Showing papers in "Development and Change in 2002"

Gender and the silences of social capital: lessons from Latin America

Abstract: Social capital has entered development policy thinking and practice in Latin America where it converges with the premises of a new development agenda that emerged in the 1990s. Women are often central to the forms of social capital that development agencies are keen to mobilize in poverty relief programmes, but the terms of women’s insertion into these programmes is rarely problematized. This article critically examines the gendered assumptions that govern efforts to build social capital, and explores some of the tensions that have arisen in post-transition Latin America between women’s rights and social capital agendas.

Civil Society in African Contexts: Reflections on the Usefulness of a Concept

Abstract: This article considers the usefulness of the concept of civil society — both as an analytical construct and as a policy tool — in non-Western contexts, drawing on a selected review of literature on Africa from anthropology and development studies. Rejecting arguments that the concept has little meaning outside its Western origins, but critical of the sometimes crude export of the concept by Western development donors seeking to build ‘good governance’, the author examines different local meanings being created around the concept as part of an increasingly universal negotiation between citizens, states and markets. The article seeks to clarify different theoretical traditions in thinking about civil society, and suggests distinguishing the use of civil society as an analytical term from the set of actually existing groups, organizations and processes which are active on the ground. The concept is therefore useful in the analysis of contemporary politics, but is also important because it has a capacity to inspire action.

Rebuilding State Institutions in Collapsed States

Abstract: The international community has embraced an unprecedented approach to collapsed states — those that have lost their capacity to perform even the most basic functions. While historically such states simply disappeared, divided up into smaller units or were conquered by a more powerful neighbour, collapsed states are now expected to be rebuilt within the same international borders thanks to the intervention of multilateral organizations and bilateral donors. Furthermore, there is now the expectation that these states will from the very beginning be rebuilt as democracies with strong institutions. This article examines the model of state reconstruction currently adopted by the international community and some examples of its implementation. It concludes that the approach cannot be applied to all countries, that institution–building is often undertaken prematurely, and that there is a discrepancy between the donors’ prescriptions and the resources they are willing to make available.

Social reconstruction and the radicalization of development : aid as a relation of global liberal governance.

Abstract: That democratic societies do not fall into conflict has become an axiom of contemporary international relations. Liberal societies, however, do not properly exist along the troubled margins of the global order. This absence has lent urgency to present efforts at social reconstruction. Whereas a couple of decades ago the principle of non–interference prevailed, this unfinished business has shaped a new will to intervene and transform societies as a whole. This article critically analyses the international will to govern through three interconnected themes. First, it examines accepted views on the nature of the new wars. These representations usually portray conflict as a form of social regression stemming from the failure of modernity. As such, they provide a moral justification for intervention. Second, an alternative view of the new wars — as a form of resistant and reflexive modernity — is developed. Made possible by the opportunities created by globalization, this resistance assumes the organizational form of network war. The essay concludes with an examination of the encounter between the international will to govern and the resistance of reflexive modernity. This encounter is the site of the post–Cold War reuniting of aid and politics. One important consequence has been the radicalization of development and its reinvention as a strategic tool of conflict resolution and social reconstruction. The use of aid as a tool of global liberal governance is fraught with difficulty; not least, the equivocal and contested nature of its influence. Rather than reconsideration, however, policy failure tends to result in a fresh round of reinvention and reform. The increasing normalization of violence is but one effect.

Building State Failure in East Timor

Abstract: East Timor is the newest state of the twenty–first century. Yet its human development indicators compare with the most severely collapsed states in the world. Two and a half years of international administration by the United Nations seems to have had little effect on a social and political reality that has evolved by itself. In effect, the UN has given birth to a failed state. The purpose of governorship types of intervention — which attempt to (re)build governments that have collapsed or states that have failed — was to take control of a local political process and break with an abusive past. This aim was the rationale behind the most total form of international administration — UN statehood and international sovereignty in East Timor. In practice, however, the intervention failed to decentralize its own absolutist form of authority, but succeeded in excluding the local population from the equation. If there is to be any future for interventions that are both effective and legitimate, then they will need to guarantee much greater and genuine integration of the local population. ‘Participatory intervention’ is the next doctrinal puzzle to solve in the evolution of international state–building enterprises of any brand.

