Showing papers on "Underdevelopment published in 1999"

Geographies of Development

Abstract: Table of Contents Introduction 1. Questioning Development 2. Understanding Colonialism 3. Theories and Strategies of Development 4. Globalisation, Development and Underdevelopment 5. People in the Development Process 6. Resources and the Environment 7. Institutions of Development 8. Movements and Flows 9. Urban Spaces 10. Rural Spaces Conclusion

NGO failure and the need to bring back the state

Abstract: One of the many reasons why non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were considered to be part of the alternative development paradigm, was because the state, its institutions, and public policy, were unable to address a host of issues of underdevelopment. NGOs mushroomed in every corner of the globe, with substantial amounts of multilateral and bilateral funds being diverted through them for developmental purposes. NGOs were perceived to be a panacea for much of the ills that affect underdeveloped countries, and were supposed to do development in a way very different from the way the state pursued these objectives. They were thought to be participatory, community-oriented, democratic, cost effective, and better at targeting the poorest of the poor. However, in recent years, the halo of saintliness around NGOs has almost disappeared, and there is wide acknowledgement of the inability of NGOs to deliver what was expected from them. This paper after analysing the shortcomings of NGOs and the reasons and causes for their failure, suggests that there is need to bring the state back into development once again, with emphasis on reform of the nature of the state. Acknowledging that the state has failed, it argues that the only alternate to state failure is the state itself. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sierra Leone: The political economy of civil war, 1991-98

Abstract: This article looks at the causal factors for the May 1997 military intervention in Sierra Leone which unleashed complex political emergencies engulfing the entire country. The paper argues that the causal factors are historical, reflecting the political economy of underdevelopment in that country. Attention is drawn to the role played by personalised rule of the APC leadership, and structural factors such as deteriorating terms of trade and the irrationality of the post-colonial development strategy. Particular attention is drawn to the role played by IMF and World Bank Structural adjustment programmes in creating a corp of socially excluded intellectuals who could not find jobs either within the state or private sectors.

Politics of pension sharing in urban South Africa

Abstract: Analysing the practice of pension sharing, this article looks at social and cultural dimensions of ageing in an urban African residential area, Cape Town's Khayelitsha. First, the paper discusses pension sharing as a futureoriented security strategy. Many older Africans in Khayelitsha believe that if they do not share their pensions with their kin, they do not have much chance of being helped in times of need. Pension sharing as an instrumental act is rooted in the perceived underdevelopment of the state social security system on the one hand, and in the very character of African kinship and the ¯uidity of today's urban domestic units on the other. Partly triggered by poverty and mass unemployment, African pensioners are under severe normative pressure to share their grants within their families. Taking into account African notions of old age and of personhood, and considering the widespread devaluation of older Africans in social constructions, pension sharing provides older Africans with an (easily available) means by which they can earn (self-)respect. Further, state policies indirectly enhance the normative pressure on pensioners to share their old-age pensions. On a symbolic plane the practice may be construed as a political model that conceptualises duty as the inner bond of the social world. In conclusion, it is propounded that the concept of (intergenerational) reciprocity is inadequate to account for pension sharing or practical provision of old-age care.

From Regional Development to Local Development: On the Life, Death and Rebirth (?) of Regional Science as a Policy Relevant Science

