bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
New Perspectives for Modernization in Central America
Authors: Irvin George
Published: October 2008

ABSTRACT

Ostensibly, the Central American Left has been defeated both politically, in the Nicaraguan elections, and economically, with the triumph of orthodox economic adjustment policy. In reality, the end of the Cold War promises to alter the economic and political climate in a way that will encourage the region's long‐delayed modernization. Although the political arena remains turbulent, moderate forces are emerging which Washington will find easier to support. Equally promising is the region's favourable record of economic adjustment in the second half of the 1980s. A more favourable world climate for world trade in the 1990s would ease the region's foreign exchange constraint and enable a further round of industrialization to take place, while further eroding the economic basis of ‘oligarchic despotism’.
Elites, the Rural Masses and Land in Paraguay: The Subordination of the Rural Masses to the Ruling Class
Authors: Kleinpenning J.M.G. , Zoomers E.B.
Published: October 2008

ABSTRACT

Despite the fact that rural ownership and tenure relationships were very unfavourable to the majority when President Stroessner came to power, there was little or no peasant rebellion during his regime, and the rural masses were unable to force the government to improve their situation. This paper explains the lack of resistance by the rural poor in terms of the effectiveness of the repressive regime, which kept the poor quiet and either eliminated or discouraged capable young leaders who might have organized a defence of the rights of the rural population. Agricultural colonization has also served as a safety valve, reducing the tensions among the rural poor which might otherwise have led to more radical reforms that would have been against the interests of the landowning elite. A further explanation of the weak resistance is to be found in the lack of unity among the rural poor. Opposed interests have thwarted their adequate organization and the appearance of large and successful rural social movements. The paper begins by providing some historical background.
Gifts and Rights: Cautionary Notes on Community Self‐help in Thailand
Authors: Vandergeest Peter
Published: October 2008

ABSTRACT

A pervasive assumption in the critical literature and practice of development has been that capitalism and state‐building has undermined relatively autonomous village communities in which there were equalizing institutions of mutual help or gift‐giving. These assumptions tend to retain the dualisms of modernization theories by reversing them. The author argues that we should instead challenge these dualisms, and look for complexity and contradictions within both the past and the present. He then draws on a study in Thailand to show how the ‘village’ was a product of state‐building, and how in the past the idiom of ‘helping’ constituted relations of domination and extraction as well as more egalitarian relations of mutual help. The use of the language of the gift confers power on the giver; since the 1930s, state officials have appropriated and transformed the language of ‘helping’ to coerce villagers into working on ‘development’ projects. Until the 1970s, villagers described ‘development’ as coerced serf labour, but since then, they have struggled with mixed results to redefine development as their right to participate in the national and global product. The author finishes by arguing that, in the context of the current global crisis of accumulation, we should reclaim rural development as a democratic right, opposing neoliberal attempts to redefine it as a gift which government and development agencies can discontinue at their will.
Illicit Drug Production and Supply‐side Drugs Policy in Asia and South America
Authors: Whynes David
Published: October 2008

This paper examines the feasibility of current policies of supply limitation as an instrument for the control of dangerous drugs (principally South American cocaine and Asian heroin). The structure of production and distribution is examined, and revenue estimates are made. A range of supply‐side policy options are evaluated by means of a simple game‐theory approach. In all cases, it is concluded that supply‐side policies are likely to prove ineffectual as a means of drug control.
Communal Forest Management: The Honduran Resin Tappers
Authors: Stanley Denise L.
Published: October 2008

Natural resource tenure and economic feasibility of resource‐based activities are two of the most important issues in the current debate around environmental degradation and rural poverty. While many analyses have blamed the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and government mismanagement for environmental destruction, this paper provides a case study of resin tapping in Honduras which formulates the hypotheses that common property regimes can be successful and that economic liberalization policies may be detrimental to community‐level resource schemes. Over half of the 6000 farmer‐resin tappers in Honduras are organized into forty‐six co‐operatives that market the tree sap, wood and other forest products. These activities combine the twin goals of community‐based forest preservation and income generation. Established legally in 1974, the tapping groups have expanded to include a variety of organizational and technical arrangements. The two co‐operatives of Villa Santa and San Juan de Ojojona demonstrate contrasting histories, ecological endowments and economic outcomes. Currently the Honduran resin tappers are facing problems over their access to forest resources, the fluctuating profitability of extractive activities and the stability of the co‐operative organization. These three issues are relevant to a variety of community‐based environmental activities, and the lessons of the Honduran experience can be applied to analyse the processes of environmental degradation and community response elsewhere in the Third World.
The Indonesian Family Planning Programme: A Success Story for Women?
Authors: Smyth Ines
Published: October 2008

