Based on three years of extensive fieldwork, this ethnographic study of prostitution in the metropolitan city of Dalian, China, explores the lives of rural migrant women working as karaoke bar hostesses, delving into the interplay of gender politics, nationalism, and power relationships that inhere in practices of birth control, disease control, and control of women's bodies.

This work represents a major survey of research which succeeds in opening up new perspectives on a number of European countries. The theme of social inequality is divided into sections on income, property, employment, education, housing, illness and death. The author finally attempts to develop a number of arguments about the relationship between industrialisation and social inequality, which are likely to stimulate further debate.

Good research is vital for forming effective policies; this can come from a variety of organizations. What types of research and knowledge are most effective in policymaking processes, and how do relationships become established between researchers and policymakers?This study from Practical Action, UK and the Overseas Development Institute, UK, explores the links between knowledge, research, and civil society campaigns. The researchers focus on a twenty-year period of development and negotiations on the Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture policy. The research examines the effectiveness of two research categories: polemical materials produced by non-governmental organizations and scientific and technical research produced by specialist academics and institutes. The study identifies five "transition episodes" between 1981 and 2001. These episodes created the momentum for the policy process, concluding in an international agreement agreed in 2001, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture--is also known as the International Seed Treaty.

This comprehensive and broad-ranging introductory textbook examines the key aspects of contemporary international development from both a practical and theoretical perspective. It addresses the fundamental question of what 'development' actually is and examines social, economic and environmental developments around the world. Written by experts with extensive field experience, this text introduces key issues in the development debate from how the developing world is changing global order to discussions on gender and development as well as security and development. International Development is a critical and interdisciplinary introduction to the contested field of development that is the ideal companion for both undergraduate and postgraduate students studying modules in development on degrees in international politics, international relations and development studies. This title will also appeal to policy-makers working in areas of development and professionals working in the area.

Integrating Amartya Sen's approach with the literature on place-based territorial development processes, this book recognises the interplay between the evolution of local development systems and the expansion of individual and collective capabilities.

Fisher expertly describes and analyzes the growing non-governmental movement throughout the Third World in relation to the global issue of sustainable development, highlighted by the recent Rio Conference. An estimated 200,000 or more indigenous NGOs (non-governmental organizations) at both the grassroots and intermediary levels help fill the void created by the failure of governments to adequately address the escalating, intertwined crises of poverty, environmental degradation, and population. NGOs, a number of which Fisher examines in detail, address the myriad problems associated with dire poverty, environmental destruction, pervasive unemployment, and the grinding exploitation of women. The stimulus to action and group effort is typically the basic need for life's fundamentals--food, shelter, and safety. Fisher points out, however, that NGOs focusing on population have grown less rapidly than those concentrating on enterprise development and/or environmental degradation. Fisher identifies the core abilities within and among NGOs that help them develop effective short-term strategies and also enhance their institutional sustainability in the long run. She demonstrates that this grassroots movement is a vital, growing force in the vast majority of Third World countries, with the potential to undermine the politics of repression and inequality. The international importance of NGOs is increasingly evident, given their ability to network and support one another. Fisher offers a comprehensive, insightful, and substantive assessment of what may be the most hopeful institutional resource available for the sustainable development of the Third World and, therefore, our ultimate survival as a species.

The contributors discuss the links between ethnicity, inequality and governance. Their findings suggest that it is not the existence of diversity" per se," but "types of diversity" that explain potentials for conflict or cohesion in multiethnic societies. Relative equality has been achieved in the public sectors of countries that are highly fragmented or those with ethnicity-sensitive policies, but not in those with ethnicity-blind policies. The book is critical of approaches to conflict management that underplay background conditions in shaping choices.

This book presents an accounting framework to critically review existing studies of aid's macroeconomic effects and as a basis for four country studies on Guinea-Bissau, Nicaragua, Tanzania and Zambia. This framework focuses on the impact of different types of aid on the level and composition of key macroeconomic aggregates such as imports, investment and government expenditure. The importance of the relationship between aid and policy reform is also stressed. The case studies find that aid has had a generally positive contribution, though recommendations to further improve aid impact are also given.

Eruptions, Initiatives and Evolution in Citizen Activism is the result of a collaborative research project spanning Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. The book analyses internal and external challenges to civil society in more than twenty countries. It investigates through studies of ountries that include South Africa, India and the Netherlands of civil society evolution; examinations of citizen activism, such as Occupy London, the Chilean student movement, the Cambodian farmers campaign against land grabs; regional overviews such as the Southern Cone of Latin America, Southern Africa, and Russia. The studies identify changing roles, capacities, contributions and limitations of civil society in response to changing political, economic and social contexts. The book goes on to present selected studies, identifies patterns and lessons that emerge across countries and regions. It articulates implications of those lessons for practitioners and policy makers concerned with civil society contributions to national and regional development.

