Search results for "Development studies"
showing 10 items of 69 documents
Charitable food aid in Finland: from a social issue to an environmental solution
2019
Since the establishment of the first food bank in 1995, charitable food aid (CFA) has become entrenched in Finland as a seemingly irreplaceable solution to food poverty. Further, it has recently been suggested that the focus of food aid activities is shifting from food poverty and temporary hunger alleviation towards environmental sustainability through addressing food waste via organized re-distribution of expiring food from retail to charitable organizations. This potentially creates a mechanism that (1) solidifies food poverty and (2) fortifies the paradoxical situation where charitable organizations delivering food aid are dependent on food waste rather than trying to reduce it. To unde…
India’s Turn to Rights-Based Legislation (2004–2014): A Critical Review of the Literature
2018
This article surveys the academic literature on rights-based legislation and critically discusses key findings and arguments that emerge from this literature. I conduct this survey and discussion in light of a wider understanding of the political economy of Indian democracy as resilient but limited in terms of substantial forms of redistribution and recognition in favour of subaltern groups. This contradiction has arguably become especially pronounced in the context of neoliberalisation, where, despite the active participation of the poor in electoral democracy, socioeconomic inequality has reached dramatic heights, and I discuss rights-based legislation as a response to this. In conclusio…
Money, morality and magistrates: prosecuting and judging in the Republic of Benin
2018
Since 2012, Beninese magistrates have gone on multiple strikes. Most of them complain about their substantial workload, low pay, and poor working conditions. They also highlight the discrepancies b...
Micro-investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income
2018
In this article, we explore the prospects of Basic Income (BI) as a development policy tool. Our approach is to analyse the BI as a tool for promoting micro-investments and as a general development policy instrument, thus deliberately departing from the perception of cash transfers as targeted poverty reduction tools. As experiences in testing BI systems in developing country contexts are limited to local and regional experiments in Namibia and India (Haarmann et al., 2009; Haarmann & Haarmann, 2012; Davala et al., 2015), conclusive assessments about the impacts of the BI cannot be drawn. Therefore, we aim to estimate potential impacts of the BI by synthesising existing knowledge. This esti…
Rethinking Civil Society in Development: Scales and Situated Hegemonies
2016
Ethnic residential segregation is often explained with the claim that ‘immigrants don’t want to integrate—they prefer to stick together with co-ethnics’. By contrast, mixed neighbourhoods are seen as crucial for achieving social cohesion. In line with spatial assimilation theory there is a normative assumption that people interact with those living nearby. From interviews on neighbourhood qualities and locations valued by Oslo residents of Turkish, Somali and Polish backgrounds, we raise questions about the validity of two assumptions: that most immigrants want to live in the same neighbourhoods as co-ethnics; and that they want to live close to co-ethnics because they do not want to integr…
Citizenship, Civil Society, and Development: Interconnections in a Global World
2012
1. Citizenship, Civil Society, and Development: Interconnections in a Global World 2. Citizenship Quality: A New Agenda for Development? 3. Water Privatization and Social Citizenship: The Case of Urban Water Sector in Ghana 4. CSO Law in Ethiopia: Considering its Constraints and Consequences 5. Cooperation for the Enhancement of Environmental Citizenship in the Context of Securitization: The Case of an OSCE Project in Serbia 6. The Arab Spring Meets the Occupy Wall Street Movement: Examples of Changing Definitions of Citizenship in a Global World
Gender, Weather Shocks and Welfare: Evidence from Malawi
2017
This paper explores the gender-differentiated effects of weather shocks on households’ welfare in Malawi using panel data aligned with climatic records. Results show that temperature shocks severely affect household welfare, reducing consumption, food consumption and daily caloric intake. The negative welfare effects are more severe for households where land is solely managed by women, a finding that sheds light on the gender-unequal impact of temperature shocks. Our evidence also suggests that women’s vulnerability to temperature shocks is linked to women’s land tenure security, as temperature shocks impact significantly women’s welfare only in patrilineal districts, where statistics show …
Crisis and credit: social and political challenges of the Malian tea market
2020
This article examines the manifold facets of crisis situations in Mali since the 1990s. Most prominent was la crise, the political crisis of 2012 that resulted from the rise of armed separatist gro...
Chances and challenges of African entrepreneurial activity in times of crisis
2020
This special issue looks in new ways at the relationship between small-scale entrepreneurship, economic (and political) crisis, and the outcomes of neoliberal market economy in African countries. I...
Pirates or entrepreneurs? Informal music distributors and the Nigerian recording industry crisis
2020
This paper is based on field research in Lagos and seeks to examine a group of actors that is often neglected in the literature as well as in local discourses. I refer to these actors as informal m...