Dilemmas of counter-mapping community resources in Tanzania

Abstract: Recent work has celebrated the political potential of ‘counter-mapping’, that is, mapping against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals. This article briefly reviews the counter-mapping literature, and compares four counter-mapping projects from Maasai areas in Tanzania to explore some potential pitfalls in such efforts. The cases, which involve community-based initiatives led by a church-based NGO, ecotourism companies, the Tanzanian National Parks Authority, and grassroots pastoralist rights advocacy groups, illustrate the broad range of activities grouped under the heading of counter-mapping. They also present a series of political dilemmas that are typical of many counter-mapping efforts: conflicts inherent in conservation efforts involving territorialization, privatization, integration and indigenization; problems associated with the theory and practice of ‘community-level’ political engagement; the need to combine mapping efforts with broader legal and political strategies; and critical questions involving the agency of ‘external’ actors such as conservation and development donors, the state and private business interests.

Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better? War, the State, and the 'Post-Conflict' Challenge in Afghanistan

Abstract: This article investigates the challenges currently facing Afghanistan. It argues that ‘post–conflict’ peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan may depend on a dramatic expansion of institutionalized economic interdependence: this will not necessarily require obeisance to standard international policy paradigms and it will have to draw on existing patterns of interdependence, even though many of these are rooted in brutally exploitative war economy conditions. The authors argue further that neither peace nor economic development will hold without a centralized, credible and effective state, that the emergence of such a state is a political problem more than a technical problem, and that it will depend on a monopolization of force by the state. Such developments cannot be envisaged without policy being based on a close reading of the long and decidedly non–linear, conflictual experiences in state formation and failure in Afghanistan, a history whose patterns and implications are summarized in this article.

The Impact of AIDS on Rural Households in Africa: A Shock Like Any Other?

Abstract: In areas where HIV prevalence is high household production can be significantly affected and the integrity of households compromised. Yet policy responses to the impact of HIV/AIDS have been muted in comparison to outcomes of other shocks such as drought or complex political emergencies. This article looks at the reasons for the apparent under-reaction to AIDS using data from Zambia and examines recent calls to mitigate the effects of AIDS at household level. Critical consideration is directed at proposals relating to community safety nets micro-finance and the mainstreaming of AIDS within larger poverty alleviation programs. It is argued that effective initiatives must attend to the specific features of AIDS incorporating both an assault on those inequalities which drive the epidemic and sensitivity to the staging of AIDS both across and within households. A multi-pronged approach is advocated which is addressed not just at mitigation or prevention but also at emergency relief rehabilitation and development. (author’s)

The Politics of Insurgency in Collapsing States

Abstract: The phenomenon of failed states might be expected to lead to the development of mass–based social movements to address the typically ensuing social problems. This article explores the general failure of reformist insurgencies to develop in failed states, using analyses of Nigeria’s Bakassi Boys and Oodua People’s Congress, and references to other armed groups. The cause of this failure is found in the legacy of patronage politics, especially the strategies of rulers who monopolized economic opportunities as a way of controlling people. As centralized patronage networks fragment, popular movements develop to challenge this control. Local political entrepreneurs, however, continue to dominate local markets, including clandestine ones, and use this social domination to buy off members of mass movements. As their new patrons give them access to weapons and protection against rivals, the organizational position of members who pursue individual economic interests is enhanced, while the people with more overt ideological agendas are marginalized.

The challenge to the state in a globalized world.

