Blockchain Papers

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Nov 26, 2018·DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals)
0 cites
Tokens & The Internet of Value: Blending Game Theory, Computer Science, Psychology, and Economics

Tom Savel, Katherine Kuzmeskas, Chrissa McFarlane, Mihaela Ulieru

Session Description: Tokenization is a fundamental and transformation feature enabled via a blockchain. Tokenization is the digital representation of a real-world or digital asset of value (e.g., health data, real estate, music, insurance, advertising, art). Once tokenized, assets can be easily and securely exchanged. Within the healthcare ecosystem, these digital assets can be used for many different purposes (incentivizing positive health behaviors, reward data sharing, facilitate communication, assuring data quality, etc.). This session will discuss the transformational impact tokenization can have within the healthcare ecosystem. Topics will also include the use of next generation, non-fungible tokens (e.g., ERC-721, “CryptoKitties”). As every technology has its challenges, concerns and pitfalls around tokenization and the internet of value will be discussed.

Open access
Business Strategy and Innovation
Scientific Research and Philosophical Inquiry
Original source
Oct 16, 2018·HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)
0 cites
Risks and strategic opportunities of a new technology cluster: Distributed digital ledgers

Marc Lassagne, Laurent Dehouck

his article examines the risks and opportunities associated with distributed ledgers technologies. A novel methodology is developed and presented in order to diagnose and manage their impacts using a strategic risk management perspective. Possible responses to the identified challenges are suggested.

Open access
Business Strategy and Innovation
Economic and Technological Developments in Russia
Innovation and Knowledge Management
Original source
May 23, 2018·Journal of risk and financial management
8 cites
The Wolf and the Caribou: Coexistence of Decentralized Economies and Competitive Markets

Andreas Freund, Danielle Stanko

Starting with BitTorrent and then Bitcoin, decentralized technologies have been on the rise over the last 15+ years, gaining significant momentum in the last 2+ years with the advent of platform ecosystems such as the Blockchain platform Ethereum. New projects have evolved from decentralized games to marketplaces to open funding models to decentralized autonomous organizations. The hype around cryptocurrency and the valuation of innovative projects drove the market cap of cryptocurrencies to over a trillion dollars at one point in 2017. These high valued technologies are now enabling something new: globally scaled and decentralized business models. Despite their valuation and the hype, these new business ecosystems are frail. This is not only because the underlying technology is rapidly evolving, but also because competitive markets see a profit opportunity in exponential cryptocurrency returns. This extracts value from these ecosystems, which could lead to their collapse, if unchecked. In this paper, we explore novel ways for decentralized economies to protect themselves from, and coexist with, competitive markets at a global scale utilizing decentralized technologies such as Blockchain.

Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Business Strategy and Innovation
Digital Platforms and Economics
Original source
Apr 2, 2018·Preprints.org
2 cites
The Wolf and The Caribou: Coexistence of Decentralized Economies and Competitive Market

Andreas Freund, Danielle Stanko

Starting with BitTorrent and then Bitcoin, decentralized technologies have been on the rise over the last 15+ years, gaining significant momentum in the last 2+ years with the advent of platform ecosystems such as the Blockchain platform Ethereum. New projects have evolved from decentralized games to marketplaces to open funding models to decentralized autonomous organizations. The hype around cryptocurrency and the valuation of innovative projects drove the market cap of cryptocurrencies to over a trillion dollars at one point in 2017. These high valued technologies are now enabling something new: globally scaled, decentralized business models. Despite their valuation and the hype, these new business ecosystems are frail. This is not only because the underlying technology is rapidly evolving, but also because competitive markets see a profit opportunity in exponential cryptocurrency returns. This extracts value from these ecosystems, which could lead to their collapse, if unchecked. In this paper, we explore novel ways for decentralized economies to protect themselves from, and coexist with competitive markets at a global scale utilizing decentralized technologies such as Blockchain.

Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Business Strategy and Innovation
Digital Platforms and Economics
Original source
Jan 1, 2018·Trendy v podnikåní
1 cites
Investments in cryptocurrencies: How risky are they?

