Contrary to expectations implicit in the image of the “melting pot” that ethnic distinctions could be eliminated in US society, the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the United States and around the world has prompted social scientists to rethink models of ethnicity rooted in assumptions about the inevitability of assimilation.1 Instead, the resiliency of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences among populations has led to a search for a more accurate, less evolutionary means of understanding not only the resurgence of ancient differences among peoples, but also the actual emergence of historically new ethnic groups.2 The result has been the development of a model of ethnicity that stresses the fluid, situational, volitional, and dynamic character of ethnic identification, organization, and action – a model that emphasizes the socially “constructed” aspects of ethnicity, that is, the ways in which ethnic boundaries, identities, and cultures, are negotiated, defined, and produced through social interaction inside and outside ethnic communities.3

Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture

During 2006, the Gallup Organization conducted a World Poll that used an identical questionnaire for national samples of adults from 132 countries. I analyze the data on life satisfaction (happiness) and on health satisfaction and look at their relationships with national income, age, and life-expectancy. Average happiness is strongly related to per capita national income; each doubling of income is associated with a near one point increase in life satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10. Unlike most previous findings, the effect holds across the range of international incomes; if anything, it is slightly stronger among rich countries. Conditional on national income, recent economic growth makes people unhappier, improvements in life-expectancy make them happier, but life-expectancy itself has little effect. Age has an internationally inconsistent relationship with happiness. National income moderates the effects of aging on self-reported health, and the decline in health satisfaction and rise in disability with age are much stronger in poor countries than in rich countries. In line with earlier findings, people in much of Eastern Europe and in the countries of the former Soviet Union are particularly unhappy and particularly dissatisfied with their health, and older people in those countries are much less satisfied with their lives and with their health than are younger people. HIV prevalence in Africa has little effect on Africans' life or health satisfaction; the fraction of Kenyans who are satisfied with their personal health is the same as the fraction of Britons and higher than the fraction of Americans. The US ranks 81st out of 115 countries in the fraction of people who have confidence in their healthcare system, and has a lower score than countries such as India, Iran, Malawi, or Sierra Leone. While the strong relationship between life-satisfaction and income gives some credence to the measures, as do the low levels of life and health satisfaction in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, the lack of correlations between life and health satisfaction and health measures shows that happiness (or self-reported health) measures cannot be regarded as useful summary indicators of human welfare in international comparisons.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/nber_w13317.pdf?abstractid=1008811&mirid=1&type=2

Income, Aging, Health and Wellbeing Around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll

During 2006, the Gallup Organization conducted a World Poll that used an identical questionnaire for national samples of adults from 132 countries. I analyze the data on life satisfaction and on health satisfaction and look at their relationships with national income, age, and life-expectancy. Average life satisfaction is strongly related to per capita national income; each doubling of income is associated with a near one point increase in life satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10. Unlike most previous findings, the effect holds across the range of international incomes; if anything, it is slightly stronger among rich countries. Conditional on national income, recent economic growth makes people less satisfied with their lives, improvements in life-expectancy make them more satisfied, but life-expectancy itself has little effect. In most countries, except the richest, older people are less satisfied with their lives. National income moderates the effects of aging on self-reported health, and the decline in health satisfaction with age is much stronger in poor countries than in rich countries. In line with earlier findings, people in much of Eastern Europe and in the countries of the former Soviet Union are particularly dissatisfied with their lives and with their health, and older people in those countries are much less satisfied with their lives and with their health than are younger people. HIV prevalence in Africa has little effect on Africans’ life or health satisfaction; the fraction of Kenyans who are satisfied with their personal health is the same as the fraction of Britons and higher than the fraction of Americans. The US ranks 88th out of 120 countries in the fraction of people who have confidence in their healthcare system, and has a lower score than countries such as India, Iran, Malawi, Afghanistan or Angola . While the strong relationship between life-satisfaction and income gives some credence to the measures, as do the low levels of life and health satisfaction in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, the lack of correlations between life and health satisfaction and health measures shows that self-assessed life or health evaluations cannot be regarded as useful summary indicators of human welfare in international comparisons.

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Income, health, and well-being around the world: evidence from the Gallup World Poll.

Most work on the relationship between farm size and productivity strongly suggests that farms that rely mostly on family labor are more productive than large farms operated primarily by hired labor. This study began as an inquiry into how rental and sales markets for agricultural land in the developing world affect efficiency and equity. What emerged was the clear sense that great variations in land relations around the world and over time cannot be understood in the common paradigm of property rights and competitive markets. Under that paradigm, land scarcity leads to better definition of rights, which are then traded in sales and rental markets accessible equally to all players. The outcome should be the allocation of land to the most efficient uses and users, yet this rarely happens. Instead, land rights and ownership tend to grow out of power relationships. Landowning groups have used coercion and distortions in land, labor, credit, and commodity markets to extract economic rents from the land, from peasants and workers, and most recently from urban consumer groups or taxpayers. Such rent-seeking activities reduce the efficiency of resource use, retard growth, and increase the poverty of the rural population. The authors examine how these power relations emerged and what legal means enabled relatively few landowners to accumulate and hold on to large landholdings. The authors discuss the successes and failures of reform in market and socialist economies, and the perversions of reforms in both systems, manifested in large commercial farms and collectives. They survey the history of land relations and the legacies that history leaves. They discuss the three analytical controversies surrounding economies of scale, and the efficiency of the land sales and land rental market. They discuss the main policy issues and implications of various distortions and successful and unsuccessful reforms in the developing world, including land registration and titling, land taxation, regulations restricting land sales and rentals, fragmentation and consolidation of land, redistributive land reform, and decollectivization. In an epilogue on methodology, the authors examine how various strands of economic theory have contributed, or failed to contribute, to the explanation of variations in policies, distortions, and land relations over space and time.

