Showing papers in "Development and Change in 1998"
TL;DR: Alternative development has been concerned with alternative practices of development as discussed by the authors and with redefining the goals of development, and it has been argued that the key question is rather whether growth and production are considered within or outside the people-centred development approach and whether this can rhyme with the structural adjustment programmes followed by the international financial institutions.
Abstract: Alternative development has been concerned with alternative practices of development — participatory and people-centred — and with redefining the goals of development. Mainstream development has gradually been moving away from the preoccupation with economic growth toward a people-centred definition of development, for instance in human development. This raises the question in what way alternative development remains distinguishable from mainstream development — as a roving criticism, a development style, a profile of alternative positions regarding development agency, methodology, epistemology? Increasingly the claim is that alternative development represents an alternative paradigm. This is a problematic idea for four reasons: because whether paradigms apply to social science is questionable; because in development the concern is with policy frameworks rather than explanatory frameworks; because there are diAerent views on whether a paradigm break with conventional development is desirable; and finally because the actual divergence in approaches to development is in some respects narrowing. There is a meaningful alternative development profile or package but there is no alternative development paradigm — nor should there be. Mainstream development is not what it used to be and it may be argued that the key question is rather whether growth and production are considered within or outside the people-centred development approach and whether this can rhyme with the structural adjustment programmes followed by the international financial institutions. Post-development may be interpreted as a neotraditionalist reaction against modernity. More enabling as a perspective is reflexive development, in which a critique of science is viewed as part of development politics.
456 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the distribution of benefits from Senegal's charcoal trade and the multiple market mechanisms underpinning that distribution, and shed light on the limited role of property, the embedded nature of markets, and the role of extra-legal structures and mechanisms in shaping equity and eAciency in resource use.
Abstract: The questions at the centre of this article are: who profits from commercial forestry, and how? Through access mapping with commodity chain analysis, this study examines the distribution of benefits from Senegal’s charcoal trade and the multiple market mechanisms underpinning that distribution. Benefits from charcoal are derived from direct control over forest access, as well as through access to markets, labour opportunities, capital, and state agents and oAcials. Access to these arenas is based on a number of inter-related mechanisms including legal property, social identity, social relations, coercion and information control. A commodity chain is the series of relations through which an item passes, from extraction through conversion, exchange, transport, distribution and final use. Access mapping involves evaluating the distribution of benefits along the chain, and tracing out the mechanisms by which access to benefits is maintained. It sheds light on the limited role of property, the embedded nature of markets, and the role of extra-legal structures and mechanisms in shaping equity and eAciency in resource use. It does so in a socially situated, multi-local manner, spanning the geographic spread of production and exchange. It also illuminates the practical issues surrounding establishment of community participation in benefits from and control over natural resources.
435 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the links between globalization and ethnic violence in comparative perspective, and suggested that bodily violence between social intimates may be viewed as a form of vivisection, and as an effort to resolve unacceptable levels of uncertainty through bodily deconstruction.
Abstract: This article explores the links between globalization and ethnic violence in comparative perspective. By looking at ethnographic material from Central Africa, Europe, India and China, the paper suggests that bodily violence between social intimates may be viewed as a form of vivisection, and as an effort to resolve unacceptable levels of uncertainty through bodily deconstruction. This approach may cast light on the surplus of rage displayed in many recent episodes of inter-group violence. At the same time, the study suggests that the conditions for such extreme and intimate violence may partly lie in the deformation of national and local spaces of everyday life by the physical and moral pressures of globalization.
227 citations
TL;DR: Despite the appearance of an extensive literature on women's movements and the steady growth since the mid-1970s in works which offer a critical, feminist engagement with political theory, discussion of the broader implications of women's politics remains a relatively unexamined aspect of the literature on development as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Despite the appearance of an extensive literature on women’s movements and the steady growth since the mid-1970s in works which offer a critical, feminist engagement with political theory,1 discussion of the broader implications of women’s politics remains a relatively unexamined aspect of the literature on development. There have been some recent attempts to redress this absence,2 yet it is as if the debates within feminist political theory and the field of development studies have pursued parallel paths with little real engagement with each other. This is all the more remarkable given the impact of women’s movements on policy-making and politics in the developing world.
