Harmonisation: how is the orchestra conducted?

Harmonisation of donor efforts is one of the current buzzwords in the world of official aid. However, while it is an attractive idea in theory, as long as donors do not recognise and address the operations of power in the aid relationship, harmonisation is likely to be counterproductive in promoting locally initiated responses to development challenges.     

Exposure to Family Violence in Young At-Risk Children: A Longitudinal Look at the Effects of Victimization and Witnessed Physical and Psychological Aggression

This study examines the contribution of specific types of family violence exposure (e.g., victim vs. witness; physical vs. psychological) to aggressive and anxious/depressed problem behaviors in young (i.e., 6-year-old) at-risk children. This multisite prospective study of 682 children from four different regions of the country asked mothers and their 6-year-old children to report on violence exposure in their families. After controlling for mother reports of child problem behaviors on the Child Behavior Checklist at Age 4, it was found that subsequent exposure to family violence predicted reported problem behaviors at Age 6. Although mothers' report of child victimization predicted subsequent problem behaviors, witnessed violence was related to these problems only when both mothers and children reported its occurrence. The results of this study suggest that even though there was a relationship between witnessed and directly experienced family violence, both had independent, noninteractive effects on subsequent behavior problems.     

Self-reported crime rates of women prisoners

This paper presents findings from the first study of female prisoners' self-reports of criminal activity. Using the criminal career paradigm to frame the analysis, self-reported estimates of crime participation and frequency rates were examined for eight felony crimes. Important similarities between women and men were found in overall patterns of crime. Specifically, a small proportion ofboth women and men described committing a large portion of the total crimes reported. These data also suggest that women and men are similar in violent crime participation — a finding that varies from the current literature. Once active in a crime type, women and men committed assault, theft, and forgery at significantly different rates; no gender differences were found in the annualized frequency rates of burglary, robbery, motor vehicle theft, fraud, and drug dealing. However, although statistical differences were not found in the overall frequency of drug dealing, specific patterns of drug dealing reflected considerable gender variation, with a larger proportion of the female sample committing very frequent (daily) drug dealing activity. The findings reflect the value of the criminal career paradigm for the study of gender differences. Future research should include largescale quantitative designs that allow detailed analyses of correlates of the distinct criminal career dimensions.Points of view are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice.This research was funded in part by the National Institute of Justice, Grant 87-IJ-CX-0048.     

Emerging and Submerging Powers: Imagined Geographies in the New Development Partnership at the Busan Fourth High Level Forum

The geopolitics of development is in a state of uncertainty and transition that the Busan High Level Forum both mirrored and contributed to. Busan established a new discourse of international development cooperation in which the old donor-recipient relationship is replaced by an equator-less landscape of a multi-stakeholder global partnership. But by analysing the Busan preparations and conference through textual analysis and participant observation we found it to be a fractured landscape of variable imagined geographies, suggesting that the question of who is ‘North’ and who is ‘South’ will continue to shape global negotiations on the future of development cooperation.     

Notes on contributors

‘Women's empowerment’, as used by international development organisations, is a fuzzy concept. Historical textual analysis and interviews with officials in development agencies reveal its adaptability and capacity to carry multiple meanings that variously wax and wane in their discursive influence. Today a privileging of instrumentalist meanings of empowerment associated with efficiency and growth are crowding out more socially transformative meanings associated with rights and collective action. In their efforts to make headway in what has become an unfavourable policy environment, officials in development agencies with a commitment to a broader social change agenda juggle these different meanings, strategically exploiting the concept's polysemic nature to keep that agenda alive. We argue for a politics of solidarity between such officials and feminist activists. We encourage the latter to challenge the prevailing instrumentalist discourse of empowerment with a clear, well articulated call for social transformation, while alerting them to how those with the same agenda within international development agencies may well be choosing their words with care, even if what they say appears fuzzy.