Anxiety,order and the other: well-being among ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks

Neither well-being nor suffering can be understood without understanding how the two experiences are related. In this paper, the author focuses on the experiences of well-being and suffering in everyday, mundane contexts, such as food preparation, cleaning and hospitality. Data presented are drawn from fieldwork conducted among ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan, shortly after independence. The author discusses how the experiences of well-being and suffering are informed by symbolic systems that are linked to religious beliefs. This examination contributes to an understanding of the power of religious symbols, arguing that the expectations of well-being or suffering make systems of religious symbols more compelling.     

Multichannel Delivery of Public Services: A New and Complex Management Challenge

A strategic challenge facing all governments today is how to deliver services effectively and efficiently. At one time, they thought that they could meet this challenge by exploiting technology and going the E-government route with the promise of single-window, integrated, intelligent service delivery. Very quickly, however, they had to accept the fact that they would have to overcome a multitude of obstacles and that individual and corporate clients often preferred to receive service in traditional ways.

As a result, the delivery of public services is becoming increasingly multichannel: over the counter, by mail and telephone, over the Internet, via text and television, etc. There is therefore a need to identify some kind of model for managing this highly complex new phenomenon effectively and efficiently. By conducting research in the field with the help of case studies and international benchmarking, it was possible to identify the main variables in the degree of effectiveness and efficiency of multichannel public service delivery and develop the outline of a model representing the underlying factors.     

东南亚各国的粮食新政及其与中国的合作分析

2008年以来,全球粮食产量增长缓慢,需求不断增长,粮食危机席卷全球,如何保证粮食供应安全已成为东南亚国家面临的突出问题。为此,东南亚各国纷纷实施粮食新政,采取多种措施发展农业生产,确保粮食供给与粮食安全。世界范围内的粮食危机促进中国与东盟强化在粮食领域的合作。     

A Research Revolution in Women's Health

SUMMARY

Women's health research initiatives are emerging with evidence that there are unique diagnosis and intervention factors that provide a window into the specific health needs of women. The evidence of the need for this gender-specific research is being spurred by the establishment of The Office of Research on Women's Health by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A review of some of the more current and salient research findings that apply to women's health and the health needs of women in different lifestyles, at different stages of the life cycle is discussed. Also considered are women's roles in the health service delivery system and where they fit into the provision of services within the context of women's styles of accessing and using health care. Self-help and other support programs will be described as they apply specifically to women and a case will be made for providing comprehensive, multi-systemic women's health services in one facility at the community level through an overview of some of the more current and successful models.     

食品安全信息供给的政府义务及其实现路径

食品安全信息的有效供给,关系到社会对食品生产和消费的信息和对政府的信任,而完善我国食品安全信息的供给,已经成为完善我国食品安全监管的重要环节。本文通过对食品安全信息特性的分析,认为政府应当承担食品安全信息供给的义务。因此,本文全面反思现行法律中我国食品安全信息供给中政府义务的缺陷,并提出矫正的对策。     

ANALYZING SELF‐ORGANIZED LOCAL GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES: ARE THERE INSIGHTS FOR DECENTRALIZATION REFORMS?

In spite of the great enthusiasm and arguments supporting decentralization in Africa, its performance has frequently fallen well below expectations. However, a number of self‐initiated, local governance efforts have been quite successful. The article finds that all governance initiatives face a number of collective action problems that they must overcome to succeed. These include issues of collective choice, free riding, principal–agency, and constitutional design. The article explores two cases of locally initiated self‐governance initiatives where smaller population size, the ability to focus on only a few services, and the ability flexibly to redesign their institutions were important in their success in overcoming these governance challenges. In one case, challenge by and negotiation with formal governance institutions furthered their success. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gorillas in the closet? Public and private actors in the enforcement of transnational private regulation

This paper examines to what extent the background presence of state regulatory capacity – at times referred to as the “regulatory gorilla in the closet” – is a necessary precondition for the effective enforcement of transnational private regulation. By drawing on regulatory regimes in the areas of advertising and food safety, it identifies conditions under which (the potential of) public regulatory intervention can bolster the capacity of private actors to enforce transnational private regulation. These involve the overlap between norms, objectives, and interests of public and private regulation; the institutional design of regulatory enforcement; compliance with due process standards; and information management and data sharing. The paper argues that while public intervention remains important for the effective enforcement of transnational private regulation, governmental actors – both national and international – should create the necessary preconditions to strengthen private regulatory enforcement, as it can also enhance their own regulatory capacity, in particular, in transnational contexts.     

Food Import Dependency in Cuba: Still the ‘Achilles’ Heel of the Revolution'?

The ‘Special Period in Peacetime’ plunged Cuba into an austerity programme of great severity. The crisis forced agriculture to shift dramatically from a model based on trade dependency (sugar exports providing most of the foreign currency) to one prioritising food import substitution. This alternative brought about major transformations in the country's agriculture. It revolutionised food production and decentralised land ownership. This article asks whether or not these changes reduced food dependency in Cuba. It provides an updated picture of Cuba's food import dependency, with a particular emphasis on the increased role of small farmers in food production during the 2000s.     

East Asian food regimes: agrarian warriors,edamame beans and spatial topologies of food regimes in East Asia

Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning body of work thinking differently about food regimes. Drawing on the concepts of a corporate food regime and a corporate-environmental food regime, this paper highlights the constituent parts of East Asian food regimes, addressing the food regime transition that has taken place in the region. The first part of the paper addresses the role played by agrarian-scientific institutions in this transition; specifically, it investigates the spatial topologies, political economy, histories and socio-cultural contexts of agrarian knowledge production and practices that have conditioned East Asia’s transition to a corporate-environmental food regime. The second part offers an analysis of a specific food commodity – edamame beans – to illustrate how East Asian food regimes have changed as they have been incorporated into a corporate-environmental food regime. In investigating the evolution of edamame production and trade, I analyze how edamame production and trade has been reorganized under this new regime. My study argues that broadening the conversation about the food regimes approach requires a regional-geographic perspective in order to understand the spatial topologies, uneven development and socio-cultural-ecological differentiation characteristic of food regimes.     

The labor of agrodiversity in a Moroccan oasis

This paper examines the recent history of peasant farming in a Moroccan oasis to reflect on the relationship between agrodiversity, labor and tradition in contemporary smallholder systems. Many agrarian scholars and food sovereignty activists emphasize the role of peasant farmers in protecting agricultural biodiversity. This paper argues that certain kinds of agrodiversity may in fact be ‘new', a product of recent agrarian transformations that adapt and in some cases reject agricultural traditions. Ethnographic research in pre-Saharan Morocco found that some households used migration remittances to experiment with new crops and produce for the market for the first time. In recognizing the ambivalent relationship peasant farmers may have towards tradition, this paper contends that it is important to locate a political economy of agrodiversity in the larger context of the contemporary agrarian question and to relate agrodiversity to the changing labor regimes that enable peasant farming systems.