All Paths Lead to Rain: Explaining why Watershed Development in India Does Not Alleviate the Experience of Water Scarcity

Abstract

Watershed development (WSD) projects in India are key to meeting a range of human development goals in rain-fed agrarian landscapes. However, outcomes are often observed to be partial and short-lived. We offer a novel perspective on the reasons. Our analysis shows that the dominant ‘water narratives’ of WSD policy and practice and the lived experience of local people contribute to a naturalisation of water scarcity, resulting in widespread views that WSD is primarily a means for increasing irrigation water supply. We show how this over-simplifies the complex problem of agricultural water use and perversely contributes to a continuing experience of water scarcity rather than its resolution.     

Feminism,Art, Deleuze,and Darwin: An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz

Abstract

This discussion stresses that looking at countries on the margins of European colonial rule can be useful when considering the wider dynamics of the present, reflecting the persistence of colonial discourses and how racism “endures”. Iceland’s colonial experience was characterized by duality, in which the country was an object of colonialism, while actively participating in the racist discourses predominant in Europe at that time. This paper demonstrates how Iceland’s long association with the exotic and its gendered manifestations is currently being perpetuated by the tourist and state industries, under the influence of neo-liberal ideas about nation branding. When contextualized within the larger geopolitical environment, Iceland as an “exotic” destination unravels the racist and colonized narratives still at play within a wider geopolitical context.     

Silence and Articulation—Whiteness,Racialization and Feminist Memory Work

Racialization is a constant process of “doing race”. Critical whiteness studies make efforts to address the silencing of whiteness in mainstream white feminism. In this article memory work is explored as a possible method for studies of whiteness as an unmarked majority position. The focus is on methodological practices or “how‐to‐do” questions. Starting from feminist epistemology the author investigates ways of practising the epistemological standpoint of situated knowledges. Feminist epistemology, despite its disagreements, has pointed to the importance of positioning work for scientific knowledge production. The relationship between racialization as an analytical concept and whiteness as dominant majority position is complicated. Usually memory work is employed to address gender or more specifically femininity, but, as argued here, it is well suited to investigations of racialization, too. The analysis shows that silent avoidance of matters associated with whiteness helps keep the majority position in place; whiteness is co‐produced with silence through avoidance in concrete everyday situations. Despite a number of problematic aspects, memory work proved productive in bridging the gap between an epistemological standpoint and the nitty‐gritty work of doing empirical research. It helped clarify racialization as a relational phenomenon and shows how lack of attention to or awareness of race has implications for scientific knowledge production.     

INSTITUTIONAL LAYERING IN GOVERNING HEALTHCARE QUALITY

Since the 1980s, regulated markets and New Public Management have been introduced in the public sector across the world. How they have affected existing governance mechanisms such as self‐regulation and state regulation has remained largely unexplored, however. This article examines the origins and consequences of institutional layering in governing healthcare quality. Dutch health care, where a market‐based system has been introduced, is used as a case study. The results show that this market‐based system did not replace but modified existing institutional arrangements. As a result, hospitals have to deal with the fragmentation of quality demands. Using the concept of institutional layering, this study shows how different arrangements interact. As a consequence, the introduction of a certain policy reform will work out differently in different countries and policy sectors. Our ‘archaeological’ study in this layering can be seen as an example of how such incremental change can be studied in detail.     

Corruption complaints,inequality and ethnic grievances in post-Biafra Nigeria

Based on anthropological field work in southeastern Nigeria, this paper explores the public concerns and everyday experience of corruption in a society still living with the legacies of the Biafran secession attempt. The paper shows how the revival of Igbo nationalism and resentment over perceived marginalisation is fuelled by perceptions that the corrupt machinery of the federal government runs against the interests of the Igbo people, and funnels resources away from the southeast as punishment for the failed separatist struggle more than 40 years ago. Hence, complaints about corruption are used to critique the Nigerian state and other regional or ethnic groups, but they also figure in an internally focused critique by Igbos of their own complicity in Nigeria’s endemic corruption.     

The Role of Social Support in Students’ Perceived Abilities and Attitudes Toward Math and Science

Social cognitive models examining academic and career outcomes emphasize constructs such as attitude, interest, and self-efficacy as key factors affecting students’ pursuit of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses and careers. The current research examines another under-researched component of social cognitive models: social support, and the relationship between this component and attitude and self-efficacy in math and science. A large cross-sectional design was used gathering data from 1,552 participants in four adolescent school settings from 5th grade to early college (41 % female, 80 % white). Students completed measures of perceived social support from parents, teachers and friends as well as their perceived ability and attitudes toward math and science. Fifth grade and college students reported higher levels of support from teachers and friends when compared to students at other grade levels. In addition, students who perceived greater social support for math and science from parents, teachers, and friends reported better attitudes and had higher perceptions of their abilities in math and science. Lastly, structural equation modeling revealed that social support had both a direct effect on math and science perceived abilities and an indirect effect mediated through math and science attitudes. Findings suggest that students who perceive greater social support for math and science from parents, teachers, and friends have more positive attitudes toward math and science and a higher sense of their own competence in these subjects.     

"Transcending gynocentric space”: Spatial metaphorics in feminist theory and criticism

Many studies assert that there are new gender constructions among young Scandinavian girls, who seem to be more individualized than earlier generations. In this article questions are raised as to what effect these girls’ newly won status as subjects might have on their construction of bodily gender, especially the part referred to as generative femininity. A “loss” of the generative body is argued to be a general tendency in postmodern discourse, as well as a dilemma in the individual girl's striving for being both individual and gender. This dilemma and its tentative solution is illustrated through the analysis of an 18‐year‐old Norwegian girl, who was the subject of an in‐depth interview in a three‐generational study of gender in change.     

Understanding Change in Political Science: On the Need to Bring Space into Theoretical Positions and Empirical Analyses

In recent times, issues surrounding change have become increasingly important in the study of political analysis. This is especially true within strains of new institutionalism such as historical institutionalism and the 'Varieties of Capitalism' approach. However, although this has led to a sensitising towards the temporal dimension, the spatial dimension has been relatively ignored. This is arguably problematic, as a fuller understanding of space and the spatiality of social and political relations would lead to more coherent and accurate analyses of political phenomena that currently characterise historical institutionalism. Indeed at an ontological level, drawing on work within the natural sciences and geography, it is impossible to talk of time without reference to spatiality and of space without reference to temporality. This short article reviews some of the more prominent historical institutionalist literature that deals with change and renders explicit the problematic conceptualisation of space, and consequently time, which underpins their analyses. Drawing on Massey and Sayer, it proceeds to outline briefly a relational conception of space and the difference that space makes to political analyses.