Linking action training to bureaucratic reorientation and institutional reform

This article explores the use of action-training methods in a highly centralized and control-oriented public sector. It focuses on the Technical Assistance and Training Programme for Departmental Development Corporations (PATC-CORDES), an innovative programme in Peru initially supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Successive sections review a particularly influential alternative to conventional classroom training proposed by Honadle and Hannah (1982); provide relevant background; describe PATC-CORDES organization and objectives; examine its training activities; assess the resulting institutional impacts; and posit important insights from the case study. The PATC-CORDES experience demonstrates that action-training methods can produce positive results in agencies that are part of a rigid public sector and, more importantly, that such methods can be linked to bureaucratic reorientation and institutional reform. Perhaps the most interesting and controversial conclusion is that recruitment of central administrators to lead training exercises can be a useful tactic for bureaucratic reorientation. The article is based on review of documents, reports, and evaluations prepared by persons working for USAID/Peru, PATC-CORDES, and departmental development corporations (CORDES); extensive interviews with political leaders, managers, and professionals in these same organizations; analysis of Peruvian legislation; and other references cited in the text.     

The conditions of production: A note∗

Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb: For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

Bill Weinberg: War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America. Zed Press, 1991.

Daniel Faber: Environment Under Fire: Imperialism and the Ecological Crisis in Central America. Monthly Review Press, 1993.

Malcom V. Brock: Biotechnology in Japan. Routledge, London/New York, 1989.     

Against Understanding: The Techniques of Shock and Awe in Jesuit Theology,Neoliberal Thought and Timothy Morton’s Philosophy of Hyperobjects

Revolving around three examples - Jesuit missionary activities in 17th century North America, Friedrich von Hayek’s neoliberal thought and Timothy Morton’s theory of hyperobjects - our paper discusses the notions of “distance” and “pointing out” which are subterraneously at work in today’s critical spirit and its tendency to align itself with the “affirmation turn”. Our investigation of the distances between subject and object and the role of the critic’s pointing at diverse “hyperobjects” (god, the market and global warming), helps us excavate a mode of critique that we call “presentist persuasion”. “Presentist persuasion” works as a form of critique that reveals the truth by pointing out hyperobjects’ encompassing presence for the sake of an overarching ethical or political goal instead of initiating a process of understanding them.     

Voices on Paper: Multimodal Texts and Indigenous Literacy in Brazil

This paper focuses on the recent production of multimodal writing in an indigenous community in Brazil, resulting from the equally recent introduction of literacy. Seeing this form of writing as part of the process of intercultural semiosis and cultural translation, the paper discusses how concepts of local indigenous oral culture and received wisdom interact with the Western concept of writing as the ‘record’ or ‘representation’ of speech, bringing to writing the indigenous notion of cultural ‘enactment’ or ‘performativity’. In an effort to overcome a view of alphabetic writing as semantically only propositional, mimetic and decontextualized, the Kashinawa´ community, by adding visual components to alphabetic texts, appear to transform writing into contextualized performative ‘poiesis’, which simul taneously inaugurates a complex process of semiosis inseparable and only comprehensible from their local cultural perspective.     

Radespiel, Liane: Die naturschutzrechtliche Verbandsklage – Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Analyse

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