Books by "A. Madana Mohan Rao"
4 books found
The 'Indian Techie' has become a global icon, taking its place alongside McDonalds and MTV as one of the key symbols of contemporary globalization. India and the IT Revolution explores the contemporary emergence of cosmopolitan, high-tech India as marking the arrival of a truly global cyberculture. It argues against the notion that globalization is a process of 'Westernization', which radiates out unilaterally from the core, imposing itself upon a passive, backward periphery. Instead, it conceives of global culture as a dynamic, innovative network, which proceeds primarily from its edges.
Ghana has been a crucial site of encounters between the West and Africa and a historic center for twentieth-century Pan-African independence movements. Today, it has also emerged as an important node of technology-driven development in the Global South. Ghana's activist software developers and digital diaspora are redefining the role of technology, not simply as a means for economic growth, but as a tool for greater African political autonomy. In this rich ethnography, Reginold A. Royston uses the term "Pan-African futurism" to describe the redemptive ethos among technologists working on development projects on the ground in Africa today. Royston charts the explosion of mobile Internet access on the African continent, growing interest in African tech entrepreneurship, and the flowering of digital transnational ties. Ghana's Pan-African futurists advocate entrepreneurship and civil society activism as a means of "hacking" the kinds of socioeconomic development that have long been advocated by NGOs. Using participant observation and interviews with tech developers on the ground and media producers in the diaspora, including in virtual spaces and with communities online, Royston provides a nuanced portrait of tech users focused on "social good" emanating from the Global South, expanding the discourse for contemporary Pan-African politics.
A successful design practice requires principals and staff who are creative, technically proficient, and financially savvy. Designing Profits focuses on the last component—the one that is so elusive for many architects, engineers, and construction professionals—the business aspects of practice. Not an ordinary book on practice issues or finance, Designing Profits explains the application of design thinking to guide wise business decisions. It is indeed possible to be as creative in establishing and operating a practice as in designing and constructing a building. The book offers comprehensive guidance and objective tools for design professionals to reap financial rewards from their practices, and to discover innovative strategies to become entrepreneurial and implement creative practice models. An extended case study is woven throughout the book. Witness the trials and tribulations of Michelangelo & Brunelleschi Architects as they engage problematic clients, tight project budgets and schedules, low fees and insufficient profits, marketing issues, quirky staff, technology upgrades, and growth, among other difficult challenges. This mythical firm, a composite of several real-life practices, navigates through these various dilemmas, providing readers with insights into superior financial management and a reimagined services portfolio.
This book studies the politics surrounding Indian emigration from the 19th century to the present day. Bringing together data and case studies from across five continents, it moves beyond economic and social movers of migration, and explores the role of politics—both local and global—in shaping diaspora at a deeper level. The work will be invaluable to scholars and students of migration and diaspora studies, development studies, international politics, and sociology as well as policy-makers, and non-governmental organizations in the field.