The Family Planning Programme of Indonesia is constantly being hailed as a success story for its performance in reducing fertility rates in many parts of the country. This paper examines what this apparent success has meant for women, taking women's rights to the control of their fertility as the necessary aim for all family planning programmes, and the safeguarding of their reproductive health as an obligation. In the paper, the aims and methods of the Family Planning Programme are examined separately, in order to assess on the one hand the extent and the manner in which women's interests are acknowledged in its objectives, and, on the other, whether in its implementation the programme takes into account the needs of women, both as recipients and as family planning workers. The main conclusion of the paper is that the priorities, style of implementation and service delivery of the programme do not provide women with the means of regulating their fertility autonomously through access to freely chosen contraceptives and related services. In addition, the paper concludes that the safeguard and improvement of women's reproductive health is not among the concerns of the programme, in principle or in practice.
Indian Lands, Environmental Policy and Military Geopolitics in the Development of the Brazilian Amazon: The Case of the Yanomami
Authors: Albert Bruce
Published: October 2008

This article examines the realignments of the developmentalist discourse and strategy of the Brazilian military for the Amazon during the civilian government of the ‘New Republic’ (1985–90). It focuses on a case study, i.e. the official expropriation of the lands of the Yanomami Indians in the states of Roraima and Amazonas along the Brazil/Venezueta border. The analysis brings to light how, during this period, the military aimed at neutralizing both the pressure of environmental NGOs on Brazil's international creditors and the emergent democratization of decisions on land use in Amazônia. It shows how such attempts involved manipulating environmental legislation and ecological rhetoric in order to perpetuate military hegemony over the development of Amazônia to the benefit of mining interests. Finally, the paper traces the roots of these manœuvres to a geopolitical and economical model for Amazonian integration still inspired by the national security doctrine drawn up in the 1950s and 1960s by the Escola Superior de Guerra.
The Informal Financial Sector in Bangladesh: An Appraisal of its Role in Development
Authors: Rahman Atiq
Published: October 2008

Informal financial markets in developing countries, and their role in the development process itself, form a relatively neglected area when it comes to research and policy planning. It seems, however, that this may be due to inaccurate perceptions of the value and effectiveness of this sector, and of its relationship to formal sector financial institutions. This paper uses data from an extensive research project on informal financial markets in Bangladesh to examine the size of the informal market, its relationship to the formal financial sector and the part it plays in the process of development. The paper concludes that, in all these aspects, the informal financial markets are more important, more efficient and more equitable than is generally supposed.
Reforming Peasant Production in Africa: Power and Technological Change in Two Nigerian Villages
Authors: Eyoh Dickson L.
Published: October 2008

Differential access to state‐allocated incentives, based on socio‐economic inequalities in rural society, is commonly assumed to be a key determinant of change in rural Africa. This article argues that, given the spatial diversity of Africa's rural political economies, analysis of the politics of rural change needs to be premised on an appreciation of the multiplicity of social relations through which rural power structures are configured. Data from a field study of a World Bank assisted agricultural development project in Lafia, Nigeria, are used to illustrate the manner in which spatial and inter‐community variations in responses to commercialization, cultural divisions and the reorganization of political relations during the colonial era combine to sustain regional power structures which are defined by such differences. A comparative analysis of two village communities at opposite ends of the regional spectrum of commercialization is employed to demonstrate how such power structures provide a framework within which the political conditions of access operate to the advantage of both dominant socio‐economic strata and members of particular cultural communities.
From Idealism to Realism: Women, Feminism and Empowerment in Nicaraguan Tailoring Co‐operatives
Authors: Mayoux Linda
Published: October 2008

Co‐operatives have been widely promoted as the ideal type of project for women. Because of the focus on income earning, they have been seen as less threatening than more explicit attempts to organize feminist consciousness‐raising groups. Based on field research conducted in 1988, this article discusses the experience of women in the Nicaraguan tailoring co‐operatives. After the 1979 Revolution, these were set up on a large scale as part of a wider economic policy and grassroots political mobilization. After an initial period of expansion in which many women benefited both in improved income and access to training and management experience, the co‐operatives found themselves in serious difficulty by 1988. It is argued that even without the wider economic crisis in Nicaragua, they would have faced serious problems without extensive and probably unsustainable state support. Although co‐operative employment has considerable potential, the Nicaraguan case highlights the need for new thinking on ways to resolve basic tensions between economic efficiency and worker participation. It also casts doubt on their viability as a development alternative for women, without specific attention to basic gender inequalities.
Of Coconuts and Kings: The Political Economy of an Export Crop
Authors: Boyce James K.
Published: October 2008