221 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of diamond traffic on rural and urban life in southwestern Congo-Zaire is explored in an attempt at a "multi-sited" ethnography of the circulation of cultural meanings, commodities, money and identities in an increasingly diffuse time-space, in which the standard dichotomies between rural or urban worlds, lived world and system, traditional and modern, or precapitalist and capitalist realities have lost much of their explanatory strength.
Abstract: This article explores the impact of the recent diamond traffic on both rural and urban life in southwestern Congo-Zaire, in an attempt at a ‘multi-sited’ ethnography of the circulation of cultural meanings, commodities, money and identities in an increasingly diffuse time-space, in which the standard dichotomies between rural and urban worlds, lived world and system, traditional and modern, or precapitalist and capitalist realities have lost much of their explanatory strength. More specifically, the article deals with the widespread phenomenon of the bana Lunda, ‘the children of Lunda’, young Congolese urbanites who travel from all over southwestern Zaire to the Angolan province of Lunda Norte in order to dig or dive for diamonds in the UNITA-controlled territories. It investigates the changes brought about by the diamond trade and by the influx of these urban youngsters into the rural border area, as well as the impact of the accompanying monetization, known as ‘dollarization’, on the daily life of villagers and urbanites in Southwestern Zaire.
202 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that trust-based authentic partnerships remain vital for development, and outline some steps that NGOs might take towards forming them, and argue that NGDOs must radically rethink their roles, which calls for a transformation from intermediaries in a funding chain to facilitators of international co-operation between the diverse groups which comprise civil society.
Abstract: Since the 1970s, ‘partnership’ has been an aspiration for relationships amongst non-governmental organizations involved in international development (NGDOs). Unfortunately, NGDOs have shown little ability to form equitable relations, or true partnership, amongst themselves. The first part of this article examines why. The new policy agenda for international aid emphasizes contract-based relationships which will make real partnerships even more difficult to achieve. The second part of the analysis argues that trust-based authentic partnerships remain vital for development, and outlines some steps that NGOs might take towards forming them. In the long term, however, NGDOs must radically rethink their roles, which calls for a transformation from intermediaries in a funding chain to facilitators of international co-operation between the diverse groups which comprise civil society. NGDOs unwilling to take this step could be classified as hypocrites if they continue to employ the term ‘partnership’ for what is essentially old wine in re-labelled civic bottles.
191 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a method to repudiate liability for the Mobutu regime's debts on the basis of odious debt, and then seek to recover their losses by identifying and impounding flight capital which was extracted from the country.
Abstract: During the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo (or Zaire, as Mobutu renamed the country) accumulated a public external debt of roughly $14 billion. At the same time, Mobutu and his associates extracted wealth from the country. By 1990, real capital flight from Zaire amounted to $12 billion. With imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of Zairian flight capital was nearly $18 billion. Congo’s successor governments may be able to repudiate liability for the Mobutu regime’s debts on the basis of the doctrine of odious debt. Creditors could then seek to recover their losses by identifying and impounding flight capital which was extracted from the country.
125 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated Pentecostal views of and attitudes towards commodities in southern Ghana, and found that the modern global economy as enchanted and themselves as agents of disenchantment: only through prayer may commodities cease to act as "fetishes" which threaten the personal integrity and identity of their owners.
Abstract: This article addresses the phenomenal success of pentecostalism, a global religious movement par excellence, throughout postcolonial Africa. Investigating pentecostalist views of and attitudes towards commodities in southern Ghana, the article shows that pentecostalists represent the modern global economy as enchanted and themselves as agents of disenchantment: only through prayer may commodities cease to act as ‘fetishes’ which threaten the personal integrity and identity of their owners. Pentecostalism creates modern consumers through a ritual of prayer, which helps them handle globalization and control foreign commodities in such a way that they can be consumed without danger. Through prayer, commodities cease to possess their owners; the latter are rather enabled to possess the former. Pentecostalism engages in globalization by enabling its members to consume products from the global market and by offering its followers fixed orientation points and a well-delimited moral universe within globalization's unsettling flows.
111 citations
TL;DR: The more current the notion of globalization becomes, the more it seems to be beset with vagueness and inconsistencies as discussed by the authors, and it is no reason to abandon the notion altogether.
