Agricultural research organisations’ role in the emergence of agricultural innovation systems

Poor farmers seldom benefit from new agricultural technologies. In response, research and extension approaches based on agricultural innovation systems are popular. Often agricultural research organisations are the network brokers, facilitating the emergence of the innovation system. Based on an analysis of the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) initiative in Mexico, this viewpoint suggests that such organisations are more often suitable network brokers when the objective is the development and scaling out of a technology by itself. When the objectives are multi-faceted and include extension and education, other actors are better placed to be the network broker.     

‘Communication’ in the era of ‘Empire’ and ‘multitude’

SUMMARY

Politics has been described as “an aggregate of persons in a power perspective of elaborated demands and expectations”. From this the collective nature of politics can be clearly seen. Without communication, however, no collective action is possible and consequently no political action. Based on this politics can be seen as the continuous defining of collective action in the context of mutual power relations in which there are differences (inter alia of objectives and methods) and consequently conflict over the allocation of scarce resources. Even though there has been an early interest in the relationship between politics and communication, e.g. Aristoteles and Julius Caesar with his Acta Diurna, systematic study of the relationship between communication and politics and the generation and regulation of conflict is of recent nature. A review of the literature on the theory and research in the field of political communication indicates it to be of original interest to researchers from fields such as journalism, mass communication, political science and speech communication. Recently, however, political communication emerged as a field on its own worthy of its recognition as a subdiscipline of communication science: it is recognized by professional bodies like the International Communication Association it is a separate area for research, teaching and for publication of journals devoted to it.     

‘Cracking collaboration’ between NGOs and academics in development research

This note argues that NGOs and academics are increasingly being pushed to collaborate by their respective ‘impact’ agendas. And a growing number of individuals who traverse both worlds are advocates for a much closer relationship to facilitate the theory-data interaction that lies at the heart of knowledge creation in international development. But different cultures and institutional constraints create challenges in making this collaboration work. A number of practical pointers are outlined for overcoming these obstacles, arguing that keeping the ultimate beneficiaries in focus is the best foundation for constructing a shared agenda in development research.

« Résoudre la collaboration » entre les ONG et les universitaires dans la recherche en matière de développement

Cette note soutient que les ONG et les universitaires sont de plus en plus incités à collaborer par leurs ordres du jour liés à l'« impact » respectifs. Et un nombre croissant d'individus qui appartiennent aux deux milieux préconisent une relation beaucoup plus étroite afin de faciliter l'interaction théorie-données qui est au centre même de la création de connaissances dans le développement international. Mais les cultures différentes et les contraintes institutionnelles engendrent des difficultés au moment d'assurer le bon fonctionnement de cette collaboration. Un certain nombre de conseils pratiques sont proposés pour surmonter ces obstacles, et on soutient que la meilleure fondation pour la construction d'un ordre du jour commun dans la recherche pour le développement consiste à garder en tête qui sont les bénéficiaires.

Resolviendo las dificultades a nivel de la colaboración entre ong y académicos en la investigación para el desarrollo

La presente nota sostiene que, cada vez más, las ong y los académicos son impulsados a colaborar entre ellos debido a sus respectivas agendas de “impacto”. Asimismo, un creciente grupo de personas que conoce ambos ámbitos aboga por el establecimiento de una relación aún más estrecha, a fin de facilitar la interacción entre teoría y realidad, meollo de la creación de conocimientos en el ámbito del desarrollo internacional. Sin embargo, las diferentes culturas y las limitantes institucionales generan impedimentos para el funcionamiento de dicha colaboración. El artículo establece un bosquejo de ayudas prácticas que posibilitarían eliminar dichos impedimentos, sosteniendo que mantener presentes a los beneficiarios últimos constituye el mejor cimiento para la construcción de una agenda compartida en el ámbito de la investigación para el desarrollo.

“Colaboração com fissuras” entre ONGs e acadêmicos na pesquisa sobre desenvolvimento

Esta nota argumenta que as ONGs e os acadêmicos estão cada vez mais sendo pressionados para colaborar através de suas respectivas agendas de “impacto”. E um número crescente de indivíduos que atravessam ambos os mundos são defensores de uma relação muito mais próxima para promover a interação entre teoria-dados que permanece no centro da criação de conhecimento no desenvolvimento internacional. Mas diferentes culturas e restrições institucionais criam desafios para a realização desse trabalho de colaboração. Vários indicadores práticos são apresentados para se superar esses obstáculos, argumentando que manter em foco os beneficiários finais é a melhor base para construirmos uma agenda compartilhada na pesquisa sobre desenvolvimento.     