The Philippines is the world's leading coconut exporter. The benefits of this trade for Filipino producers have been circumscribed by declining terms of trade in the world market and by highly unequal distribution of coconut‐sector income at home. A case study of the Philippine coconut trade illustrates the crucial importance of linkages between wealth and power in determining the size and distribution of income in export agriculture.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

‘To talk of many things:

of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax —

Of cabbages — and — kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

And whether pigs have wings.’

Carroll (1922: 186)
The Political Ecology of Extraction and Extractive Reserves in East Kalimantan, Indonesia
Authors: Peluso Nancy Lee
Published: October 2008

Extractive reserves established in the Amazon have given development professionals hope for solving two critical problems in conservation and development: the empowerment of indigenous people and the conservation of tropical forests. The extraction of non‐timber forest products has provided an important part of the livelihood strategies of rainforest dwelling people and of the regional economy of East Kalimantan for some two millennia. The specific political‐economic and environmental circumstances of Indonesia and interior Kalimantan, however, preclude applying the Amazonian model for extractive reserves. Using a political ecology framework, this article analyses sociological and environmental factors emerging over the past two and a half decades and influencing contemporary rattan production and trade. Based on this analysis, the author concludes that the politics of forest management, at both the national and local levels, are more conducive to village level extractive reserves than to regional, labour‐based organizations.
Panchayati Raj in West Bengal: Popular Participation for the People or the Party?
Authors: Webster Neil
Published: October 2008

Since 1978 the Left Front government in West Bengal, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — CPI(M) — has pursued a strategy of decentralized planning through locally elected panchayats (councils) in the countryside. The stated ideological commitment of the CP1(M) is to support and eventually empower the poor and oppressed and this has resulted in Panchayati Raj assuming the status of not just a state sponsored decentralization strategy, but the institutional forum for the mobilization of the poor and the expansion of the party's base. However the CPI(M)'s strategy is to some extent ambiguous in that it combines a need to maintain an electoral status as a party leading a state government within the Indian Union and a political status as a party promoting the conditions for, and the transition to, a people's democracy and thereby socialism.
The Geography of Economic Development and Racial Discrimination in Brazil
Authors: Lovell Peggy A.
Published: October 2008

This study investigates the relationship between unequal resource and population distribution and racial wage inequality in Brazil. Using sample data from the 1980 Brazilian census, monthly wages were estimated for white and Afro‐Brazilian men working in nine metropolitan areas. Estimates showed that racial disparities in wages existed across all regional labour markets. Regression‐based decomposition analysis found that a substantial portion of the racial wage gap was due to discrimination (unequal pay), while estimates of the magnitude of labour market discrimination indicated considerable variation by geographical area. Discrimination was higher in the predominantly white and highly developed areas of the South than in the former slave and underdeveloped regions of the Northeast.
Who is the ‘Other‘?: A Postmodern Feminist Critique of Women and Development Theory and Practice
Authors: Parpart Jane L.
Published: October 2008

In the last decade poststructural and postmodern critiques have increasingly dominated the world of scholarship. The grand theories of the past have been called into question; universals have been overtaken by particularities and difference. Feminist scholars have reacted to postmodernism in a number of ways. Some reject it outright, while others call for a synthesis of feminist and postmodern approaches. Many scholars and activists concerned with Third World issues, especially poverty and development, have rejected both feminism and postmodernism, dismissing them as First World preoccupations, if not indulgences. This article seeks to explore the relevance of postmodern feminism for Third World problems and analysis, particularly its utility for theorists and practitioners concerned with issues of women and development.
State, Politics and the Idea of Social Justice in Chile
Authors: Silva Patricio
Published: October 2008

This article explores the ways in which the idea of social justice has been utilized during this century as an idée‐force in Chilean politics. It stresses the Catholic background of the concept and shows how it has been adapted to the political objectives of several doctrinal streams. The idea of social justice has been a powerful ideological instrument for governments in their attempts to deal with the social expectations of the electorate and to create a broad consensus between different political and social sectors. This idea has also been historically related to an active state role in the search for equity through income distribution and the adoption of progressive social legislation. While the recent military government (1973‐90) radically reformulated both the social function of the state and the official definition of social justice, the current democratic authorities seem to have readopted the idea of social justice as a key element in their ideological discourse.
Agrarian Transformation and the Distribution of Fixed Productive Assets in China
Authors: McKinley Terry
Published: October 2008