JiĆ™Ä±Ì MĂĄlek, Van Quang Tran

Author Jiƙí Málek acknowledges the financial support of Czech Science Foundation with grant GAČR 18-05244S “Innovative Approaches to Credit Risk Management” and Institutional support IP 100040/1020. Author Tran van Quang is grateful for the financial support of grant GAČR 18-05244S “Innovative Approaches to Credit Risk Management” of Czech Science Foundation.

Open access
Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
Business Strategy and Innovation
Banking stability, regulation, efficiency
Original source
Jan 1, 2018·Communications of the Association for Information Systems
56 cites
Peer Review: Toward a Blockchain-enabled Market-based Ecosystem

Michel Avital

The scientific enterprise relies on a peer-review process to maintain the quality of academic discourse and to ensure researchers develop a valid and consistent cumulative body of knowledge. In recent years, it appears that the review capacity in the IS field has decreased, which indicates that the community’s hunger for publication accompanies only a modest appetite for providing the necessary support to sustain the consequent increase in peer-review load. The advent of blockchain technologies and the proliferation of cryptocurrencies presents an opportunity to develop a token-based peer-review payment system that can clear the congested review pipelines while also controlling for quality and spreading the equity that peer review generates in a fair fashion through market-regulation mechanisms. Despite the digital transformation of the publishing industry, little has been done thus far to address the chronic inefficiency of the review process. The typical review cycles, which are measured in years, suggest that something needs to change. Developing a token-based peer-review payment system may be an opportunity not only to address the apparent challenge in the peer-review process but also to assert our proclaimed role as stewards of the digital revolution.

Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Business Strategy and Innovation
Original source
Jan 1, 2018·Translational systems sciences
16 cites
Distributed Governance in Multi-sided Platforms: A Conceptual Framework from Case: Bitcoin

Juri Mattila, Timo SeppÀlÀ

Over the last decade, blockchain technology has facilitated a method by which a network of equipotent and equally privileged peers can jointly maintain and edit databases in an entirely decentralized manner, without any kind of an intermediary exhibiting unilateral control. As a consequence it has enabled the creation of a new type of multi-sided platform architecture with distributed governance. As the different platform provision functions are opened to free market competition rather than monopolized by a single entity, the monopoly-like pricing structure typical of platforms is overhauled. Instead, blockchain-enabled distributed platforms appear to share value more evenly between the all the different market sides connected to the platform. Our analysis reveals that blockchain technology adds new considerations to how multi-sided platform architectures should be perceived and analyzed.

Open access
Digital Platforms and Economics
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Business Strategy and Innovation
Original source
Mar 9, 2017·Copernican Journal of Finance & Accounting
4 cites
FIELDS OF POTENTIAL USE OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES IN THE PAYMENT SERVICES MARKET IN POLAND – RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Anna Piotrowska

The payment services market in Poland is particularly open to new payment solutions. The most important financial innovations of the recent years include cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the most well-known of them and its applications cover payments and investments. The article aims to determine the potential for using cryptocurrencies in individual segments of the payment services market in Poland. The paper considers the following research hypothesis: Representatives of the financial sector see a potential for a widespread use of cryptocurrencies in the payment services sector in Poland. The aim of the paper was achieved and the hypothesis verified on the basis of selected results of a survey among representatives of institutions operating in the financial market in Poland. The study, primarily carried out by the author, presents the opinions of experts representing the broadly understood community of professionals from the payment services market in Poland. Their views concern the directions in which innovations in the payment services sector may develop and the prospects for the use of cryptocurrencies in that area.

Open access
Business Strategy and Innovation
Digital Platforms and Economics
finance, banking, and market dynamics
Original source
Jan 1, 2017·KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
0 cites
Design and Implementation of Corporate Actions on a Decentralized Securities Depository

Jonas Hedin

Trading securities is a process that requires multiple trusted intermediaries to ensure that the trade is done correctly. The securities industry is therefore very slow and expensive; the central securities depository (CSD) being one of the main contributors to the disruption. In an effort to fix this, financial institutions has recently started looking into the blockchain technology; the innovation behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital currency that can be traded peer-to-peer without the need for a trusted intermediary. If this concept could be used when trading securities it would simplify the process, making the settlement-time near instant. In addition to the speedup, it would also save the industry a lot of money since many processes could be automated. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the blockchain technology and its applications in the finance industry. The focus is on how a blockchain could be used to reduce the responsibility of the central securities depository as much as possible, and especially on how corporate actions could be automated. The goal is to answer these questions: Is blockchain a suitable platform for a decentralized corporate actions solution? Whatare the benefits and drawbacks of using a blockchain versus a traditional centralized solution? The aim is to provide an evaluation of the usage of blockchains in finance, with extra focus on the CSD and corporate actions

