Showing papers in "Development and Change in 2003"
Journal Article•
801 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that despite the rhetoric of devolution and participation associated with new CBC models, conservation planning in Tanzania remains a top-down endeavour, with communities and their specialized socio-ecological knowledge delegated to the margins.
Abstract: Community Based Conservation (CBC) has become the catch–all solution to the social and ecological problems plaguing traditional top–down, protectionist conservation approaches. CBC has been particularly popular throughout Africa as a way to gain local support for wildlife conservation measures that have previously excluded local people and their development needs. This article shows that, despite the rhetoric of devolution and participation associated with new CBC models, conservation planning in Tanzania remains a top–down endeavour, with communities and their specialized socio–ecological knowledge delegated to the margins. In addition to the difficulties associated with the transfer of power from state to community hands, CBC also poses complex challenges to the culture or institution of conservation. Using the example of the Tarangire–Manyara ecosystem, the author shows how local knowledge and the complexities of ecological processes challenge the conventional zone–based conservation models, and argues that the insights of local Maasai knowledge claims could better reflect the ecological and social goals of the new CBC rhetoric.
282 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of micro-credit program participation on women's empowerment has been evaluated by applying an analytical framework that recognizes the conceptual shift in emphasis in the definition of empowerment, from notions of greater well-being of women to notions of women's choice and active agency.
Abstract: This article re-assesses the effect of microcredit programme participation on women's empowerment by applying an analytical framework that recognizes the conceptual shift in emphasis in the definition of empowerment, from notions of greater well-being of women to notions of women's choice and active agency in the attainment of greater well-being. The author finds that microcredit programme participation has only a limited direct effect in increasing women's access to choice-enhancing resources, but has a much stronger effect in increasing women's ability to exercise agency in intra-household processes. Consequently, programme participation is able to increase women's welfare and possibly to reduce male bias in welfare outcomes, particularly in poor households.
216 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the extent to which home-based production in the garment sector of Ahmedabad, India, serves to empower its female participants, defining empowerment in terms of control over enterprise income and decision-making within the household.
Abstract: This article examines the extent to which home–based production in the garment sector of Ahmedabad, India, serves to empower its female participants, defining empowerment in terms of control over enterprise income and decision–making within the household. It places this question within the literatures on resource theory and bargaining models of the household, both of which posit that improved access to resources increases women's power in the household. This study highlights why access to resources may not lead so directly to improvements in women's position in the household in the Indian context. It then discusses why home–based work may be less empowering than sources of work outside of the home. The arguments about the empowerment potential of women's access to resources through home–based work are tested by examining, first, the determinants of control over the income generated by women in home–based garment production and, second, to what extent access to and control over income from this source translates into involvement in decisions which are atypically women's and yet important to their lives. The results provide a better understanding of the potential of home–based work to offer women in urban India a source of economic activity that also can translate into increased intra–household power.
169 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the Impoverishment Risk and Reconstruction model is used to evaluate the risks faced by the resettled populations, and to elaborate some social and environmental guidelines to mitigate them.
Abstract: Since the Rio Conference of 1992, which declared the conservation of biodiversity and the creation of national parks to be priorities, resettlements resulting from conservation projects in Central Africa have been on the increase, as people living inside protected areas are relocated. Hardly any of these resettlements have been successful. There has been resistance to moving in the first place, and even returns to former villages inside the national parks. Resettlement is still the most common way to deal with people who happen to live in African national parks, but the risks which arise from these resettlements have led some scientists to rethink their position. This article focuses on the Congo River Basin. It reviews the only ‘official’ relocation programme in the region (Korup National Park, Cameroon) and evaluates different approaches of national parks in Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo (Brazzaville) and Gabon. The author uses the Impoverishment Risk and Reconstruction model introduced by Cernea to evaluate the risks faced by the resettled populations, and to elaborate some social and environmental guidelines to mitigate them.
128 citations
TL;DR: Tanzania's pastoralist land rights movement began with local resistance to the alienation of traditional grazing lands in Maasai and Barabaig communities as mentioned in this paper, and it gained institutional legitimacy through the registration of pastoralist Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).