Abstract: The more current the notion of globalization becomes, the more it seems to be beset with vagueness and inconsistencies. The notion as such and the complex reality it attempts to grasp are therefore met with a mixture of uneasiness and fascination by social scientists. This lack of clarity is not exceptional—it seems to be the fate of many fashionable terms and probably also the cause of their popularity—and it is no reason to abandon the notion altogether. Even if globalization amounts to nothing more than a sensitizing notion, rather than an analytical concept, it is important to realize that the ambiguities it calls forth issue urgent challenges, not merely on the level of theory but also with regard to a better understanding of actual global entanglements and the crises to which they give rise.
109 citations
TL;DR: The authors of as mentioned in this paper argue that the failure of the land titling project is not solely a consequence of the organizational incapacity of the bureaucracy, as some evaluations suggest, but that it is rooted in mistaken assumptions about the social organization of property rights and the causes of insecurity.
Abstract: The Honduran land titling project (the Proyecto de Titulacion de Tierra para los Pequenos Productores), initiated in 1982, was intended to enhance security in land rights, to facilitate credit and to improve agricultural productivity. This study explores how the project has operated in one village, and concludes that it has attained none of its objectives; instead, it has triggered new sources of land conflicts, thus adding to the existing complex of local rules and laws. The authors argue that the failure of the project is not solely a consequence of the organizational incapacity of the bureaucracy, as some evaluations suggest, but that it is rooted in mistaken assumptions about the social organization of property rights and the causes of insecurity. The land titling project is founded on a contradiction: although based on the ideology of the capitalizing family farm in the context of a withdrawing state, its implementation actually requires strong and repressive state intervention. Rather than reducing insecurity in property rights, the project has merely 'modernized' the sources which can be used to contest rights in land.
101 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors employ their own research using Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in a Zimbabwean Resettlement Area, to examine how knowledge is created through this type of research act, and how later research may be used to turn back and make sense of PRA data.
Abstract: The increased popularity of ‘participatory’ methods in research, development projects, and rural extension in developing countries, has not consistently been accompanied by a critical evaluation of the quality and reliability of knowledge created and extracted in the process. In this article, the author employs her own research using Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in a Zimbabwean Resettlement Area, to examine how knowledge is created through this type of research act, and how later research may be used to turn back and ‘make sense’ of PRA data. The article explores how power relations among participants are both revealed and concealed in PRA, focusing specifically on the implications for gendered perspectives. The paper also highlights the dynamic, contested and often contradictory nature of ‘local knowledge’ itself. Apparently transparent chunks of ‘local reality’ gleaned through PRA can turn out to be part of complex webs of multiple ideologies and practices. The author argues that while participatory methodologies may offer effective ways of beginning a research project, adoption of short PRA workshops in academic or project related research could lead to dangerously faulty representations of complex social worlds.
TL;DR: In this paper, the appropriate role for the law to play in the restructuring and reform of land relations and land tenure in Africa is explored, and the authors conclude that, while there is no single "right way" to tackle land tenure reform in Africa, there are a number of factors which may be crucial to success, and in which the law and lawyers can play a vital role.
Abstract: This article explores a number of issues concerning the appropriate role for the law to play in the restructuring and reform of land relations and land tenure in Africa. Given current (external) donor tendencies, and (internal) pressures for reform from within, this is a particularly topical issue: in seeking to explore it, the author draws on his own experiences and involvement in land law reform, as well as other sources of information, concentrating on countries and events in Eastern and Southern Africa. After examining various models and country experiences, the article concludes that, while there is no single ‘right way’ to tackle land tenure reform in Africa, there are a number of factors which may be crucial to success, and in which the law—and lawyers—can play a vital role.
TL;DR: In this paper, representations in South and West Cameroon about ekong, supposedly a novel form of witchcraft explicitly associated with modern forms of wealth, are compared to Weller's study of the upsurge of spirit cults in Taiwan, during the recent economic boom of this ‘Asian tiger’.
