Why green grabs don't work in Papua New Guinea

In recent years, private companies have acquired long-term leasehold titles to more than five million hectares of what was formerly customary land in Papua New Guinea (PNG), but hardly any of this land has been devoted to production of the four green commodities in which PNG might have some comparative advantage – sustainable palm oil, bio-ethanol, biodiversity and carbon credits. Nearly all of it is dedicated to so-called ‘agro forestry’ projects that appear to be short-term salvage logging projects justified by the promise of a purely virtual form of large-scale agricultural production. I argue that the ‘agro foresters’ have been more successful than the green investors because of a set of political and institutional factors that distinguish PNG from many of the other countries where land grabbing has become the order of the day.     

Smallholdings,land law and the politics of land tenure in Papua New Guinea

It has been asserted of Papua New Guinea that the nineteenth and twentieth century expansion of capitalism into that country occurred without the commodification of more than a small amount of land. The various arguments supporting this view are rejected, and the evidence to the contrary is presented. It is shown that from the 1950s smallholder production increases have been substantial, mainly but not wholly in export crops. The role of the state is examined, with particular focus upon the characteristics of state power and the politics of land which have underpinned the increase in smallholder production. Similarities in the quality and application of state power across both colonial and post‐colonial regimes is stressed.     

Education and labour supply inequality in the informal sector: the case of Cameroon

This paper estimated the effects of education on labour supply inequality in the informal sector. For this purpose, it used quantile regression and data from the national institute of statistics of Cameroon. The results indicate that labour supply decreases with education in the informal sector. Indeed, the effects of education on the labour supply is as follows: primary education ?0.054; lower secondary education ?0.083; upper secondary education ?0.18; and tertiary education ?0.34; no level of education is the reference. It appears that, labour supply of unqualified employees of the informal sector in Cameroon is very high. For this reason, the government should promote transition from informal sector to formal sector by encouraging private sector to create more jobs for skilled workforce. The government could also use media to spread information on the benefits of formalization of employment.     

Listening and moving in the urban environment

This article discusses The Language of the Listening Body, a collaborative creative project between choreographer Hope Mohr and composer Michelle Nagai exploring an active listening and moving practice in the urban environment of New York City. Mohr discusses listening and moving practices in the studio and in ‘soundwalks’—walking meditations where participants are encouraged to maintain a high level of sonic awareness. The article discusses discoveries and questions that arose during a creative process with a focus on: (1) the relationship between listening-based movement research and public soundwalks, and (2) the unique issues involved in environmentally based creative process and performance.     

Advocating for the Right: Alliance Defending Freedom and the Rhetoric of Christian Persecution

In this article I trace the legal and cultural advocacy work of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the single largest Christian conservative legal organisation operating in the US today. I begin by locating ADF strategy within the longer history of Christian persecution rhetoric articulated by the Moral Majority during the 1970s and 1980s. I then analyse both legal and cultural outputs of the organisation in two key cases: the so-called bathroom bills limiting transgender access to public facilities in several states, and the service denial of florist Barronelle Stutzman. I argue that by emphasising the perceived vulnerability of white cisgender women and girls in these cases, ADF litigators and cultural producers advance a narrow conception of religious freedom rights located in the specific cultural politics of neoliberal, white evangelicalism. As a result, while these cases have been legislative and policy failures for ADF they nevertheless provide useful insight into the rhetorical project of Christian persecution.

     

Female education and full-time employment in Guinea: an ambiguous relationship

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the direct and indirect effects of female education on full-time labour market employment using Guinean demographic and health surveys. It addresses potential endogeneity of female education, unobserved heterogeneity and sample selectivity concerns using the control function model and a non-self-cluster identification strategy. Results show that female education has a diminishing direct effect on full-time employment, with the inverted-U-shaped relationship portraying that women with seven-plus years of schooling are less likely to be regularly employed than their counterparts with less years of schooling. Interacting female education and its square with the corresponding reduced form residuals increase the probability of full-time labour market employment – an indication that female education and unobserved correlates are complementary. Thus, highly educated Guinea women do not increase their full-time market engagements – a pointer of the importance they may be attributing to home-produced goods and services that push them to perhaps prefer flexi-work arrangements such as occasional or seasonal market engagements.     