Power, distortions, revolt, and reform in agricultural land relations

Miombo woodlands are the most extensive vegetation type in Africa south of the equator. These dry tropical woodlands cover some 2.5 million hectares and are home to over 40 million people. Miombo products are very important to the livelihoods and basic needs of an additional 15 million urban Africans. The book demonstrates how much livelihood strategies of rural communities depend on miombo goods and services, and indicates the strong differentiation of uses within communities and in space and time. The ecological constraints to human activity in the region are clearly articulated, ranging from nutrient-poor soils to the presence of the tsetse fly. The authors also trace the host of policies that have influenced miombo woodlands and their uses, from pre-colonial times to the present. The current importance of miombo products in markets, both locally and globally, is documented in a chapter on trade patterns. Options for management are outlined, including silvicultural treatment, fire management and grazing regimes. Institutional arrangements, both local and state, for the management of the woodlands are investigated, and the authors examine how local communities can be empowered to manage and benefit from the woodlands. The final chapter proposes a conceptual model of how all the diverse social, economic, political and ecological processes interact to shape how the household and woodland situations are changing. This conceptual framework is then used to identify key issues for research, which will reduce gaps in current understanding and facilitate formulation of new management strategies, policies and institutions. The Miombo in Transition is a resource for researchers, with over 250 pages reviewing and synthesising over 400 studies. There are numerous figures, tables and plates. The book contains contributions by a number of researchers, and yet has managed to ensure coherence, close linking of chapters and complete coverage of material through authors' workshops and tight editorial control. Each chapter was reviewed by international experts both in draft and final format, resulting in the high quality of the final produc

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The miombo in transition: Woodlands and welfare in Africa

List of maps and tables Preface Acknowledgements Terminology Abbreviations 1. Intentions 2. Tanganyika in 1800 3. The nineteenth century 4. The German conquest 5. Colonial economy and ecological crisis, 1890-1914 6. The Maji Maji rebellion, 1905-7 7. Religious and cultural change before 1914 8. Fortunes of war 9. The origins of rural capitalism 10. The creation of tribes 11. The crisis of colonial society, 1929-45 12. Townsmen and workers 13. The African Association, 1929-48 14. The new colonialism 15. The new politics, 1945-55 16. The nationalist victory, 1955-61 Bibliography Index.

A modern history of Tanganyika

Preface 1. The comparative history of the poor 2. Christian Ethiopia 3. The Islamic tradition 4. Poverty and pastoralism 6. Yoruba and Igbo 7. Early European initiatives 8. Poverty in South Africa, 1886-1948 9. Rural poverty in colonial Africa 10. Urban poverty in tropical Africa 11. The care of the poor in colonial Africa 12. Leprosy 13. The growth of poverty in independent Africa 14. The transformation of poverty in southern Africa Notes Bibliography Index.

The African Poor: A History

In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the present day, John Iliffe refocuses its history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, but during the last century their inherited culture has interacted with medical progress to produce the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This new edition incorporates genetic and linguistic findings, throwing light on early African history and summarises research that has transformed the study of the Atlantic slave trade. It also examines the consequences of a rapidly growing youthful population, the hopeful but uncertain democratisation and economic recovery of the early twenty-first century, the containment of the AIDS epidemic and the turmoil within Islam that has produced the Arab Spring. Africans: The History of a Continent is thus a single story binding modern men and women to their earliest human ancestors.

Africans: The History of a Continent

The African Poor: A History.

1. The comparative history of honour Part I. Hero and Householder: 2. Men on horseback 3. Honour and Islam 4. Christian Ethiopia 5. Honour, rank, and warfare among the Yoruba 6. Honour and the state in West and Central Africa 7. Honour without the state 8. The honour of the slave 9. Praise and slander in southern Africa 10. Ekitiibwa and martyrdom Part II. Fragmentation and Mutation: 11. The deaths of heroes 12. Honour in defeat 13. The honour of the mercenary 14. Respectability 15. Honour and gender 16. Urbanisation and masculinity 17. Honour, race, and nation 18. Political honour 19. To live in dignity 20. Concluding questions.

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John Iliffe

Papers

A modern history of Tanganyika

The African Poor: A History

Africans: The History of a Continent

The African Poor: A History.

Honour in African history