Insecurity and Pastoral Development in the Sahel

In this article it is argued that conventional agro-ecological and organizational concepts used in pastoral development are strongly biased towards the formulation and enforcement of norms. This leads development experts to attempts to control pastoralists and their herds. The policies and development interventions based on these assumptions have been largely unsuccessful. As a consequence attention for dryland areas and pastoral development has declined among researchers and development agencies. An important reason for this failure is the fundamental misfit between these normative concepts and the reality of dryland ecosystems and pastoral society. In order to show this, an alternative view on rangeland ecology and pastoral society is presented, supported by a case study of Fulbe pastoral society in dryland Central Mali. The authors argue that approaches to pastoral development must be revised in the direction of the dynamics inherent in the pastoral way of life.     

NGOs,Civil Society,and the State in Bangladesh: The Politics of Representing the Poor

The established rhetoric of opposition between state and NGOs as development agents has shifted to one of complementarity and common interest. Along with this, the ‘comparative advantage’ claimed for NGOs has expanded from economic and welfare benefits to encompass also the political goods of civil society and popular participation. This paper reviews these developments in the context of Bangladesh. It argues that they need to be assessed critically in ways which are both theoretically informed and locally contextualized. While recognizing that there are, indeed, areas of common experience and interest between the state and NGOs in Bangladesh, it questions whether these necessarily coincide with the interests of those they all invoke: the poor.