Abstract: The obsession with witchcraft in many parts of present-day Africa is not to be viewed as some sort of traditional residue. On the contrary, it is especially present in the more modern spheres of society. In a comparative, global perspective, this linking of modernity and witchcraft is not particular to Africa: in other parts of our globalized world, modern developments coincide with a proliferation of what the Comaroffs (forthcoming) call ‘the economies of the occult’. In this article, representations in South and West Cameroon about ekong, supposedly a novel form of witchcraft explicitly associated with modern forms of wealth, are compared to Weller's study of the upsurge of spirit cults in Taiwan, during the recent economic boom of this ‘Asian tiger’. The power of such discourses on occult forces is that they relate people's fascination with the open-endedness of global flows to the search for fixed orientation points and identities. Both witchcraft and spirit cults exhibit a surprising capacity for combining the local and the global. Both also have specific implications for the ways in which people try to deal with modernity's challenge.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry and showed that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted to convert those tenure rights into concrete economic gains.
Abstract: The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea was expected by many to lead to a drastic redistribution of income from the world's fisheries. This article explores the extent to which this happened by examining the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry. The analysis shows that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted to convert those tenure rights into concrete economic gains. Notwithstanding their success in organizing and co-operating amongst themselves, the Pacific Island countries (PICs) were unable to compel the distant water fishing nations to pay them more than a nominal access fee. When the PICs tried instead to develop their own tuna industries, they were disadvantaged by being located at the raw material end of the commodity chain. This case study suggests that a change in property rights is only a starting point for achieving increased equity in a global natural resource industry; not only do the new resource owners have to develop expertise in managing their ‘property’; they also need to develop a good understanding of the organization and operation of these natural resource industries.
TL;DR: In the post-Soviet era of transition, the governments of the Central Asian states and international donors have tried to mitigate the impact of the crisis and contain its scope as mentioned in this paper, but the room for manoeuvre that exists to implement policies which would immediately improve the environment, such as efficient water management and sustainable land use, is not being sufficiently utilized.
Abstract: The haunting picture of a disappearing Aral Sea is just part of an overall environmental crisis in the Aral Sea Basin, where millions of people are dependent on agricultural production around the flows of two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Forced cotton cultivation in the former Soviet Union, in the context of inefficient agricultural organization and production, caused water mismanagement, salinization, water and soil contamination, erosion and the desiccation of the Aral Sea. In the post-Soviet era of ‘transition’, the governments of the Central Asian states and international donors have tried to mitigate the impact of the crisis and contain its scope. Resource-based tensions in the region reflect national (and sometimes ethnic) interests vested in the crucial agricultural sectors that provide foreign exchange and food. Although the Central Asian governments are gradually formulating regional water, land and salt management strategies, the room for manoeuvre that exists to implement policies which would immediately improve the environment, such as efficient water management and sustainable land use, is not being sufficiently utilized.
TL;DR: The authors analyzed French assimilation policy towards the four communes of the colony of Senegal, placing it in a new conceptual framework of "globalization" and "post-colonial studies".
Abstract: This article analyses French assimilation policy towards the four communes of the colony of Senegal, placing it in a new conceptual framework of ‘globalization’ and ‘post-colonial studies’. Between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, the four cities of Saint-Louis, Goree, Rufisque and Dakar were granted municipal status, while their inhabitants acquired French citizenship. However, the acquisition of these political privileges went together with a refusal on the part of these ‘citizens’ to submit themselves to the French code civil. Their resistance manifested itself in particular in the forging of an urban culture that differed from both the metropolitan model and the Senegambian models of the independent kingdoms on the colony's fringes or the societies integrated as protectorates. This article argues that, at the very heart of this colonial project and despite its marked assimilationist and jacobin overtones, a strong project of cultural and political hybridization developed. The inhabitants of the quatre communes forged their own civilite which enabled them to participate in a global colonial culture on the basis of local idioms.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors re-opened questions about chronopolitics raised by Johannes Fabian in Time and the Other, and argued that the oversymmetric portrayals of identity and nationalism in Anderson's Imagined Communities were made real by colonial practices, and that glory and hierarchical self-assertion, not horizontal comradeship, were central to Europe's Rome-fantasizing imperial nations.
