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2392. The Promise and Peril of Public Anthropology
- Author:
- Ben Feinberg
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Human Rights Human Welfare (University of Denver)
- Abstract:
- In recent years, as we accelerate our planetary experiment into increasing violence and social inequality, cultural anthropologists have increasingly expressed their befuddlement about why, amid all the clamor and reckless talk about the state of the world that characterizes public discourse, our voice has been notably absent. We have moved from the introspection of the 80s, when the big debates within the discipline involved tearing at our own flesh and flaunting the sackcloth of self-doubt: how do know what we know about other people? Are we not projecting our colonialist narratives onto the weak? Who the Hell do we think we are to talk so pompously and authoritatively about them? Emerging from this doubt, we remembered that, at the same time that we sparred with each other and devoured our elders in the hidden corners and footnotes of obscure journals, our discipline has actually reached a near-unanimous consensus—as strong as the consensus for evolution among physical anthropologists or for global warming among climate scientists—on a number of vitally important issues that are relevant to the masses outside our club, and could, if applied by the right people, actually benefit society and serve in defense of human rights.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Human Rights
- Political Geography:
- United States
2393. Taxing Development: The Law and Economics of Traffic Impact Fees
- Author:
- Edward P. Stringham, Benjamin Powell, and Jack Estill
- Publication Date:
- 12-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Independent Institute
- Abstract:
- Should developers be charged fees for negatively impacting residents? New development often uses existing (or requires new) infrastructure including roads, sewers, refuse collection, parks, fire, police, and schools. When developers provide this infrastructure to users for “free,” who should pay? Over the past fifty years governments have increasingly charged new development impact fees for imposing costs on communities. California is one of the leaders in the development of impact fees. The modern Pigovian idea is that government can set a fee at the value of the impact to internalize externalities and encourage the economically efficient amount of development. While developers can often provide the necessary infrastructure within their own developments as part of the construction process, additional impacts from new development may spill over into existing communities that necessitate additional capital improvements. Local government can hypothetically charge the development a fee that is equal to this impact, thereby internalizing this externality. If the exact value of the external impact is known and implemented as a fee, this process can encourage the economically efficient amount of development. Despite the increasing popularity of development impact fees, several issues make the government's “economically efficient” solution easier said than done.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Economics, and Education
- Political Geography:
- California
2394. Somalia After State Collapse: Chaos or Improvement?
- Author:
- Benjamin Powell, Alex Nowrasteh, and Ryan Ford
- Publication Date:
- 11-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Independent Institute
- Abstract:
- Many people believe that Somalia's economy has been in chaos since the collapse of its national government in 1991. We take a comparative institutional approach to examine Somalia's performance relative to other African countries both when Somalia had a government and during its extended period of anarchy. We find that although Somalia is poor, its relative economic performance has improved during its period of statelessness. We also describe how Somalia has provided basic law and order and a currency, which have enabled the country to achieve the coordination that has led to improvements in its standard of living.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Somalia
2395. China's Economic Growth, 1978-2005: Structural Change and Institutional Attributes
- Author:
- Dic Lo and LI Guicai
- Publication Date:
- 11-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- China's sustained rapid economic growth over the era of its systemic reform is of general importance for late development under globalization. This paper seeks to construct an explanation of the experience, which centers around the notion of an evolving "regime of accumulation", or development path, that emboddies an uneasy mix of the attributes of allocative and productive efficiency. In this light, the analytical findings of the paper give rise to two main propositions. First, in contrast to the general direction of market reform in the institutional dimension, China's actual path of industrialization and economic growth has rather tended to contradict the principle of comparative advantage - it has been in the direction of capital deepening, especially since the early 1990s. Second, China's reformed economic institutions have encompassed both market-conforming and market-supplanting elements, represented by non-state-owned enterprises and state-owned enterprises, respectively, with the former accounting for the improvement in allocative efficiency while the latter accounting for the improvement in productive efficiency. The paper concludes with a discussion on the social implications of the findings and propositions.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Economics, and International Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- China
2396. Making Sense of China's Economic Transformation
- Author:
- Dic Lo
- Publication Date:
- 03-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- China's sustained rapid economic growth over the post-1978 reform era, which is also the era of globalisation, is of worldwide importance. This growth experience has been based mainly on China's internal dynamics. In the first half of the era, economic growth was propelled by improvement in both allocative efficiency and productive efficiency. From the early 1990s until the present time, however, economic growth has been increasingly based on dynamic increasing returns associated with a growth path that is characterised by capital deepening. In both periods, the growth paths and their associated long-term-oriented institutions contradict principles of the free market economy - i.e., doctrines of globalisation. In the form of an analytical overview, this article seeks to explain and interpret the historical background, logic of evolution, and developmental and social implications of China's economic transformation. The analytics draws on a range of relevant economic theories including Marxian theory of economic growth, Post-Keynesian theory of demand determination, and Neo-Schumpeterian theory of innovation. It is posited that these alternative theoretical perspectives offer better insights than mainstream neoclassical economics in explaining and interpreting China's economic transformation.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Economics, and International Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- China
2397. Export-Oriented Policies, Women's Work Burden and Human Development in Mauritius
- Author:
- Myriam Blin
- Publication Date:
- 02-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- This paper, looking at the case study of Mauritius, attempts to understand the factors affecting the relationship between EOP, women's work burden along different social backgrounds. The analysis is based on between-method triangulation consisting of a quantitative survey in the industrial sector and a qualitative survey in the industrial and services sectors. The main result shows that women and the social reproductive process were not affected in the same way depending on the socio- professional background of the woman.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Economics, and International Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Mauritius
2398. Sécurité et stabilité dans le Sahel africain
- Author:
- Medi Taje
- Publication Date:
- 12-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- «Rivage aride d'une mer abandonnée», ainsi que l'évoque Jean Gallais (1984) , le Sahel africain, terme d'origine arabe, désigne traditionnellement le rivage ou la bordure méridionale du désert. Géographiquement, le Sahel africain, s'étendant de l'Océan Atla ntique à la mer Rouge fait la transition entre le Sahara, plus grand dés ert du monde où il est impossible de cultiver, et la savane où, à la f aveur d'une pluviométrie suffisante, l'homme est en mesure de développer un e agriculture, même rudimentaire. Les risques climatiques, source s de sécheresse et d'une insécurité alimentaire chronique, caractéri sent ce champ aux limites floues et mouvantes.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, and Development
- Political Geography:
- Africa
2399. Russia's Quest for Strategic Identity
- Author:
- Stanislav Secrieru
- Publication Date:
- 11-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- Since the end of the Cold War, post-Soviet Russia has experienced a profound crisis of strategic identity. Previously a self- sufficient and autonomous international actor, post-Soviet Russia not only had to rethink its domestic political and economic organizational model in depth, but also had to “confront the most significant transformation of its surrounding strategic environment in the past five centuries – the greatest change since the rise of Muscovy.” Russia was challenged not only by the losses of strategically pivotal terrestrial and maritime strongholds, and the rise of powerful actors in its immediate vicinity, but also faced profound changes in the entire international political framework with blurred prospects for the future world order.
- Topic:
- International Relations, NATO, and Development
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Soviet Union
2400. Promoting Sustainable Security
- Author:
- Jean Dufourcq(ed.) and Laure Borgomano-Loup (ed)
- Publication Date:
- 02-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- War has vanished; it seems to have disappeared from the mental landscape of the Western world. War, that is, as it was understood in the 19th and 20th centuries, as conflict between nation-states and organized societies for the defence or conquest of territory and wealth, the establishment of empires or the imposition of ideologies by force. When the Second World War ended, the Western victors attempted to outlaw war by means of collective regulators and the restrictive provisions of the San Francisco Charter concerning individual and collective legitimate defence. And then these very peoples, armed to the teeth for the cold war, developed the art of strategy and sophisticated weapons of destruction to such a point that, unwittingly, it seems, they domesticated war. The huge-scale disasters that the destructive power of the atom was now able to inflict made war unthinkable. Thus the cold war ended in a strategic stalemate, without a shot being fired. War quietly fell into discredit, as Western states, conditioned by centuries of national wars, border fighting and national defensive postures against neighbouring countries, slowly began to shift the focus to collective security to protect common interests, and policies on disarmament and prevention of proliferation in whatever form it took. In doing so, they exposed themselves to a potential new hazard: the danger that war might return, via other routes, to the heart of the Western world.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, Development, and Peace Studies