Abstract: In the following paragraphs, I shall attempt to describe briefly how and why regional science, both as a field of study and a policy science, has changed since its founding in the 1950s. Regional Science has gone through a period of profound change in recent years--some would say through a period of crisis and decline. The term "Regional Science" is used here in a generic sense to cover the broad range of social science inquiry devoted to issues of regional development in various forms. The analysis that follows is in part a personal journey, influenced by the author's personal experience, first as a student of regional science at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, and after that, as a practitioner and scholar of regional economic development in Canada and, more recently, in Latin America. (1) However, before beginning, let me define what I mean by regional economic development and region al development policy. In my arguments below, I make an implicit distinction between regional development and regional equity or interregional income transfers. Regional development, as used here, refers to the capacity of a region to produce (and sell) goods and services, and thus the capacity of its inhabitants to earn income. Regional development disparities thus refer to differences among regions in their capacity to provide earned income opportunities to their inhabitants. Regional development policies seek to reduce such disparities, essentially by seeking to promote increased development in lagging regions. Interregional income transfers, on the other hand, can reduce income disparities (a pure equity objective) but will not necessarily reduce regional development disparities. From a policy perspective, it is chiefly the latter which is addressed in this essay. The Birth of Regional Science Regional Science, as a distinct field of study, has gone through many lives since its founding in the United States in the 1950s with Walter Isard as its father. The roots of regional science go back to Europe, especially Germany (Polese 1995), where most of the pioneers of early classical location theory were born (such as Christaller, Losch, Von Thunen and Weber). Much early work in what was to become the field of regional science, most notably Isard (1956), may be seen as attempts to introduce the German spatial economic tradition, Raum wirtschaft, into North America and the larger English-speaking world. Ponsard (1955, 1958) tried to do very much the same thing for the French-speaking world, but without attempting to create a separate field of inquiry. It is important to recall that regional science, although a European transplant (like so many post-war immigrants), grew up in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. It is also of some consequence that its early parents were economists. The effects are visible at various levels. The post-war period in the United States was an era of unbridled optimism. Economic growth was strong and seemingly unending. The American Way of Life was the envy of the world. This was also the golden age of Keynesian economics. Whether called "fine tuning" (in its U.S. version) or planification indicative in France, most economists were confident that national economies could be wisely managed and recessions avoided, if only the right tools and models were applied. This newfound optimism also infected thinking about economic development. With Harrod (1939) and Domar (1946) among the principal pioneers (very much in the Keynesian tradition), a school was born promising the end of underdevelopment, again if only the right tools and models were applied. Furtado (1970), Lewis (1966) and Rostow (1960) are among the classics in that tradition. The interventionist optimism of economists was similar on both sides of the ideological divide, despite the Cold War. Indeed, many of the economic planning tools used, of which Leontieff's Input-Output framework is perhaps the prime example,were common to economists on both sides of the Iron Curtain. …

The Premodern Chinese Economy: Structural Equilibrium and Capitalist Sterility

Abstract: Covering the time span from the Shang to the Qing Periods (1520BC - 1911AD), Gang Deng examines important factors in the decline of the Chinese economy from medieval sophistication to modern underdevelopment. These factors include: * resource endowments * socio-economic structure * property rights * state and bureaucracy * ideology and values * geo-political environment * internal rebellions * external invasions and conquests The Premodern Chinese Economy is a comprehensive analysis of China's economic history and provides essential background to the study of this country's modern struggle for growth and development. Deng's emphasis on comparative analysis offers new insights into the concept of underdevelopment and theories of transitional economics. This will become a major reference work in the fields of Chinese studies, economic history and development studies.

Regulating Investment Abroad: The Political Economy of the Regionalization of Singaporean Firms

Abstract: This paper attempts to understand the regionalization of national firms from Singapore within the methodological construct of the regulationist perspective. It aims to demonstrate the usefulness of some concepts in the regulationist perspective for explaining restructuring processes in developing countries, and to evaluate critically the role of some of these concepts—such as regimes of accumulation and modes of social regulation—in illuminating the internationalization of capital through transnational corporations and their associated foreign direct investment. In particular, the paper argues that Singapore's export-led regime of accumulation manifests inherent contradictions in its dependence on foreign capital, the domination of the domestic economy by state-owned enterprises, and the relative underdevelopment of indigenous entrepreneurship. While this accumulation process was embedded in an earlier set of social and institutional mechanisms, its contradictions and tensions were not appropriately regulated and contained. When Singapore experienced two major external economic crises in the mid-1970s and 1985, these shocks and their internal tensions triggered a continuous process of economic restructuring regulated by a distinct combination of social and institutional mechanisms, or “fixes.” One such institutional fix in recent years has been the promotion of the regionalization of Singaporean firms through the social regulation of local labor markets and the state-led establishment of institutions to facilitate the regionalization drive.