Abstract: Individual instances of state failure and collapse must be placed within a broader appreciation of the evolution of statehood within the international system. The idea that the inhabited area of the globe must be divided between sovereign states is a recent development, and likely to prove a transient one. Largely the product of European colonialism, and turned into a global norm by decolonization, it is threatened both by the inherent difficulties of state maintenance, and by processes inherent in globalization. States are expensive organizations to maintain, not only in economic terms but also in the demands that they make on their citizens and their own employees. Poor and dispersed peoples, and those whose values derive from societies without states, have found these demands especially burdensome. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union revealed the hollowness of existing models of sovereign states, and challenged the triple narratives on which the project of global statehood has depended: the narratives of security, representation, and wealth and welfare. While individual cases of state failure and collapse may owe much to specific circumstances and the behaviour of particular individuals, they must also be understood within the context of a world in which maintaining states has become increasingly difficult.

Conservation Narratives in Costa Rica: Conflict and Co-existence

Abstract: This article examines narratives about nature conservation in Costa Rica, specifically those related to wildlife and biodiversity, and their evolution with the growth of tourism and bioprospecting industries. It outlines a traditional conservation narrative and two streams of an emerging counter-narrative, and discusses problems and prospects for each in contemporary Costa Rica. The use of narrative and counter-narrative follows Roe (1991, 1995), Fairhead and Leach (1995), and Leach and Mearns (1996). The article focuses particularly on the ways in which the narratives are increasingly drawing on, informing, and sometimes conflicting with one another; it is based on the author’s research undertaken in various protected areas in Costa Rica since 1994 and on research published by others.

‘The Problem with the Locals’: Partnership and Participation in Ethiopia

Abstract: This article examines the proliferation of development discourses about participation and partnership, focusing on natural resources management policy in Ethiopia. It argues that relationships between the state and donors and between donors themselves are contested and negotiated. The generation of policy is a value-laden process. However, because these institutions are not monolithic, the agency and positioning of those individuals charged with implementing participatory policy influence both practice and interpretation. This may go some way towards explaining the frequent gaps between policy and practice.

Empowering Pyromaniacs in Madagascar: Ideology and Legitimacy in Community‐Based Natural Resource Management

Abstract: Development practitioners frequently rely on community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) as an approach to encourage equitable and sustainable environmental resource use. Based on an analysis of the case of grassland and woodland burning in highland Madagascar, this article argues that the success of CBNRM depends upon the real empowerment of local resource users and attention to legitimacy in local institutions. Two key factors — obstructive environmental ideologies (‘received wisdoms’) and the complex political and social arena of ‘community’ governance — challenge empowerment and legitimacy and can transform outcomes. In Madagascar, persistent hesitancy among leaders over the legitimate role of fire has sidetracked a new CBNRM policy called GELOSE away from one of its original purposes — community fire management — towards other applications, such as community management of forest exploitation. In addition, complications with local governance frustrate implementation efforts. As a result, a century-long political stalemate over fire continues.

Local Histories, Global Markets: Cocoa and Class in Upland Sulawesi

Abstract: Research and policy concerning the Southeast Asian uplands have generally focused on issues of cultural diversity, conservation and community resource management. This article argues for a reorientation of analysis to highlight the increasingly uneven access to land, labour and capital stemming from processes of agrarian differentiation in upland settings. It draws upon contrasting case studies from two areas of Central Sulawesi to explore the processes through which differentiation occurs, and the role of local histories of agriculture and settlement in shaping farmers’ responses to new market opportunities. Smallholders have enthusiastically abandoned their diversified farming systems to invest their land and labour in a new global crop, cocoa, thereby stimulating a set of changes in resource access and social relations that they did not anticipate. The concept of agency drawn from a culturally oriented political economy guides the analysis of struggles over livelihoods, land entitlements, and the reconfiguration of community, as well as the grounds on which new collective visions emerge.

Economic Action and Social Structure: 'Cambisme' in Kinshasa

Abstract: In the recent literature on institutions and social capital, there has been a renewed emphasis on the importance of social structure in explaining the performance of economic markets. Approaches to how this ‘social structure’ is conceived differ widely, however. This article examines the social structure and partitioning of the market in foreign currency in Kinshasa, based on fieldwork in the mid–1990s, and finds remarkable similarities with Geertz’s seminal paper on the functioning of peasant markets and his description of the bazaar economy in Sefrou. The case study is also instructive as it highlights the day–to–day reality of hyperinflation and monetary chaos.

