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.     

Grrl explorers of the World Wild Web

Scholars in feminist rhetorical theory and linguistics have documented ways in which online environments reinstate patriarchal forms of control, leading to the continued online victimization of women. In this article, young women's resistance to a narrative of victimization is seen through the lenses of a feminist reconstructionist perspective and a gender diversity perspective (Foss, Foss and Griffin 1997 Foss Sonja Griffin Cindy Foss Karen. 1997 Transforming rhetoric through feminist reconstruction: A response to the gender diversity perspective. Women's Studies in Communication, 20 117 35  [Google Scholar]; Condit 1997 Condit Celeste M. 1997 In praise of eloquent diversity: Gender and rhetoric as public persuasion. Women's Studies in Communication, 20 91 116  [Google Scholar]). The author finds that grrls are best understood within a gender diversity perspective on rhetoric (Condit 1997 Condit Celeste M. 1997 In praise of eloquent diversity: Gender and rhetoric as public persuasion. Women's Studies in Communication, 20 91 116  [Google Scholar]; Butler 1990 Butler Judith. 1990 Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 1st ed. New York Routledge [Google Scholar], 1997 Butler Judith. 1997 Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York Routledge [Google Scholar]). Grrls appropriate the frontier metaphor and engender masculine talk to communicate resistance and change. The author concludes that the rhetoric of young women broadens the scope of feminist rhetorical criticism and calls for a re‐visioning of feminist rhetoric.     

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.     

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.