Open access
Financial Reporting and Valuation Research
Securities Regulation and Market Practices
Business Strategy and Innovation
Original source
Jan 1, 2017·Managerial and Decision Economics
13 cites
Corporate diversification and innovation: Managerial myopia or inefficient internal capital markets?

Peter G. Klein, Robert Wuebker

Which is more innovative: the decentralized, diversified firm, or the centralized, more narrowly focused firm? The economics and finance literatures argue that diversified firms have innovation advantages as their operating units have access to an internal capital market. In contrast, the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures argue that managers of these firms suffer from “managerial myopia,” discouraging them from investing in projects with long‐term, uncertain payoffs. We take a fresh look at the relationship between innovation and diversification using a comprehensive sample of diversified and nondiversified firms and a novel approach that teases out the mechanisms influencing the relationship between diversification and innovation. Consistent with conceptual and empirical work in strategy, we find a robust negative correlation between diversification and R&D intensity, suggesting that diversification reduces innovation by discouraging investment. However, our analysis suggests that internal capital market inefficiencies, rather than managerial myopia, is responsible for this observed negative relationship.

Open access
2 source records
Corporate Finance and Governance
Business Strategy and Innovation
Innovation and Knowledge Management
Original source
Jan 1, 2017·Aaltodoc (Aalto University)
0 cites
Small wins as footholds for co-creation

Tua Björklund

Making a series of small bets rather than one large gamble is at the core of experimentation, thereby scaling down what is at stake. Less effortful and more specific behaviors are more likely to be followed through, so making things tangible increases your odds of translating intentions into actions. Small wins mark progress and offer proof-of-concept, opportunities for feedback, and opportunities for joining development efforts.

Open access
Service and Product Innovation
Business Strategy and Innovation
Open Source Software Innovations
Original source
Dec 20, 2016·Interactive science
1 cites
Cryptocurrency as an innovative tool of world trade

Daria Sergeevna Lyubshina

The article discusses the history of cryptocurrency, its positive and negative sides, legal status, the evaluation of the prospects for its use and investigates the possibilities of obtaining cryptocurrency, mechanism of operation and its impact on the development of the shadow economy.

Open access
Business and Economic Development
Economic Issues in Ukraine
Business Strategy and Innovation
Original source
Jan 1, 2016·International Journal of Business and Management
3 cites
CONTROL STRATEGY TO TRADE CRYPTOCURRENCIES

Josef Kokeơ, Michal Bejček

The paper deals with cryptocurrencies and trading. Main goal of this article is to introduce strategy for automated trading on cryptocurrency exchange market. For this purpose we will use algorithm based of Floyd-Warshall algorithm. Article is introductory and can this method can be developed in the future. First, a general introduction to cryptocurrencies is given from the programmer's point of view, some statistics data and figure representing volatility of exchange. Then the article describes some basic strategies for automated trading. Also explained is the algorithm Floyd-Warshall and its modifications for automation arbitrage. An illustrative example is given and a trading algorithm is listed.

Open access
3 source records
Business Strategy and Innovation
Stochastic processes and financial applications
Mathematical Dynamics and Fractals
Original source
May 1, 2015·London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science)
0 cites
Organizing to adapt and compete

Ricardo Alonso, Wouter Dessein, Niko Matouschek

We examine the relationship between the organization of a multi-divisional firm and its ability to adapt production decisions to changes in the environment. We show that even if lower-level manag-ers have superior information about local conditions, and incentive conflicts are negligible, a centralized organization can be better at adapting to local information than a decentralized one. As a result, and in contrast to what is commonly argued, an increase in product market competition that makes adaptation more important can favor centralization rather than decentralization. (JEL D21, D23, F23, L22) The organization theorist Chester Barnard and the economist Friedrich Hayek shared the view that the “economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place ” (Hayek 1945, 524). But whereas Hayek viewed adaptation as an autonomous process, undertaken by individual economic actors, Barnard (1938) stressed the ability of organizations to engage in what Oliver Williamson (1996, 2002) calls “coordinated adaptation.” Williamson (1996, 103), referring to Barnard and challenging Hayek, argues that:

Open access
Business Strategy and Innovation
Merger and Competition Analysis
Economic Theory and Institutions
Original source
Jan 1, 2015·CeON Repository (Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science)
1 cites
Transakcje kryptowalutą bitcoin - wybrane zagroĆŒenia

Kinga KądzioƂka

W artykule zwrĂłcono uwagę na wybrane zagroĆŒenia związane z internetowym systemem pƂatnoƛci za pomocą kryptowaluty bitcoin. Poruszone zostaƂy zagadnienia związane z anoniowoƛcią w sieci Bitcoin, pozyskiwaniem bitcoinĂłw, prawdopodobieƄstwem podwĂłjnego wydania ƛrodkĂłw (ang. double spending), ryzykiem inwestycji w kryptowalutę oraz ryzykiem AML.

Open access
Business Strategy and Innovation
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Digital Platforms and Economics
Original source
Jan 1, 2015·CBS Research Portal (Copenhagen Business School)
44 cites
Value Creation in Cryptocurrency Networks: Towards a Taxonomy of Digital Business Models for Bitcoin Companies

Erol Kazan, Chee‐Wee Tan, Eric T.K. Lim

Cryptocurrency networks have given birth to a diversity of start-ups and attracted a huge influx of venture capital to invest in these start-ups for creating and capturing value within and between such networks. Synthesizing strategic management and information systems (IS) literature, this study advances a unified theoretical framework for identifying and investigating how cryptocurrency companies configure value through digital business models. This framework is then employed, via multiple case studies, to examine digital business models of companies within the bitcoin network. Findings suggest that companies within the bitcoin network exhibits six generic digital business models. These six digital business models are in turn driven by three modes of value configurations with their own distinct logic for value creation and mechanisms for value capturing. A key finding of this study is that value-chain and value-network driven business models commercialize their products and services for each value unit transfer, whereas commercialization for value-shop driven business models is realized through the subsidization of direct users by revenue generating entities. This study contributes to extant literature on value configurations and digital businesses models within the emerging and increasingly pervasive domain of cryptocurrency networks.

Open access
Business Strategy and Innovation
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Big Data and Business Intelligence
Original source
Nov 7, 2014·arXiv (Cornell University)
1 cites
On the Complexity and Behaviour of Cryptocurrencies Compared to Other Markets

Daniel Wilson-Nunn, Héctor Zenil

We show that the behaviour of Bitcoin has interesting similarities to stock\nand precious metal markets, such as gold and silver. We report that whilst\nLitecoin, the second largest cryptocurrency, closely follows Bitcoin's\nbehaviour, it does not show all the reported properties of Bitcoin. Agreements\nbetween apparently disparate complexity measures have been found, and it is\nshown that statistical, information-theoretic, algorithmic and fractal measures\nhave different but interesting capabilities of clustering families of markets\nby type. The report is particularly interesting because of the range and novel\nuse of some measures of complexity to characterize price behaviour, because of\nthe IRS designation of Bitcoin as an investment property and not a currency,\nand the announcement of the Canadian government's own electronic currency\nMintChip.\n

Open access
3 source records
q-fin.ST
cs.IT
Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms
Original source
Mar 12, 2012·Strategic Management Journal
340 cites
Ambidexterity and performance in multiunit contexts: Cross‐level moderating effects of structural and resource attributes

Justin J.P. Jansen, Zeki ƞimƟek, Qing Cao

Abstract Research suggests that unit‐level ambidexterity positively impacts subsequent unit performance but theory and testing on this impact remain impoverished. We develop a cross‐level model suggesting that structural and resource attributes of the organizational context significantly shape the relationship between unit ambidexterity and performance. Using multisource and lagged data from 285 organizational units located within 88 autonomous branches, results from hierarchical linear modeling show that this relationship is boosted when the organization is decentralized, more resource munificent, or less resource interdependent. We also find that structural differentiation of the organization does not condition the unit ambidexterity‐performance relationship. Through this cross‐level theory and testing, we develop a richer explanation of the effectiveness of ambidextrous units operating in multiunit contexts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Open access
Business Strategy and Innovation
Innovation and Knowledge Management
Cognitive Science and Mapping
Original source
Jan 1, 2003·SSRN Electronic Journal
10 cites
Hayek's Catallaxy - A Forward Looking Concept for Information Systems?