State narratives of ‘foreignness’ and ‘criminality’ in South Africa

This article brings the notion of transfiguration to bear on the study of the ‘unspeakable’ identity of African migrants living in South Africa, in the context of state language games on violence perpetrated against these migrants. The significance of these discourses is explored, in particular how official and not-so-unofficial discourses on violence in South African media combine to make migrants simultaneously visible and invisible. Speaking about violence involving black non-South Africans, state functionaries tend to downplay the ‘xenophobic’ element while overplaying the link with motiveless crime. Nevertheless, the sense that the migrant, labelled ‘foreigner’, is to blame for all the problems is never far from the surface of these language games. The migrant is therefore enlisted into a discourse where s/he is transformed and subsequently forced to recognise him/herself as subject. As a victim of violence, the migrants find themselves inhabiting zones of discursive indistinction, where they are both victim and victimiser, criminal and crime victim.     

‘The one great Hyperpower in the Sky’: anti-Americanism in contemporary European literature

In this article, three recent works by French, English and German authors are analysed as examples of anti-Americanism in contemporary European literature. Luc Lang's travel book, 11 septembre mon amour (2003), John Le Carré's spy novel, Absolute friends (2003) and Frank Schätzing's apocalyptic ‘eco-thriller’ Der Schwarm (2004) were all written in response to the ongoing ‘war on terror’, and each presents a remarkably antagonistic interpretation of the United States and its role in the world today. Although the literary strategies employed in these negative representations of the US are very different in each case, the three books share a deep disgust not only with American foreign policy, invariably interpreted as a reckless, deranged bid for global hegemony, but also with American culture and society in general. This article interprets this disgust as an expression of a deep-seated, irrational Americanophobia—that is, of ‘anti-Americanism’.     

Failures in agricultural innovation due to poor understanding of farmers’ predispositions

Development projects in Madagascar have increased and evolved for half a century, yet they have failed to enhance farmers’ performances. Related literature attributes the causes of failure as external to the project instigators, who are mostly institutions and funders. This article aims to highlight the role of development agents and their responsibility in unsuccessful projects. Participant observation of participatory learning and action research conducted in the Malagasy highlands revealed that non-consideration of the target audience’s rationale makes the innovation processes provided by development projects obsolete.     

The collaboration of ‘ghostwriting’ and literature – the case of Kawabata Yasunari

Abstract: Kawabata Yasunari is Japan's first Nobel Prize recipient for literature and thus an emblem of the modern Japanese writer, but as this essay demonstrates, this writer's career, like that of so many throughout Japan's premodern and modern history, is spanned by the curious practice of ghostwriting. Taking up the specific case of Kawabata, the article exposes a wider conflict between the modern West's notion of the original artist, underwritten by its idea of individualized creativity, and modern Japan's persistent adherence to ghostwriting's more collaborative premodern concept of creativity. Subjecting fine-grained literary historical analysis to its far-reaching theoretical consequences for the modernness of modern literature, Japanese and otherwise, this essay shows how the spectre of Kawabata's ghostwriting haunts our contemporary, and therefore possibly anachronistic, understanding of ‘modern’ literary practice.     

Evaluating authorial ‘objectivity’ and ‘stancetaking’ in reporting the making of a new constitution in Zimbabwean newspapers

ABSTRACT

Zimbabwe held ‘fresh’ elections on July 31, 2013 under a new constitution. This was in line with the provisions of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), a political power-sharing compromise signed between Zimbabwe's three main political parties, following the heavily disputed 2008 harmonised presidential and parliamentary elections. The GPA established in Zimbabwe a Government of National Unity (GNU). On the road to making a new constitution, political differences and party politicking always seemed to take precedence over national interest. This political polarity in Zimbabwe resulted in the heavy polarity of the media, especially along political ideological grounds. The new constitution-making process and all its problems received heavy coverage in almost all national newspapers. This article analyses the discourse-linguistic notion of ‘objectivity’ in ‘hard’ news reports on the new constitution-making process by comparing the textuality of ‘hard’ news reports from two Zimbabwean national daily newspapers: the government-owned and controlled Herald and the privately owned Newsday. Focusing on how language and linguistic resources are used evaluatively in ways that betray authorial attitudes and bias in news reporting, the article examines how the news reports uphold or flout the ‘objectivity’ ideal as explicated through the ‘reporter voice’ configuration, and within Appraisal Theory.     

