Week 5_Ecology & Biodiversity Management in human use landscapes
Week 5 was the much awaited week on Ecology, after 3 weeks of community, sanitation, livelihoods, enterprise and governance. The week focused on the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, with case studies from the region. However, all through the week, the broader concepts of socio-ecological systems and traditional ecological knowledge were drawn upon through lecture and reading […]
Week 4_Livelihoods in transition and Enterprise
Week 4 turned the lens on livelihoods in the Nilgiris – the past and the changing trends of the present. While the Cornell students predominantly saw white collar jobs and professions as livelihood options, the Nilgiris students said it was more rooted in the land, even in these times of quick transition. Exercises and sessions […]
Week 3_Governance, Water & Waste
The week started off on a high note with the students being dropped in the middle of a grievance day program (as observers) at the district collector’s office. In a short span of a few hours the students got a sense of the complexity of governance – in terms of process and structure in large […]
2020 Feb 3_Kinship Conservation Workshop
India is a land of biodiversity with rich vegetation and wildlife. No doubt, it is under threat due to various reasons and making conservation of this valuable diversity important. In India, officially it is the State that formulates the policy and controls the ambit of conservation. But, in a country like ours, there are communities […]
Week 2_And it Begins
Week 2 of the NFLC 2020 focused on the theme of community wellbeing, gender and power norms (relating to gender) under the broad umbrella of Anthropological studies. Lectures, readings and discussion covered the history, complexity and theories of ethnographic methods used in anthropological studies with a focus on gender. The Cornell students got their first […]
Slow Food Festival 2020
A food festival is a long-established celebration at Keystone and a great community event to bring local people together. Keystone Foundation, along with its sister organisations celebrated Terra Madre (a Slow Food event celebrating local food globally) on 3rd and 4th January 2020, with the Indigenous people, local communities and people from the town area […]
Setting up an Enterprise model for unemployed women
Vivekanadapuram, Periyanaickenpalayam & Bavinayaganagar in Narasimanaickenplayam Today women entrepreneurs contribute for up to a third of all businesses operating in the formal economy worldwide. Women across the world with strong entrepreneurial ambitions are setting up a women – centric model business. This provides income opportunities especially for women from marginalized communities. Yet, access to finance and networks are a […]
The Assimilation Week
The much loved popular fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), famed for his keen sense of observation and logical reasoning is said to have remarked, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data”. It so happens that it is equally valid in the real world of social research […]
Field immersion
“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” Wernher von Braun All research essentially begins with an exploration into the unknown. And so it was, for our students, who were now ensconced in their respective field sites, ready to delve into their research topics. There was a nervous excitement and anticipation as […]
Field initiation
Read about the first week and how it all began… – It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.- Henry David Thoreau The week of 20th May was one the students had been eagerly waiting for. As an early initiation to the field, the students traveled to Pillur on Sunday (19th May). As […]