Abstract: What are the chronopolitics of global–local relations? This article reconsiders the oversymmetric portrayals of identity and nationalism in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, and reopens questions about chronopolitics raised by Johannes Fabian in Time and the Other. Anderson relies heavily on Walter Benjamin, but seriously misunderstands him, in his portrayal of nations as parallel communities in ‘homogeneous, empty, time’. Against Anderson's premise that homogeneous, empty time is real, this article argues that calibrated asymmetries in global time were made real by colonial practices, that we have forgotten that glory and hierarchical self-assertion, not horizontal comradeship, were central to Europe's Rome-fantasizing imperial nations, and that elite diaspora have replaced imperial conquests precisely in the wake of decolonization and the rise of UN ideology.
TL;DR: In this paper, three narratives of journeys to the homeland are presented, showing the complex motivations and consequences of such journeys, and they reveal that concepts of ethnicity, nationalism, and non-nationalism have to be rethought in the context of shifting borders, transnational encounters and the production of diasporas.
Abstract: Diasporas are an increasingly important phenomenon in the ‘era of globalization’. Transnational networks structure and restructure economic exchanges, familial bonds, cultural identities and political mobilization. This article examines one such diaspora, which traces its origin to the North Caucasus, the Circassians. The break-up of the Soviet Union has enabled some people to journey back to their ‘homeland’ and even take up residence there once again. Through such journeys and the encounters that accompany them, notions of identity, history, culture and tradition are challenged. This has the dual eAect of fragmenting ethnic identity while simultaneously transforming the ‘homeland’ from an abstract concept to an everyday reality. The ensuing interplay between nation and diaspora is translated by diAerent individuals in diAerent ways. Three narratives of journeys to the homeland are presented here, showing the complex motivations and consequences of such journeys. Ethnographies of globalization thus reveal that concepts of ‘ethnicity’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘ethnonationalism’ have to be rethought in the context of shifting borders, transnational encounters and the production of diasporas.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the concept of virtuality, arguing that this constitutes one of the key concepts for a characterization and understanding of the forms of globalization in Africa.
Abstract: In response to the need for further conceptual development in the field of anthropological globalization studies, this article concentrates on the concept of virtuality, arguing that this constitutes one of the key concepts for a characterization and understanding of the forms of globalization in Africa. The article first defines virtuality and globalization and provisionally indicates their theoretical relationship. The problematic heritage of a locality-obsessed anthropological tradition (as explored in the article) then provides the analytical framework within which virtuality makes an inspiring topic. The transition from theory to empirical case studies is made by examining the problem of meaning in the African urban environment. Finally, an ethnographic situation is invoked (urban puberty rites in present day Zambia) which illustrates particular forms of virtuality as part of the globalization process.
TL;DR: The authors argue that diversification of local rural economies does not emerge automatically from agricultural growth and market expansion, rather, intersectoral and spatial linkages depend crucially on the social organization of production, the conditions of access to resources, and the social logic of investment.
Abstract: Regional growth linkage modellers claim that agricultural growth generates non-agricultural diversification of rural regions through the operation of production and consumption linkages. These influential claims are often legitimated in terms of a composite model of ‘Asian success’ from which neoliberal policy prescriptions are derived for other parts of the world. This article argues that diversification of local rural economies does not emerge automatically from agricultural growth and market expansion. Rather, intersectoral and spatial linkages depend crucially on the social organization of production, the conditions of access to resources, and the social logic of investment—that is, who gets the surplus and what they do with it — as well as on wider configurations of political – economic forces. The article repositions key ‘Asian successes’ within institutionally and historically specific contexts, and shows how supposedly similar instances of regional growth linkages exemplify multiple and quite divergent paths of sectoral and spatial development.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors follow the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of specific products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world.
Abstract: This article follows the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of specific products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world. By highlighting the multiplicities and ambiguities of social value and cultural identities implicit in the workings of commodity chains and globalization processes, the study leads to a questioning of commodity-chain analysis. It also challenges theories of cultural production and circulation based on a unified and hierarchical system of value.