From Adygeya to Yaroslavl: Factors of Party Development in the Regions of Russia, 1995-1998

Abstract: It is generally recognised that political parties have failed to emerge as important actors in the vast majority of Russia's regions.' Party underdevelopment on the regional level has been testified by recent studies focused on candidate nomination strategies and electoral performance in the 1995 national legislative elections2 and in the 1995-97 gubernatorial elections.3 On the one hand, this situation can be explained with reference to a particularly unfavourable constellation of institutional and political factors in Russia as a whole.4 On the other hand, the modest role of parties in gubernatorial elections arguably stems from these elections' inherently majoritarian features.5 In this analysis I will attempt to identify factors facilitating party development on the regional level by focusing my attention on a presumably favourable institutional milieu of sub-national legislative elections. So far, this subject has not attracted much scholarly attention. In addition to a number of descriptive studies,6 the 1993-94 regional legislative elections generated two articles discussing primarily the occupational structures of the assemblies.7 In particular, it has been demonstrated that the electoral strength of administrative and economic managers impedes party development. Some of the studies of more recent elections confirm this inference.8 Taking different but still elite-centred perspectives, other analyses related regional party development in Russia to the 'split and reconfiguration of ex-Communist party factions'9 and to intra-elite conflicts on the regional level.'1 Both explanations have been based on fairly limited numbers of observations. In this analysis I will examine the results of regional legislative elections held in 86 regions of Russia in 1995-98. By regions I understand constitutionally defined sub-national units of the Russian Federation-republics, kraya, oblasti, federal cities, the autonomous oblast' and autonomous okruga (AO)." First, I will identify the empirical indicators of party development on the regional level, thus constructing a set of dependent variables. At the same time, some basic factual information about the regional assembly elections and those political parties that are active on the regional level will be provided. Second, I will formulate and substantiate several hypotheses about the causes of party development. The operationalisation of these hypotheses will provide a set of independent variables. Third, I will statistically examine the strength of the hypothetical causal relationships. On this basis, a number of factors facilitating party development in Russia's regions will be identified.

Modern Europe : place, culture and identity

Abstract: Introduction - modern Europe, fracture and faults. Part 1 Europe and Europeaness: the past in Europe's present diversity and the structure of place. Part 2 The past in the present - the present in the past: economies in space and time, economic geopgraphies of development and underdevelopment and the historical geographies of modernization war and the shaping of Europe "the chicken of Versailles" the new Central and Eastern Europe. Part 3 The nature of European integration and the consequences of diversity: the political geography of European integration convergence, cohesion and regionalism, contradictory trends in new Europe room to talk in a house of faith, on language and religion. Part 4 Identity and the renegotiation of meanings of European place: European landscape and identity the question of heritage in European cultural context the conserved European city as cultural symbol, the meaning of the text the European countryside, contested space Europe's geographies, diversity and integration.

Discontinuity in development: Kenya’s middle-scale manufacturing industry

Abstract: This thesis concerns middle-scale enterprise and economic development, focussing on the case of Kenya. The distribution of industry in Kenya is characterised by an apparent underdevelopment of middle-scale enterprise compared with micro- and large-scale, a feature frequently referred to as the 'missing middle'. A further distinctive feature of Kenya's middle is the relatively strong involvement by entrepreneurs of Asian origin. The immediate objective of this thesis is to produce a better understanding of these phenomena, argued to be highly relevant to Kenya’s wider economic development. To understand the position of the middle in Kenya, a new concept frame is put forward based on a broadly institutional approach drawing on both new and old institutional economics. This frame sees the potential for middle-scale enterprise in terms of the economic and social context, with formal and informal institutions playing a role. The notion of discontinuity is introduced to describe interactions between elements of structure which produce an adverse exchange environment for enterprise. It is argued that Kenya has a generally hostile environment for middle- scale enterprise, characterised by discontinuities and uncertainty. Entrepreneurs from Kenya's Asian communities are able to escape these generic problems by use of informal social institutions, accounting for their relative success. Evidence from cases studies of middle-scale enterprises owned by Kenyans of both Asian and African origin, together with secondary data, broadly supports the argument. There are strong indications of discontinuities between large and middle- scale enterprise and within the formal institutional environment. Asian entrepreneurs are observed to rely heavily on informal social institutions to facilitate exchange. Such an option does not appear open to aspirant African entrepreneurs. Supporting the development of Kenya's middle-scale will necessitate addressing the discontinuities undermining its development. Simple deregulation and market liberalisation will not suffice.

