Witchcraft,Social Cohesion and Participation in a South African Village

The past thirty years have seen development agencies, non‐governmental organizations and their funders embrace ‘participatory’ development strategies. These strategies require the poor to take part in decision‐making about, and the implementation of, development projects and programmes. Underlying enthusiasm for participation is the recognition that centralized, top‐down systems and methods have not delivered development, and the assumption that the poor are eager and able to ‘participate’. Using ethnographic research on witch beliefs and their impact on social relations in a South African village, this article argues that such assumptions are not always justified. It shows that witch beliefs and related conflicts have long‐term negative consequences for intra‐community relations and examines what this implies for development policy and practice.     

Developing Climate Adaptation: The Intersection of Climate Research and Development Programmes in Index Insurance

Using a case study from Ethiopia, this article examines the ways in which climate information and economic development interact in climate adaptation programmes. Microinsurance programmes have become very popular as an adaptation strategy but there has been little attention paid to the social, economic and political aspects of implementation. Examining one case in relation to the broader literature on climate adaptation projects suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to existing coping strategies, introduction of additional market risks, local capacity building and the socio‐political context of implementation. Climate change cannot be viewed as a technical problem only; it has a social dimension as well.     

Lethal differences: a short history of the concepts of wealth and poverty in Danish epidemiological writings, 1858-1914

Through a study of the history of the concepts of wealth and poverty, this paper investigates the onset of a tradition in the conceptual architecture of epidemiological research concerning social differences in mortality rates from 1858 to 1914. It raises the question as to what the concepts of wealth and poverty meant to those who used them and what objects of interventions the conceptual architecture surrounding the concepts enabled the researchers to create. It argues that a transition began in the late 19th century in which an important framework for the understanding of causal relations behind the mortality patterns changed and that this change in turn influenced the scope of what was conceived as relevant objects of intervention.     

Evaluating the governance of structural funds programmes: The case of community economic development in South Yorkshire

Methods for evaluating regional and urban policies have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. However, this paper argues that the evaluation of Structural Funds programmes has systematically underplayed the effect of governance on both programme design and implementation. This paper uses the role of voluntary and community sector organizations in promoting community economic development initiatives within the European Union's Structural Funds programmes in South Yorkshire as a case study. An argument is made for extending evaluation methods, especially theory-based evaluation, through using multi-level governance as a “theory of change”. A key finding is that to explain how programmes work, evaluators need to consider formal partnership and management arrangements, their traditional focus, but also wider governance structures and the importance of informal policy networks. Such a focus allows for a consideration of issues such as resource mobilization and power.     

Public Intervention and Poverty Alleviation: A Study of the Declining Incidence of Rural Poverty in Kerala,India

In the context of the continuing and lively debate on the estimates, trends and determinants of rural poverty in India, this article examines the sharp decline, since the late 1970s, in the incidence of rural poverty in the state of Kerala, well known for its record of social development. It is argued that, given the slow rate of growth of the Kerala economy in general and agriculture in particular since the mid-1970s, the ‘trickle down’ theory cannot explain the decline in poverty. Similarly, the fact that rural wages have increased faster than the consumer price index does not constitute a sufficient condition for crossing the poverty line. Expansion of state-directed programmes is seen to be the single most important determinant in reducing rural poverty. The effect of public intervention programmes is roughly estimated to be equal to one fifth of the consumption of rural labour households. The lesson of Kerala for poverty alleviation is that social protection expressed in terms of meeting the basic consumption requirements of the poor, especially the vulnerable among the poor, should be a necessary component of development policy. However, this is not a sufficient condition: there should also be a growth strategy which would provide adequate employment to all members of the labour force from the poorer sections of the population. The current line of official thinking in India, in the context of economic liberalization, is hardly conducive to such a strategy.     

Out of the dark but not out of the cage: women's empowerment and gender relations in the Dangme West district of Ghana

In Ghana, strategies to address poverty among rural women have often been linked to women's empowerment programmes with credit as a core component of these. Yet, many programmes focus on the economic benefit to women without necessarily looking at the impact on gender relations at the household level and its implications on women. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the Dangme West district of Ghana, this article shows how poverty reduction programmes with credit components can reduce women's vulnerability to poverty and empower them. But much more needs to be done to complement these efforts. The study shows that women beneficiaries as against women non-beneficiaries have significantly improved their socio-economic status through access to financial and non-financial resources. This has in certain instances improved gender relations at the household level, with women being recognized as earners of income and contributors to household budget. However, some women still regard their spouses as ‘heads’ and require their consent in decisions even in issues that have to do with their own personal lives. Moreover, the improved economic status of women has resulted in a ‘power conflict’, creating confrontation between spouses. The article recommends that, as part of their programmes, assisting organizations and institutions must address ‘power relations’, the basis of gender subordination at the household level, otherwise socio-cultural norms and practices, underpinned by patriarchal structures, will remain ‘cages’ for rural women.     