Torsten Eymann, Stefan Sackmann, GĂŒnter MĂŒller, Ingo Pippow

The mobile and increasingly ubiquitous use of information technology leads to more dynamic, constantly self-reconfiguring networks. Their services are available anytime and anywhere; as software agents, they can make local, context-aware decisions. F. A. von Hayek developed a theory for economic coordination based on individual decision making. This paper presents the explanation concepts of economic self-organization as at least one option for the design of decentralized coordination of information systems consisting of autonomous software agents with limited information processing capacity and incomplete information. Experiments using a multi-agent system show that a targeted change of this basic rule set directly influences the behavior of the individual elements and indirectly the behavior of the overall system.

Open access
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Economic theories and models
Business Strategy and Innovation
Original source
Jan 1, 1972·Apress eBooks
2 cites
Introduction

B. Balamurugan, T. Poongodi, M. R. Manu, S. Karthikeyan · 5 authors

The moving image archive of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) includes a copy of the film The Double Day (1975), cataloged in the series Moving Images Relating to International Development Programs and Activities, 1979–1991, a collection of more than eight hundred titles “created to provide information on assistance programs supported by the Agency for International Development (AID).”1 Yet, The Double Day does not, in fact, directly depict or engage with any specific development or aid initiative. Instead, the film—directed by US-based Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg as part of the International Women’s Film Project collective and described as “the first Latin American feminist documentary”—examines the gendered dynamics of paid and unpaid labor through the testimonies of women from Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.2 Its presence in the USAID archive is likely a consequence of its funding history, having received support from the Inter-American Foundation, a USAID-affiliated entity; the development agencies of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; the United Nations Development Program; and US philanthropist Calvin Cafritz.3These transnational funding structures not only enabled the film’s production but also determined its archival destination, which renders legible its place within the history of international development.4 The Double Day’s institutional trajectory reflects the shifting configurations of aid, gender, and media during a historic moment when women were being repositioned at the center of what Arturo Escobar has described as development’s “regimes of visuality.”5 Especially relevant to The Double Day’s production and exhibition was the international institutional framework of Women in Development (WID). Emerging in the early 1970s and culminating in United Nations’ proclamation of 1975 as International Women’s Year, WID emphasized women’s participation in the global economy as both an index and mechanism of development. Indeed, The Double Day premiered at the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City.6 Within this context, the film forms part of a broader trajectory of media use by international organizations that intensified during the 1970s—as best exemplified by Media Habitat, a collection of 236 documentary films commissioned by the United Nations to represent urban and rural development initiatives for the 1976 Habitat Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver. As a policy-shaping initiative, Media Habitat primarily featured films from the Global South intended not only to illustrate but also to help codify standardized audiovisual markers of “underdevelopment” that determined access to the emerging global economic order and to international aid.7Framed in relation to these international institutions and their operations, The Double Day could similarly be considered “development media”—exemplifying the type of nonfiction media produced and distributed outside of the commercial film circuits whose aspects and subcategories have been variously described in scholarship as nontheatrical, useful, sponsored, institutional, industrial, educational, or nonprofessional/amateur.8 Scholars working in this area have emphasized the institutional contexts of such media’s production and exhibition infrastructures as shaping its instrumentalized effects. From a feminist perspective, such an approach is crucial to grappling with the broader question of how “gender impacts [these works’] shape, content, and trajectories.”9 Yet we also argue that, taken in isolation, the institutional and infrastructural contexts are insufficient to account for the complex relationship between media and development, potentially not only limiting our understanding of the reach and impact of development but also distorting our interpretive conclusions. For example, to categorize The Double Day as “development media” is to overlook the film’s place within Solberg’s directorial oeuvre, as well as within the histories of both transnational women’s filmmaking and radical Latin American documentary cinema to which it simultaneously belongs. Such exclusive framing is especially limiting given that women globally were disproportionately engaged in nonfiction production throughout the twentieth century—sometimes by political choice but more often due to structural exclusions from fiction filmmaking. Even in nonfiction historiography, however, institutional media has remained particularly marginal, reinforcing hierarchies that separate such works from the aesthetic and authorial frameworks through which film history has been constructed.10 This marginalization not only tends to erase women’s contributions