Apologies for cross posting.

Call for Abstracts.
Graduate Masterclass, 'Infrastructures of Inclusion: Service Provision, New
Technologies, Markets and Finance'
London School of Economics, April 28, 2017
Abstracts due February 20, 2017.

Infrastructures of Inclusion: Service Provision, New Technologies, Markets
and Finance*
The opening decades of the 21st century have shown that high growth rates
can be accompanied by expanding poverty, informality and precarious
livelihoods. This has provoked a shift of focus from growth to inclusion,
with attention to how workers and consumers at the ŒBottom of the Pyramid¹
can be incorporated into growth processes, so that none will be Œleft
behind¹.  A strong emphasis on connections explores how those trapped in
poverty and precarity can be linked into the wider economic system through
innovative forms of service provision, ICT linkages and off-grid solutions,
Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) initiatives and financial inclusion.  But the
rhetoric of connections, tied to economic imaginaries of unimpeded flows,
tells us little of how mechanisms of including the poor and marginalized
actually operate.  This workshop invites an ethnography and political
economy of these infrastructures of inclusion, with attention to the
institutional and political as well as material elements. There will be a
primary focus on inclusive initiatives for the poor in Africa and Asia,
although we encourage reflections on wider implications of inclusive
infrastructures for precarious populations.
The masterclass is part of a larger workshop organised by the London School
of Economics, together with SOAS, University of London, the University of
Edinburgh and the University of Sussex, held at the LSE on April 27-28,
2017. The workshop seeks to trace the infrastructural mechanisms through
which the poor are being included in service provision and economic life,
and to interrogate the terms of inclusion, as well as the regulatory and
political implications of these inclusive infrastructures.  It will focus on
four distinct infrastructures of inclusion: public services for poor
communities, new technologies such as ICTs and solar, BoP initiatives to
engage with precarious workers and consumers, and novel financial mechanisms
for engaging with the Œunbanked¹.
We invite contributions from graduate students working across a number of
empirical country studies to reflect on how infrastructures of inclusion are
(re)shaping the social, political and economic lives of the poor. Relevant
questions include:
1.     How do infrastructures of inclusion actually work?

2.     Do they provide structures for extending support and material
benefits to the poor, or do they enmesh the poor in new mechanisms of
extraction and erosion of their social and political rights?

3.     What do these modes of inclusion strengthen and what do they
marginalize and bypass?  What new forms of subjectivity, citizenship and
politics do they foster?

4.     How are the effects of inclusive arrangements reshaped by local
realities and new forms of popular resistance?

5.     In what ways are multi-stakeholder arrangements involving the private
sector and international actors reconfiguring the nature of the state and
the rights of citizens?

Students will be asked to circulate a paper/draft chapter in advance of the
masterclass, which will be allocated to an expert discussant. Each student
will have 15 minutes to present their paper, which will be followed by
feedback from their discussant and audience questions and comments.
Participants in the masterclass are of course also welcome to attend the
workshop on the 27th April.
Please send a short abstract to Catherine Dolan ([log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> ) and Dinah Rajak ([log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> ) by February 20th.
 

*
part of the ESRC seminar series in 'Doing Good by Doing Well: Capitalism,
Humanitarianism and International Development'













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