What is the Alternative? Youth,Entrepreneurship and the Developmental State in Urban Ethiopia

This article investigates the implementation of small‐scale entrepreneurship programmes in inner‐city Addis Ababa. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, it discusses the failure of these programmes to open up opportunities for social improvement for young people. It also analyses how young people confronted with this failure suggest ways of conceptualizing ‘alternatives’ to established development concepts of poverty reduction, such as microfinance and small‐scale entrepreneurship. In doing this, the author does not pretend either to offer a grand solution or to invent a brand new developmental concept. Rather, the aim is to provide a critical commentary on the reasons why some of the current academic debate on alternatives to neoliberalism have, de facto, amounted to an endorsement Ethiopia's political authoritarianism.     

Challenging Orthodoxies: Understanding Poverty in Pastoral Areas of East Africa

Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable attention from a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities, academics, activists and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there is surprisingly little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of poverty among one of the continent's most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic remoteness, and market integration. It argues that current poverty debates ‘homogenize’ the concept of ‘pastoralist’ by failing to acknowledge the diverse livelihoods and wealth differentiation that fall under the term. The article concludes that what is not needed is another development label (stereotype) that equates pastoralism with poverty, thereby empowering outside interests to transform rather than strengthen pastoral livelihoods.     

Whose Wealth Is It Anyway? Mozambique's Outstanding Economic Growth with Worsening Rural Poverty

Despite rapid economic growth and massive inflows of aid, rural poverty in Mozambique is worsening. Agricultural production and productivity have not increased in the last decade. Use of chemical fertilizers and other modern technology is at a low level and decreasing. The present development model emphasizes that the role of government and donors is to provide human capital and infrastructure, while the private sector is responsible for economic development and ending poverty. The most recent national surveys confirm what is being seen elsewhere in Africa — that this non‐interventionist strategy does not raise agricultural productivity or reduce poverty. While 80 per cent of Mozambique's population is engaged in agriculture, this sector contributes only 20 per cent of GDP. This suggests that investments in agriculture are likely to generate pro‐poor growth, both to rural and urban dwellers. This policy failure is increasingly recognized, but donors and government have invested too much political capital in the current policy to change easily.     

Tackling the Down Side: Social Capital,Women’s Empowerment and Micro‐Finance in Cameroon

Micro‐finance programmes are currently dominated by the ‘financial self‐sustainability paradigm’ where women’s participation in groups is promoted as a key means of increasing financial sustainability while at the same time assumed to automatically empower them. This article examines the experience of seven micro‐finance programmes in Cameroon. The evidence indicates that micro‐finance programmes which build social capital can indeed make a significant contribution to women’s empowerment. However, serious questions need to be asked about what sorts of norms, networks and associations are to be promoted, in whose interests, and how they can best contribute to empowerment, particularly for the poorest women. Where the complexities of power relations and inequality are ignored, reliance on social capital as a mechanism for reducing programme costs may undermine programme aims not only of empowerment but also of financial sustainability and poverty targeting.     

Sustaining the Forests: The Community-based Approach in South and South-East Asia

The concept of sustainability emphasizes four basic principles when applied to rural communities: that basic needs must be met; that resources should be subject to local control; that local communities must have a decisive voice in planning; and that they should represent themselves through their own institutions. These principles have been notionally accepted by development planners and conservationists at all levels. Yet, throughout the tropical forest belt, they are being systematically overridden by international and national policies and development programmes, leading to increasing poverty, social conflict and rapid deforestation. Traditional knowledge and systems of land use have proved far more environmentally appropriate, resilient and complex than initially supposed by outsiders. Forest peoples have successfully opposed many socially and environmentally destructive development schemes proposed for their lands. However, these societies are not resisting all change: population increase and the internal dynamic for development have also created social and environmental problems. A review of community-based initiatives in South and South-East Asia shows that in some countries, positive initiatives have been taken by local and national governments to promote a community-based approach. Notable successes have been achieved but many other initiatives have failed. The examples show that, besides the four principles noted above, environmentally successful management also depends on innovative political organization at the community level.     