The Effectiveness of Policy Conditionality: Eight Country Experiences

Abstract: This article analyses the effectiveness of the setting of policy conditions in exchange for aid. Given the emerging consensus that this process is not effective, this article focuses on explaining why not. In analysing the experiences of eight countries — Bangladesh, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia — an ‘augmented’ principal–agent framework proved valuable in explaining why policy conditionality is not effective in these countries. The article concludes that donors should focus on some simple policy outcomes (ex post) instead of extensive policy conditions (ex ante).

State Collapse and Fresh Starts: Some Critical Reflections

Abstract: Until little more than a decade ago, it would have seemed almost inconceivable even to professional political analysts that incidences of state collapse should be on the increase, that the prospect of short-lived or more enduring statelessness should become more common, and that discussion about these phenomena should be rapidly spreading. For a long time, states were accepted as ‘normal’ in a very basic sense and scholarly perspectives commonly took such ‘normalcy’ as their point of departure (Doornbos 1994). As already noted in Chapter 1, an extensive literature (in history, archaeology, anthropology and political science) developed on the dynamics of state formation — discussing and weighing variables that may have given rise to it, such as conquest, trade routes, population pressure and a range of other factors (see, e.g., Claessen and Skalnik 1978, Doornbos and Kaviraj 1997, Tilly 1990) — but generally there was little writing on state collapse. Normatively, once states had come into existence they were expected to last — and, in recent decades, to help sustain the international system that had in turn come to be based on them. A notable exception to this continuity-based perspective was the historical, and the historians’, interest in the collapse of empires (e.g., Eisenstadt 1988, Gibbon 1952, Lieven 2000). But there are important qualitative differences between empires and state systems, and by implication in the nature of their possible collapse.

Models and Methods in Development–Induced Displacement (Review Article)

Abstract: Books reviewed in this article: S. Parasuraman, The Development Dilemma: Displacement in India Michael Cernea, (ed.) Economics of Involuntary Resettlement: Questions and Challenges Michael Cernea and Chris McDowell, (eds) Risks and Reconstruction: Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development, A New Framework for Decision–Making, Report of the World Commission on Dams Robert Picciotto, Warren van Wicklin and Edward Rice, (eds) Involuntary Resettlement: Comparative Perspectives

Gender, Traditional Authority, and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa

Abstract: The new South African Constitution together with later policies and legislation affirm a commitment to gender rights that is incompatible with the formal recognition afforded to unelected traditional authorities. This contradiction is particularly evident in the case of land reform in many rural areas where women’s right of access to land is denied through the practice of customary law. This article illustrates the ways in which these constitutional contradictions play out with particular intensity in the ‘former homelands’ through the example of a conflict over land use in Buffelspruit Mpumalanga province. There a number of women who had been granted informal access to communal land for the purposes of subsistence cultivation had their rights revoked by the traditional authority. Despite desperate protests they continue to be marginalized in terms of access to land while their male counterparts appropriate communal land for commercial farming and cattle grazing. Drawing on this protest we argue that current South African practice in relation to the pressing issue of gender equity in land reform represents a politics of accommodation and evasion that tends to reinforce gender biases in rural development and in so doing undermines the prospects for genuinely radical transformation of the instituted geographies and institutionalized practices bequeathed by the apartheid regime. (author’s)

Aid Conditionality as a Tool for Peacebuilding: Opportunities and Constraints

Abstract: Over the past decade, aid donors have pledged billions of dollars to support peacebuilding efforts in collapsed states and war–torn societies. Peace conditionality — the use of formal performance criteria and informal policy dialogue to encourage the implementation of peace accords and the consolidation of peace — could make aid a more effective tool for building peace. In Bosnia, for example, donors have attempted to link aid to the protection of human rights, co–operation with the international war crimes tribunal, and the right of people displaced by ‘ethnic cleansing’ to return to their homes. Yet the conventional practices and priorities of aid donors pose constraints to the exercise of peace conditionality. This article examines several of these constraints, including the reluctance of donors (particularly the international financial institutions) to acknowledge responsibility for the political repercussions of aid; the competing foreign–policy objectives of donor governments; the humanitarian imperative to aid people whose lives are at risk; and the incentive structures and institutional cultures of donor agencies.

