No more adoption rates! Looking for empowerment in agricultural development programmes

The debate on empowerment encompasses an older discourse about the intrinsic value of empowerment, and a newer discourse about the instrumental benefits of empowerment; the concept of agency is useful in understanding this distinction. In agricultural development, empowerment efforts are often instrumentalist, viewed as an advanced form of participation that will improve project effectiveness, with adoption rates that promote compliance rather than intrinsic empowerment. Nevertheless, it is possible for projects to enhance the means for – and facilitate the process of – intrinsic empowerment. With regard to process, research and extension can make use of a constructivist rather than the behaviourist approach to support changes in knowledge, behaviour, and social relationships. In assessing empowerment, both developers and ‘developees’ need to look for evidence that people are taking control of their lives. Case studies – such as those used by the Indonesian Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Programme – will help to capture context and chronology, with unplanned behaviours being particularly useful indicators.     

Mad cows and democratic governance: BSE and the coonstruction of a “free market” in the UK

The Conservative government elected in 1979 was ideologically committed to deregulation and removed many of the state's previously established regulatory procedures. The policy permitted important changes in the structure of the meat rendering industry and in the processes employed by it. These changes were directly responsible for the spread of BSE through the British cattle herd and lead to a rising incidence of the human form of BSE – variant-CJD. The British Government – and particularly MAFF – sought to defend the meat industry by denying – until March 1996 – both the seriousness of the BSE epidemic in cattle and the possibility of a species jump from cattle to the human population. Ministers and officials insisted that beef was safe to eat and underpinned this stance by providing misleading or inaccurate information to Parliament and the public. This deception was made possible by officials having the power to manipulate the scientific evidence and to prevent research and the publication of research findings. The British Government also succeeded in obstructing European Union directives from 1990 and in intimidating the Commission. MAFF equated the “public interest” with that of the meat rendering industry and consistently put the financial interests of the dominant firms above public health. The conspiracy of silence and the deceits employed to hide the increased risks resulting from infectious agents carried by food and the public health implications of deregulation reflect not only the broad economic and industrial policy of the then government and its agencies, but also the state's lack of independence from industrial and financial interests. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Interventions with women offenders: a systematic review and meta-analysis of mental health gain

Currently, a conjunction of policy, legislative change in health and social care and the criminal justice system, combined with funding for innovative services make it opportune to assess the evidence base for interventions with women offenders. Women offenders have a distinctive criminological, health and social profile and a gender specific approach to their difficulties is advocated. This systematic review and meta-analysis focus on mental health gain in adult women offenders in forensic health settings, criminal justice institutions and in the community, following therapeutic interventions. Interventions were assessed in terms of specific outcome measures of depression, trauma symptomatology and global mental health status. Comprehensive search strategies yielded 3018 articles, from which we obtained 199 full text articles. Seventeen articles were included in the final review, of which six were excluded from the meta-analysis as there was no comparator group. There is a modest, but increasing, body of evidence for the utility of some interventions, notably those addressing the consequences of earlier trauma, including interventions which also address comorbid substance misuse. This does not amount, to date, to a robust evidence base. Limitations of these studies are discussed and include small sample sizes, their restriction mainly to prison populations and that they were substantially undertaken in the US. Variations in outcome measures follow-up and the difficulties inherent in measuring change in this complex population are also detailed. However, the review delineates definite avenues for further work. To achieve this, those responsible for policy, practice and purchase of services should both be mindful of existing evidence and promote additional, high quality research into interventions which are designed around a coherent, theoretical approach.