Understanding Local Leadership in Building the Capacity of Rural Communities in Australia

Current approaches to rural community development in Australia provide for limited government intervention. Such intervention is usually housed within programmes that seek to build the internal capacity of communities to achieve long term socio‐economic sustainability. A fundamental implementation strategy for capacity building has been developing local leadership. The underlying assumption of this approach is that good leadership will result in existing resources being mobilised for a more sustainable function and new resources attracted. What though is good leadership in terms of building the capacity of rural communities to develop sustainable socio‐economic futures? This paper compares the conceptualisation of leadership within rural development policies and leadership training programmes with the nature of local leadership as it exists in on‐ground community building projects. From an in‐depth review of the role and nature of local leadership within six Australian rural communities it was found that local leadership could result in improved adaptive capacity if the leadership is similar in nature to Burn's (1978 ) transformational model of leadership. Within policy, local leadership was most often conceptualised as being similar to this transformational model. However, rural leadership training programmes tended to conceptualise leadership as a top‐down process, similar to Burn's (1978 ) transactional model. While this study of leadership within rural communities revealed that transactional skills, as taught in leadership training programmes, were important for successful project management, such skills did not necessarily result in improved community adaptive capacity. It is suggested that, while transactional leadership can have an important role in influencing the development of rural communities, greater attention needs to be given to developing strategies to support transformational leadership.     

Social capital and poverty of the wage-labour class: problems with the social capital theory

Social capital, understood as norms of reciprocity and associational life, is supposed to provide a bottom-up approach to poverty alleviation world-wide. The World Bank says that social capital is a necessary condition for long-term development and that social capital is the capital of the poor. This paper will argue that much of the literature is too sanguine of the benefits of social capital for the poor. It is, of course, important to look at the extent to which social capital can help the poor. But how the conditions of the poor people can also affect their social capital is equally important to examine, and this has often been neglected by many scholars who have been busy to prove that social capital is a new paradigm of development. Based on qualitative interviews in two rural areas in Orissa, eastern India, this paper seeks to examine whether and to what extent poor people of the daily wage labour class benefit from their social capital. It then goes on to unpack the mechanisms in which the economic-political conditions under which poor people live and the spatiality of these conditions affect the production of social capital. By seeking to unpack the dialectical relation between social capital and poverty, the paper aims at problematizing the overly optimistic claims about social capital. It shows that it is untenable to posit social capital as an independent variable and poverty as a dependent variable because the economic-political conditions of poor people have an enormous constraining effect on social capital itself and its supposed material benefits for the poor.     

COMPANY WELFARE PROGRAMMES AND INDUSTRIAL MODERNIZATION IN FINLAND

Prior to the modern welfare state, many large companies provided extensive welfare programmes for their employees. In this article, such welfare programmes – or corporate welfarism – in Finnish manufacturing firms in the early 20th century are the focus of attention. I analyse the content of these programmes and how they changed over time as part of the modernization and professionalization of management and industrial and societal change. I also discuss how company managers perceived the role of welfare provisions in corporate development and what happened with these programmes when the first steps towards the modern welfare state were taken. I show that these programmes started as a necessity and part of industrial paternalism, but gradually became part of labour management, in particular for the creation of a loyal workforce and productivity improvements. These programmes often developed in collaboration with local municipalities, which led to intertwined relationships at the local level, marked by both trust and tension in local communities. Once general welfare reforms emerged, companies often abandoned their voluntary programmes, while some services were taken over by the municipalities. I also ask to what extent these programmes were managerial strategies to counteract growing state involvement in their affairs.     

Social Funds in Stabilization and Adjustment Programmes: A Critique

This article evaluates the impact of the large number of Social Funds (SFs) which were introduced over the last fifteen years to offset the increase in poverty induced by adjustment. SFs have enjoyed greater visibility and financial support by the donor community than traditional social security programmes, and raised expectations about improvements in living conditions in developing countries. Notwithstanding the visibility and administrative flexibility they enjoyed, and their fairly rapid implementation, SFs played only a minor role in reducing the number of adjustment poor and chronic poor and reversing adverse shifts in income distribution. This was due to problems in funding, targeting and sequencing, and cost‐effectiveness. The article concludes that, all in all, SFs have proven to be no panacea. Many of them were formulated with the political objective of reducing domestic opposition to the adjustment process. Greater impact on poverty would have required increased resources, more permanent relief structures, improved planning and targeting and, especially, better timing in relation to the fiscal cuts entailed by macroeconomic adjustment.     

