People's science in action: the politics of protest and knowledge brokering in India.

摘要

After extended political protest against the Indian government's design for the Uchangi dam, nongovernmental engineers and social activists aided project-affected villagers in producing an alternative dam design that provided the same quantity of water storage without the need for village submergence. This alternative plan, which compelled the irrigation agency to redesign the dam, resulted from data gathered through a participatory resource mapping effort. Through detailed ethnographic analysis, this article explores the factors that are necessary to spur government bureaucracies into including locally generated data in technical planning. In particular, the article argues that nongovernmental engineers play an important role in hybridizing local knowledge and bureaucratic expertise.