Search results for "development studies"

Knowledge practice in development studies: Examples from ethnographies on civil society

2015

Making conservation sustainable under unfavourable conditions : the case of Chimanimani National Reserve, Mozambique

2019

Based on a case study from the Chimanimani National Reserve in Mozambique, this article analyses to what extent different types of operational practices can contribute to the sustainability of protected areas in relatively unfavourable external conditions. While current conservation policies highlight community participation and market-based approaches, the same “best practices” are not equally valid under different conditions. Where unfavourable natural conditions, lack of infrastructure, difficult access and political instability limit the potential for upmarket ecotourism, actors should focus on community empowerment, diversification of livelihoods, and building joint conservation ideolo…

Developing development studies in North-South partnership: How to support institutional capacity in academia?

2015

Audience involvement in creative media for development: Making sense of the semiotic interface

2017

This article explores the role that semiotic communication plays in the generation of narrative affect. It also draws on Suruchi Sood’s concept of audience involvement as being capable of increasing self-efficacy and collective-efficacy, both of which are crucial to behaviour change. It therefore, demonstrates how semiotic tropes are used in creative media narratives to elicit affect and in turn generate authentic audience involvement with the subjects of those narratives, a process which eventually has positive consequences for behaviour change communication. Hence, these narratives fueled by semiotics, become the threshing floor where potential audiences are drawn into pro-social discours…

Institutional Learning in North–South Partnerships: Critical Self-Reflection on Collaboration Between Finnish and Tanzanian Academics

2020

Knowledge production and its possibilities and pitfalls in North-South research partnerships have gained increasing attention. The previous literature has identified certain pervasive challenges, and suggested a variety of ways to change partnerships, ranging from improvement of current collaboration activities to fundamental transformation of the hegemonic Eurocentric criteria for knowledge. Against this backdrop, we ask what kinds of learning can take place in research partnerships. We draw from two sources – an institutional approach and a classical categorization of learning proposed by Gregory Bateson – to develop a heuristic for analyzing institutional learning in North-South research…

Hybrid Identities of Development Studies in Tanzania

2023

This article addresses identities, hierarchies of knowledge and power relations in academia in postcolonial settings, in the context of development studies in Tanzania. Based on literatures on organizational identity and postcolonial hybridity, it establishes a conceptual lens of hybrid identity, scrutinizing how the identity of the discipline of development studies is constructed. Based on analysis of interviews with staff in development studies, we identify four relationships where differences and asymmetries were articulated: with other disciplines, with past development studies, with global theorizing on development, and with partners in the global North. We conclude in discussing how a…

Growth Into Citizenship: Framework for Conceptualizing Learning in NGO Interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa

2018

This article develops a theoretical framework for analyzing adult learning in projects aiming to strengthen citizenship implemented by nongovernmental organizations, especially in the contexts of sub-Saharan Africa. On the basis of a review of international development research, we suggest that a new framework should address the need for a conceptualization of learning as a gradual process and for capturing the gap between ideal models and everyday experiences of citizenship. We argue, building on John Dewey’s philosophy, for a framework of growth into citizenship, and introduce the notions of learning as reorganization of habits and the method of democracy as an avenue for learning as nove…

Strengthening Institutional Isomorphism in Development NGOs? Program Mechanisms in an Organizational Intervention

2017

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in international development struggle between being actors in the mainstream or representatives of alternatives to it. However, many NGOs all over the world align with the mainstream and are increasingly similar to each other. This homogenization results from institutional isomorphism, which is affected by their aspirations to be legitimate vis-á-vis the international field. Consultancies are among the main practices to promote normative isomorphism, but little is known about their micro-level dynamics. Drawing on the notion of program mechanisms in realistic evaluation, we scrutinize how external facilitators in organizational development processes enab…

International Assessment Surveys of Educational Achievement in Developing Countries : Why Education Economists Should Care

2015

International audience; This paper reviews the most known international assessment studies that are conducted in the context of poor countries and highlights the lack of empirical evidence on the degree to which the contents of the tests really match countries' curricula. To illustrate, the paper evaluates the sensitivity of an international testing instrument by comparing the responses of students in two consecutive grades on the same battery of tests. Using propensity score matching to control for student and teacher characteristics, the results show that the tests are not grade sensitive, which raises the question of the validity of many empirical works that are based on similar instrume…