Ann Light (center) participating in a small discussion group

Fair Tracing’s Ann Light and Dorothea Kleine, representing the EPSRC Bridging the Global Digital Divide Network, organised together with Mike Powell (IKM Emergent) and Mark Thompson (Judge Business School, Cambridge University) a workshop on “Good Planning or benign imposition? Innovation, emergence and risk in Development research: learning from ICTD” in Cambridge from 17-18 Sept 2009.

The idea was to have a broad mix of academics, practitioners and funders talk about innovation and emergence in development research. Challenges, conceptualisations and future strategies were discussed.

Twenty-one participants attended, among them well-known experts such as Ineke Buskens, Geoff Walsham, Shirin Madon, David Grimshaw, Anita Gurumurthy, Robin Mansell and Henk Molenaar. The discussions in groups were fascinating and continue in a network online. General summaries will soon be made available on the IKM website

Greetings from Lima!

I, [Fair Tracing project manager Dr Dorothea Kleine], am at Congresso HDCA 2009, the annual conference of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, in Lima, Peru. This is an interdisciplinary conference interested in human development as freedom (Amartya Sen).

I presented a paper called “Applying the capability approach to the ‘medium of choice par excellence’: Using the Choice Framework for a holistic analysis of internet usage”. In it, I used Fair Tracing as an example to show how action research can help consumers and producers in their choices. I argued that one can use Sen’s capability approach, translated with the Choice Framework, to theorise what we did.

The conference is also a great opportunity to draw the attention of Latin American academics to our work, including our participatory work with producers in Chile.

At this year’s Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Conference in Manchester (26-28 Aug 2009), Fair Tracing’s Dr Dorothea Kleine teamed up with Dr Ian Cook (Exeter University) and Dr Mark Graham (Oxford Internet Institute) to host three sessions on “Follow the thing: New Cultural and Economic Geographies“. The idea of the session was to bring together value chain research conducted from cultural geography and economic geography perspectives (see also the full programme).

Our sessions had 13 papers (one of which was on the Fair Tracing project) running from 09:00 to 16:50. Thanks to the great interest in the topic, sponsorship from two research groups, the quality of the papers (and the lucky coincidence that our session info was printed in the front section of the programme at a busy, multi-strand conference with several sessions in parallel) we had audiences of over 30 people throughout the day, consisting of mainly cultural, but also some economic geographers. 

The quality of questions were outstanding. One question on the Fair Tracing project was whether we had spoken to workers directly, or whether we had, just like much of the Fair Trade research, merged the categories or producers and workers. I was glad to be able to explain that our focus groups in Chile had been conducted with vineyard owners, bodega employees and workers separately. I also remarked how at the time one of us (ie Dr Ann Light) succeeded in involving the foreman in conversation and distracting him sufficiently while Macarena Vivent and I had unsupervised focus group time with workers… 

Ah, we were a great team!      

Fair Tracing’s Research Fellow and Project Manager Dr Dorothea Kleine represented the project at ICTD2009, the international IEEE/ACM conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development held in Doha, Qatar from 17-19 April 2009, with over 300 delegates in attendance.

Our demonstration, “Understanding the Provenance of Ethically Produced Goods”, showed the early Fair Tracing computer screen version with the Google Earth map, and used the Upcode application to demonstrate the tool on a mobile screen. We were able to let people use the Nokia N70 or N95 to scan a barcode on a bottle (in Qatar alcohol is banned so we had to go for a water instead of a wine bottle) or a coffee package. The mobile could then go online and link directly to key information from our Fair Tracing data set. Information on offer included the pie chart of “Where does the money go?”, the producer’s website, and the YouTube videos which we have produced in partnership with the Chilean producers.

There was great interest the Fair Tracing demo stand which was up for two days. Over 70 people came to talk to us and try out the demo, including development practitioners from Ecuador, Pakistan, Australia and Egypt.

