Search

Begin New Search Publication Year within 25 Years

33771. Reforms, Remoteness and Risk in Africa: Understanding Inequality and Poverty during the 1990s

Author:
Luc Christiaensen, Lionel Demery, and Stefano Paternostro
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This study traces the interactions between economic growth, income inequality and consumption poverty in a sample of African countries during the 1990s. It draws on the much-improved household data sets now available in the region. It finds that experiences have varied: some countries have seen sharp falls in income poverty; others have witnessed marked increases. Economic growth has been 'pro-poor' in that the incomes of poor households have typically grown at similar or faster rates than average income. But the aggregate numbers hide significant and systematic distributional effects which have caused some groups and regions to be left behind. The paper explores the contours of these effects, and draws three key conclusions. First, agricultural market liberalization has been conducive to reductions in rural poverty. Second, market connectedness is crucial for poor producers to take advantage of the opportunities offered by economic growth. Some regions and households by virtue of their sheer remoteness have been left behind when growth picks up. The availability of infrastructure (especially roads) and proximity to markets are crucial. And finally risks, such as rainfall variations and ill health are found to have profound effects on poverty outcomes, underscoring the significance of social protection in poverty reduction strategies in Africa.
Topic:
Economics and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa

33772. Acknowledgement: The Road to Forgiveness

Author:
Joanna Quinn
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
One of the most daunting tasks faced by a society left in ruin after a period of mass atrocity is the rebuilding of that society. In transitional societies, the outward signs of poverty and destitution often mask the importance of rebuilding those structural social institutions that form the basis of any stable society. Often, scarce resources are allocated to the repair of the physical infrastructure in its many forms, rather than to the repair of the social infrastructure of that same community. Roads and schools, for example, are given priority over issues of justice and security. Reckoning with past injustices, however, is an important step in the process of acknowledgement and forgiveness, leading to the rebuilding of a viable democracy, a restructured judicial system, and strengthened networks of civic engagement, all of which may lead, ultimately, to increased levels of social trust. And these are particularly important in overcoming the causes of conflict within divided transitional societies.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Civil Society, Globalization, Human Rights, International Organization, and Sovereignty

33773. Content Providers of the World Unite! A Critical Canadian Analysis and Agenda

Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The theme of the McMaster conference, “Content Providers of the World Unite!,” was a wonderfully provocative re-writing of the slogan on the title page of The Communist Manifesto. This slogan was rewritten as modish media lingo, that pseudo-lingua-franca that bears such a freight of treacherous reassurance under the banner of global culture, the communications revolution, trickle-down prosperity, and endlessly expanding consumer 'choice.' The combination of allusion and revision in the conference title evinces both continuity and change. Indeed, such rewriting is an effective combination of solidarity and resistance. But rewriting alone, while crucial as we will see, will not of itself do the job necessary in the current conjuncture.
Topic:
Globalization and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Canada

33774. Content Providers of the World Unite! The Cultural Politics of Globalization

Author:
Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
What about that feeling that it's all been done? Not in the techie department, of course; there, the possibility of novelty seems to be unlimited. But in those areas occupied by what platform proprietors call “content providers.” What a phrase! Could anything register the devastation of the spirit more completely than that little generic? Could meaning suffer more complete evacuation? Not since we landed on the moon and found nothing has our cultural unconscious encountered so traumatic a void. (de Zengottia 2002: 37).
Topic:
Civil Society and Globalization

33775. History, Globalization, and Globality: Preliminary Thoughts

Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
During reviews of the project application by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, we were asked how the outcomes would differ from results achieved by funding the specific investigations - each of our projects - as standard grants. How would we achieve collaborative results? What would be gained from collaborative effort? What does society gain?
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and History

33776. Globality and Transnational Policy-Making in Agriculture: Complexity, Contradictions, and Conflict

Author:
William D. Coleman
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
States and other collective actors are seeking to reconstitute political authority in the 21st Century in part to regulate an ongoing series of globalizing processes. These processes are adding to the spread of globality, consciousness that the world is one place. What is also clear is that attempts to reconstitute authority require states to cooperate with one another in ever increasing ways. The global scope of such cooperation, its regularity, level of institutionalization, and frequency have all contributed to the growth of densely networked transnational policy spaces on an unprecedented scale.
Topic:
Agriculture, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Treaties and Agreements

33777. Obligations of a Global Neighbor

Author:
Joyce E. Bellous
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Globalizing processes increase the importance of developing civility both within societies and between societies. More broadly, they point to the need for global civility. Building global civility requires the development of a sense of neighborliness. Civility will result from a strong sense of neighborliness.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, Globalization, Human Welfare, and International Political Economy

33778. 'Self-fulfilling geopolitics'? - or: the social production of foreign policy expertise in Europe

Author:
Stefano Guzzini
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper sketches the very first research hypotheses and methodological framework for exploring the puzzle why at the peaceful end of the Cold War, more militarist versions of realism and decidedly geopolitical thought have known a comeback in different European countries while not in others. It proposes a constructivism-inspired analysis which, in a sequence, explores geopolitics as an intellectual tradition, an expression of state interests, and of identity politics. It proposes to analyse the actual revival (and/or the lack of) via a sociological process-tracing inspired by already existing institutionalist approaches yet embedded in an application of Bourdieu's field theory to 'foreign policy'. Needless to say that the most important part needs still to be done, both on the methodological level (the concrete framework) and on the comparative empirical analysis which necessarily asks for a collaborative teamwork.
Topic:
Agriculture, Environment, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

33779. Between Grassroots and Governments: Civil Society Experiences with the PRSPs

Author:
Susanne Possing
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The report focuses on civil society experience with locally identified priorities for poverty eradication, an area little examined and less discussed in the international debate on PRSP to date.In the three N/S PRSP Programme countries, Honduras, Nicaragua and Zambia, civil society organisations have been involved in efforts to identify national as well as local priorities for poverty eradication. Taking the point of departure in involvement of CS with PRSP planning and monitoring at both levels, the paper presents a range of challenges and dilemmas for civil society in its efforts to combat poverty. Special attention is given to civil society initiatives and response to PRSP in provinces, districts and communities.
Topic:
Agriculture, Civil Society, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Nicaragua, Honduras, and Zambia

33780. Deaths in Wars and Conflicts Between 1945 and 2000

Author:
Milton Leitenberg
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Abstract:
"A Beastly Century": It was a phrase used by Margaret Drabble, a British novelist, in an address to the Royal Society of Literature in London, on December 14, 2000. But of course it was no more than a human century. In 1994, the historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that 187 million people were "killed or allowed to die by human decision" in what he called the "short century"-a period of about 75 years from 1914 to 1991. The period chosen by Hobsbawm spanned the beginning of World War I to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Soviet occupation of its Eastern European "allies." Given that Hobsbawm is a Marxist historian, his choice of the category "by human decision" was particularly significant. However, the sum that he provided was low by just about 29 million people for the full twentieth century, during which approximately 216 million people died in wars and conflict and, in very large numbers, "by human decision." The data to support this statement are presented in the following pages and in a detailed table beginning on page 43 of this document. The purpose of this study is to provide the derivation of the numbers in that table and to briefly discuss several instances in the past decade or so when large numbers of deaths could unquestionably have been averted by international action.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Peace Studies, and War
Political Geography:
Soviet Union and London