Rethinking dependency and development between international and indigenous non-governmental organisations

This article presents a case study detailing how the Netherlands-based international NGO Terre Des Hommes (TDH) works with and impacts the indigenous Tanzanian NGO Umoja wa Maendeleo ya Bukwaya (UMABU) and the Bukwaya region that UMABU serves. The article illustrates how indigenous agency and autonomy are actualised within relationships where indigenous over-reliance and dependency are connected to Western aid organisations. The paper proposes that dependent relationships between Southern and Northern NGO partners can be negotiated by indigenous leaders in order to disseminate resources for development in indigenous communities to a greater extent than previously imagined by Western donor agencies.     

Riot Grrrl Manifestos and Radical Vernacular Feminism

This essay argues that Riot Grrrl manifestos were instrumental in promulgating a form of radical feminism that demonstrates the enduring nature of feminist radicalism. While a great deal of important work has been written on the movement, little attention has been paid to how these manifestos developed a distinctive political language and culture. By foregrounding the volatility of feminine youth and the historical erasure of the girl subject as a radical political agent, Riot Grrrl manifestos redefined the gendered (and ageist) exclusionary practices of the radical public sphere, promoting unified forms of resistance, often symbolised as a personal, albeit contagious, awakening to the realities of harassment, repression, violence and ridicule. This kind of molecular, contingent politics worked to exploit the contradictions inherent in young women's lives rather than to overcome the differences that had splintered more congealed formations of feminist politics. In rejecting the traditional claims of the radical public sphere, Riot Grrl manifestos insist on a vernacular feminism that strategically emphasises micropolitical action over grand narratives of resistance and revolution. While these manifestos draw on aspects of second-wave radical feminism and older forms of avant-garde culture, they push the genre of the manifesto into new territory by stressing everyday forms of resistance, defining their imagined consistency as porous and reactive rather than exclusive or over-determined.     

Socio‐economic differentiation and relations of production among rural‐based petty producers in central Peru, 1880 to 1970.

In an attempt to uncover the complexity of socio‐economic differentiation, detailed evidence is presented of the changing production relations among the Huasicanchinos of Central Peru over a period of ninety years.

It is argued that the process of differentiation can only be understood within the context of a quite specific system of production. An examination of the specificity of the relations of production in a particular period then reveals the complexity of this differentiation process and exposes some of the difficulties involved in a class analysis where capitalist relations have not been generalised throughout the social formation.

The study of this group of Central Peruvian petty producers over ninety years reveals that the differentiation process was a function of specific features of the relations of production in each of three periods; these relations were themselves emergent from the articulation of huasicanchino petty production with the changing form of dominant capitalism in Peru. As a function of differing relations to large capital, petty production units took on a variety of forms. Qualitative differences in the form of small production units in one period then gave rise to quantitative differences in control over resources in a subsequent period. Quantitative differences were in turn expressed in variations in relations of production between controllers and direct producers, and so on.

It is concluded that assumptions about inevitable polarisation should not obscure the complexity of a process which can only be understood by reference to the particular history of a social formation.     

The Role of Foreign Direct Investment and State Capture in Shaping Innovation Outcome in Russia

This article explores the linkage between foreign direct investment, grand corruption (that is, state capture) and innovation in Russia's regions in between 1997 and 2010. The results indicate that during the period under investigation both foreign direct investment and state capture were the significant determinants of innovation outcome. What is also interesting is that a positive impact of state capture on innovation through foreign firms, and a negative impact—through exporting—was observed.     

Japan and China: A Fresh Start in a Difficult Era

No relationship is more important to the future of Asia than the one between Japan and China. PM Abe’s visit to Beijing last month put the relationship back on a firmer footing. Yet diplomacy alone will not stabilize Sino-Japanese relations. Popular attitudes in both countries also matter, and will be shaped by the success or failure of leaders to manage the growing complexity of this relationship from food security to fisheries management to national defense and new solutions to China’s growing influence over the daily lives of Japanese. Across Asia too, Japan and China will need to coexist without impeding each other’s influence. Next year’s visit to Japan by President Xi offers ample opportunity for expanding the foundation of this latest round of diplomatic “fresh starts” in the Japan-China relationship. Uncertainty over the US role in Asia, however, has made this a more difficult task.