Relating Seasonal Hunger and Prevention and Coping Strategies: A Panel Analysis of Malawian Farm Households

Relative to chronic hunger, seasonal hunger in rural and urban areas of Africa is poorly understood. This paper examines the extent and potential correlates of seasonal hunger in Malawi using panel data from 2011–2013. We find that both urban and rural households report seasonal hunger in the pre-harvest months. Certain strategies to smooth consumption, including crop storage and livestock ownership, are associated with fewer months of hunger. In addition, we find that Malawian households that experience seasonal hunger harvest their crops earlier than average – a short-term coping mechanism that can reduce the crop’s yield and nutritional value, possibly perpetuating hunger.     

The Tunisian Revolt: Learning from the Mistakes of the Iranian Revolution

The Great Arab Revolt of 2011 has moved swiftly from the peaceful overthrow of autocrats in the nation‐states of Tunisia and Egypt to brutal repression in the tribal societies of Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. Meanwhile, the wired youth bulge of the Middle East that brought change is dissipating into an impotent diaspora while the organized interests of the old regimes and the once‐suppressed Islamists charge ahead to power. This section examines the revolt, the reaction and the power struggles in its aftermath.     

Critical Management Studies and public administration: Reinterpreting democratic governance using critical theory and poststructuralism

In this article we present the schools of thought comprising Critical Management Studies (CMS), explore their implications for public administration, and provide an alternate definition of democratic governance. We synthesize and describe the “modern stream,” inspired by the Frankfurt School, and the “postmodern stream,” associated with poststructuralist authors. Despite significant epistemological and ontological differences, these perspectives complement each other and cast new light on democratic governance. We present the respective theories of Foucault and Habermas, explore their implications for public administration, reconcile their views on power as a basis for a normative definition for so‐called good governance, and redefine the concept of “democratic governance.”     

Editor's note

This study applies Elisabeth Noelle‐Neumann's spiral of silence theory to the controversial issue of whether children with AIDS should be allowed to attend public school. The study tests the theory's hypotheses in light of two content analyses of the media's treatment of the issue. The findings offer tentative and qualified support for Noelle‐Neumann's theoretical propositions about the relationship between individuals' perceptions of the issue and the media's tenor of the issue; particularly that of television. The findings suggest the need to address the role of other agents of influence, including reference groups, and to use time‐based data to unravel the causal order of the relationships.     

Money,Mortgages, and the Conquest of America

In colonial America, land acquired new liquidity when it became liable for debts. Though English property law maintained a firm distinction between land and chattel for centuries, in the American colonies, the boundary between the categories of real and personal property began to disintegrate. There, the novelty of easy foreclosure and consequent easy alienation of land made it possible for colonists to obtain credit, using land as a security. However, scholars have neglected the first instances in which a newly unconstrained practice of mortgage foreclosure appeared—the transactions through which colonists acquired land from indigenous people in the first place. In this article, I explore these early transactions for land, which took place across fundamental differences between colonists’ and native communities’ conceptions of money, land, and exchange itself. I describe how difference and dependence propelled the growth of the early American contact economy to make land into real estate, or the fungible commodity on the speculative market that it remains today.     

The representation of ethnic and linguistic groups in the federal civil service of Belgium and Canada

This article investigates how the struggles of national groups have affected the politics of bureaucratic representation of ethnic minorities in Belgium and Canada, and vice‐versa. It argues that the politics of multinational representation in Belgium limited the adoption of measures seeking to guarantee a greater representation of ethnic and racial minorities. In contrast, the politics of multiculturalism in Canada associated with the political mobilization of ethnic groups, contributed to the rejection of measures of guaranteed representation of Francophones in the federal bureaucracy. Measures adopted to increase the representation of Francophones, however, did not impede later attempts to augment representation of visible minorities in the civil service.