Quality Rice: An Ethnographic Study of Rice Agroecology in Northern Bangladesh (MA Dissertation)
Synopsis: In this ethnographic study, I examined how the concept of quality rice is socially constructed, economically contested, and culturally performed among the rural peasantry. Though no professional quality tester exists in the rice supply chains in Bangladesh, invisible actors attach an elusive quality hierarchy to the Bangladeshi local rice market, and rural peasants’ quality perceptions remain unheard. I illustrate how peasant communities perceive, appreciate, and interpret the quality of rice and why their interpretations differ from the conventional classification of quality. Rural peasants’ perceptions of the quality of rice are grounded on the materiality and relationality of rice production, distribution, and consumption, which inform their social dispositions, class conditionings, and livelihood patterns. Perception of quality also differs from one's gendered locations; it varies over time across spaces.
Beneficiaries’ Perspectives of Income-Generating Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD) Program on Sustainable Socioeconomic Development: A Union-Level Study (Honor’s Senior Project)
Synopsis: From a bottom-up, right-based approach to development, I examined how community people think about the operational strategy and outcome of one of Bangladesh’s largest and most successful safety-net programs. Although the success of the VGD program is lauded for combating poverty and widening entrepreneurial activities among beneficiary households, the program operation is plagued by unhealthy practices of party politics, corruption, nepotism, and selling VGD cards through bribery by local governments. As a result, most eligible candidates from the poor community could not access safety-net programs.