The distribution of fixed productive assets is more unequal than the distribution of land in rural China, but the two distributions to some degree offset each other because of economic specialization and the role of rural industrial and commercial enterprises. Surprisingly, the distribution of fixed productive assets has the most equalizing effect on the distribution of rural wealth. This is partly due to the mixed ownership patterns of assets. The households with the highest values of fixed productive assets are not particularly rich, and neither are assetless households particularly poor. The distribution of fixed assets is a key reason why the distribution of wealth in rural China is actually more equal than the distribution of income, a result which is most unusual for a developing country.
A Development Success Story? Low Caste Entrepreneurship and Inequality: An Indian Case Study
Authors: Mayoux Linda
Published: October 2008

Small‐scale industry development, particularly when targeting disadvantaged groups, has often been promoted as a possible alternative to fundamental change in property relations, and for women as a way of improving their position without direct forms of feminist organization. This article discusses a relatively successful case of small‐scale entrepreneurship development in the silk reeling industry in five villages in South India. In this area, despite the substantial amounts of capital and risk involved, an unusually high number of Scheduled Caste ex‐labourers have managed to become reasonably successful entrepreneurs. Based on the findings of survey and anthropological research conducted over a period of six months between 1989 and 1991 it considers the factors contributing to these cases' success: characteristics of the reeling industry, the nature of government intervention and the socioeconomic and historical context of this particular area. However, as argued in the second half of the article, the upward mobility for some has been dependent on the availability of cheap labour and the manipulation of caste and family loyalties within the disadvantaged groups. Significantly, gender inequalities have remained, despite the potentially powerful position of a skilled female labour force in a situation of increasing labour shortage.
Frank Cass THE JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Authors: Jackson Cecile
Published: October 2008

Much environment and development discourse assumes that women are the ‘natural’ constituency for conservation interventions. This article attempts to illuminate this assumption with the lens of a gendered critique of environmentalisms (technocentric, ecocentric and non‐western). How do the intellectual roots of Western environmentalisms influence the positions, or non‐positions, of contemporary environmentalism with regard to gender? What does research on environmental perceptions in non‐Western societies imply about gender differentiation in environmental relations? The article concludes that there are no grounds for assuming an affinity between women's gender interests and those of environments and that such a view is symptomatic of the gender blind, ethnocentric and populist character of western environmentalisms. By contrast the application of gender analysis to environmental relations involves seeing women in relation to men, the disaggregation of the category of ‘women’, and an understanding of gender roles as socially and historically constructed, materially grounded and continually reformulated. The issue of how far women's gender interests and environmental interests go hand in hand leads us to pose a broader question of the degree to which environmental conservation is premissed upon social inequality.
Entitlements Analysis: Relating Concepts and Contexts
Authors: Gasper Des
Published: October 2008

Sen's entitlements approach has attracted much attention and imitation, including attempted extensions beyond its original context in the explanation of famines. It has evolved in various ways as it is applied to new regions, purposes and subjects – beyond South Asia, to policy design and to matters of routine hunger, environment, gender and overall intra‐societal distribution. For analysis of famines, the approach provides a valuable set of concepts and questions in explanation and policy design; but it gives a general frame rather than a comprehensive theory or detailed explanatory model. For wider subjects, this general approach – a socially disaggregated, institutionally aware analysis of effective command over specific necessities – is again valuable. However, difficulties may arise with its concept of ‘entitlement relations’, and with confusions related to the label and the referent of the ‘entitlement’ concept, and to the original ‘exchange entitlement’ label. Sen's concepts and labels reflected, naturally enough, the purposes in his study of the 1940s Bengal famine and its specific conditions. A modified set of concepts and labels may be more helpful, together with an underlining of the variety of contexts and of the limits to any one theoretical frame.
Understanding Technology Development
Authors: Lall Sanjaya
Published: October 2008

