Design is essential to fulfil unmet or under-served needs of resource-poor societies, supporting their social and human development. A great deal of design research has been undertaken in such low resource settings, and is discussed under different names, such as ‘community development engineering’, ‘humanitarian engineering’, ‘appropriate technology’, ‘design for development’, ‘design at the Base of the Pyramid’, etc. This has created an important need to know what has been examined and learnt so far and to plan for further investigation. To address this, we review a broad range of literature, with close examination of 30 design studies in this field. This reveals a multifaceted picture, showing a great diversity in investigation and reporting of attributes of context (income, rural and urban, design sectors, countries, and gender), the roles of poor people (consumers, producers, and co-designers), characteristics of research methods employed (e.g. descriptive and prescriptive, data collection methods, qualitative and quantitative aspects, and unit of analysis), and design topics. Based on the review results, we offer recommendations for further research, identifying concerns that researchers ought to have about this field and suggesting ways in which research in this field can be undertaken and reported.

/pdf/design-and-poverty-a-review-of-contexts-roles-of-poor-people-1faacu17n4.pdf

Design and poverty: a review of contexts, roles of poor people, and methods

Socio–environmental synthesis as a research approach contributes to broader sustainability policy and practice by reusing data from disparate disciplines in innovative ways. Synthesizing diverse data sources and types of evidence can help to better conceptualize, investigate and address increasingly complex socio–environmental problems. However, sharing qualitative data for re-use remains uncommon when compared to sharing quantitative data. We argue that qualitative data present untapped opportunities for sustainability science, and discuss practical pathways to facilitate and realize the benefits from sharing and reusing qualitative data. However, these opportunities and benefits are also hindered by practical, ethical and epistemological challenges. To address these challenges and accelerate qualitative data sharing, we outline enabling conditions and suggest actions for researchers, institutions, funders, data repository managers and publishers. Opportunities, challenges and recommended targeted actions to accelerate qualitative data sharing to address complex socio–environmental problems

Qualitative data sharing and synthesis for sustainability science

Research on factors associated with partner violence against women is often framed within the context of gender inequality and power imbalances between husbands and wives—inequalities that are considered products of broader structural systems. Tanzania, a patriarchal society where high levels of partner violence exists, has gone through rapid economic and social changes over the past two decades. Increasing numbers of women are seeking paid work, and men’s ideals of manhood have reshaped with evidence of extra marital relations and alcohol use. Nationally representative population-based data documents 46.2% of ever-married women have experienced physical or sexual partner violence in their lifetime; 29.6% in the past year. In order to plan appropriate interventions to end violence against women, factors consistently associated with abuse need to be understood. This study uses “couples” data from the 2015 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey to examine correlates of past year partner violence against women. Multivariate regression analysis was used to explore individual and relational-level variables—including socio-demographic characteristics and history of abuse among women, partner behavioural characteristics, and indicators of gender and economic inequality—among 1278 married and cohabiting couples. At the individual level, women’s experiences of non-partner violence (sexual abuse by a non-partner and witnessing violence in childhood) was strongly associated with risk and highlights that all forms of violence against women serve to keep them subordinated. Partner behavioural characteristics (polygamy and problematic alcohol use) were also associated with risk. Household socio-economic status, however, was not significantly associated with women’s risk in the final multivariate model. At the relational-level, men’s age difference of 10 or more years; and any employment (compared to none/unpaid) were associated with lower risk. When considering attitudes tolerant towards wife abuse, the strongest association with risk of violence was when both partners held tolerant views. The findings support the assertions of violence being associated with women’s prior/additional experiences of abuse and with men’s harmful expressions of masculinity. In addition to interventions that focus on transforming gender norms and attitudes (at the individual and community levels), addressing economic, legal and political structural barriers are also required.

/pdf/unequal-power-relations-and-partner-violence-against-women-2xzaey5wcu.pdf

Unequal power relations and partner violence against women in Tanzania: a cross-sectional analysis.

Achieving global environmental sustainability is a current issue, and one of profound importance for the future of humanity. However, environmental sustainability cannot be meaningfully discussed as an issue in isolation, for it is deeply intertwined with other social justice issues such as education, spirituality and—by extension—humanity’s collective understanding of a right and good life. The crucial role of education in achieving global environmental sustainability is universally accepted, although typically understood as a linear process from ‘educated’ to ‘uneducated’, from scholarly elites to their students, from ‘uppers’ to ‘lowers’. This is intriguing given the widely accepted understanding that the so-called ‘uneducated’ poor tend to live far more sustainably than the presumably educated wealthy, and the sustainable lifestyles of the poor are often firmly underpinned by their spirituality. This phenomenon raises important questions in the quest to achieve global environmental sustainability: If the poor have much to teach about sustainable living and contentment, why are they not more actively engaged and enlisted as subject matter experts when it comes to drafting strategic responses to climate change mitigation and profligate living? Are policy makers and development professionals in danger of inadvertently entrenching the status quo where the poor are primarily conceived as service delivery recipients rather than engaged on par as active partners and joint sustainability stakeholders? This mixed methods research is informed by an analysis of expert literature, including a systematic UN document keyword search, and 20 in-depth interviews that engaged 17 development organisations across eight nations. It also addresses contemporary barriers to the inclusion of the voice of the poor as equal participants in this necessary global discourse. A Judeo-Christian Theology underpins this discussion, offering hopeful historical perspectives on the Divine preference for self-revelation and human betterment through the least expected voice. The study extends previous research by focusing expressly on the intersection of sustainability and the humanities as a fertile space for inquiry into auspicious forms of learning about value-based and spiritually shaped sustainability. The research concludes that the poor are overwhelmingly perceived and portrayed as subjects to be helped, rather than as experts to be engaged and heeded. Hence, ‘reversals of learning’ need to be prioritised, standardised and normalised.

The Poor just Might Be the Educators We Need for Global Sustainability—A Manifesto for Consulting the Unconsulted

This article examines the views and experiences of rickshaw drivers in Hanoi regarding the tourism–poverty nexus. Observation, interview, and diary methods collected data from 58 drivers, of whom 2...

Deepa Narayan-Parker

Papers

Crying out for change