Eradicating Blindness: Global Health Innovation from South Asia

Description

This book describes community ophthalmology professionals in South Asia who demonstrate social entrepreneurship in global health to help the rural poor. Their innovations contested economic and scientific norms, and spread from India and Nepal outwards to other countries in Africa and Asia, as well as the United States, Australia, and Finland. This feminist postcolonial global ethnography illustrates how these innovations have resulted in dual socio-technical systems to solve the problem of avoidable blindness. Policymakers and activists might use this example of how to avoid Schumacher's critique of low labor, large scale and implement Gandhi's philosophy of good for all. Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Introduction (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 1-35 Origins of an Autonomous Global Network to Eradicate Blindness (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 37-75 Balancing the Scales: Appropriate Technology and Social Entrepreneurship (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 77-109 Witnessing Rural Blindness: Standardizing Benchmarks from Eye Camps (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 111-144 A Laboratory of Our Own: Technology Diffusion from the Incumbent Regime (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 145-180 The Hard Case of White Cataracts: Appropriation of Surgical Science (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 181-215 Training the New Cadre: Translation of Interlocking Innovations (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 217-251 Evidence-Based Medicine: Contesting the Phaco-Regime (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 253-287 Conclusion: Innovation from Below (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 289-313 Appendix A: The Extended Case Method and Global Ethnography (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 315-331 Appendix B: The Robin Hood Model (Logan D. A. Williams)....Pages 333-352 Back Matter ....Pages 353-369