The ‘Freedom of Navigation’ Issue in Sino-US Relations

On 27 October 2015, the US guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen entered China's 12-nautical-mile territorial waters in the South ChinaSea to carry out a so-called freedom of navigation (FON) operation.The FON issue has driven tensions in the region and has become a sore point in Sino-US relations.The US has long implemented close-in reconnaissance near Chinese territorial waters under the FON banner, but in recent years,the US has used this as an instrument to interfere in East Asian maritime disputes, risking heightening Sino-US frictions.As a result, their strategic mutual suspicion has increased significantly.This paper attempts to review the evolution of the FON issue in Sino-US relations, analyze the causes of Sino-US differences and the impacts, and assess future prospects on this issue.     

The politics of security sector reform in ‘fragile’ or ‘post-conflict’ settings: a critical review of the experience in Timor-Leste

Security sector reform (SSR) policy has, for the better part of a decade, been viewed as instrumental to the larger international project of improving and strengthening the ‘capacity’ of post-conflict and ‘fragile’ states. The current policy approach, which represents a merging of security and development agendas in the post-Cold War era, is based on the premise that fragmented, ineffective, poorly managed and politicised state security institutions threaten political stability and undermine poverty reduction and sustainable development goals. The objective of this article is to examine aspects of what has been described as the ‘SSR policy-practice gap’ that arose in the course of implementing SSR policy in Timor-Leste by analysing the systemic basis of the gap. An analytical framework that untangles the relationship between SSR policy objectives, targets and outcomes is presented in concert with a discussion of the social and political circumstances that confronted international organisations and donor countries when they sought to implement SSR policy in Timor-Leste. By using the analytical framework to assess the policy coherence between SSR objectives and the SSR programme contained in UN Security Council Resolution 1704, the ubiquitous disconnect between SSR ‘Gospel and Reality’ is pulled more sharply into focus.     

Developing a critical pedagogy of ‘research-based’ teaching in Islamic studies

Studying Islam and Middle Eastern politics has become highly popular, particularly in American and British universities after the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist events. Unfortunately, the increasing interest in Islam and Muslims in the West is often based on (mis)recognition of images of Muslims in the media. This has created a new set of problems of ignorance and misunderstandings about terrorism and the Islamic world. The intent of this article is to outline a ‘critical pedagogy’ of research-based teaching for Islamic studies and illustrate how this kind of pedagogical engagement better equips students to ‘problematise the natural, cultural and historical reality’ and dominant Orientalist assumptions about the relationship between Islam and terrorism. This article shows how research-based teaching can help students to become critical thinkers to connect knowledge and power while studying Islam and Middle Eastern politics.     

From ‘Christians doing development’ to ‘doing Christian development’: the changing role of religion in the international work of Tearfund

This article seeks to bring more nuance to recent discussions about the role of faith in religious development NGOs. It takes an in-depth look at Tearfund, a leading Evangelical development NGO, and explores the ways in which faith shapes its conceptualisation of development, its programme design, and its implementation strategy. The article traces the process through which Tearfund actively sought to bring faith into the centre of its development work, and argues that grappling with faith in this way can lead religious development NGOs to innovate new approaches to development that are at least somewhat outside of mainstream development thinking.     

Revisiting DDR in Liberia: exploring the power,agency and interests of local and international actors in the ‘making’ and ‘unmaking’ of combatants

The understanding that disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes are essential in helping to prevent war recurrence in post-conflict situations is at the heart of current international aid practice and the academic literature on peacekeeping and stabilisation. However DDR programmes are often launched on the basis of untested assumptions. This article considers the DDR programme in Liberia and analyses the complex relationship between the programmatic efforts to disarm and reintegrate combatants and the programme's actual effects. If we are to understand how DDR works as a tool of post-conflict governance, it is essential to explore the mechanisms of authority and power at stake. The focus is therefore not on whether combatants were successfully disarmed and reintegrated, but rather on exploring unfolding processes and the field of forces within which DDR programmes are implemented. It critically assesses the ideas of disarmament and reintegration and the basic assumptions behind current DDR policy through an analysis of the Liberian case, emphasising the agency and interests of local and international actors in the ‘making’ and ‘unmaking’ of combatants.     

