Never look back: political thought and the abolition of slavery

The campaigns for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, spanning over 40 years, represented one of the major political issues of the late Enlightenment, and drew in people of all backgrounds. The very idea of humanity was at stake and this was an issue of broad-based concern. For the abolitionists, the humanity of black slaves was not in doubt, it was the actions of a society who condoned the practice, active or passive, that they saw as inhuman. Against this backdrop, Enlightenment thinkers were working on theories of justice, rights and humanity which would have an enduring influence on politics, society and academic thought for hundreds of years to come. This article addresses this historical context which, it is argued, is vital in reading, interpreting and applying Enlightenment thought in international relations today. The article presents primary and secondary historical evidence to this end and proposes that Spivak's conceptualization of ‘sanctioned ignorance’ offers much for understanding how it can be that European political thought has been so divorced from the context of slavery, from whence it emerged.     

非洲脱贫战略的演进 --减贫战略报告

消除贫困是当今非洲国家实现经济和社会可持续发展道路上面临的一个重大难题 ,也是国际社会发展援助的核心。减贫战略报告的产生 ,表明世界银行和国际货币基金组织与非洲国家的合作载体已由原来的“结构调整计划”过渡到“减贫战略报告” ,大多数非洲国家以此作为近几年的国家减贫计划和行动纲领。从减贫战略报告提出的历史背景、制订过程以及主要内容来看 ,它为非洲国家解决贫困问题提供了新的国际合作平台。良好的治理结构、稳健的宏观政策和人民的积极参与是该战略取得成效的关键     

阿根廷贫困化历程

20世纪70年代,阿根廷城市出现快速贫困化现象,20年内其贫困人口从5%以下上升到50%以上;90年代,阿根廷用10年左右的时间将贫困率降至20%以下;进入21世纪以来,阿根廷进一步将贫困率降至个位数。40年间,阿根廷贫困波动幅度之剧烈是十分罕见的,其进程与成因均有着鲜明的特点。文章回顾了阿根廷从20世纪70年代至今的贫困化发展历程,认为阿根廷的贫困问题不仅与其经济有着密切的关系,而且与其国内的政策紧密相关,新穷人问题正是这一结论生动的注脚。     

居住空间的意象蕴含——《傲慢与偏见》和《简·爱》的相关语境

本文对《傲慢与偏见》和《简.爱》中的居住空间描写进行分析,通过两部作品在这方面的同异,来考察二者在以居住空间为代表的环境描写方面如何作用于对人物性格的塑造以及对作品情节发展所起到的暗示性作用,从而理解两位作家在创作上的高超手法。     

非洲的脱贫之路

长期以来,贫困已成为非洲经济发展的羁绊,减轻贫困是21世纪非洲发展面临的主要挑战.非洲贫困集中表现为农村贫困人口占绝大多数.生产资料、劳动者质量等生产要素以及政局动荡和历史原因分别是造成非洲长期贫困的结构性因素、现实因素和历史因素.非洲国家把消除贫困作为社会经济发展中最紧迫、最基本的任务,制定了发展社会经济和减轻贫困的基本战略,并采取各种措施,努力谱写振兴非洲大陆的新篇章.但非洲国家的脱贫任重而道远.     

Communication for development: alive and kicking!

ABSTRACT

Communication has been a key element in the West's project of developing the Third World. In the one-and-a-half decades after Lerner's influential 1958 study of communication and development in the Middle East, communication researchers assumed that the introduction of media and certain types of educational, political, and economic information into a social system could transform individuals and societies from traditional to modern. Conceived as having fairly direct and powerful effects on Third World audiences, the media were seen as magic multipliers, able to accelerate and magnify the benefits of development.     

ICTs and decision making: findings from the Poverty Assessor

Pro-poor decision making depends on an understanding of the complexities and inter-relationships between household livelihood, demographic, and economic factors. This article describes the design and implementation of the Poverty Assessor, a software programme to assist practitioners, policy makers, and researchers in visualising the direct impacts on poverty of specific livelihood factors and events among populations living in poverty. The software enables users to upload their own data and profile households in relation to the national poverty line, by selecting from a range of demographic and livelihood indicators. The authors present findings from the programme, using a dataset from Bolivia.     