There are wide variations between the developing countries in the capabilities of their enterprises to import, utilize and improve upon industrial technologies. It is important for the purposes of industrial policy to understand why these differences exist and how industrial capabilities may be improved. This article presents the findings of recent research into the nature of capability development and the role of government policies in promoting such development. The process of becoming efficient in industry is very different from the usual textbook portrayal, in which firms costlessly access and absorb new technologies. In reality, there is a long and uncertain learning process involved, differing with the nature of the technology, the efficiency of factor and product markets, and the provision of various technological information and services from the infrastructure institutions. There is a widespread risk in developing countries that all these markets suffer from failures: the scope for technology development policies rests on the need to remedy these failures. The experience of the most successful newly industrializing economies (NIEs) suggests that well‐designed interventions, both selective and functional, are needed to promote technology development. Experience clearly shows the dangers of government failure, but it is necessary to retain a large role for the government if industry is to succeed. The pattern and implementation of interventions have to be very different. This article points out the outlines of economically desirable interventions.
Are Households Universal? On Misunderstanding Domestic Groups in Swaziland
Authors: Russell Margo
Published: October 2008

‘Household’ is not the neutral, universal category that census‐takers have lulled us into believing, but a culturally‐loaded, historically specific, Western term, like ‘family’. This article demonstrates its inappropriateness in capturing the nature of domestic organization in Swaziland through a critical examination of attempts to reduce the indigenous domestic unit umuti (rural homestead) to various constellations of household. The patrilineal homestead on traditionally tenured land persists as the dominant domestic group despite urbanization and the deep penetration of the economy by market principles. The relationship between this homestead and the more ephemeral urban households, into which many of its members are continually dispersed, underlies the linkage between urban and rural areas. Without grounding our understanding of contemporary Swazi society in the rural homestead we fail to understand female‐headed domestic groups, domestic cycles, and the location and dynamics of poverty and wealth.
Parks and People: Livelihood Issues in National Parks Management in Thailand and Madagascar
Authors: Ghimire Krishna B.
Published: October 2008

In many countries, the transformation by the state of increasing areas of land and aquatic resources into strictly protected areas has included a total restriction on the use of park resources by the local people, causing poverty and social conflict, and in some cases further environmental deterioration. This essay examines the forms of management in national parks in developing countries in general, and in Thailand and Madagascar in particular.
Export‐led Technology Development in the Four Dragons: The Case of Electronics
Authors: Hobday Mike
Published: October 2008

To date, little attention has been paid to the strategies of local firms in bringing about industrialization in Bast Asia. This article focuses on the methods by which domestic firms utilized foreign connections to overcome technology and market barriers in electronics. A simple market‐technology model is developed as a first approximation of how domestic technology assimilation relates to export marketing in the four ‘Dragons' of East Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore). It proposes that export demand shaped the pace and pattern of technological progress in electronics in each of the four Dragons. Historical evidence shows that each country used a distinctive mix of direct and indirect export mechanisms to acquire technology and to enter international markets. Foreign buyers, transnational corporations (TNCs), original equipment manufacturer (OEM) arrangements, joint ventures and licensing deals were exploited by ‘latecomer’ firms to their market and technology advantage. Asian firms progressed from simple assembly tasks to more sophisticated product design and development capabilities, travelling ‘backwards' along the product life cycle of traditional innovation models. Today, leading Asian firms invest heavily in R&D and engage in partnerships with TNCs to acquire and develop advanced new electronics technologies. The technological progress of latecomers remains closely coupled to export demand through OEM and other institutional arrangements.
Is There a Conflict Between Growth and Welfarism? The Significance of the Sri Lanka Debate
Authors: Osmani S.R.
Published: October 2008

This article seeks to derive some general lessons regarding the relationship between growth and welfarism by undertaking a reassessment of Sri Lanka's long experience with interventions in social spheres. While Sri Lanka has been hailed by many for pursuing the welfarist strategy with apparently spectacular results, several critics have recently suggested that she would have been better off by diverting resources away from welfare interventions towards investment for growth. They have argued that the interventions were not terribly effective anyway, and further that welfarism involved a conflict with growth which eventually undermined the very sustainability of welfarist strategy. This article contests these criticisms, and argues in its turn that the Sri Lankan experience offers a lesson not in the conflict but in the complementarity between growth and welfarism.
Drought as a Revelatory Crisis: An Exploration of Shifting Entitlements and Hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana
Authors: Solway Jacqueline S.
Published: October 2008

This article analyses drought in Botswana as a ‘revelatory crisis' in which structural contradictions as well as deteriorating socio‐economic conditions are exposed. Paradoxically, however, drought also enables such conditions to be concealed because they can be attributed to the ‘crisis' and not to deeper problems and trends. In addition, crises such as droughts disrupt conventional routine sufficiently to allow actors (including government policy‐makers as well as rural producers) to innovate with normative codes. This fact along with the opening up of structural fault lines often leads to accelerated rates of social change. Change is analysed here both in terms of the structural conditions in which it takes place (and alters) and with regard to the actions taken by individuals and institutions in order to reveal the links between structure and agency. The article draws upon an extended case study from Central Botswana and utilizes Sen's method of entitlement analysis to examine changing social processes.
Authority, Gender and Knowledge: Theoretical Reflections on the Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal
Authors: Mosse David
Published: October 2008