Poverty Reduction with Growth and Redistribution

Abstract: In the late 1990s the bilateral and multilateral development agencies placed increasing emphasis on poverty reduction in developing countries. This led to the establishment by the United Nations of the ‘International Development Targets’ for poverty reduction. The target of poverty reduction might be achieved through faster economic growth alone, through redistribution, or through a combination of the two. This article presents an analytical framework to assess the effectiveness of growth and redistribution for poverty reduction. It concludes that redistribution, either of current income or the growth increment of income, is more effective in reducing poverty for a majority of countries than growth alone.

Privatization of Security, Arms Proliferation and the Process of State Collapse in Africa

Abstract: Most so–called ‘collapsed states’ in Africa are extreme cases of the complex and contradictory processes of state–making and unmaking which are unfolding in the continent. Beneath the veneer of sovereignty, virtually all these nations started their independent existence in the 1960s as shell states. Since then, they have either followed the path of self–destruction (state collapse) or have sought to fill the shell with institutional content (state–making). Private military intervention is one of the key external factors undermining the state–building project. Whether in its traditional ‘soldier of fortune’ form, or in its current corporate cloak, the privatization of security injects an inflammatory element into the governance process in weak states. Since independence, the populations of Africa have been subjected to structural violence that has highlighted force and de–emphasized human security as the cornerstone of governance. Civil society reactions to this have become more pronounced since the end of the Cold War, and have led to negative reconfiguration in weak states that are least equipped to manage the new challenges. The privatization of security impedes efforts to fashion accountable governance, and entrenches the culture of violence. Private military companies, their partner arms brokers and local warlords are the principal actors in illegitimate resource appropriation — a major cause of ongoing asymmetric warfare in Africa — and the proliferation of weapons — an incendiary element in these wars.

Scaling up Participatory Watershed Development in India

Abstract: ‘Participation’ is widely accepted as a prerequisite to successful watershed development in India, but there is no shared understanding of its meaning, nor of how to make it operational. Meaningful participation, in which communities work collectively, help make decisions and share costs, is limited primarily to projects implemented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Participation in government projects is more superficial because staff lack the skills and incentive to engage in meaningful participation. Strategies to scale up meaningful participation require a large number of NGOs. However, the number of NGOs with the necessary skills and values is limited, so a realistic strategy must seek to improve the capabilities and incentives of government agencies. Their performance may improve by making them accountable through transparent processes and participatory monitoring and evaluation. NGO-facilitated access to information for communities can potentially change power relations and initiate political processes that make both community leaders and government agencies more accountable to communities.

Vulnerability, control and oil palm in Sarawak: globalization and a new era?

Abstract: In the post logging era Sarawak is being restructured to make way for large- scale oil palm plantations. In this restructuring the vulnerabilities of particular areas are being used in a wider battle to control production particularly for export. Native customary lands considered `unproductive or `idle by officials are the target of oil palm plantation development under a new land development program called Konsep Baru (New Concept). This article looks at the contradictions generated by the complex process of laying claims to idle native customary land and focuses on Dayak organizing initiatives in northern Sarawak Malaysia. (authors)

State Collapse and its Implications for Peace–Building and Reconstruction

Abstract: At the beginning of the twenty–first century, terms such as state collapse and failed states are becoming familiar, regularly used in international politics to describe a new and frightening challenge to international security. The dramatic events of September 11 have pushed the issue of collapsed states further into the limelight. This article has two aims. Firstly, it explains the contextual factors that gave rise to the phenomenon of state collapse. In the early post–Cold War period, state collapse was usually viewed as a regional phenomenon, and concerns were mainly limited to humanitarian consequences for the local population and destabilizing effects on neighbouring countries. Now, state collapse is seen in a more global context, and concerns are directed at the emergence of groups of non–state actors who are hostile to the fundamental values and interests of the international society such as peace, stability, rule of law, freedom and democracy. Secondly, the article offers some observations about the normative implications of the phenomenon of state collapse for peace–building and reconstruction.