Dependency Theory: Concepts, Classifications, and Criticisms:

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to review the different arguments concerning the theory of dependency. For this purpose, this paper examines the definitions of dependency, general perspectives, classi...

Overcoming the Underdevelopment of Learning: A Transdisciplinary View.

Abstract: This paper serves as an introduction to the collection of papers prepared for the Symposium on Overcoming the Underdevelopment of Learning at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, held in Montreal, Canada, from 19 to 23 April 1999. It will provide an integrative conceptual framework for the other papers, inspired by the following theses: • Learning is an underdeveloped concept. It is increasingly necessary for humans to be able to adapt themselves to continuous and ever faster change and to conceive of the world as a complex environment. School-based learning, in many parts of the world, however, is often still largely based on the assumption that human intervention in the world is linear and that preparation for life is more important than preparation for learning during the lifespan. Fundamental change in the school system, attitudinal change in the actors within the school, and the conceptualization of more comprehensive learning environments of which the school is a part, are some of the urgent requirements. • Learning is a transdisciplinary concept. It relates to such diverse issues and concerns as change and growth; community processes and development; complex adaptation; diversity and emergence; design of systems for knowledge construction; interaction with and building on existing knowledge bases; learning at different levels of organizational complexity; neuroscience; lifespan cognitive development; the connections and distinctions between data, information, knowledge and wisdom; technologies for learning; language, cognition, and meta-cognition. While much can be learned from looking at learning from the point of view of all these different perspectives as well as from their multiple interactions, there is also a need to transcend these different and separate views and to acquire a transdisciplinary and integrative vision of learning. • Learning has to do with the capacity to interact creatively and constructively with problems. In much of the current educational practice such problems are at best concealed and at worst ignored. Learning therefore needs to be refocused on problems, including their historical and epistemological context. 1 The author is Director of the Learning Without Frontiers coordination unit (LWF) in UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Information about LWF is available at http://www.unesco.org/education/lwf. Any opinions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect any position taken by UNESCO as an organization. The author is equally involved in creating the Learning Development Institute (LDI), about which information will be available at http://www.learndev.org (at the time of writing still under construction). The author can be contacted via the following e-mail addresses: j.visser@unesco.org or jvisse@ibm.net.

A Cross-Cultural Race/Class/Gender Critique of Contemporary Population Policy: The Impact of Globalization

Abstract: The argument that rapid population growth is the causal determinant of poverty and underdevelopment is seeing a resurgence. Contemporary population policy, as directed toward women of African descent on the African continent as well as African diaspora, continues this Malthusian Legacy (Roberts, 1997; Kuumba, 1993). This manuscript offers a race/class/gender critique of population policy using women of African descent cross-culturally as illustration. The ways in which global population policies simultaneously facilitate racial inequality, class exploitation, and gender subordination are of particular interest. It further explores the relationship between repressive reproductive polity, or “reproductive imperialism,” and the current trends toward increasing international economic polarization. An approach to the understanding of population policy that highlights the reproductive and productive capacities of African women offers a particular vantage point from which to examine this relationship between population control and global capitalist interests.

Change and Development in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Part 1 Theories of change and development: change as growth change as cyclical renewal change as progress and becoming modern change as development change as evolution discussion. Part 2 Modern industrial capitalist society: the radical view of Karl Marx the liberal corporatist view of Emile Durkheim the left-liberal nationalist view of Max Weber discussion. Part 3 Imperialism, nations, peasants and indigenous peoples: imperialism - conquest abroad, repression at home the national question -nationalism, nations and national minorities the agrarian question - capitalist development and peasantries indigenous peoples, national minorities and colonial subjects discussion. Part 4 Capitalism in crisis and the search for social order: capitalist crises - social reform or socialists revolution rural class structures and alternative paths of agrarian development national integration acculturation and culture contact discussion. Part 5 The Cold War, decolonization and Third World development: economic growth and modernization dependency and underdevelopment the transition from feudalism to capitalism unequal exchange, world systems and modes of production national liberation and new nations rural development, social revolution and peasant communities discussion. Part 6 Globalization and postmodernity: globalization or the internationalization of capitalism? globalization and the state globalization and the dissolution of socialism reassessing rural class structures and the potential for peasant protest identities, grievances and new social movements subaltern studies of postcolonial theory discussion.

