Plantations,outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change

Whether or not investments in African agriculture can generate quality employment at scale, avoid dispossessing local people of their land, promote diversified and sustainable livelihoods, and catalyse more vibrant local economies depends on what farming model is pursued. In this Forum, we build on recent scholarship by discussing the key findings of our recent studies in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. We examined cases of three models of agricultural commercialisation, characterised by different sets of institutional arrangements that link land, labour and capital. The three models are: plantations or estates with on-farm processing; contract farming and outgrower schemes; and medium-scale commercial farming areas. Building on core debates in the critical agrarian studies literature, we identify commercial farming areas and contract farming as producing the most local economic linkages, and plantations/estates as producing more jobs, although these are of low quality and mostly casual. We point to the gender and generational dynamics emerging in the three models, which reflect the changing demand for family and wage labour. Models of agricultural commercialisation do not always deliver what is expected of them in part because local conditions play a critical role in the unfolding outcomes for land relations, labour regimes, livelihoods and local economies.     

Evidence-Based Practice: Challenging the Rational Wisdom

The field of performance measurement (PM) is firmly entrenched as a management practice in many governments, agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Though emerging later, the field of evidence-based practice (EBP) has developed simultaneously as a new approach to enhance agency performance. While both rationality-oriented reforms intend to enhance program or agency performance, these two related rational approaches are seldom considered in concert. This essay examines the conceptual underpinnings and practical linkages between PM and EBP to explore how EBP and PM can be jointly implemented as tools to advance agency goals. As rational approaches aimed at improving performance, these two distinct tools are not substitutes, but integrated components of a results-driven strategic management approach. As a conceptual assessment, the article offers practical advice and broad appeal to performance-oriented practitioners seeking to improve agency performance.     

Revenge pornography and manhood acts: a discourse analysis of perpetrators’ accounts

Revenge pornography (hereafter, revenge porn) is the online, sometimes offline, non-consensual distribution or sharing, of explicit images of someone else by ex-partners, partners, others or hackers seeking revenge or entertainment – also referred to as non-consensual pornography. The vast majority of revenge porn is committed by men on women ex-partners. In this paper, we discursively analyse men’s electronic texts accompanying their posting of explicit images on arguably the most popular revenge porn-specific website MyEx.com. Situating our analysis as a contemporary form of online gendered violence and abuse, we show the complex ways in which manhood acts are invoked by men to account for their practices. The impacts on victims/survivors and possible interventions are also discussed.     

Talking With Teen Parents,Hearing Young Families: (In)forming Welfare Reform Through Local Relations

This article explores an engagement process undertaken by Australian government social workers in one disadvantaged locality prior to the introduction of federal “teenage parent” welfare reforms. The focus of engagement was to learn about young parents’ experiences and aspirations, and to draw on this to inform policy implementation. Findings from engagement, and how engagement between social workers and young parents impacted local policy implementation are discussed, including the subsequent development of family friendly school options. The authors suggest that problematizing early parenting may itself be “risky,” and may obscure opportunities for building on the parental role as a source of inspiration.     

A new barrier to participation: Heterogeneous application of voter identification policies

In democratic societies there is a tension between maximizing ballot access and minimizing voter fraud. Since the 2000 presidential election, this tension has been central to discussions about election reform at the national, state, and local level. We examine this tension by focusing on the implementation of voter identification laws in one state that has experienced significant issues in recent elections, and that is currently implementing election reform: New Mexico. We hypothesize that Hispanic voters are more likely to show some form of identification than other types of voters. Using a voter data set from New Mexico's First Congressional District in the 2006 election, we find that Hispanic, male and Election Day voters are more likely to show some form of identification than non-Hispanic, female and early voters. In addition, using an overlapping study of Bernalillo County 2006 poll workers, which almost entirely overlaps with the First Congressional District, we find no evidence that differences in poll worker partisanship or ethnicity produce differences in voter identification procedures. Our findings suggest that broad voter identification laws, which may be applied unequally, may be perceived as discriminatory.