but also presumes a “weak” or derivative authorship, rendering these films unworthy of the interpretive attention needed to apprehend their aesthetic and political complexity.11 The same dynamic is likely to structure assumptions about “development media” as well.Categorizing The Double Day exclusively within this category would further prompt us to assume top-down institutional analyses that have been characteristic of both institutional media methodologies and the scholarship on development at large. This, in turn, would risk obscuring this film’s radical Marxist approach to women’s labor as well as its concrete contribution to activism and its attendant grassroot structures. In Mexico City, The Double Day became a catalyst for feminist solidarity in practice when one of the film’s protagonists, Bolivian activist and trade unionist Domitila Barrios de Chungara, was invited to participate in the Tribune of Non-Governmental Organizations held alongside the official UN conference.12 There, Barrios de Chungara challenged Western feminist priorities by reframing the debate around labor, class, and imperialism, helping to articulate a shared Third World feminist agenda that significantly departed from the developmentalist vision of the United Nations and USAID.13 Seen through the lens of activist media, The Double Day helped forge transnational solidarity networks by enabling information exchange across the diverse voices that shaped its making—from the women featured in the film to the activists who circulated it—revealing a considerably more dynamic interplay between institutional and grassroots or contingent media practices.Moreover, the film’s Latin American context—reflected in Solberg’s formation in Brazil as the only woman in Cinema Novo, its focus on women from across the region, and its premiere and key reception in Mexico City—requires grappling with the regional specificities of the very notion of development in its multiple iterations.14 Far from being an epistemological and political framework imposed solely by the Global North, both the practices of development and the theoretical foundations of developmentalism (understood as a broad and polysemic set of discourses) were shaped through the active participation of Latin American economists.15 Within this iteration, underdevelopment, as a constitutive notion of developmentalism, became central to a distinctly critical strand, which by the late 1960s became known as the dependency theory.16 This same approach is reflected in some of the best-known Latin American radical film manifestos of the time, arising precisely from the same milieus to which Solberg belonged.17These various considerations of the film’s history illustrate the methodological challenges confronting feminist scholars seeking to assess the impact of development on media projects, theories, and practices. To disregard the developmentalist context of such works by emphasizing their political aesthetics and affects risks reproducing a romanticized narrative of heroic resistance (albeit from a feminist perspective). Yet to engage exclusively with their institutional and material infrastructures risks naturalizing developmentalism’s political and epistemological foundations at the expense of the goals and beliefs of the many women who participated in these projects. The contradictions and ambivalences that animate such histories call for feminist frameworks capable of holding both institutional complicity and radical possibility in view.This challenge resonates with ongoing debates about the politics of the archive and what Allyson Field has termed “the practice of informed speculation.”18 As she reminds us, feminist, queer, and decolonial methodologies have long taught us to “press at the limits” of the archive to “inoculate our scholarship against our evidence’s afflictions.”19 The concern that the evidence we draw on in our analysis reproduces the very structures and blind spots of the dominant ideology and therefore shapes and delimits our interpretation becomes particularly urgent when engaging the developmentalist media corpus. Informed speculation offers an alternative by inviting the experimental, creative, and speculative rewriting of history, mobilizing the archive “in a project that runs counter to the original purpose, or the imperative to preserve, or the conditions that led to erasure.”20 Yet, as Field cautions, such speculative gestures must remain grounded in a deep and “intimate familiarity with the archive” that we are working with and against. Building on this imperative, we suggest that the developmentalist archive, in particular, demands expansion and critical reconsideration in ways that unsettle the very disciplinary frameworks through which it has been studied as well as the larger institutional contexts for such knowledge production.Our focus on The Double Day in the opening of this introduction thus foregrounds the entanglements of institutional and grassroots forces, local and international contexts, structural and interpersonal relations, and creative and economic factors that have shaped not only this film but the broader ecosystem of development media projects—and their preservation—over time. Addressing such a constellation involves transgressing methodologically entrenched divisions between political economy and aesthetics, between material infrastructures and affective regimes; reckoning with divergent periodizations across film history and world economics; and situating these within the local specificities of women’s movements and international institutional programs. It also demands attentiveness to the coexistence of multiple, and sometimes competing, understandings of development—each historically, geographically, and ideologically situated.We imagine this special issue as an opening toward a critical dialogue, not only about how such an approach might be enacted