Building synergies in development research: is it time for the Mosaic Approach?

Development research has responded to a number of charges over the past few decades. For example, when traditional research was accused of being ‘top–down’, the response was participatory research, linking the ‘receptors’ to the generators of research. As participatory processes were recognised as producing limited outcomes, the demand-led agenda was born. In response to the alleged failure of research to deliver its products, the ‘joined-up’ model, which links research with the private sector, has become popular. However, using examples from animal-health research, this article demonstrates that all the aforementioned approaches are seriously limited in their attempts to generate outputs to address the multi-faceted problems facing the poor. The article outlines a new approach to research: the Mosaic Model. By combining different knowledge forms, and focusing on existing gaps, the model aims to bridge basic and applied findings to enhance the efficiency and value of research, past, present, and future.     

Children,war and world disorder in the 21st century: a review of the theories and the literature on children's contributions to armed violence

Young populations, and particularly young males, have been attributed a proclivity to aggression and unrest that puts societies at risk. Theories about the dangers of a demographic ‘youth bulge’ inform public and policy debates about the predictors of violent conflict, as evidenced most recently in the World Bank's World Development Report for 2007. This paper assesses the validity and utility of claims linking youth bulges to civil conflicts by reviewing different literatures concerning naturalist ideas of young humans' innate aggression and cognitive incompetence as well as environmentalist ideas of environmental stimuli, processes of socialisation, and the dialectical relationship of structural conditions and human agency. This review finds that the moral panic propagated by youth bulge theorists is too often based on only one form of influence on human development and action, whether an aspect of environment, personal experience, or individual traits. A more cogent analysis must integrate the highly complex and dynamic processes involved in cognition and behaviour and aim to develop theories that take account of the social power, ideational and structural forms, and emotional and cognitive processes that young people experience and draw on in times of war.