From ‘Christians doing development’ to ‘doing Christian development’: the changing role of religion in the international work of Tearfund

This article seeks to bring more nuance to recent discussions about the role of faith in religious development NGOs. It takes an in-depth look at Tearfund, a leading Evangelical development NGO, and explores the ways in which faith shapes its conceptualisation of development, its programme design, and its implementation strategy. The article traces the process through which Tearfund actively sought to bring faith into the centre of its development work, and argues that grappling with faith in this way can lead religious development NGOs to innovate new approaches to development that are at least somewhat outside of mainstream development thinking.     

Ethnocompetitiveness,relations, and networks: towards rural sustainability

Small producers face various obstacles in placing their products on the global market. The most important obstacle is associated with the generation of innovative products in a dynamic context. This article presents a case study which provides support for a methodology designed to quantify the competitiveness of small and medium-sized local producers in relation to other producers in the same region and nation. It explores how the evolution of knowledge relates to the ability of agricultural producers to sell their products in regional and international markets. To do so, it utilises the concept of ethnocompetitiveness, which can be understood as the hybridisation of local knowledges with external or codified knowledge.     

Building indicators to address community sustainability: learning from the Mixteca region,Mexico

This article reports on an indicator model to assess sustainability at the community level that was developed by an interdisciplinary work group. We applied this model in a case study of the Mixteca region in Oaxaca, Mexico, and provided a tool guide to measure the effectiveness of community-based actions. Two innovative aspects are presented: an iterative process with the community to develop a locally appropriate set of indicators drawn from the literature, and a baseline diagnostic assessment of the community’s performance on these indicators. This assessment may serve as a basis for future research and community-driven projects.     

Peacebuilding for faith-based development organisations: informing theory and practice

Faith leaders and their congregations have been recognised as holding the potential to engage positively in peacebuilding activities in a post-conflict context. Alongside this, faith-based development organisations (FBDOs) have the ability to engage with these constituencies to increase the peacebuilding impact of their activities. This paper presents a framework of faith engagement for FBDOs to work with local faith leaders and people of faith to develop the peacebuilding impact of development activities. A reworking of Anderson's “Do No Harm”, it encompasses the areas that FBDOs need to address in order to be effective peacebuilding actors in a faith context.     

Polarised narratives and complex realities in Tanzania’s Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor

This article assesses the controversy surrounding a high-profile agricultural investment initiative, the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), which aims to modernise, commercialise, and transform Tanzania’s agricultural sector. Drawing on a review of SAGCOT literature and findings from consultations with SAGCOT stakeholders and intended beneficiaries, the article outlines the polarised narratives of “opportunity” and “risk” informing SAGCOT debates, and presents research findings that challenge these narratives. The findings suggest that agricultural investments are rarely as glamorous or as gloomy in practice as the polarised narratives around SAGCOT suggest, and illustrate the challenges involved in directing agricultural investments in ways that balance multiple interests and objectives in practice.     

Participatory gender-responsive monitoring of women land rights: empowering and smart

This viewpoint argues that a genuine participatory approach to defining a theory of change and outcome indicators of enhanced women land and property rights is essential to include the standpoint of women and men who are directly involved, and to acknowledge their power to frame the change and solutions they envision. Moreover, outcomes and outcome indicators defined by women and men who are targeted by women rights interventions typically better distinguish outcomes to be reached among women, among men, and in terms of gender relations, are more concrete and easier to measure.     

Responsive planning in development interventions: consulting rights-holders in the Sanitized Villages programme in Kongo Central

This article empirically examines one of the most important causes of the non-implementation of human rights-based approaches to development (HRBAD): their alleged limited relevance for actors on the ground. The article argues that claims about local relevance can only be made after meaningful consultation with local rights-holders. Consulting local rights-holders in order to ensure responsive planning is not only relevant for HRBADs, but for development interventions more generally. The article presents new material on the Sanitized Villages programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assess whether and how rights-holders are consulted, and identifies four mechanisms that can facilitate meaningful consultation.     

From the web to the streets: internet and protests under authoritarian regimes

This article systematically investigates the relationship between internet use and protests in authoritarian states and democracies. It argues that unlike in democracies, internet use has facilitated the occurrence of protests in authoritarian regimes, developing a theoretical rationale for this claim and substantiating it with robust empirical evidence. The article argues that whereas information could already flow relatively freely in democracies, the use of the internet has increased access to information in authoritarian regimes despite authoritarian attempts to control cyberspace. The article suggests this increased access to information positively affects protesting in authoritarian states via four complementary causal pathways: (1) by reducing the communication costs for oppositional movements; (2) by instigating attitudinal change; (3) decreasing the informational uncertainty for potential protesters; and (4) through the mobilizing effect of the spread of dramatic videos and images. These causal pathways are illustrated using anecdotal evidence from the Tunisian revolution (2010–2011). The general claim that internet use has facilitated the occurrence of protests under authoritarian rule is systematically tested in a global quantitative study using country-year data from 1990 to 2013. Internet use increases the expected number of protests in authoritarian states as hypothesized. This effect remains robust across a number of model specifications.     

An exploration of the financial practices of tribal communities in Jhabua,India

Tribal communities of India have been facing financial challenges for many years, and these have increased alongside commercialisation led by industrialisation. The major reason for this is that tribal communities are neglected by the state, which has had a negative impact on their livelihoods and financial status. The state has made some attempts to promote these communities, but these have been unsuccessful. Against this background, this article explores the financial practices of tribal communities in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh, India and presents a microfinance model which could be suitable in the Jhabua context.     

Factors influencing rubber marketing by smallholder farmers in Thailand

This article assesses the factors determining the type of rubber product that farmers are willing to sell and the factors influencing their marketing channel choice in Thailand. Primary data were collected through questionnaire administration from 280 rubber farmers in two southern provinces. The results of the logit regression model revealed that membership of farmers’ organisation, access to knowledge and information, and total area of immature rubber positively influenced the sale of fresh latex. Membership of farmer organisations and accessibility to market infrastructure also significantly positively influenced the sale of fresh latex to farmer groups. The implications for rubber marketing are presented.