Abstract: Tanzania's pastoralist land rights movement began with local resistance to the alienation of traditional grazing lands in Maasai and Barabaig communities. While these community–based social movements were conducted through institutions and relationships that local people knew and understood, they were not co–ordinated in a comprehensive fashion and their initial effectiveness was limited. With the advent of liberalization in the mid–1980s, they began to gain institutional legitimacy through the registration of pastoralist Non–Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Registered NGOs provided community leaders with a formal mechanism for co–ordinating local land movements and for advocating for land rights at the international level. The connections of pastoralist NGOs to disenfranchised communities, and their incorporation of traditional cultural institutions into modern institutional structures, resonated with the desires of international donors to support civil society and to create an effective public sphere in Tanzania, making these NGOs an attractive focus for donor funding. In spite of their good intentions, however, donors frequently overlooked the institutional impacts of their assistance on the pastoralist land rights movement and the formation of civil society in pastoralist communities. NGO leaders have become less accountable to their constituent communities, and the movement itself has lost momentum as its energies have been diverted into activities that can be justified in donor funding reports. A political movement geared towards specific outcomes has been transformed into group of apolitical institutions geared toward the process of donor funding cycles.
125 citations
TL;DR: The World Trade Organization, a target of the critics of globalization, should be seen as a welcome extension of the rule of law to the international arena and a counterweight to unilateralism as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Economic globalization is reducing the significance of state boundaries. We have a global economy but lack the institutions necessary for a global polity. Unilateral action by a would–be hegemon is untenable in the long term and hence there is a need to discuss our institutions of global governance. The benefits and costs of globalization have been distributed asymmetrically, placing poor people in poor countries at a disadvantage, especially as regards the free movement of low–skilled labour and the creation of intellectual property rights. The World Trade Organization, a target of the critics of globalization, should be seen as a welcome extension of the rule of law to the international arena and a counterweight to unilateralism. More generally, global economic liberalism should be balanced by institutions which provide global public goods and international mechanisms to finance them. All of this implies a further weakening of state sovereignty and a need to ensure that global institutions are democratic and can be held accountable to people worldwide for their performance.
104 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that understanding spatial and historical dimensions of the process through which Amdo was incorporated into the People's Republic of China (PRC) helps us make sense of these conflicts.
Abstract: This article focuses on one of the most disturbing features of life on the Tibetan grasslands today: intractable, violent conflicts over pasture. The author argues that understanding spatial and historical dimensions of the process through which Amdo was incorporated into the People's Republic of China (PRC) helps us make sense of these conflicts. State territoriality attempts to replace older socio–territorial identities with new administrative units. However, histories remain inscribed in the landscape and lead to unintended consequences in the implementation of new grassland policies. The author draws on Raymond Williams’ insight into residual formations to theorize the relationship between range conflicts and secular state officials’ lack of authority. At the same time, dispute resolution by religious figures challenges both triumphalist readings of state domination and romantic notions of Tibetan resistance.
101 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine an institutional approach to development in which indigenous institutions are viewed as a resource for achieving development, and show that partnerships between development agencies and indigenous NRM institutions are often fragile, and tend to dissolve when they fail to meet the preconceptions of the developers.
Abstract: This article examines an institutional approach to development in which indigenous institutions are viewed as a resource for achieving development. It concentrates on indigenous natural resource management (NRM) institutions which have been seen by some development agencies to be a means to address the needs of people and the environment in a way that is also participatory. Using material from Borana, Ethiopia, the article describes the indigenous NRM institutions and examines the outcome of one attempt to work with them. In the process, it shows that partnerships between development agencies and indigenous NRM institutions are often fragile, and tend to dissolve when they fail to meet the preconceptions of the developers. Through an examination of this approach to development, the article also examines the usefulness of recent broad approaches to institutions.
94 citations
TL;DR: The main thesis of as mentioned in this paper is that being recognized as traditional or indigenous requires the employment of modern means, and that the entire debate is the expression of a dilemma that has no solution but is actually an expression of modernity.
Abstract: The main thesis of this essay is that being recognized as traditional or indigenous requires the employment of modern means. A form of ‘Bureaucratic Orientalism’ has been devised, constructing and reaffirming ‘the Other’ through the minutiae of administrative procedures and contemporary representational processes. These procedures exist for the twin purposes of establishing the right to act as an indigenous group, and of circumscribing the obligations of the state, and possibly of other institutions of governance. The entire debate is the expression of a dilemma that has no solution but is actually an expression of modernity. The three pillars upon which indigeneity is affirmed are a national (internationally legitimized) legal system, the contemporary world of NGOs, and the institutions of local government. Thus, through the very process of being recognized as ‘indigenous’, these groups enter the realms of modernity. The Philippines provide a case study for these explorations.
