Amazonian peasant livelihood differentiation as mutuality-market dialectics

ABSTRACT

Economistic approaches to the study of peasant livelihoods have considerable academic and policy influence, yet, we argue, perpetuate a partial misunderstanding – often reducing peasant livelihood to the management of capital assets by rational actors. In this paper, we propose to revitalize the original heterodox spirit of the sustainable livelihoods framework by drawing on Stephen Gudeman’s work on the dialectic between use values and mutuality on the one hand, and exchange values and the market on the other. We use this approach to examine how historically divergent mutuality-market dialectics in different Amazonian regions have shaped greater prominence of either extractivism or agriculture in current livelihoods. We conclude that an approach centered on the mutuality-market dialectic is of considerable utility in revealing the role of economic histories in shaping differential peasant livelihoods in tropical forests. More generally, it has considerable potential to contribute to a much-needed re-pluralization of approaches to livelihood in academia and policy.     

A Comparative Analysis of Social Impact Bond and Conventional Financing Approaches to Health Service Commissioning in England: The Case of Social Prescribing

Abstract

The article compares two social prescribing interventions in Northern England. One was financed through a Social Impact Bond (SIB) and the other was financed in a more conventional way. It utilises a comparative approach to understand the extent to which different methods of financing social prescribing conform to key features of the New Public Management (NPM) or New Public Governance (NPG) in their design and implementation. It finds that a SIB approach tends towards NPM during programme design and implementation and that this creates challenges for social prescribing programmes, the complexity of which appear better suited to an NPG-based relational approach.     

‘Whatever It Takes’

Despite European leaders’ efforts to address fearsover the euro, there is no quick solution to the crisis While most of Europe goes on holiday or sits glued to the London Olympics,     

Hybrid Warfare,International Negotiation,and an Experiment in “Remote Convening”

The authors are leading a multinational effort to understand the effects of “hybrid” warfare on international commercial negotiation. The start-up process is itself essentially a negotiation, among about forty individual practitioners and scholars with very diverse backgrounds, over whether and how they will work together. In a pandemic, a key risk is that the necessary cooperation and trust will be harder to build, particularly among professionals who are dealing with security-sensitive issues and who have never met each other. This article discusses the current necessity of replacing the in-person model for eliciting such cooperation which the authors had developed previously for large collaborative projects, and describes a “remote convening” replacement process.     

Review of William E. Conklin,The Phenomenology of Modern Legal Discourse

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Architecture of a broken dream: The CIA and Guatemala, 1952–54

In 1954, the United States launched a coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of State declassified new documents pertaining to the fall of the Arbenz regime. In this paper I argue that although the new information does not substantially alter the overall debate about the causes and consequences of the action, it offers a portrait of the operation which is richer and more complex than what has been seen before. The documents reveal details of the operation which have been hidden for half a century. They illustrate how the mission faltered under the weight of security breaches and miscommunications. They also offer a fascinating glimpse at a shadowy figure in the plot to topple the Arbenz regime who has until now largely evaded the public record. In the end the documents affirm what many scholars had previously concluded, that at the end of the day it was the actions of the Guatemalan Army that made the difference between victory and defeat in the crusade to oust a democratically elected head of state.