Climate deterioration and land-use change in the first millennium BC: perspectives from the British palynological record

Climate deterioration at around the time of the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition has for long been argued to have resulted in upland abandonment in northern and western Britain, and recent research has provided evidence that a major climate downturn from 850 cal BC caused settlement abandonment in western Europe and potentially worldwide. It is, however, unclear to what extent only ‘marginal’ sites were affected, due to the lack of any systematic attempt to view the evidence for settlement and land-use change across a range of landscape types with differing sensitivities to environmental change. This paper addresses this issue by an evaluation of 75 pollen sequences spanning the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age in Britain to assess whether climatic deterioration was sufficient to cause widespread land abandonment. The results provide no evidence for wholesale land-use change at this time; the overall picture is one of continuity of land use or even increased agricultural activity. There are, however, hints of regional variability, with a greater tendency to abandonment of upland areas in Wales, and signs of woodland regeneration in agriculturally productive areas of lowland central southern England. The latter pattern may reflect a combination of rising ground-water levels affecting local land-use in the immediate vicinity of the mires which provide the source of the pollen data, against a backdrop of regional-scale social and economic changes at the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition.     

The Langkawi Global Geopark: local community’s perspectives on public education

The study reported in this paper represents one of the first attempts at exploring the perspectives of the local communities on the designation of Langkawi Island in Malaysia as a UNESCO Global Geopark. It is premised on the widely acknowledged assertion that the local communities constitute an important group of stakeholders in the planning and implementation of development activities. Hence, the communities living in the geopark areas in Langkawi are considered important stakeholders who play a crucial role in the development of heritage tourism in Langkawi Global Geopark. This paper examines their views on their appreciation of the geopark as heritage, the interpretation of their shared values, the benefits and opportunities afforded by the geopark, and the extent of their involvement in the implementation of geopark activities. The findings point to the need for more support for public education programmes, and awareness initiatives aimed not only at ensuring community engagement with the development of Langkawi Geopark but also at generating stewardship actions from the community.     

An Environmental Education Concept for Galtür,Austria

The Alps have always been of global interest and significance due to their natural and cultural diversity and are presently the number one tourist destination worldwide. Therefore, raising awareness of issues of global change and sustainability is most relevant in this region. Due to its integrative nature, geography can contribute substantially to disseminating knowledge about the Alps. This paper reports on the development of an environmental education concept for the community of Galtür. The concept is based on a thorough analysis of the Alpine environment, the recording of educational interest in the Alps, and the development of implementation strategies for environmental education programmes. The main goal of the concept is to contribute to a sustainable future for the Alps. The paper highlights the role of geographical research and education in promoting public awareness and understanding of sustainability issues.     

Concentrated Urban Poverty: The Case of Izmir Inner Area,Turkey

In Turkey, poverty has been a main subject of debates since 1960s. It used to be a serious problem for both rural areas and the big cities that gained migration. In Turkey and world-wide since the 1980s, however, there have been more research interests in the concentrated urban poverty, especially along with the increase in levels of impoverishment around the world. With the help of a case study in Izmir (Turkey), this paper aims to examine the process of concentrated urban poverty from different points of view in the literature. This is a case study developed at the peripheries of the traditional city centre—or inner areas—of the city of Izmir, Turkey. The paper, first, discusses the parameters of concentrated poverty according to the literature. Then it introduces the study findings of the author, which point out the macro-scale, micro-scale and ecological dynamics that are important in the development of concentrated urban poverty. The macro-scale dynamics suggest that poverty in inner areas of the city are related to the unbalanced development trends within the country, such as the overgrowth of metropolitan cities, economic restructuring processes, migration trends and the development of informal economy. The ecological dynamics address to the housing and job location preferences and invasion-succession processes in the city, which emphasize that socio-economic characteristics of inner areas of the city are different from those of other city parts. Micro-scale dynamics are related to poors' ability of developing solidarity relations among themselves, which is also related to the spatial characteristics of inner areas of the city, according to this study's findings.     

Women Beneficiaries or Women Bearing the Cost? A Gendered Analysis of the Red de Protección Social in Nicaragua

Conditional Cash Transfer programmes aim to alleviate short‐term poverty through cash transfers to poor households, and to reduce longer‐term poverty through making these transfers conditional on household investment in the health and education of children. These programmes have become increasingly popular with institutions such as the World Bank. However, the need for conditionalities has been questioned on a number of levels, including its necessity: it has been suggested that the cash transfer in itself may be sufficient to secure most of the programme's wider aims. The example of Nicaragua supports this contention, demonstrating that only a small incentive is needed to bring the desired changes in the uptake of education, since this is something prized by the poor themselves. In health, the Nicaraguan case suggests that demand‐side initiatives might not be as important as supply‐side changes that improve the affordability and accessibility of services. The Nicaragua case also highlights the long‐term limitations of applying such programmes in countries with high levels of poverty and low economic growth. A gendered analysis of the programme highlights the fact that women ‘beneficiaries’ bear the economic and social cost of the programme without apparent benefit to themselves or even necessarily to the household in the short or longer term.