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods are increasingly taken up by public sector organizations as well as NGOs among whom they have been pioneered. While PRA methods are successfully employed in a variety of project planning situations, and with increasing sophistication, in some contexts the practice of PRA faces constraints. This article examines the constraints as experienced in the early stages of one project, and suggests some more general issues to which these point. In particular, it is suggested that, as participatory exercises, PRAs involve ‘public’ social events which construct ‘local knowledge’ in ways that are strongly influenced by existing social relationships. It suggests that information for planning is shaped by relations of power and gender, and by the investigators themselves; and that certain kinds of knowledge are often excluded. Finally, the paper suggests that as a method for articulating existing local knowledge, PRA needs to be complemented by other methods of ‘participation’ which generate the changed awareness and new ways of knowing, which are necessary to locally‐controlled innovation and change.
Economics of Marriage Change in a South Indian Village
Authors: Dharmalingam A.
Published: October 2008

The Indian marriage system has undergone major changes in the last few decades. Studies have found an expansion and intensification of dowry and increase in age at marriage. Using information from a village in Tamil Nadu, south India, this article shows that recent marriage changes in the study village (increased number of love‐marriages and stagnation or slight decline in marriage age) are caused by the economic independence and personal autonomy among the younger generation which are products of major changes in the socio‐economic organization of the society.
Environment, Technology and Employment: Towards a New Definition of Sustainable Development
Authors: Karshenas Massoud
Published: October 2008

This article analyses the interrelations between environment, employment and technology in the process of development. A new concept of sustainable development is introduced which makes a distinction between environmental problems associated with high income levels and technological progress and those related to underdevelopment and technological stagnation. The latter category accounts for a major proportion of environmental problems facing poor agrarian economies which are undergoing a process of forced environmental degradation. It is argued that in these types of economies there is a complementarity between economic development and employment generation and the preservation of the environment. It is further shown that in such economies, where the ultimate causes of environmental degradation may be far removed from the immediate environmental issues, conventional environmental policies may be counterproductive.
Women's Interests and Empowerment: Gender Planning Reconsidered
Authors: Wieringa Saskia
Published: October 2008

This article looks at the empowerment approach in relation to issues of women and development. After explaining why this is currently the most fruitful perspective in the field of gender planning, it then goes on to explore two central problems of the empowerment approach. The first problem is the conceptualization of women's gender interests. The distinction between women's practical and strategic gender interests was introduced by Molyneux and popularized by Moser. It is argued here that this distinction is theoretically unfounded and empirically untenable. Secondly, gender planners tend towards a preference for simplified tools and quantifiable targets. Here it is argued that women's realities should not be bent into this planning framework but that instead planners, working from an empowerment perspective, should demonstrate flexibility and theoretical grounding, and be aware of the political dimensions of their work.
Children, Work and ‘Child Labour’: Changing Responses to the Employment of Children
Authors: White Ben
Published: October 2008

This article examines the ways in which the problem of child labour has been perceived and addressed, from the beginnings of social concern about these issues until the present, with illustrations from The Netherlands and Indonesia. National and international responses to the problem of child labour reflect a number of assumptions which are almost completely at odds with the views and the preferences of children themselves. Paradoxically, powerful lobbies in some of the world's wealthiest countries – which cannot enforce, and in some cases are beginning to relax, their own child labour laws – are trying to insist that the developing countries tighten and/or enforce their laws, under the threat of various forms of sanction or boycott. These increasingly active threats make it highly inadvisable for any exporting country to acknowledge the existence of children's employment at all, for example by protective legislation or other efforts to promote the improvement of children's working conditions.
Albania's Road from Communism: Political and Social Change, 1990–1993
Authors: Tarifa Fatos
Published: October 2008

