bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Panchayati Raj in West Bengal: Popular Participation for the People or the Party?
Authors: Webster Neil 
Published: October 2008

ABSTRACTSince 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTIn 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTThe 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

ABSTRACTSmall‐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

ABSTRACTMuch 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

ABSTRACTSen'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

ABSTRACTThere 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

ABSTRACT‘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

ABSTRACTIn 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

ABSTRACTTo 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTParticipatory 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

ABSTRACTThe 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTUntil 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

ABSTRACTAlthough 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.