This book was published as a special double issue of Development in Practice.

Agriculture is at the centre of the economies of many developing countries, and its stagnation and poor performance across large parts of Africa is a major cause for concern. First published in 1990, this book focuses on the nature and role of incentives in agricultural organization and production in East Africa, looking in particular at the political and ideological determinants of that role. Mats Lundahl analyses ways of improving agricultural performance, and considers the African socialism of Julius Nyerere in contrast with the market-led approaches, which he favours. A detailed title, this volume will of interest to all those concerned with the issues of rural development, including students of development studies, economics, and African studies. "

Already on the margins of an agrarian society, the marine fisherfolk of the South Indian state of Kerala are faced with a severe environmental problem: overfishing. The actions of trawlers and industrial fishing ships, it seems, have caused the resources on which they depend to dwindle rapidly. Yet what may appear to be a clear-cut case of cause, effect and responsibility turns out to be a complex issue. Local perceptions of the environment are deeply enmeshed with notions of morality, the self and people's understanding of their place in society. Overfishing is one of several environmental issues that bring into focus parallel knowledges, giving rise to contradictory views on what the problems are, whether changes are good or bad, and how they are to be remedied. As the fisherfolk confront the state, a discourse develops on what is innate to the environment, or "natural," and on what its malleability entails.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Hindus and Muslims in a coastal village, this book explores the fisherfolk's environmental knowledge, its transformation in a period of rapid socio-economic and political change as well as its role in dealing with the state and the science - putatively universal and objective - upon which the state's policies are claimed to be based. The book emphasises conversation as a cultural process, metaphors and figurative speech in the investigation of knowledge, as well as the use and limits of memory in conceptualising environmental change.

Gotz Hoeppe is an editor of the magazine "Spektrum der Wissenschaft" and a part-time lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Heidelberg. He studied ethnology, physics and astronomy in Gottingen, Albuquerque and Berlin and has done fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and India. The author of "Why the Sky is Blue" (forthcoming at Princeton University Press), Hoeppe now investigates the epistemic practices of astronomers.

While science has achieved a remarkable understanding of nature, affording humans an astonishing technological capability, it has led, through Euro-American global domination, to the muting of other cultural views and values, even threatening their continued existence. There is a growing realization that the diversity of knowledge systems demand respect, some refer to them in a conservation idiom as alternative information banks. The scientific perspective is only one. We now have many examples of the soundness of local science and practices, some previously considered "primitive" and in need of change, but this book goes beyond demonstrating the soundness of local science and arguing for the incorporation of others' knowledge in development, to argue that we need to look quizzically at the foundations of science itself and further challenge its hegemony, not only over local communities in Africa, Asia, the Pacific or wherever, but also the global community. The issues are large and the challenges are exciting, as addressed in this book, in a range of ethnographic and institutional contexts.

The first volume of IDS Companions to Development Studies focuses on pivotal writing emerging from the IDS fellowship during the last 50 years. It includes five topics: perspectives and paradigms, debunking myths, development policy, gender and international perspectives, and policy, as well as names like Seers, Singer, Lipton, Reg Green.

As an instrument of international economic policy, conditionality is on the increase. During the last decade the World Bank, the bilateral aid agencies and more recently the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have made extensive use of conditionality as an instrument for making their finance more effective. At the same time, the scope of conditionality has widened to take in political and environmental considerations as well as the traditional concerns of economic policy. However, the effectiveness of such conditionality, either in changing policies or in improving the state of recipient economies, has seldom been examined. This book brings together theoretical and empirical analyses of conditionality and its side-effects by major donors, countributors from recipient countries and independent observers of the international finance scene. These analyses show that donors must pursue alternative objectives to the enforcement of conditionality, such as quick disbursement, and that the bargaining power of recipients has increased. While accepting the need for adjustment in developing countries, therefore the contributors are generally sceptical concerning the degree of suc

This collection is concerned with revisiting and redefining the political economy - both empirical and theoretical - of 'foreign policy' in the South as we approach the twenty-first century: the position of post-colonial states and societies in the post-Bretton Woods and Cold War world. With a focus on Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, this collection comparatively examines the impact of changing political and economic structures upon policy-makers and civil societies in the South.