TL;DR: The persistence of non-capitalist dimensions within land relations in the Philippines is basic to rural livelihood strategies, and has been a major but widely-neglected factor in the failure of land reform programs as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: This article argues that the persistence of non-capitalist dimensions within land relations in the Philippines is basic to rural livelihood strategies, and has been a major but widely-neglected factor in the failure of land reform programmes. Addressing the issue of non-capitalist relationships brings into focus the indigenous or ‘customary’ land tenure relationships that exist in lowland land tenure arrangements, with the result that the conventional dichotomy between lowland and upland ‘cultural minority’ land relations becomes spurious. The article offers some suggestions as to why, for the major part of this century, the indigenous norms of lowlanders have been overlooked, with a discussion which links up to issues of national identity and nation building.
TL;DR: This paper developed a globalization framework and a model of transnational processes for analysing social change and development, and then applied the model to Central America, emphasizing determinacy, in the last instance, of social forces in historic developmental outcomes.
Abstract: This article develops a globalization framework and a model of transnational processes for analysing social change and development, and then applies the model to Central America. The analysis emphasizes determinacy, in the last instance, of social forces in historic developmental outcomes, and documents how social forces in struggles in an emergent transnational environment have shaped Central America's changing profile within the global economy and society. Revolutionary movements, a new class structure, US geo-political considerations, and the internationalization of East Asian economies, have all contributed to a new model of development; from the 1960s into the 1990s the national model of development is being replaced by a transnational model. Maquiladora garment production, tourism, non-traditional agricultural exports, and remittances from emigrant workers are coming to eclipse traditional agro-exports as the most dynamic economic sectors linking the region to globalized circuits of production and distribution. The article also examines Central American migration to the US and gender dimensions of the new transnational model of development.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors blend the insights of development economics and political economy in order to analyse industrial policy in Hong Kong, and suggest that the political change from a colony to a special administrative region of China provides a context for Hong Kong State to undertake a more interventionist, industry-specific policy, the success of which will depend on a combination of two factors: state autonomy against the excessive influence of Beijing, and state capacity to guard against corruption and to enhance a mutually beneficial regional co-operation in the South China region.
Abstract: This article attempts to blend the insights of development economics and political economy in order to analyse industrial policy in Hong Kong. It describes the lack of industrial upgrading, the process of de-industrialization, and the over-reliance on the service sector, and examines the political economy of the functional industrial policy practised in Hong Kong, as well as its limitation. The author suggests that the political change from a colony to a special administrative region of China provides a context for Hong Kong State to undertake a more interventionist, industry-specific policy, the success of which will depend on a combination of two factors: state autonomy against the excessive influence of Beijing, and state capacity to guard against corruption and to enhance a mutually-beneficial regional co-operation in the South China region.
TL;DR: The impact of globalization in the context of human rights enforcement within the European Union is explored in this article, where the authors argue that despite the growing impact of transnational forces and supranational institutions, national mechanisms are still crucial in enforcing international obligations, so that states remain critical players rather than diminishing entities.
Abstract: This article explores the impact of globalization in the context of human rights enforcement within the European Union. It argues that despite the growing impact of transnational forces and supranational institutions, national mechanisms are still crucial in enforcing international obligations, so that states remain critical players rather than diminishing entities. The article considers the development of human rights as a fundamental norm within the European Union, and explores the relevance of this norm for third country (i.e. non-European) nationals. It argues that restrictionist policies designed to curtail immigration and exclude asylum seekers override international human rights obligations voluntarily entered into by the European member states. Even the concept of European Union citizenship, designed in part to address the rights deficit within Europe, has not so far created a base of fundamental rights capable of trumping state interests, but rather functions primarily as an exclusionary concept directed against non-Europeans.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the costs of lending through solidarity groups are high and that the benefits of high repayment rates associated with group control are not worth the high costs.
Abstract: This article argues that the costs of lending through solidarity groups are high. This is explained by the nature of groups: groups are not a forum for contractual exchange, but are costly institutions built on social capital. The costs of group formation and interaction outweigh the benefits of high repayment rates associated with group control. Supposedly sustainable group-lenders often depend on large injections of subsidized loans or capital from donors. This is usually ignored in mainstream literature which does not pay sufficient attention to the operational costs of credit extension. The argument is illustrated with a study of the Small Enterprise Foundation, South Africa, which shows a contradiction between staff-intensive, personalized lending technology and sufficient cost-recovery.