in practice but also about the far-reaching ways development paradigms have shaped both our objects of study and the contours of the field itself. The decision to center institutionally sponsored films across all the essays in this issue is deliberate and enables us to highlight institutional critique as a vital methodological imperative within our analytical framework. Created within the frameworks of international organizations, state agencies, or NGOs, these films’ histories make legible the institutional logics that underwrite their production. Yet our critique does not stop at these specific entities. Rather, we argue for a broader interrogation of the political conditions and institutional infrastructures that shape media and knowledge production more generally. This includes contemporary corporations embedded in the digital platform economy, from streaming services to the rapid expansion of AI. Equally critical is a reflexive examination of academia itself, where departments of economics, political science, and centers for development have played a formative role in producing and legitimizing developmentalist theories and policy frameworks. While the humanities and arts have at times offered critical alternatives, they have also frequently mirrored and reinforced many of the same developmentalist assumptions. A feminist analysis of the nexus between development and media must therefore unsettle not only dominant archives but also the institutional and disciplinary foundations of our own scholarly practices.As scholars, we share the complex position of navigating the same tensions between institutional complicity and emancipatory aspiration as many of the media-makers whose work we study. Mirroring our subjects is also the transnational, collective mode of this special issue’s own production as it emerges from an ongoing informal working group we have sustained over several years. While relying on institutional and disciplinary affordances—such as university funding for conferences or access to academic publishing platforms—we have been working toward creating a community that exceeds, and often resists, the prevailing logics of our academic institutions. Our aim has been to create a space for shared inquiry and mutual support that pushes back against disciplinary siloing and technocratic neoliberal assessment modes of both labor and knowledge production—and this certainly extends to our experience collaborating with the journal editors throughout the publication process. Our goal has been to examine both the persistence and variability of developmentalism, understood as what Gustavo Esteva calls a “powerful but fragile semantic constellation,” as a conceptual formation that has historically inspired, legitimized, and mobilized media projects across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.21 And gendered biopolitics, from population control to gender mainstreaming, have remained integral to development policies and media practices, recurring across formats from institutional newsreels to film festivals.We share the conviction that, far beyond the history of nonfiction institutional media, development (as both a broad ideological project and a network of material and institutional practices) and developmentalism (as a set of discourses and theoretical models associated with development) have exerted a far-reaching influence on film and media cultures at large. As such, they must be treated as a major force in shaping global film and media systems and also the many ongoing assumptions behind their critical discourses. The discipline of communication studies was founded on modernization theory governed by Cold War goals of dissemination of Western liberal democracy around the world, while “an area studies framework allowed compartmentalizing Western and non-Western outcomes of technologies that were always claimed to be universal.”22 Despite critique from postcolonial and critical race studies, many of these frameworks have remained foundational for media theory.23 In historical scholarship, as we increasingly move beyond “modernity” as a dominant conceptual anchor, engaging with practices and discourses of development opens more precise analytical pathways. These film and media’s entanglements with the logics of and economic and the associated with as well as their conceptual underdevelopment, and impact in as diverse as and of media aesthetic and paradigms in film and film and funding are developmentalist assumptions to the they to underwrite the narrative and logics of and global media from the structure of the film to the cultures of argue that a examination of the historical entanglements between film and developmentalist aesthetics, modes of as well as infrastructures and critical the and that our contemporary media is a of the historical contours of development as a field of inquiry embedded within a of some of the methodologies by the featured in this special a of this complex history, to the larger at in media, development, and gender all its development a it as an of be with practices as divergent as and in In as we work on this the of the of the USAID the ideological that have the history of international the and of this on the global its a from development as a global practice and as an institutional and which over the has as a with its own media Yet or does not erase the historical impact of these the contradictions they have reflected and over the as the of development several crucial to the economic theories of development initiatives to and through the of the development an international policy framework at from the Global to the of the Global the by the political role of and the of the International the on was challenged by dependency theory and at development as global structural the neoliberal of the the Programs by the and World imposed and as conditions for and forms of assistance