic lines, making maps that more accurately—and equitably—reflect our space. (checked on 16 Mar. 2018)

Newsletters:

1. Open Space, Pune has a library with national as well as international magazines, newsletters, etc. that deal with diverse topics from globalisation to  sustainable development; from culture to politics. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)
2. Media Studies Group, New Delhi is a media watch group which regularly publishes two journals (Mass Media and जन मीडिया) in English and Hindi. (checked on 25 Jun. 2015)