The politics of neoliberal economic reform in South America, 1980–1994

What political conditions facilitate market-oriented reform? Prior research suggests that neoliberal policies are inherently unpopular, politically hazardous, and consequently dependent upon the existence of strong and relative autonomous governments. This study reassesses the political costs and benefits of market-oriented reform and attempts to offer insights for future theory building by exploring five hypotheses on the basis of the post-1980 South American experience. The findings suggest that the political obstacles to reform have been exaggerated and theoretically misspecified. Neoliberal policies are less the product of the triumph of technocratic expertise over political calculus than of the structure of political incentives and opportunities created by broader sets of factors, including economic circumstances, structural conditions, pluralist pressures, institutional constraints, and international linkages.     

The Southern African customs union,cereal price policy in South Africa,and food security in Botswana

It is elaborated in this article that external factors may affect food security in developing countries even if these countries are not exposed to price instability in world food markets. This is the case in the Southern African Customs Union where the agricultural price policy in South Africa affects food security in Botswana, Lesotho and Swasiland. It is analysed quantitatively how cereal price policy in South Africa influenced the cereal import sector of Botswana in the period 1969–84. Cereal import prices increased due to Botswana's membership of the customs union, and cereal imports declined. The price increase was accompanied by a price‐stabilising impact.     

The Transition to Equity in South African Higher Education: Governance,Fairness, and Trust in Everyday Academic Practice

In South Africa, 15 years into a new political order, higher education institutions are under pressure to create and sustain the conditions necessary for the consolidation of democracy. One of the more important of these conditions is the need to shift their academic staff profiles in ways that are more representative of a diverse democracy. This process is mediated by legislative and policy reforms that have as their aims the establishment of a more diverse community of academics (see, inter alia: White Paper, 1997; Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998; National Plan for Higher Education, 2001). While much current thinking is at the macro-level and focused on narrow human resource aspects related to “getting the numbers right,” there is limited research on what happens in the daily experiences of faculty. This article draws on a research project conducted at five universities in South Africa in order to explore how academics in their everyday micro-practices of governance, teaching, and research respond to this external systemic pressure. The findings are considered in terms of their implications for the democratization process, in relation to issues of governance, fairness, and trust, at the levels both of institutions and of society as a whole.     

Anatomy of a Riot: The Social Imaginary,Single Women,and Religious Violence in Niger

This article asks us to rethink the models that have conventionally represented the coming of Islam to Africa: that of a pre-established entity, given from the outside, coherent, monadic, unity, like an already formed identity. Using Lacanian challenges to conventional notions of identity, this article contests the above version of Islam, viewing it as an incarnation of the imago: always there, always obeying the logic of a model of transmission into Africa as a reception from abroad. The conventional representation of its irruption into Africa has always involved the misrecognition of an identity as a pre-existent, already-whole form, wait ing to be born, presumably in complete unity. What this model ignores is that the language and form of what it came to recognize and name as Islam were already there, and that the Islam that formed its newlyconscious sense of self was grounded in the same act of misrecognition as characterizes the mirror stage, that is, the stage at which the subject comes to state: “This is who I am.” In order to rethink the identitarian model, this article evokes the figure of the dead father, the “McGuffin” on which turns the drama of Hampaté Ba’s Wangrin and Sembène Ousmane’s Faat Kine. In both works, the act of exhuming the father’s body takes on a degree of fantastical importance because it situates the struggle between two competing mirror stage tendencies: narcissism and aggression, tendencies around which all forms of subject-identity formation take place.     

The economic impact of genetically modified cotton on South African smallholders: Yield,profit and health effects

Results of a large-scale survey of resource-poor smallholder cotton farmers in South Africa over three years conclusively show that adopters of Bt cotton have benefited in terms of higher yields, lower pesticide use, less labour for pesticide application and substantially higher gross margins per hectare. These benefits were clearly related to the technology, and not to preferential adoption by farmers who were already highly efficient. The smallest producers are shown to have benefited from adoption of the Bt variety as much as, if not more than, larger producers. Moreover, evidence from hospital records suggests a link between declining pesticide poisonings and adoption of the Bt variety.     

The hares,the hounds and the African National Congress: on joining the Third World in post-apartheid South Africa

The utility of framing questions of global inequality in relation to a ‘First World’ and a ‘Third World’, a North and a South, or developed countries and developing (or underdeveloped) countries, has been much debated since the end of the Cold War. This article addresses the issue of the perceived weaknesses and possible continued strengths of the notion of the ‘Third World’ in general terms, and then grounds such a discussion through an analysis of the way that the African National Congress (anc) government in post-apartheid South Africa has approached the question of global inequality. Since its election in 1994, and more particularly since Thabo Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela as president, the anc has presented itself as having an especially important leadership role on behalf of the Third World. The profound contradictions inherent in the anc's effort both to retain its Third Worldist credentials and to present itself as a reliable client to the Bretton Woods institutions and foreign investors provides insights into how to design alternative strategies for overcoming world-wide poverty, strategies which might be more effective than those chosen by the anc. Since the anc was elected to government in 1994 it has pursued a brand of deeply compromised quasi-reformism, analysed here, that serves primarily to deflect consideration away from the options presented by other, much more meaningfully radical international and South African labour organisations, environmental groups and social movements. At the present juncture a range of increasingly well-organised grassroots movements in South Africa find that they have no choice but to mobilise in active resistance to the bankrupt policies of the anc. The increasing significance of these efforts points to the possibility that they might eventually be able to push South Africa—either through a transformation of the anc itself or through the creation of some new, potentially hegemonic, political project in that country—back into the ranks of those governments and groups that seek to use innovative and appropriately revolutionary approaches to challenge the geographical, racial and class-based hierarchies of global inequality.     

Ethnicity,Language Capacity,and Perception of Ethnic-Specific Services Agencies in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

Abstract

This study examined (1) the ethnicity and language similarity between professional staff and service users, and (2) client satisfaction in ethnic-specific services (ESS) agencies serving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). A combined method of agency survey and focus groups was used to collect the data. Findings indicate that ESS served a diverse AAPI population, although some ethnic and language sub-groups remain to be under served. Service users clearly prefer ESS, which is associated with a higher level of trust than mainstream services. However, staff simply sharing similar language or ethnic background does not automatically warrant trust. Trust is developed through a sense of respect that staff demonstrates within a cultural context. The feeling of trust is likely to determine AAPI clients' commitment to remain in treatment, a prior condition for achieving any desirable outcome.     

Boko Haram,bandits and slave-raiders: identities and violence in a Central African borderland

ABSTRACT

Boko Haram is a religiously motivated insurgency with a complex history in Nigeria and origins in urban Maiduguri. Through most of its existence Boko Haram has shown an affinity for border regions: the frontier zones between Nigeria and Niger, the Mandara Mountains on the border with Cameroon, and the shorelines and islands of Lake Chad. This paper argues that this is an historically mediated process. Boko Haram as a borderland phenomenon echoes the hijra of Usman dan Fodio, but also structured forms of violence and wealth creation that have historically united elites and their followers in the region. Moreover, there are continuities between the actions and actors associated with earlier phases of border violence and processes involving Boko Haram today. This suggests that Boko Haram will not be “defeated,” but rather that the region will see a reversion to forms of border violence that were prevalent as recently as the early 2000s.