A teoria da dependência na América Latina

Abstract: THE SO-CALLED DEPENDENCE theory is here scrutinized in its political aspects and as political economy, with the purpose of opposing it as a theory in itself, once it does not present methodological elements either significant or innovating in their content. The notion that dependence exists is tautological. Strictly speaking, there is no dependence theory, but merely dependence as a historical process within the international system of force and power relationships. The Cepal academy debates have dealt with the capitalist development at the periphery, more precisely with the consequences of central capitalism in Latin America, a chapter on the interpretations related to the development/underdevelopment condition, which involves the role played by the so-called historical agents in social changes. In their search for a dependence typology, the oversimplication of the butterfly collectors in social sciences does not create a new theory, but merely ambiguous general principles.

Colonial Political Economy: Recruitment and Underdevelopment in the Punjab

Abstract: This text explores the dialectic between military recruitment and underdevelopment in the rainfed area of the Punjab as it unfolded under colonial capitalism in the aftermath of the Great Revolt of 1857. The product of original fieldwork in the Barani areas of the Punjab, it analyzes the localized processes of colonial political economy, drawn from a diverse body of literature in comparative development, sociology, anthropology, political economy, and economic history.

Rethinking Development Theory and Policy: A Human Factor Critique

Abstract: Preface Introduction Agents of and Obstacles to Development The Political Economy of Growth and Development: Orthodox Thinking, Presuppositions, and Policy Misconceptions about Development: The Economic Underdevelopment Nightmare of the Developing Countries Obstacles to Economic Growth and Development: Orthodox Views and New Recipies for Progress Human Factor Reflections The Human Factor Philosophy of Economic Growth and Development Human Factor Reflections on and Its Critique of the Presuppositions of Orthodox Development Thinking and Policy The Genesis of Entrepreneurial and Commercial Decline in the Developing World: A Case Study of African Countries Human Factor Underdevelopment and Its Implications for Policy Failure, Dependency, and Employee Work Behavior Human Factor Engineering: The Primary Foundation of All Industrial Technology Transfer Programs The Certification Epidemic in the Developing Countries: Transcending Credentialization and Doing It by Yourself Changing Course for Action and Development Identifying and Diffusing the Hidden Mines Along the Rails of the Development Train

Information technology and underdevelopment in the Third World

Abstract: Information technology is taking centre stage as the world approaches the twenty‐first century. The enormous advantages it has in easing the delivery of information around the world, as well as the central role of information in the new global economy, means that information technology will shape the dynamics of the new millennium. However, for most Third World countries, faced with the problems of illiteracy and poverty, information technology poses a danger to their fledgling economies. This paper discusses the theories of underdevelopment and applies them to information technology in a Third World context. Issues are raised about the role of information in a globalized economy and how this can become a disadvantage to developing countries. It is suggested that technology should be implemented within a social context.

The state and the market, their functions and failures in the history of economic development thought

Abstract: Outlines the ideas incorporated in “development economics” and criticizes the lack of distinction made by some writers between development and economic growth. Asks whether underdeveloped countries really need a different economic theory from Western Europe and suggests that growth (in gross national product) and development (i.e. structural change) are actually complementary processes. Reviews various theories on the causes of underdevelopment (e.g. market failure, government failure) and strategies to cure it (e.g. government intervention, private initiative, market mechanism); and cites some examples of successful positive intervention.

