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Cultivating Online Virtual Community of Purpose to Mitigate Knowledge Asymmetry and Market Separation of Rural Artisans in India

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Evolving Perspectives on ICTs in Global Souths (IDIA 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1236))

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Abstract

One of the key deficiencies in many marginalized rural communities is lack of linkage to local and larger metropolitan area opportunity structure, financial, technical, social and political resources. The primary reason behind this is the knowledge asymmetry between rural communities and the urban marketplace and associated agencies, which often disallows rural artisans to sustain profitable entrepreneurial ventures. Knowledge asymmetry occurs when one party (the artisans) in an economic transaction possesses lesser market knowledge (or, lesser understanding about the market context in which a business operates) than the other party (urban marketplace and associated agencies). The resultant market separation derivative of knowledge asymmetry necessitates dependence on middlemen and resultant lack of autonomy for the rural artisans, which often impedes a rural community in achieving workable levels of self-sufficiency. This paper proposes building an online virtual community of purpose to mitigate knowledge asymmetry and market separation of Indian rural artisans. The community of purpose is defined as a community of people, who are going through the same process or are trying to achieve a similar objective. The paper concludes by providing an architectural framework of a Community Information System (CIS), through which we have attempted in building a virtual community of purpose for rural Indian artisans by connecting them digitally with other relevant actors in the craft production system.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Informatics Research Group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata, India

    Sneha Bhattacharyya, Jayanta Basak & Somprakash Bandyopadhyay

  2. Department of Information Technology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

    Parama Bhaumik

Authors
  1. Sneha Bhattacharyya
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  2. Jayanta Basak
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  3. Parama Bhaumik
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  4. Somprakash Bandyopadhyay
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Somprakash Bandyopadhyay .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. United Nations University Institute in Macau, Macau, China

    Don Rodney Junio

  2. University of South Africa, Roodepoort, South Africa

    Cecile Koopman

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Bhattacharyya, S., Basak, J., Bhaumik, P., Bandyopadhyay, S. (2020). Cultivating Online Virtual Community of Purpose to Mitigate Knowledge Asymmetry and Market Separation of Rural Artisans in India. In: Junio, D., Koopman, C. (eds) Evolving Perspectives on ICTs in Global Souths. IDIA 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1236. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52014-4_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52014-4_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52013-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52014-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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