became known as the major markers for international development development has moving beyond economic to such as the Human Development and the Development and from international organizations such as the United Nations to a broader network of These frameworks increasingly of and liberal of and with what in many ways to various while the of the to development’s epistemological more scholarship has toward a of its and material the field has to a of and critical by and scholars, which development as a dynamic of conceptual and political to these the studies in this special issue call for sustained analysis in place of In we draw from a of and that in of of gender and to this special issue engage that and from Mexico to contemporary specific local historical of global distinctly feminist methodologies as well as attention to studies that this issue a in the global history of development on and documentary work in Mexico how early women infrastructures as of while US films an early of state and transnational on a outside the Global as the of developmentalist both the and markers of development media, its to the and Latin central grounded in archival also women’s in transnational and the methodological of archives on study of the series to a a digital media not by but by women not as but as subjects and within circuits of neoliberal and the aesthetics and of how development’s has models of to contemporary neoliberal paradigms of and analysis how digital and gender and practices, discourses on and their of these essays the of some of the historical of developmentalist as the question of the role of the state within such on a notion of economic as a and the dominant of development that the state as the for and through infrastructural projects. This understanding of development was shared across both of the as well as in the Third The United and the increasingly mobilized international in the of the modes of international at the postcolonial of policy and ideological These programs were at the expansion of their and of while with the and decolonial of The conceptual between modernization and development that the Cold in of and hierarchies of that long and As an of postcolonial their role as of international aid concern about the of Western development projects. In alternative across the Global South that to structural between and through policies of and In many they were further the global structures. In Latin for example, this approach was through organizations such as the United Nations for Latin and the both developmentalist projects and their have taken many forms historically, and they have and they have been to a of projects, and postcolonial and development has been and in ways and with frequently political While many of these alternative frameworks the embedded in dominant Western they often technocratic and assumptions. gender and gender as for the of to be shaped by This becomes particularly in the media that of development where women frequently a crucial associated with and women were as both the subjects and of their participation in the and labor often as the index of In this study of from the 1970s how women were as of this as these about women’s urban and recurring and of a within the own of and critique that official examination of archives and enables a feminist interrogation of their mobilizing a of the in the of contribution to this issue similarly the of a dynamic within as well as across ideological the of women’s and the media of the and as active in labor and as integral to the technocratic women became of as their labor remained a of and analysis and archival with attention to the specific of and It also transnational that as a and affective a nexus of and practices through which gender, media, and developmentalism one film not as a but as part of the of alongside and work a broader concern of this special media as a of developmentalist projects. The debates the World and which international such as the United Nations and a critical historical for such primarily by postcolonial and of the for the of media and communication infrastructures in as to counter Western The a between and economic how systems of media and reinforced global hierarchies of and in an agenda that supported and alternative media infrastructures across postcolonial contexts, the framework gender as an analytical This “gender in the 1970s by of the Women in Development in relation to The Double its political critique of with its broader to center women in development policy through and This was also in of media, which was shaped by its international reach and audiovisual production and and and Yet, as WID institutional it also to the and of the women’s development programs often by in These were by a of studies, and on and the to of women’s presence and through the of their economic and In this on the filmmaker this history directly by the and of for women by the WID framework during the with and agencies the of and against Women in at the of the neoliberal turn, when institutional media often the only to access and support to projects. The an by this dynamic as of the from the Global South are to engage with the developmentalist assumptions funding models that their similarly the as a in developmentalist media history by the of and centers on the Film a between of and the attention toward the and labor by and work was foundational the of and the of audiovisual aid, as both a of development projects and a critical for their the in this issue argue for a with media, gender, and developmentalism as an field of that is and shaped by feminist and methodologies and that challenge the entanglements between academic knowledge production and and technocratic development And while methodological these dynamics at the structural the of feminist in media and cinema by this the very a

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