State Collapse as Business: The Role of Conflict Trade and the Emerging Control Agenda

Abstract: This article examines the role played by conflict trade in the process of state collapse. Conflict trade is defined here as the trade in non–military goods such as diamonds, timber and drugs that finances war. Such trade includes both the export and import of goods to a war zone as well as extra–territorial trade undertaken by supporters of a warring faction. It is argued that the decline of superpower military aid coupled with the broader effects of centre–periphery exploitation mediated through a neo–liberal and western imposed version of globalization has meant such trade has a particular salience both in contemporary conflict and the process of state collapse. Equally, though, the reliance of warring factions on conflict trade means they are also susceptible to changes in the market for their goods, creating a vulnerability that can (and to some extent has been) exploited to promote peace. The emerging control agenda on conflict trade is currently characterized by a number of problems — most notably, the risk that the control of conflict trade might become a substitute for action on arms exports; that international action has largely been undertaken within an inappropriate statist paradigm; that control has sometimes taken second place to economic or strategic interests and that policy has become hostage to a ‘drugs and thugs’ agenda which risks undermining its effectiveness.

Aid and the Geopolitics of the Post‐Colonial: Critical Reflections on New Labour’s Overseas Development Strategy

Abstract: In the post Cold War era, issues of poverty, inequality and social exclusion have become central to many of the key discussions of international relations and development aid. In this context, this article sets out to analyse the nature and specificity of the development strategy of the New Labour government in Britain, as it has evolved since 1997. In the setting of the literatures on post-colonialism, aid and development, the authors examine the specific concepts and approaches that help to frame such a strategy, giving particular attention to the commonalities and divergences between the British Government’s 1997 and 2000 White Papers. The perspective used connects ideas and issues from domains of knowledge which tend to remain independent of each other, namely aid and development studies and post-colonial theory. Situated on the terrain of aid and development, the guiding objective of the article is to raise certain questions concerning power, knowledge and geopolitics, so that a wider conceptual and policy-oriented debate might be engendered.

Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition: The Case of Kenyan Horticulture

Abstract: This article examines the social effects of contract farming of export horticulture among smallholders in Meru District, Kenya. During the 1980s and 1990s, contracting was popularized by donors and governments alike as a way to reduce poverty and increase opportunities for self–employment in rural areas. Considerable research has documented the tensions in social relations that emerge in such cases, giving rise to gendered struggles over land, labour, and income in the face of new commodity systems. This article highlights similar tendencies. It suggests that men’s failure to compensate their wives for horticulture production has given rise to a string of witchcraft allegations and acts, as the wealth engendered by horticultural commodities comes up against cultural norms of marital obligation. While witchcraft accusations can expose women to risks of social alienation and financial deprivation, witchcraft nevertheless remains a powerful weapon through which women can level intra–household disparities and, more broadly, challenge the legitimacy of social practice. In Meru, witchcraft discourses are a vehicle through which gendered struggles over contract income are articulated and contested, and through which the social costs of agrarian transition become apparent.

Social Movements and Ecological Modernization: The Transformation of Pulp and Paper Manufacturing

Abstract: Ecological modernization theory posits that social movements play a central role in the environmental transformation of contemporary society. How they do so has received limited scholarly attention. This article seeks to reduce this thesis to a number of propositions which are then examined in light of the experience of the pulp and paper industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on field research and interviews in Southeast Asia, Australia and the United States, as well as available data, the study finds that social movements were instrumental in the environmental transformation of the pulp industry, with important differences between North and South. It concludes with a call for more nuanced studies of the influence of social movements on different sectors and countries, especially in newly industrializing countries where more tenuous and dependent forms of ecological modernization may be emerging.