79 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that people tend to deploy hybrid and highly selective and situational responses to development interventions and that these hybrid responses can be regarded as indigenous modernities, and they also question James Ferguson's conclusion that depoliticizing development discourses inevitably buttresses bureaucratic state power.
Abstract: This article questions some of the key assumptions of post-development and anti-development critics such as Arturo Escobar and Wolfgang Sachs, who tend to prescribe a puritanical and principled rejection of ‘exogenous development’ that does not necessarily reflect the needs and desires of the beneficiaries of development. Drawing on fieldwork research on land claims in Northern Cape and Northern Provinces (South Africa), the author argues that these beneficiaries tend to deploy hybrid and highly selective and situational responses to development interventions. These hybrid responses can be regarded as indigenous modernities. Development packages are resisted, embraced, reshaped or accommodated depending on the specific content and context. The author also questions James Ferguson's conclusion that depoliticizing development discourses inevitably buttresses bureaucratic state power. Rather, the fieldwork findings suggest that state-led development is often an extremely risky business that can undermine the legitimacy and authority of governments. In addition, in many parts of the developing world, it is the retreat of the neo-liberal state, rather than ‘the tyranny of development’, that poses the most serious threat to household livelihood strategies and economic survival. The case studies discussed here suggest that responses to development are usually neither wholesale endorsements nor radical rejections of modernity. Even when resisting and subverting development ideas and practices, people do not generally do so on the basis of either radical populist politics or in defence of pristine and authentic local cultural traditions.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the hydrological evidence for such reductions in supply is very weak and that, rather, the key issue in upland catchments is a significant increase in water demand, especially during the dry season.
Abstract: Tensions over water resources in upland areas of northern Thailand are often attributed to reductions in water supply caused by forest clearing. This article argues that the hydrological evidence for such reductions in supply is very weak and that, rather, the key hydrological issue in upland catchments is a significant increase in water demand, especially during the dry season. The arguments are illustrated with a detailed examination of the Mae Uam catchment, located in Chiang Mai province, where the development of dryseason soybean cultivation appears to have tested the hydrological limit of the catchment, and even exceeded this limit in drier years. The author argues that a shift in focus from water supply to water demand has fundamentally important political implications. As long as the focus of public debate is on water supply, the regulatory focus will be on those resident in the forested upland areas that are seen as being crucial in securing downstream flows. But if the water management focus is shifted to water demand, then regulatory attention must shift to the diverse sources of demand that exist throughout the hydrological system.
TL;DR: In this paper, an important but overlooked means by which able-bodied poor people get hold of lump sums of cash in rural West Bengal: seasonal migration for agricultural wage work is discussed.
Abstract: This article concerns an important but overlooked means by which able-bodied poor people get hold of lump sums of cash in rural West Bengal: seasonal migration for agricultural wage work. Drawing on a regional study of four migration streams, our main focus here is on the struggle to secure this cash by landless households in just one of those streams, originating in Murshidabad District. Case studies are used to illustrate the importance for women in nuclear families of maintaining supportive networks of kin for periods when men are absent. A parallel analysis is made of the negotiations between male migrant workers and their employers, at labour markets, during the period of work, and afterwards. The article then briefly discusses some of the contrasting ways in which remittances are used by landless households and owners of very small plots of land, in the context of rapid ecological change, demographic pressure and growing inequality.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the new environmental management partnerships emerging in southern Africa's countryside and argue that these new interventions not only fail to deliver benefits to villagers, but also curtail the long-established rights to land and other natural resources of indigenous communities.
Abstract: There is in Africa, as in other parts of the third world, a desire for environmental management that simultaneously incorporates and benefits all stakeholders, including private businesses and villagers. While these partnerships continue to displace the failed state-centric management of the African landscape, research to document their local-level impact is still formative and developing. This article is an attempt to examine the new environmental management partnerships emerging in southern Africa's countryside. It argues that these new interventions not only fail to deliver benefits to villagers: more importantly, they curtail the long-established rights to land and other natural resources of indigenous communities. While villagers may engage in a battle to recover these rights, it is a struggle in which the odds are stacked against them, and which the private sector and its partners are set to win.
TL;DR: In this paper, the formalized process of participation in the EAS is placed in the context of varied and uneven village-level relationships, and the importance of local power brokers and the heterogeneity of disempowerment are highlighted.