Bringing politics back in: the introduction of the ‘performative power’ of counterterrorism

While it is sensible that governments and academics endeavour to assess the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies, this article argues that it is almost impossible to measure arithmetically the outcome of counterterrorism efforts for a variety of reasons. However, this does not mean that the effect of governmental policy cannot and should not be assessed. This article argues that it is not necessarily the policy measures and their intended results as such, but much more the way in which they are presented and perceived, that determine the overall effect of the policy in question. The article introduces the concept of ‘performativity’, which involves the extent to which a national government, by means of its official counterterrorism policy and corresponding discourse, is successful in selling its representation of events, its set of solutions to the terrorist problem, as well as being able to set the tone for the overall discourse on terrorism and counterterrorism. Due to the distinct relation between the performative power of counterterrorism efforts and the arc of violence carried out by terrorist movements, analysing the level of performativity will provide an indication to the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies. It is argued that a low level of performative power generally has a more rapidly neutralising effect on radicalisation and political violence than large-scale, public counterterrorism efforts.     

Party research: Western European bias and the ‘African labyrinth’

For a long time Africa's political parties have been neglected in political science research, although they have mushroomed during the last decade and are being seen as crucial for the democratic development of the continent. Part of the neglect was due to the very specific western European bias of political science party research, while Africanists claimed the uniqueness of the subject. Despite this bias, the article argues that the framework of established party research can be applied to African parties as well – provided that some modifications are considered. These necessary modifications are explained for four ‘fields’, namely the functionalist approach, the cleavage model, the inclusion of informal politics, and finally whether a distinctively ‘African’ or a universal party typology approach should be applied.     

‘No one speaks for us’: security policy,suspected communities and the problem of voice

This article examines some of the detrimental consequences of post-9/11 counterterrorism and security policies on Muslim minority groups in the United Kingdom. Drawing on empirical data from a qualitative study conducted in the north-west of England involving young British Pakistanis, it is argued that both political discourses and specific security policies have unjustly targeted Muslims and fuelled a wider public climate of suspicion and hostility. Three focal issues raised by participants in the study are prioritised. First, we discuss the process of collective attribution through which Muslims are generically treated as a suspect community. Second, a series of experiential ‘safety gaps’ – resulting in part from the pre-emptive turn in counterterrorism regulation – are considered. Third, critical ‘speech gaps’, which have important ramifications for future policy-making, are elucidated.     

Garden of Eden? The impact of resettlement on squatters' ‘agri-hoods’ in Fiji

Since the mid 1990s, squatter settlements in Fiji have been expanding at a phenomenal rate, largely due to the non-renewal of agricultural land leases and inadequate urban governance. In response to squatter growth, the government of Fiji has implemented a squatter-resettlement scheme. This scheme threatens the livelihoods of squatters engaged in urban agriculture, or ‘farming squatters’. In this article, interviews with key informants and squatter residents will reveal contrasting attitudes and approaches to the issue of ‘farming squatters’. The article suggests a more participatory process to address the needs of ‘farming squatters’.     

‘Good governance’ and ‘state failure’: genealogies of imperial discourse

Current international policy discourse routinely characterizes the condition of African states in terms of either ‘good governance’, on one hand, or ‘fragility’ and ‘failure’, on the other. This conceptual vocabulary and analytical approach has become entrenched within the public imagination more broadly, and is reproduced in academic analysis, largely without serious questioning or critique. Some scholars, however, have argued that the entire discourse of ‘state failure’ should be rejected as a valid approach to understanding, analysis and explanation of social and political conditions in Africa. This position seeks both to demonstrate the analytical and explanatory emptiness of the conceptual framework of ‘state failure’, and to reject the uncritical adoption of strands of imperial discourse by academic scholars. This article contributes to this position by examining the failed state discourse as a modern form of racialized international thought. It argues that the discourse must be recognized as a contemporary successor to a much longer genealogy of imperial discourse about Africa and other non-European societies.     

The perils of ‘going local’: liberal peace-building agendas in Nepal

Responding to recent critiques, foreign aid organisations are increasingly ‘going local’ in their operations in order to integrate local actors into their peace-building and aid projects. This is done under the belief that entering into partnerships directly with grassroots actors will increase local autonomy in joint ventures, thus empowering locals as agents of change both during and after the project period. But despite its normative and conceptual appeal, we argue that this model is not workable in practice and cannot be under the current structural conditions of the international aid environment. This is due to a fundamental disconnect between the conceptualisation and rationale of ‘going local’ and the structural and institutional frameworks within which ‘local ownership’ is supposed to be operationalised and implemented. This paper uses the example of Nepal to illustrate that this disconnect not only prevents foreign aid organisations from reaching their stated goals, but exacerbates the very problems that ‘going local’ is supposed to address.