Monday, 30 March 2009, 4.45 pm – 6.15 pm
“Technology and Development” panel
Convenor: Ashima Chopra (University of Bradford)

1. Vincent Bagiire (University of Bradford) Improving livelihoods in the south through technology: M.S.Swaminathan’s contribution
2. Bidit Lal Dey (Queen’s University, Belfast) An overview of the use and appropriation of mobile telephony in rural Bangladesh from the perspectives of farmers
3. Ashima Chopra, (University of Bradford) Is technological innovation necessary for socio-economic development? Designing a digital traceability solution for coffee growers in Southern India

For further information, see the BASAS website or the conference homepage, or contact Ashima directly at  a.chopra@bradford.ac.uk

The panel on “Technology and Development’ may include a number of areas, such as development studies, computer science, HCI, networks, mobile systems, satellite and/or telecommunications, and multimedia. Topics might include:

• new and emerging technologies (both hardware and/or software),
• ICTs for development (including those used in education, governance, health or livelihood systems), or
• web-based gadgets or applications that can be used by communities.

The paper/presentation should demonstrate the actual or potential application of technology/technologies for development scenarios within the South Asian context. Presentations must last no longer than 20 minutes. Both established academics and/or research students are encouraged to apply.

The panel will include the paper “Technological innovation and development: the case of Fair Tracing in India” by A Chopra (University Bradford).

Full details on the BASAS conference are available at http://www.csas.ed.ac.uk/BASAS2009.php?menu=3. Early registration is £95 (by 9 March 2009), and there are few bursaries available for postgraduate students – see website.

To discuss your papers/presentations, please contact Ashima Chopra (Fair Tracing project research student) me via email at a.chopra@bradford.ac.uk

Abstract: The Fair Tracing project has as its heart the representation of a sociotechnical system, with its emphasis on the social, economic and environmental aspects of food production as a means of profitably connecting Fair Trade producers in developing countries with ethical consumers in the North. The political elements of the production system will be displayed as part of telling the story of the value chain. The case study is interesting in that not only have we set out to explore and understand the value chain and the information flows accompanying it, but the findings will inform two aspects of the project: first, the design of the system and what use would be reasonable to expect of busy people; second, the representation at the interface that users see when they choose to learn more about the circumstances of production. A significant challenge will be representing the politics of production relationships in the design of the Fair Tracing system in such a way that the tool remains agnostic, but the power relations can be understood – and even challenged.

Confirmed as attending on behalf of Fair Tracing are Dr Ian Brown, Dr Dorothea Kleine, Dr Apurba Kundu. In additional, selected research students who are contributing to the Fair Tracing Project may also attend. 

• CHI2007: Workshop on ‘UUCD and International Development’, April 2007.
• CHI2008: Workshop on ‘HCI for Community and International Development, April 2008.
• OzCHI2008: Workshop on ‘Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture’, December 2008.

The speakers, from the UK, Finland and Chile, presented six different projects and answered questions about the thinking behind their systems. Getting this set of individuals together was in itself a success: as one speaker remarked, “I have not been to an event where you had this many key players in the field all together”.

During the lunch and coffee breaks, participants were able to try out and comment on post-its on the different interfaces of the various projects. Holloway students Andrew Brooks, Lucy Fenner, Simon Hepher and Rebecca Sankar exhibited posters of their research projects on ethical consumption. From the ICT4D Collective, Win Min Tun, Andrea Burris, Marije Geldof, David Hollow, Niels-Peter Nielsen and Ugo Vallauri assisted in running the workshop on the day.

In the discussions it became evident that there were fascinating parallels and promising synergies between the projects. We were fired up by seeing how many pieces of the puzzle allowing for a system of ethical tracking and tracing, and communicating it to consumers were there in front of our eyes, waiting to be assembled. At the end of the day, there were networking groups discussing themes like

• “How can we give producers a voice in developing these systems?”
• “How can we express ethical issues in figures or symbols to get information to the consumer quickly?”
• “What kind of business model could be used to make information services for ethical consumption financially sustainable?”

In our concluding remarks, we expressed our hope that several of the projects would now begin to collaborate or, at the very least, that we would keep each other informed of our work so that, as our projects progressed, we could avoid reinventing the wheel and, instead, exploit synergies. Thanks to all the speakers and participants for coming and contributing to an exciting day!