Abstract: ‘Participation’ has become an essential part of good developmental practice for Southern governments, NGOs and international agencies alike. In this article we reflect critically on this shift by investigating how a ‘participatory’ development programme — India's Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) — intersects with poor people's existing social networks. By placing the formalized process of participation in the EAS within the context of these varied and uneven village–level relationships, we raise a number of important issues for participatory development practice. We note the importance of local power brokers and the heterogeneity of ‘grassroots’ (dis)empowerment, and question ideas of power reversals used within the participatory development literature.
TL;DR: This article showed that if the adjustments are not made rural poverty is under-stated as is poverty amongst those with little education minority ethnic groups and female headed households, and that far fewer children live in poverty than is suggested when the appropriate data adjustments were not made.
Abstract: The calculation of income-poverty profiles should allow for household size and composition but rarely does so. Failure to do this means that the poverty profile will be distorted. The appropriate adjustments are straightforward requiring simple assumptions which whilst arbitrary are better than ignoring the problem. Not making these adjustments distorts not only the relationship between household size and poverty but all aspects of the poverty profile correlated to household size. For the case of Vietnam this article shows that if the adjustments are not made rural poverty is under-stated as is poverty amongst those with little education minority ethnic groups and female headed households. Far fewer children live in poverty than is suggested when the appropriate data adjustments are not made. (authors)
TL;DR: In the early 1990s, Western preconceptions regarding African sexuality distorted early research on the social context of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and limited the scope of preventive policies as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Western preconceptions regarding African sexuality distorted early research on the social context of AIDS in Africa and limited the scope of preventive policies. Key works cited repeatedly in the social science and policy literature constructed a hypersexualized pan-African culture as the main reason for the high prevalence of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Africans were portrayed as the social Other in works marked by sweeping generalizations and innuendo rather than useful comparative data on sexual behaviour. Although biomedical studies demonstrate the role of numerous factors that influence HIV transmission among poor people a narrowly behavioural explanation dominated the AIDS-in-Africa discourse for over a decade and still circumscribes preventive strategies in Africa and elsewhere. (authors)
TL;DR: In this paper, it is demonstrated that the privatization of previously communally held ejido land did not lead to the promised dynamic land market, nor to an increase in agricultural productivity, and that legal security does not necessarily reside in official registration by the state, but can also be based on local recognition of land rights.
Abstract: In the 1990s the Mexican peasants witnessed the introduction of a new Agrarian Law and the implementation of the land regularization programme, PROCEDE. In this article it is demonstrated that the privatization of previously communally held ejido land did not lead to the promised dynamic land market, nor to an increase in agricultural productivity. On the basis of an. in-depth study of land tenure practices in the ejido La Canoa in Western Mexico, it is shown that the changes of 1992 did not address the main problems of peasant agriculture. The new Agrarian Law legalized practices which, although illegal, had already become quite common in ejidos throughout Mexico. In addition, it is argued that legal security does not necessarily reside in official registration by the state, but can also be based on local recognition of land rights. The main argument of the article is that property consists of complex sets of claims, rights and obligations that cannot be manipulated by forms of state intervention that reduce land tenure predicaments to technical problems.
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of Tamil Nadu marine fisheries is presented, where variations in law between lower-level territorial units are explained in situations where patterns of resource exploitation are similar and the overarching State proclaims an even approach.
Abstract: The spatial dimension of law is a neglected field of study. This article responds to suggestions that have been made to develop a ‘geography of law’, and investigates expressions of State-centred law regarding common pool natural resources. It asks how variations in law between lower-level territorial units are to be explained in situations where patterns of resource exploitation are similar and the overarching State proclaims an even approach. To explore these issues, the article focuses on a case study of Tamil Nadu marine fisheries. Comparing the reality of State regulation in different coastal districts, the author argues that the State occupies a relatively weak position vis-a-vis user groups, and strives to maximize its legitimacy by adapting to local political circumstances. The end result is a legal patchwork with strong spatial connotations.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the dynamics of marriage and childbearing in Uzbekistan through the prism of the recent socioeconomic and political history of that country and found that not only independence but also the preceding period of perestroika reforms (1985-91) had a dramatic effect on social conditions and practices and consequently the demographic behaviour of the countrys population.