Until the late 1980s, Albania was one of the least known countries in the world and virtually inaccessible to foreigners. Most studies on Eastern Europe lacked reliable and complete information about Albania; it was usually either mentioned as the smallest and the least developed country of Europe or totally ignored. For their part, Albanian scholars have made little contribution, if any, to analysing their society under Hoxha's Communist regime. As with all totalitarian systems, Albania's Communism was immune to criticism for almost forty‐five years, and information on domestic issues was tightly controlled. This article aims to throw some light on and to systematically analyse Albania's road from Communism. The country's inherited social, political, cultural, and economic conditions have made Albania's move from Communism the most difficult and convulsive of all the East European countries. They are also likely to put considerable obstacles in the path of establishing a true democracy, making Albania's post‐Communist transition highly uncertain.
How Well is Aid Allocated? Descriptive Measures of Aid Allocation: A Survey of Methodology and Results
Authors: White Howard , McGillivray Mark
Published: October 2008

Although many factors affect which countries actually receive aid, a case can be made for evaluating donor allocative performance with respect to the average income of recipients. A number of indicators are commonly used for such an assessment. Based on criteria developed in this paper, two such indicators — Suits' index and McGillivray's adjusted performance index — are shown to be the most suitable. These indicators are used to compare the performance of bilateral donors: Denmark is found to have the most progressive aid allocation, and the USA the least progressive. The indicators are also used to assess trends in allocative performance for four donors: France, Japan, the UK and USA. There appears to have been a general worsening of allocative performance in the early 1980s, with some improvement in the later part of the decade.
Crisis, Informalization and the Urban Informal Sector in Sub‐Saharan Africa
Authors: Meagher Kate
Published: October 2008

Neo‐liberal theories of informality have emphasized the potential of the informal sector for independent employment creation and growth. An alternative perspective is provided by the structuralist ‘informalization’ approach which regards the expansion of informal activity as part of the restructuring strategy of the formal sector in the face of economic recession. The informalization perspective challenges the traditional notions of the informal sector by focusing on such issues as differentiation, social networks, subcontracting and supply linkages with the formal sector, and the role of the state in informal sector expansion. Despite its First World and Latin American focus, the informalization approach offers important insights for the study of urban informal sectors in Africa.
Structural Adjustment and Poverty Alleviation: An Interpretative Survey
Authors: Killick Tony
Published: October 2008

There are few simple generalizations about the effects of adjustment programmes on poverty. There remain many data and methodological problems, and outcomes are complex and varied. Poverty groups often are harmed by adjustment programmes, especially the urban working poor, but there has been a tendency to over‐emphasize negative outcomes. There are many other influences on poverty. In the long term, adjustment is essential to the eradication of poverty. The principal responsibility for achieving anti‐poverty objectives must lie with national governments but they do not always display much concern with the poor. However, the international financial institutions must share the responsibility and could do more to design structural adjustment programmes within a cost‐minimizing framework. The principal policy tasks are to formulate a long‐term anti‐poverty strategy and ensure that adjustment policies are consistent with that, without detracting from the imperative of adapting the economy to changing circumstances.
Working Groups or Wage Labour? Cash‐crops, Reciprocity and Money among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon
Authors: Geschiere Peter
Published: October 2008

The spread of cocoa cultivation among the Maka in the 1950s created new labour demands. These were not met by wage labour, as in most cocoa producing areas, but rather by a novel system of working groups. Specific economic factors can help to explain why wage labour did not develop within the villages, but it is also clear that the preference of the Maka for more cooperative labour arrangements was related to broader socio‐cultural characteristics of this society—notably the somewhat paradoxical tension between strong levelling mechanisms and an equally strong emphasis on personal ambition. The new working groups were based on reciprocal exchange of labour, but money came to play an increasing role in their functioning. They allowed for a certain degree of commodification of labour to the advantage of richer farmers, but ultimately they restricted the rise of more structural inequalities. The recent crisis in cash‐cropping makes it clear that a system of working groups can offer farmers more flexibility than wage labour in the face of the vagaries of world‐market prices.
Gender Awareness in Migration Theory: Synthesizing Actor and Structure in Southern Africa
Authors: Wright Caroline
Published: October 2008

Recent developments in migration theory mirror two concerns writ large across the development literature, namely the attempt to reconcile structure and agency and the importance of gender. Using the specific context of southern Africa, this article analyses the development of migration theory over the last forty years and the dialectic between gender and the structure‐agency dyad. It is argued that gender is an essential tool for unpicking the migration process and that a gender perspective has enriched and been enriched by a model of migration allowing analytical space for both the agency of migrants and the structures which surround them. Juxtaposing the various theories which have been brought to bear on migration in southern Africa also reveals the extent to which new models and classificatory systems have developed on the basis of agendas set by preceding conceptual frameworks, distinctions between competing models rarely being as clear‐cut as the mode of scholarship would have them appear.
The Evolutionary Theory of Land Rights as Applied to Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Critical Assessment
Authors: Platteau Jean‐Philippe
Published: October 2008