An in-depth analysis of the small-scale mining sector in West Africa, this volume examines its link with poverty, economic contribution and the dynamics of its operations and dependent communities.In recent decades, Africa poverty-driven artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector has attracted significant donor aid. To date, millions of dollars have been pledged toward the design, redesign and implementation of efficient equipment at sites, providing industry support services and improving the quality of life of subsistence operators. The majority of initiatives, however, have been undertaken without careful analysis of, and interaction with, target communities; consequently, there has been minimal improvement overall in a rapidly expanding industry in dire need of assistance.This book facilitates a radical change in the way in which policies and support services are implemented for ASM by underscoring the importance of improving understanding of the industry s population and industry dynamics. Focusing upon the Economic Community of the West African States, the book raises important questions concerning the general approach taken to deliver support for ASM and presents findings from community-based research, a key to strengthening industry policy and assistance."

Europe and the Third World provides a schematic historical analysis of the relations between Europe and the extra-European periphery within the twin contexts of global economic inequality and global disparities in political power. The colonial and imperial relationships between western Europe and the wider world since the late fifteenth century, and the course and consequences of decolonization, form the substance of the discussion, which concludes with a glance at the links between the European Union and the world's poorest states, most of which are former colonies.

Are the global trends toward democratization and neoliberal economic development also providing enhanced protection for human rights? In this edited collection of theoretical essays and case studies, the contributors assess the often glaring contradiction between democratization trends in developing countries in the face of continuing human rights violations. The volume begins by asking whether we need to rethink our conceptualizations of democracy, human rights, and development, and particularly the causal relationships between these areas. An analysis of the changing nature of the international norms associated with these concepts illustrates some of the inherent contradictions. Next, an assessment of the status of women in the new democracies demonstrates the fallacy of assuming that all citizens progress equally, and underscores the necessity for including gender considerations and needs. Case studies based in Latin America and Africa examine further the relationships between democracy and human rights, with particular emphasis on the issue of consolidation in the future. The contributors conclude that democracy and development will only be sustainable with the active participation of civil society, especially nongovernmental groups. This collection will be important for students, scholars, and policy makers involved with issues of human rights and democratization in developing countries.

This book describes and explains the remarkably large rural-urban divide in economic well-being that exists in China, tracing the root causes, present effects, and future implications for the increasingly marketized Chinese economy. It uses the rigorous analysis and empirical methodology of modern economics. Primarily aimed at a broad readership of development and transition economists, China specialists will also find much that is of interest.

This first volume in the series examines such topics as improving public policy toward and within developing nations, economic development and decentralized government, policy evaluation methods for developing country energy issues, and the law of developing nations and super-optimum solutions.

A groundbreaking argument that the political spectrum today is inadequate to twenty-first century America and a major source of the confusion and hostility that characterize contemporary political discourse. As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called "left" and "right," people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of "liberal" and "conservative." Powerfully argued and cutting against the grain of most scholarship on polarization in America, this book shows why the idea that the political spectrum measures deeply held worldviews is the central political myth of our time and a major cause of the confusion and vitriol that characterize public discourse.

Some ten million people worldwide are displaced or resettled every year, due to development projects, such as the construction of dams, irrigation schemes, urban development, transport, conservation or mining projects. The results have usually been very negative for most of those people who have to move, as well as for other people in the area, such as host populations. People are often left socially and institutionally disrupted and economically worse-off, with the environment also suffering as a result of the introduction of infrastructure and increased crowding in the areas to which people had to move.

The contributors to this volume argue that there is a complexity, and a tension, inherent in trying to reconcile enforced displacement of people with the subsequent creation of a socio-economically viable and sustainable environment. Only when these are squarely confronted, will it be possible to adequately deal with the problems and to improve resettlement policies.

Chris de Wet is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, where he has been on the faculty for twenty-five years. His research for the last twenty years has concentrated on politically- and development-induced resettlement. From 1998 to 2002, he coordinated a project on development-induced displacement and resettlement for the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, on which this collection is based.

In this theoretically and empirically engaging volume, the contributors demonstrate that despite the dynamism of India's software industry and the rhetorical flourishes of industry leaders, at present, the benefits of the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs) touch only the hundreds of thousands with the right skills and access. India still needs to do more to bring the benefits of ICTs to the hundreds of millions of its citizens still living in acute poverty. The contributors take stock of the political economy implications of informational development in India.

The contributors to this volume bring a variety of experience, background and interest to bear on this issue and considerable attention is given to the design of appropriate structural adjustment programmes as well as the role of debt reduction, food aid and the European Community in this context. Other important issues discussed include: the link between dependent development and enviornmental degredation, the woodfuel crisis, the political economy of rural development, the transfer of institutional innovations; the role of women's organizations in development and foreign direct investment by newly industrialized countries. An important overall theme which emerges from this book is that there is a need for an adaptive evolutionary approach to problems of development.