Commentary: bringing imperialism back in

Abstract: In a previous commentary (ROAPE 76, 1998:173-7) we criticised the prevailing ideology of 'globalisation' for its insistence that successful national economic development was possible only insofar as it conformed to the logic and determination of global markets and that the only realistic role available to states was to facilitate the process of internationalisation. The dissemination of this doctrine via the international media, academic writing, and the policy statements and practice of the richest states and the international financial institutions, has been uncompromising: governments which hoped to increase the living standards and life-prospects of their people could do so only by conforming to the imperatives of rational global market behaviour and, particularly, the profit expectations of international business. There simply was no alternative. If nation-states were not to invite economic disaster on themselves, they had to ensure that growth and social investment plans did not reduce profit incentives to the point where it resulted in capital taking flight to relocate itself in more benign environments. In rejecting this dogma, we were concerned by its almost complete indifference to the human costs which the process imposed on Africa as a whole, and on its most vulnerable and needy inhabitants in particular. Poverty and underdevelopment (the shortage of skills, the lack of external economies, the weakness of local markets and political instability) made the continent relatively unattractive to foreign capital, anyway even when social spending was reduced to virtually zero and monopoly profits guaranteed. The most developed sectors of most African economies rested on the extraction of absolute rather than relative surplus value, on the application of large quantities of unskilled or semi-skilled labour to production. By insisting that global markets were the only game in town, and that nation-states were redundant unless their governments aligned the local economy to the needs of those markets, the globalisation ideology essentially confined most of Africa to a niche as impoverished primary export producers serving wealthy consumers in Europe and America, in effect to 'a future in which not even bare survival is assured' and they are the 'supernumeraries of the human race' (Leys, 1994:34)

Ethics, community development and not‐for‐profit business: The case of New Dawn Enterprises

Abstract: Many non‐metropolitan areas in developed countries suffer from problems of underdevelopment. Because the activities of traditional business firms and government have not met local needs, many communities have created “community business corporations” which are explicitly dedicated to addressing the problems of community economic development. This article examines the nature of such alternative corporations and some of the ethical issues and challenges that they raise. It focuses especially on one “not‐for‐profit corporation” in Nova Scotia, New Dawn Enterprises, and the priest/businessman who has been the driving force behind it.

Bureaucracy and the Alternatives in the Middle East

Abstract: The Middle East is the birthplace of bureaucracy in history. It is also the birthplace of the earliest civilisation, administration, religion, culture and market institutions. Located between the East and the West, the Middle East as a region is not only one of the oldest, if not the oldest, centres of civilisation in the world, it is also one of the richest areas of the modern world. Despite rich resources and old traditions, however, most parts of the Middle East are beset by symptoms of underdevelopment, economic poverty, enduring crises leading to political instability, continuous foreign interventions, and a general lack of progress in terms of democratic institutions.

Qualitative Research and the Study of the U.S. Presidency

Abstract: Research on the U.S. presidency is among the areas of political science that have suffered in prestige due to its alleged underdevelopment as a "scientific" field. Here, we challenge that charge, and in the spirit of trying to strengthen analyses, we identify some common issues in presidency research (especially that relying on qualitative data) and suggest possible responses. In doing so, we adopt the somewhat unusual tactic of taking a hard look at our own recent work, with an eye to learning from its weaknesses and communicating what we have learned to others.

On the Theory of Primary Education

Abstract: The statement that educational science is lagging behind the demands of practice is all but a commonplace. One can generally agree that the principal shortcoming of the modern art and methods of teaching—the fulcrum of educational science—is the weakness of theory. However, it is useless merely to state this fact without exploring its true causes. What, in our view, is the cause of this underdevelopment of the principal theoretical questions in today's teaching methodology, and why is it that work on them goes so extraordinarily slowly?

Agricultural history of the Abakuria of Kenya from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid 1970's

