Remittances from migration have significant impacts on economic livelihoods in developing countries. Yet, to date, scholars have paid little attention to the broader ways in which migrant remittances enable rural households to improve their capacity to respond and adapt to economic as well as environmental challenges. This paper draws upon 'social resilience' as a conceptual tool to investigate how monetary remittances are used by households to enhance their ability to respond to challenges, build economic, human and cultural capital, and plan for the future. Using data from a qualitative study of rural migrant households in Bangladesh, we provide an analysis of how different strategies for investing internal and international remittances contribute to household social resilience. Our analysis reveals that remittances in general contribute to improving the social resilience of migrant households. Remittances are important in building economic capital through accessing land for agricultural production as well as housing construction. Remittances also enable households to access education, and thus build their human capital. Nevertheless, the paper reveals an important gender dimension in the choice of investment strategies. Female-headed households tend to invest remittances in human capital, and such strategies may contribute to the reinforcement of existing gender inequalities and do little to improve resilience.
A call to expand disciplinary boundaries so that social scientific imagination and practice are central to quests for 'responsible' digital agri-food innovation
INTRODUCTIONThe current venture capital investment model and associated start-up cultures require utmost positivity in technological investment, with 'success breeds success' being a common mantra in relation to university-industry partnerships (Santoro, 2000). Such approaches within the 'agtech' community result in existential challenges for those of us who are tasked by our disciplinary training to espouse more balanced and critical perspectives. The specific aim of this special issue (SI) is to advance the scholarly understanding of a concept called responsible innovation (RI), as it applies to the sociotechnical transition processes of digitalisation within the domain of agri-food industries. This aim is built on a base of many intellectual endeavours that have come before, some of the most notable and timely including:
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