俄罗斯贫困线:基本概念与测定方法

本文对俄罗斯贫困线的基本概念和测定方法进行了初步探讨.首先,讨论了俄罗斯贫困线的一般理论与影响因子;其次,考察了俄罗斯贫困线的测定方法与具体实践;再次,分析了俄罗斯贫困线现状;最后,阐述了俄罗斯国内关于贫困线的优化思路.     

Better Multimethod Design:The Promise of Integrative Multimethod Research

As this symposium suggests, we are in the middle of a boom time for multimethod research in the social sciences. Gary Goertz's essay shows how case studies can test claims about causal pathways; this suggestion should be seen as an element of a broader set of possibilities. “Integrative multimethod designs” provide a family of compelling strategies for linking qualitative and quantitative components of an overall design, while also enhancing the quality of causal inferences. Given that rigorous and credible causal inferences are essential to both scholars and policymakers, integrative multimethod research designs deserve our attention.     

World Heritage and Public Works: Development Co-operation for Poverty Alleviation

On 29 August 2008, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee and the Japan Bank for International Co-operation co-organised a one-day seminar entitled ‘World Heritage and Public Works: Development Co-operation for Poverty Alleviation’, held at the United Nations University in Tokyo. The seminar focused on the role of World Heritage Sites in promoting development and poverty alleviation, balancing public works that sustain community life and preserve World Heritage properties with development co-operation programmes – especially those of international finance organisations – that include culture and development projects.     

Poverty of riches: contesting an economic interpretation of civil war and insurrection

Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler contend that greed is the motivation behind an insurgency, a conclusion arrived at via the application of rational-choice theory to situations of conflict. To gauge the likelihood of internal conflict, they constructed a series of quantitative variables that allowed them to test a data set of over 50 countries with a legacy of warfare. Based on this data set and the proxies employed, such as primary commodity exports, Collier and Hoeffler claim that the greed-based narrative provides greater explanation of intrastate violence than the grievance model, since, statistically, similarities exist between countries that have experienced violent conflict. While their work offers a new means of examining internal conflict, the faults inherent in the analysis prevent it from achieving its objective of establishing a predictive theory of civil war. The problem with this is not overall theory, but the authors’ interpretations: the proxies that they adopt mean that important factors in conflict initiation are ignored. In order to illuminate such concerns, this article examines them through the narrower lens of the Northern Ireland conflict.     

Economic Sanctions,Poverty, and International Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis

This study examines the impact of economic sanctions on international terrorism. It is argued that sanctions intensify economic hardships on the poor within countries and this increases their level of grievance and makes them more likely to support or engage in international terrorism. Further, economic sanctions are conceptualized as creating an opportunity for rogue leaders to manipulate aggrieved poor people to terrorize foreign entities who are demonized as engaging in a foreign encroachment on the sanctioned nation's sovereignty. A cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 152 countries for the past three decades provides evidence that ceteris paribus, economic sanctions are positively associated with international terrorism. This finding suggests that, although the main purpose of economic sanctions is to coerce rogue countries to conform to international norms and laws, they can unintentionally produce a negative ramification and become a cause of international terrorism.     

Poverty reduction and violence against women: exploring links,assessing impact

In 1993 the international community acknowledged for the first time that violence against women (VAW) is a human rights issue, while VAW is also increasingly recognised both as a global public health issue and a barrier to sustainable development. However, even where they are committed to reducing VAW through their programmes and advocacy activities, development practitioners are sometimes unsure about where this fits into the poverty‐reduction agenda. This article tries to situate VAW in the poverty discourse, drawing from a range of documentary sources to outline the conceptual links between VAW, poverty, and human development. It then goes on to look at issues surrounding the impact assessment of programmes aimed at reducing VAW, and offers examples of how specific programmes have been evaluated.     

国际劳工移民在南亚国家反贫困中的作用

国际劳工移民已经发展成为一个全球性问题。南亚国家是世界最大的国际劳工移民输出地区之一,劳工移民不仅带回了国家发展经济所需的资金,而且还带回了知识和技能。目前南亚国家基本上都将国际劳工移民作为反贫困战略的组成部分,在立法和政策上给予积极扶持。这些都有力促进了南亚国家反贫困战略的实施。     

20世纪90年代以来中印贫困问题比较研究

本文对中印贫困的现状、外在表征和内在成因等方面做出了深入细致的分析与研究,揭示出中印贫困现象背后深层次的运行机理,进而为两国政府探索消除贫困、制定切实可行的因应对策提供了全新的理论视角。