Abstract: Agricultural history is a significant aspect of the study of the African past. The theme, inter alia, compels the historian to pay attention to African physical geography. This in turn, should be welcome in view of the profound influence that geographical factors have had on African history. Growing populations are severely taxing food resources and, to provide enough food for each citizen, most nations must increase agricultural output year after year. And with agriculture at the heart of more than two-thirds of the world's national economies, promoting agricultural growth has become a subject of the highest priority. Even though the essential conditions of any one historical experience can never be exactly replicated, the past can still provide much valuable guidance in the determination of development schemes, programmes and policies for the future. A knowledge of the past successes and failures can be useful in that past experiences can raise a whole range of issues -physical, economic and social- that must be carefully considered in any appraisal of development possibilities. It should also be useful in indicating directions or types of development activity, which ought to receive emphasis in the future. There is a small body of general historical literature on the Abakuria of Kenya. However, no comprehensive attempt has yet been made to study their agricultural history. The present study is therefore intended to fill this void in Kuria historiography. The study seeks to assess the evolution and development of Kuria agricultural from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1970s. It is assumed in the study that Kuria agriculture was dynamic, productive and largely self-sustaining before colonial rule. Further, the view is taken that colonial capitalism weakened this indigenous agricultural system, resulting in stagnation and land degradation. A major factor affecting this agricultural transformation was the migrant labour system and cash crop production. This study is informed by two theoretical perspectives: dependency and underdevelopment theory, and the articulation of modes of production theory. The ecological aspects of the development of Kuria agriculture from precolonial times to the late years of Kenya's independence are also closely considered. The methodology of the study involved data collection on a systematic basis beginning with secondary source in libraries, and then proceeding to the collection of primary source materials in archives and through field research.

Canadian Indian policy and development planning theory

Abstract: This book explains the failures of Canadian Indian policy in terms of underlying deficiencies in development theories. The author shows how seemingly diverse theories in economics, sociology, planning and other disciplines can all be reduced to a fundamental dichotomy between liberal assimilationist doctrine, which "blames the victim" for their own problems, and the nationalist autonomist doctrine, which contrarily externalizes all blame for Indian "underdevelopment" on the state.Until recently, most government policy makers have been committed assimilationists. Beginning in the 1840s, Canadian governments instituted increasingly oppressive attempts at social engineering to destroy Indian cultures and to assimilate them to Western liberal ideals. These unsuccessful policies only served to fuel a reactive Indian nationalist movement which first coalesced to defeat the 1969 White Paper proposals for extinguishing native rights. The subsequent deadlock between state inaction and strident Indian nationalistic demands have left a policy vacuum, which has been filled by dependency-creating welfare programs. Autonomist theorists, while effectively criticizing assimilationism, ignore that contemporary Indian leaders often play a role in perpetuating this dependency.Rather than viewing Indian development from one polarized viewpoint or the other, the author promotes a new relational approach to explain how development problems are often simultaneously internal and external to Indian communities, and urges local community action to reduce their dependency on the central welfare state.(Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1996; revised with new preface)

The Social Production of Metropolitan Expertise in Tropical Diseases: The Imperial State, Colonial Service and the Tropical Diseases Research Fund

Abstract: The hegemonic authority of Western science over disease in the tropical world is not a prod uct of its inherent truth value, but rather refers to the underdevelopment of science resources under European rule. As this study will show, the emphasis on the delivery of medical care in the dependent British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century created conditions for the domestication of tropical disease research in the twentieth cen tury. A large pool of underemployed medical practitioners in Britain enabled the Colonial Office to satisfy the personnel needs of its far-flung empire. Colonial governments, in turn, maximised the labour of imperial doctors as primary care providers through a wide range of administrative tools. This emphasis simultaneously retarded the development of labora tory research into disease in the periphery while creating an opportunity for its metropolitan appropriation. Eventually the Tropical Disease Research Fund was created to promote the understanding of disease in t...

Raízes da questão regional no estado de são paulo: considerações sobre o vale do ribeira

Abstract: This text discusses on the problem of the regional disparities in the Sao Paulo State and analyses the causes of the economic stagnation of the region of the Ribeira Valley. It’s made a historical profile of the regional economic formation in Sao Paulo State, since the century XVI to middles of the present century, through the cycles of gold, of naval construction, of rice and of banana. The placed arguments answer the explanations based on the thesis of the regional imperialism. The conclusion is that the decadence and stagnation of the area was due to a conjugation of historical and geographical factors, such as the end of the slavery, the geographical isolation, the regional lack of aptitude for the coffee cultivation and the difficulty of settling of free labour (immigrants) in the area. Key-words: Regional Development, Underdevelopment, Ribeira Valley