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Revisiting Technology and Underdevelopment: Climate Change, Politics and the ‘D’ of Solar Energy Technology in Contemporary India

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Overcoming the Persistence of Inequality and Poverty

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Abstract

In Technology and Underdevelopment, the far-sighted and far-reaching book she published in 1977, Frances Stewart explored technological transfers which were inappropriate for their new factor endowments. She analysed the implications of technological dependence for income distribution and employment in developing countries. In this chapter, which is in two related parts, we first revisit Technology and Underdevelopment in the light of subsequent research on — and criticism of — innovation systems. We argue a case for embedding the analysis of technological packages or systems in policy, and for the analysis of policy in the politics of markets. In the second part, we develop the first stage of such a political analysis of markets, pertaining to the ‘D’ of technology, in order (i) to attempt to explain the retarded development of apparently appropriate solar energy technology in India and (ii) to evaluate the relative weight of the explanatory factors emphasised in Technology and Underdevelopment and of those of later approaches.

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Authors
  1. Barbara Harriss-White
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  2. Sunali Rohra
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  3. Nigel Singh
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford Department of International Development (Queen Elizabeth House), UK

    Valpy FitzGerald  & Rosemary Thorp  & 

  2. Somerville College, University of Oxford, UK

    Judith Heyer

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© 2011 Barbara Harriss-White with Sunali Rohra and Nigel Singh

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Harriss-White, B., Rohra, S., Singh, N. (2011). Revisiting Technology and Underdevelopment: Climate Change, Politics and the ‘D’ of Solar Energy Technology in Contemporary India. In: FitzGerald, V., Heyer, J., Thorp, R. (eds) Overcoming the Persistence of Inequality and Poverty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306721_5

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