Exploring informal sector community innovations and knowledge appropriation: A study of Kashmiri pashmina shawls

Abstract

The informal sector has become an increasingly popular subject of study. This sector has been a prominent feature of the development landscape of many countries around the globe. It is increasingly becoming the major source of employment in third world countries and thus constitutes a significant and important portion of labour force. In spite of its bigger size and its contributions to the economy, however, the informal sector has been mainly looked at from the perspective of employment and its related areas. The other potential areas of this sector, such as knowledge generation mechanisms, appropriation, etc., have remained largely unexplored. Considering the significance of such innovations, this paper is a modest attempt to conceptualise ‘informal sector community innovations’. Specifically, this paper addresses the question: to what extent do ‘communities’ in the informal sector produce, manage, protect and share new knowledge. The focus of the paper, apart from conceptualising ‘community innovations’, is to explore various informal appropriation mechanisms used by different communities.