Abstract: In this article we analyse the dynamics of marriage and childbearing in Uzbekistan through the prism of the recent socioeconomic and political history of that country. After becoming an independent nation in 1991 Uzbekistan abandoned the Soviet modernization project and aspired to set out on a radically different course of economic social and political development. We argue however that not only independence but also the preceding period of perestroika reforms (1985-91) had a dramatic effect on social conditions and practices and consequently the demographic behaviour of the countrys population. Using data from the 1996 Uzbekistan Demographic and Health Survey we apply event-history analysis to examine changes in the timing of entry into first marriage first and second births over four periods: two periods of pre-perestroika socialism the perestroika years and the period since independence. We investigate the factors that influenced the timing of these events in each of the four periods among Uzbeks the countrys eponymous and largest ethnic group and among Uzbekistans urban population. In general our results point to a dialectic combination of continuity and change in Uzbekistans recent demographic trends which reflect the complex and contradictory nature of broader societal transformations in that and other parts of the former Soviet Union. (authors)
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of trade liberalization on the level and structure of government expenditures across countries, with particular emphasis on low-income countries, was examined, and the results indicated that trade liberalisation has indeed resulted in declining revenues and higher interest expenditures and that these factors have contributed to the observed decline in infrastructure spending.
Abstract: This article examines the impact of trade liberalization on the level and structure of government expenditures across countries, with particular emphasis on low income countries. It develops the argument that the policies employed during trade liberalization have resulted in a fiscal squeeze as a result of declining tax revenues and rising interest expenditures. To surmount this fiscal hurdle, expenditures on physical capital, which have negligible political ramifications, have been reduced. Other more politically sensitive expenditures, such as spending on social capital, have been financed by incurring additional debt. However, additional debt has exerted upward pressure on interest payments, further exacerbating the fiscal situation. The statistical analysis carried out to examine the evidence uses panel data for eighty developing and industrialized countries over the period 1970–98 and employs a fixed–effects regression framework to account for country–specific characteristics. The results indicate that trade liberalization has indeed resulted in declining revenues and higher interest expenditures and that these factors have contributed to the observed decline in infrastructure spending.
TL;DR: Arunachal Pradesh on India's Northeast frontier was relatively insulated from the processes associated with development until 1962 when India and China fought a border war in this area: this war, along with signs of unrest among indigenous peoples in the neighbourhood, exposed India's vulnerabilities in the region as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Until recently Arunachal Pradesh on India's Northeast frontier was relatively insulated from the processes associated with development. State institutions were barely present during the colonial era. In 1962, however, India and China fought a border war in this area: this war, along with signs of unrest among indigenous peoples in the neighbourhood, exposed India's vulnerabilities in the region. Since then, nationalizing this frontier space by extending the institutions of the state all the way into the international border region has become the thrust of Indian policy. The region's governmental infrastructure was fundamentally redesigned to put in place what can only be described as a cosmetic federal regional order with a number of small states dependent on the central government's largess and subject to monitoring by India's Home Ministry. The new regional order has put Arunachal firmly on a developmentalist track, which has enabled India to meet its national security goals, but at a significant cost to the region.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss methodological issues affecting the measurement and analysis of poverty in developing countries and discuss a new estimation method which attempts to provide poverty measures which are internationally comparable and are also consistent with national accounts statistics.
Abstract: Examines methodological issues affecting the measurement and analysis of poverty in developing countries and discusses a new estimation method which attempts to provide poverty measures which are internationally comparable and are also consistent with national accounts statistics.
TL;DR: In this article, a conceptual framework is developed with which to analyse the causes of insecurities of informal workers, identify the core needs of social protection, develop instruments and visualize the institutional mechanisms to address these needs.
Abstract: In this article we present a broad definition of social protection to include basic securities, such as income, food, health and shelter, and economic securities including income–generating productive work. A conceptual framework is developed with which to analyse the causes of insecurities of informal workers, identify the core needs of social protection, develop instruments and visualize the institutional mechanisms to address these needs. Further, we present the macro and micro evidence of these insecurities and discuss the institutional mechanisms for delivering social protection for the workers.
TL;DR: This paper conducted interviews with eighty members of the Filipino elite, undertaken as part of a larger six-country study of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor, concluding that poverty is a highly subjective phenomenon.
Abstract: How do elites perceive poverty and the poor? In this article, we present the results of interviews with eighty members of the Filipino elite, undertaken as part of a larger six-country study of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor. Poverty, we argue, is a highly subjective phenomenon. People's perceptions of poverty, of who is and who is not poor, of how poverty affects them and others, and of how poverty can be effectively tackled, vary enormously between different types of people (defined in terms of class, status, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, gender or a myriad of other social identities). Wherever people cohere as groups, classes or other social constructs, perceptions of poverty are aggregated and refined and then embedded in social dynamics. The study of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor, we conclude, can both add to our understanding of the social dynamics of poverty and inequality and inform pro-poor public policy.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined how the global trend interfaced with local processes in the setting of a secondary metropolis of a developing country, in Metro Cebu, Philippines, and resulted in a property-led development dominated by production of high-end residential real estate commodities, the rise of a speculative land market, and a highly regressive spatial allocation.