TL;DR: The authors examines the ways in which different schools of thought analyse the effect of "opening up" the economy on industrial development, and contrasts neoclassical and evolutionary approaches, concluding that empirically oriented micro-level approaches are the most promising in guiding policy decisions.
Abstract: Import liberalization is a centrepiece of conventional approaches to policy reform and structural adjustment. Despite substantial criticism of the effects of liberalization, the underlying economic reasoning is widely accepted. This article examines the ways in which different schools of thought analyse the effect of ‘opening up’ the economy on industrial development, and contrasts neoclassical and evolutionary approaches. Different conceptualizations of ‘market failure’ emerge as the focal point for differences in discussing the role and scope of government intervention, with a convergence between the information-economics and firm-level evolutionary approaches (particularly the ‘technological capabilities’ approach). The empirical literature and its interpretation by different schools are reviewed, demonstrating how policy recommendations are strongly affected by the particular theory that informs the analysis of market failure and efficiency. It is concluded that empirically oriented micro-level approaches are the most promising in guiding policy decisions.
TL;DR: This article explored how nationalist regimes and spokesmen dealt with the transnational flows, demands, and ideals generated not only by capitalism, but by historical forces such as universalizing religions and the distribution and movement of populations across territorial nations.
Abstract: Transnationalism tends to be seen as a late twentieth century development associated with advanced capitalism, flexible production and post-modernism. However, if, as many claim, nationalism emerged in the era of capitalism, then it surely had to deal with the boundary-crossing and globalizing impetus of capitalism from its inception. This article explores how nationalist regimes and spokesmen dealt with the transnational flows, demands, and ideals generated not only by capitalism, but by historical forces such as universalizing religions and the distribution and movement of populations across territorial nations. Focusing on East Asia in the first half of the twentieth century, three cases are studied: the convergence of Chinese and Japanese ideals of pan-Asianism; the Chinese republican regime's effort to incorporate the non-Chinese peoples of the vast peripheries into the territorial nation-state; and this regime's efforts to cultivate the loyalty of overseas Chinese to the nation-state. Mobilizing and deploying these transterritorial phenomena was crucial to the nation-state's internal power, yet such a mobilization tended to transgress the conception of territorial sovereignty upon which the nation-state was equally dependent both domestically and internationally. The recent signs of a tendency for the territorially sovereign nation to develop into a deterritorialized nation has consequences that can only be understood in the context of the nation's relationship to transnational forces in this earlier period.
TL;DR: In this article, a group in Mexico used the law to resist the state's attempt to expropriate land for urban development, and used it as a method of opposition as well as a symbol, by allowing the resistance to be represented in the form of "rights".
Abstract: Judicial reform and promotion of the rule of law are at the very top of the political agendas of many developing countries. Moreover, in the context of democratization and a growing concern for human rights and citizenship, many social groups are prepared to use the law as a means to challenge the State. This article looks at how a group in Mexico used the law to resist the State's attempt to expropriate land for urban development. The law was used as a method of opposition as well as a symbol, by allowing the resistance to be represented in the form of ‘rights’. In so doing, the legal discourse exposed deeper concerns for justice, ethnicity and nationhood. The solution to the conflict, however, is shown to bear little relation to either the legal framework which structured the resistance or the legal principles which the confrontation sought to establish.
TL;DR: In this article, the relevance of agricultural development to local and regional industrial development was highlighted. But, the relevance to developing countries of the new industrial district concept was not emphasized. And, it was argued that without special efforts to develop agriculture, local and local industrial development are less likely to occur.
Abstract: In focusing on regional development and industrialization, this article highlights three main themes: the relevance to developing countries of the new industrial district concept; the apparent continued need to theorize agglomerated industrial growth; and the relevance of agricultural development to local and regional industrial development. It concludes that the new industrial district concept is not relevant to understanding industrialization in the peripheral regions of developing countries and that despite the introduction of decentralization policies, local industrial development will, as before, very largely depend on central government resource allocation, the stability of government and the role played by large and medium scale enterprises, including Multi-National Corporations (MNCs). It is also argued that without special efforts to develop agriculture, local and regional industrial development are less likely to occur.