Fighting rural poverty,inequality and low productivity through legal empowerment of the poor

The purpose of this essay is to introduce the work of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) to the broader academic community interested in the challenge of eradicating rural poverty and promoting the structural and institutional changes which underpin such a challenge. While rural development research in the past has included work on several components of the legal empowerment of the poor (LEP) agenda such as property and labour rights, much less attention has been given to the other two pillars of the framework – access to justice and rule of law and business rights – which together constitute the four pillars of LEP. However the real difference and value added is the power of the systemic interaction among the pillars and the empowerment approach to change. In this approach, change is initiated bottom up with legal identity, organisations, information, and voice of the poor. In other words an active citizenry, complemented by a democratic and effective state. None of this happens naturally as vested interests and skewed power and asset relationships are bound to get in the way of change to greater equity. Such change is only likely to come through iterative contestations between organisations of the poor, the middle class, and the state. This approach is not presented as a panacea but one which will hopefully complement and accelerate what is already working.     

Corporate power in the agro-food system and the consumer food environment in South Africa

This contribution maps the South African agro-food system with a focus on corporate ownership and power, inspired by value chain work applied to the food system as a a whole. Corporations tend to dominate some nodes, for example input supply, grain storage and handling, and feedlots. Other nodes have a corporate core but with a wide number of smaller economic actors, for example agricultural production, food manufacturing, wholesale and retail, and consumer food service. This wide number of actors points to possible areas of intervention to boost livelihoods by supporting their economic activities. The paper considers the influence of corporations in structuring consumer perceptions on food quality and health, from input into apparently neutral dietary-based guidelines to advertising. Financialisation in the food system, including the institutionalisation of share ownership and the rise of agri-investment companies, and the multi-nationalisation of South African agro-food capital especially into Africa, have implications for the ability of the nation state to regulate activities in the agro-food system. The paper concludes with some recommendations for further work.     

New investment,old challenges. Land deals and the water constraint in African agriculture

Foreign investment in agricultural land acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa has been viewed primarily as driven by a set of linked ‘crises’: in financial capital markets, in security of energy and food supply, and in global environmental governance. This paper argues that a focus on the ‘buyers’ of land risks overlooking the dynamics that operate on the side of the land ‘sellers’. Accordingly, the first part of the paper argues that it is important to view the current ‘land grab’ as the latest stage in a longer historical process of competition for control of land and other natural resources by different ‘domestic’ economic and political actors within African countries. While such struggles are often characterised as the ‘state versus the peasantry’, with the state acting on behalf of ‘urban elites’, the paper argues that processes of accumulation and associated enclosure of natural resources need to be examined more critically in specific contexts if the role and impact of foreign capital investment are to be understood. The second part of the paper seeks to identify the ways in which questions of scale (in the sense of greater capital intensity) can be considered to be constraints to the development of African agriculture. Particularly, it considers the extent to which the production models most frequently mentioned in connection with foreign investment (large-scale mechanised farms and small-scale outgrower contract farming) respond to current productivity constraints. The paper argues that current debates about foreign investment in agricultural land underplay the importance of water resources needed to overcome production risks associated with irregular rainfall. Bringing the water dimension of land deals more clearly into focus is necessary if the scope for positive and negative impacts of new investment on existing land users is to be fully understood. The paper concludes by considering the implications of such challenges in the current context of foreign investment in agriculture in Africa.     

国际环境保护中的霸权主义倾向及其根源

随着世界经济的全球化发展,基于环境目的的单边主义已成为贸易保护主义的一种托词,国际环境 保护规则受到操纵的现象并不罕见,环境霸权主义倾向日益明显。     

新经济困局、新失业问题与新对策研究

当前中国面临的经济困局是全局性、长期性世界经济危机的一部分,是全球化与新自由主义面临深刻调整的产物,因此,中国不可能像以前一样继续依赖于发达国家进口的增长摆脱困局,而严重的产能过剩与滞涨现实也决定了扩张性财政政策的不可行,只能采取供给学派对策与再分配政策扩大内需.在当前的经济危机中,处境最窘迫的是新一代农民工,他们既享受不到社会保障,又不愿意回归农村,鉴于他们庞大的规模,继续延续旧式解决方案可能引起他们激烈的反应,只有顺应潮流,积极鼓励私营经济的发展,建立起平等的覆盖全民的社会保障体系,进一步缩小社会贫富差距,进行根本性的土地制度改革,让农民顺利融入城市,才能有效化解新经济困局和新失业问题.