Abstract: The hyper mobility of capital and the associated growth of international investment in real estate which occurred across the world in the late twentieth century, led to bursts of property development and market booms. This article examines how this global trend interfaced with local processes in the setting of a secondary metropolis of a developing country, in Metro Cebu, Philippines, and resulted in a property-led development dominated by production of high-end residential real estate commodities, the rise of a speculative land market, and a highly regressive spatial allocation. It is argued that this regressive outcome was mediated by a weak state, controlled and dominated by predatory and rent-seeking bosses who, in Cebu in particular, are not simply representatives of the local oligarchy but are big real estate developers and brokers themselves. During the boom period, neither the middle classes, whose members were also attracted to speculative property buying, nor the low-income and urban poor groups, who were largely hoodwinked by official rhetoric of social housing reform and by token participation, provided any significant social force to constrain the opportunism and rent-seeking of these bosses or to challenge the pro-growth governing agenda.
TL;DR: In this paper, an econometric analysis of the constellation of factors that serve to determine some outcomes with respect to demography and to schooling in India is carried out, including the number of pregnancies, live births and infant survivals to women and the chances of children being enrolled at school and, if enrolled, of continuing in school.
Abstract: This paper undertakes an econometric analysis of the constellation of factors that serve to determine some outcomes with respect to demography and to schooling in India. These are: the numbers of pregnancies, live births and infant survivals to women and the chances of children being enrolled at school and, if enrolled, of continuing in school. The econometric estimates are based on unit record data from a survey - carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi - of 33,000 rural households - encompassing 195,000 individuals - spread over 1,765 villages, in 195 districts, in 16 states of India. The study concludes that a broad spectrum of factors affect these outcomes. The literacy of women is important but so is the literacy of men. Infrastructure, in the form of safe drinking water and easy access to medical facilities, is important for infant survivals and, in the shape of easy access to schools, is important for school enrolment. Parental occupation matters for both infant survivals and schooling: children born to women who work as labourers are disadvantaged, relative to other children, in terms of their chances both of surviving infancy and, if they do survive, of receiving schooling. The number of siblings that a child has affects his/her schooling outcomes and gender, religion and region play an important role.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss theories of power and economic articulation in the framework of a community-based forestry project among the Chiquitano communities of southeastern Bolivia, and argue that the distribution of development funds and resources in the form of small gifts and loans by Chiquito leaders to neighbours and kin follows economic and political models established in Jesuit missions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Abstract: This article discusses theories of power and economic articulation in the framework of a community-based forestry project among the Chiquitano communities of southeastern Bolivia. The analysis focuses on the tensions that characterize indigenous development projects, and the problems that result from competing systems of control and power. Using Norman Whitten's concept of the duality in power, and Carol Smith's elaboration of historical economic analysis, the author examines the connections between historical, political and economic institutions and norms promoting redistribution of resources and goods in Chiquitano culture, and the unique Chiquitano response to the opportunities and challenges of international development. He contends that the distribution of development funds and resources in the form of small gifts and loans by Chiquitano leaders to neighbours and kin follows economic and political models established in Jesuit missions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The article also argues that patterns of resistance and adaptation in Chiquitano political leadership follow patterns established under rubber and ranching patrons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
TL;DR: In this article, the use of crisis discourses and their role in the reconstruction process of Honduras following Hurricane Mitch is analyzed. But the authors make the point that the shaping of crisis discourse is not the exclusive terrain of politicians but necessarily involves technical experts.
Abstract: Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in October 1998, leaving a trail of death, injury and devastating damage. As it tore through the country, the hurricane damaged a number of warehouses which contained pesticides, resulting in the discharge of more than 70 tonnes of pesticides into the environment. This article explores the responses of the Honduran state and international relief agencies to this event. It analyses the use of crisis discourses and their role in the reconstruction process, arguing that crisis discourses may legitimize political rule in the context of a weak state. It goes on to make the point that the shaping of crisis discourses is not the exclusive terrain of politicians but necessarily involves technical experts