Invitation: IKMAS Seminar Series No.5/2016 @ Wed Apr 20, 2016 2.30 pm- 4.30 pm

THE INSTITUTE OF MALAYSIAN AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (IKMAS) UNIVERSITI KEBANGSAAN MALAYSIA  cordially invites you to;

IKMAS SEMINAR SERIES NO.5/2016

 ABSTRACT

The Seminar will address ways in which outside interveners can best achieve effective technology transfer to small farmers. Securing adoption and utilization of new technologies is vital in rural development, but hard to achieve.

Farm households are often locked in to familiar ways of operation, which although primitive at least ensure basic minimal outputs in situations fraught with climatic and other uncertainties.

Getting to higher outputs frequently entails use of ‘social engineering’. Here new methods are contained within special systems of operation, which may themselves involve departures from socially conventional approaches. Outside interveners may introduce such systems in a ‘bottom up’ manner, where new approaches are worked out and agreed in community discussions, or in a ‘top-down’ down manner with little consultation.

This interesting topic will be explored by Colin Barlow in relation to rural development in eastern Indonesia, where circumstances are backward and new technologies promise large advances in productivity and incomes. There recent approaches have generally been bottom-up, following adverse results from earlier top-down initiatives. It is hoped that senior Malaysians attending the seminar can then discuss the more top-down approaches taken in Felda and MADA schemes, enabling useful comparisons to be made.

BIODATA

Dr Colin Barlow is the CEO of an Australian NGO, the Nusatenggara Association, which has worked on rural development in eastern Indonesia for over 25 years. He has also been closely involved with oil palm and rubber, and especially with small farmer land developments, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. He is a visiting fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University, Canberra. His recent books on Malaysia include The World Rubber Industry (Routledge, 2010 with S.K. Jayasuriya and Tan Suan) and Malaysian Politics and Economics in the New Century (Edward Elgar, 2003, editor with Francis Loh Kok Wah. He is also a contributor the The Palm Oil Complex (NUS Press, 2016)

We look forward to your participation in this seminar. Confirmation of your attendance is greatly appreciated.  For further information please call 8921- 5839 or 8921-3782.