Dr Georgina Gomez has secured a Euro 450,000 research grant to gain an understanding of frugality as value and as practice in current socio-economic life.
This study aims at better understanding frugality as value and as practice in current socio-economic life. It enquires into the ways in which the value of frugality is translated into daily practices, institutionalized into formal and informal rules and disseminated within organizations, communities, and individuals in multiple locations.
Six Latin American countries
The research project will cover six Latin American countries and will be carried out locally by ISS alumni.
The research will study a Jesuit group of missionary educationalists in Latin America that aim at providing high quality education in marginal, remote and low-income locations. The organization defines itself as operating 'beyond where the asphalt ends' according to the values of frugality in its double meaning of achieving the best educational quality with limited resources.
Discourses on frugality
Discourses on frugality refer to a long and well established value that attracts attention again in the current situation of polycentric development and environmental crisis. The Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa, for example, connects the concept of frugality to new technological designs that seeks best performance with scarce resources. Frugality has generally been embraced as a positive value, although it has not undergone much scrutiny. Is frugality the principle that explains a quick fix and resignation to constrained resources, or is it a virtue that spurs creativity and commitment amidst adversity?
- Professor
