Are the LDCs really the world’s least developed countries?

The term ‘the least developed countries’ (LDCs) is widely understood to designate, exactly as stated, the world’s least developed countries. In conjunction with the 2015 United Nations (UN) triennial review of the LDC category, this article attempts to critically evaluate the UN’s list of LDC countries in the light of various indicators – economic, social, political, military and security related, and psychological. It concludes that the official and actual lists of LDCs, despite important similarities, are not completely identical. The term ‘the LDCs’ as used by the UN is therefore not fully consistent with the reality it attempts to designate and describe.     

Peasants and the redshirt movement in Thailand: some dissenting voices

The ‘redshirt’ movement in Thailand is commonly portrayed in media and scholarly accounts as a class-based, pro-Thaksin social movement that draws fervent support from the poor rural-born masses, especially peasants, in the north and northeast. The movement leaders, including Thaksin, have supposedly won these people's support by framing urban-based political elites as ammart (aristocrats) who have stakes in suppressing the needs of phrai (serfs) – a contrasting label for the rural-born poor. I question this analysis that highlights the polarisation of Thai society along class lines. Combining data from election results and fieldwork in Chiang Mai Province – Thaksin's birthplace and the putative redshirt heartland – I show that despite their relative poverty, some peasants remain cynical opponents of the redshirt movement. They have autonomy to penetrate and reinterpret the redshirts' class-centric collective action frame – a fact that cautions us against linking rural poverty causally to rural support for redshirts. Peasants are a more diverse, politically divided lot than we are led to believe.     

Seeing like an indigenous community: the World Bank's Agriculture for Development Report read from the perspective of postwar rural Guatemala

This paper uses the case of a rural indigenous village in the war torn highlands of Guatemala to question the framework for using ‘agriculture for development’ put forth by the World Bank in its 2008 World Development Report. There is a significant gap between the Bank's sanguine vision of recent developments in Guatemala and the limited options available to indigenous rural agrarian producers. This gap stems from critical lacunae in the Report's framework, namely, its neglect of the non-economic forces that structure agrarian poverty, and its neglect of history.     

Families in multi-problem situations: Backgrounds,characteristics, and care services

The article reviews practical experiences and theoretical reflections from the Dutch child and youth care sector on the provision of care for families with multiple problems. Emphasis is laid upon the complex relations between socioeconomic and psychosocial problems, and subsequent issues that may arise in arranging child and youth care. Furthermore, the current state of discussion in program development for the target group in the Netherlands is introduced. The originally English concept of families with multiple problems has been used only modestly in German-speaking countries. This is remarkable from an international perspective, especially considering the re-emerging prominence of social policies that define families as a site of social work practice in English-speaking countries. We conclude that the themes, as derived from our review open up possibilities for further international comparisons, and can provide valuable reference for the transnational discourse about child and youth care services for families with multiple problems.     

Recycling and expansion: an analysis of the World Bank agenda (1989–2014)

This article analyses the agenda of the World Bank after the Washington Consensus, arguing that it became more encompassing, politicised and intrusive. This agenda expanded and recycled itself since, in addition to liberalisation, privatisation and macroeconomic adjustment, it also advocated the wide-ranging reconstruction of the economy, the relationship between society and nature, the state, civil society and visions of the world and social practices from a neoliberal perspective. It is argued that the fight against poverty was incorporated by the institution, which functioned as an auxiliary mechanism for this liberalisation. The importance of the incorporation of New Institutional Economics for this expansion and recycling is highlighted.     

Fragile states and the evolution of risk governance: intervention,prevention and extension

Following the plane crashes into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, Ulrich Beck claimed that the West would need to pursue ‘border-transcending new beginnings’ towards a more cosmopolitan world. Rather than any radical transformation along cosmopolitan lines, however, this paper maps a process of incremental reform and policy bricolage, where the post-cold war politics of intervention, and the securitisation of development, have been extended to encompass international terrorism in three overlapping phases. Although these overlapping phases – intervention, prevention and extension – are reflexive moments, they constitute a strengthening of the prevailing rationalities and technologies of risk rather than a radical rupture.     

Economic mobility trajectories of the Russian population： The experience of the last two decades

This paper is to study the economic mobility trajectories of the Russian population in the last two decades, each of which has brought about both negative shocks and broadening of the opportunity horizons for people＇s economic advancement. The information base of the research is provided by the data of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey （RLMS） for the period of 1994-2008. The investigated period Russia clearly falls into two sub-periods-the 1990s and the 2000s： The first one is characterized by sharp shifts towards impoverishment of the population and growth of economic inequality; the second one-by considerable masses of people overcoming poverty with a still high level of economic inequality. The results indicate the following The proportion of the adult population who have been chronically poor during the whole contemporary history of Russia proves to be twice as little as the proportion of those who have been “chronically non-poor”. However, both groups in total have not constituted the majority, since the majority have been migrating between the extremes of persistent well-being and ill-being during this period with the stream of those coming out of poverty prevailing in numbers.     

Drug booms and busts: poverty and prosperity in a Nicaraguan narco-barrio

Abstract

The income generated by the drug economy can often be substantial for the different parties involved, even at the lowest rung of this illicit trade. Yet the drugs trade is also a notoriously volatile activity, meaning that drug-related prosperity is highly prone to boom-and-bust cycles. Drawing on ongoing longitudinal ethnographic research in urban Nicaragua, this article explores the consequences of the cyclical nature of the drugs trade, tracing its unequal patterns of capital accumulation, as well as what happened to those who benefited from the drug economy when it became more exclusive and then subsequently moved on elsewhere.     

关于西部地区农村贫困与反贫困问题的思考

中国贫困人口越来越集中于西北部地区的趋势有其深层次的原因,包括西部地区经济发展相对缓慢,农民能在改革时期从农业增长中获得的利益有限,并且这些地区现有的贫困人口大部分居住在边远的乡镇和农村,特别是山区。该文从当前中国西部农村贫困地区的地域特征、资源秉赋条件等现实出发,提出有利于西部农村贫困人口持续脱贫的若干建议和思考。     

Interrogating sub-Saharan Africa's high economic growth rate and low poverty reduction rate: A poverty paradox?

Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) high economic growth coincides with an increase in the level of poverty. In a panel of 40 SSA countries over a 30-year period, while accounting for the potential spillover effect of poverty in the region. The study found that economic growth recorded over the years has not translated to poverty reduction, particularly, in resource-rich economies of SSA. The result also shows that income inequality worsens the effect of economic growth on poverty and that the poverty-reducing effectiveness of growth varies considerably across sectors, across space, and over time. The research findings suggest that governments across the region, particularly, in oil-exporting countries in SSA must diversify the economy away from oil (toward the service sector) to reduce poverty in the region.