The evolutionary theory of land rights can be considered the dominant framework of analysis used by mainstream economists to assess the land tenure situation in developing countries, and to make predictions about its evolution. A central tenet of this theoryis that under the joint impact of increasing population pressure and market integration, land rights spontaneously evolve towards rising individualization and that this evolutioneventually leads rightsholders to press for the creation of duly formalized private property rights — a demand to which the state will have an incentive to respond. This article looks critically at the relevance of the evolutionary theory of land rights as currently applied to Sub‐Saharan Africa. In particular, the question of whether the establishmentof private property rights is an advisable structural reform in the present circumstancesis examined, in the light of evidence accumulated so far. It will be argued that most of the beneficial effects usually ascribed to such a reform are grossly over‐estimated and that, given its high cost, it is generally advisable to look for more appropriate solutions that rely on existing informal mechanisms at community level.
Economic Opportunity, Civil Society and Political Liberty
Authors: Dahrendorf Ralf
Published: October 2008

This essay explores the dilemmas associated with ‘squaring the circle’ of wealth creation, social cohesion and political freedom in the OECD countries. As the metaphor of square and circle implies, these three essential goals of development are not necessarily compatible and may even conflict with each other, particularly at a time when advancing globalization creates perverse choices. To become and remain competitive in international markets requires a flexible use of resources which threatens social cohesion and political freedom in a number of ways. After analysing these tensions, the essay concludes with six proposals for improving the likelihood that a workable balance between prosperity, democracy and social cohesion can be maintained in advanced industrial societies.
Positive Aspects of Community and the Dangers of Fragmentation
Authors: Etzioni Amitai
Published: October 2008

This essay seeks to explain the premisses of the communitarian movement in the USA, and to respond to some of its principal critics. At the heart of the debate is the fundamental question of the proper balance between individual liberty and commitment to the common good. The solution to this could be a form of ‘responsive’ communitarianism which in some situations (such as the present‐day USA) may argue for more community, and in others (such as contemporary China) may press for a better anchoring of individual rights. In his examination of the centrifugal forces which can be unleashed by the search for ever‐more‐exclusive forms of community, Etzioni argues that excessive insistence on self‐determination can weaken countries seeking to establish democratic government and threaten democracy in countries which have already attained it.
The Perils of Utopia: The Russian Intelligentsia under Communism and Perestroika
Authors: Tolstaya Tatyana
Published: October 2008

After evoking the spirit of the Russian intelligentsia, this essay interprets its changing place in society. A force for humanism, universal brotherhood and freedom of expression within a succession of repressive political regimes, the intelligentsia should — one might think — be greatly favoured by perestroika. Yet its very idealism and uncritical faith in such abstractions as ‘the people’ and ‘beloved foreigners’ have ill prepared it to deal with harsh and complex realities. As earlier stereotypes crumble and the Communist regime disintegrates, the intelligentsia itself is confused and divided. Faced with moral and political dilemmas, Tolstaya suggests that there may be some virtue in a productive form of escapism in art.
Affluence, Poverty and the Idea of a Post‐Scarcity Society
Authors: Giddens Anthony
Published: October 2008

The ‘end of nature’ and the attenuation of tradition, associated with accelerated modernization on a global scale, increase the need for conscious reflection on many aspects of life formerly considered to be givens. Thus in developed and developing countries alike, new questions of personal choice and ethics form the basis for a kind of life politics which is different from — and supplements, but does not replace — the longer‐established practice of emancipatory politics, concerned above all with issues of social justice. This essay invites us to consider how life politics can generate new strategies to reduce inequality and alleviate poverty.
The Political Economy of Environmental Policy Reform in Latin America
Authors: Kaimowitz David
Published: October 2008

Many parts of the world are threatened with environmental damage and degradation, affecting both the natural resources and the economy of the area. This article analyses the factors affecting the likelihood of different environmental policy reforms in Latin America, with particular emphasis on: the strengths and weaknesses of different groups which promote such reforms; the degree to which the reforms are compatible with the region's current economic policies; and how the type of political regime affects these issues. It reaches the conclusion that, although there has been progress in recent years, the possibility of carrying out far‐reaching reforms which could substantially reduce pollution and resource depletion has been limited by: 1) the difficulties involved in linking environmental issues with concerns for social justice; 2) economic policies which promote the exploitation of natural resources and labour and weaken the public sector; and 3) the great influence over regional governments of groups with vested interests in continuing environmentally destructive activities.