Ashima Chopra, a research student on the Fair Tracing project, will be presenting a paper on aspects of the project’s India case study at the forthcoming British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) conference to be held in Edinburgh from 30 March-1 April 2009. She will also be hosting the panel in which the paper will appear. The full details are as follows:
Monday, 30 March 2009, 4.45 pm – 6.15 pm
“Technology and Development” panel
Convenor: Ashima Chopra (University of Bradford)
- Vincent Bagiire (University of Bradford) Improving livelihoods in the south through technology: M.S.Swaminathan’s contribution
- 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
- 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
Due to a late cancellation, there is now place for an additional two papers in the ‘Technology and Development’ panel at the forthcoming British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) conference to be held in Edinburgh from 30 March – 1 April 2009. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE PAPERS MUST BE CONFIRMED BY FRIDAY, 6 MARCH 2009.
The article “The Fair Tracing project: mapping a traceable value chain for Indian coffee”, by Ashima Chopra and Apurba Kundu has been accepted for publication in Contemporary South Asia, 17:2 (June 2009).
On Thursday, 23 October 2008, the EPSRC Fair Tracing Project, Centre for Developing Areas Research (CEDAR) and UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London, hosted a workshop on “Ethical Consumption, Traceability and ICT” – or, short and snappy – the Ethics 2.0 Summit. The workshop brought together 35 participants from business, NGOs, and academia. Speakers included Tim Wilson (Historicfutures), Wesa Aapro (Consumergadget), Annesley Newholm (Easyethical), Rob Harrison (Ethiscore), Juha Kaario (Nokia Green Team) and Ann Light, Macarena Vivent, Helen LeVoi and Dorothea Kleine (Fair Tracing).
“Every shipping vessel that enters and leaves the United States is required to submit shipping records that document its cargo. Most of these documents are a matter of public record – you could look up the information yourself if you wanted to. But there are millions of such documents submitted each year, with no searchable index, making the data practically useless. Until now. ImportGenius has licensed import/export data form a number of sources (along with free sources like US Customs), which is added to a database that is updated daily. For a monthly fee ($99 for standard access, $250 for premium) users can search through the data, allowing them to identify criteria including the class of cargo, the company involved, and the point of origin.”
