African farmer-led irrigation development: re-framing agricultural policy and investment?

The past decade has witnessed an intensifying focus on the development of irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa. It follows a 20-year hiatus in the wake of disappointing irrigation performance during the 1970s and 1980s. Persistent low productivity in African agriculture and vulnerability of African food supplies to increasing instability in international commodity markets are driving pan-African agricultural investment initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), that identify as a priority the improvement in reliability of water control for agriculture. The paper argues that, for such initiatives to be effective, there needs to be a re-appraisal of current dynamics of irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly with respect to the role of small-scale producers’ initiatives in expanding irrigation. The paper reviews the principal forms such initiatives take and argues that official narratives and statistics on African irrigation often underestimate the extent of such activities. The paper identifies five key characteristics which, it argues, contradict widely held assumptions that inform irrigation policy in Africa. The paper concludes by offering a definition of ‘farmer-led irrigation’ that embraces a range of interaction between producers and commercial, government and non-government agencies, and identifies priority areas for research on the growth potential and impact of such interactions and strategies for their future development.     

The fly in the ointment? Chinese dissent and US–China relations

After the Tiananmen massacre of 4 June 1989 many Chinese pro-democracy activists have been able to settle in the USA. They have attempted to federate all the opposition forces overseas in an organization which aimed at influencing the US government’s policy toward China. However, plagued by factionalism, the opposition in exile has not been able to put to an efficient use the capital of sympathy that it enjoyed at the time of Tiananmen. After the failure of political organizations, Chinese dissidents have created NGOs which are regularly consulted by the Administration and the Congress. Since the mid-eighties, they represent a substantial factor in the making of American policy towards China.     

Human Security: The Making of a UN Ideology

Inspired by the conclusions of the United Nations Intellectual History Project, this article seeks to enrich the ongoing discussion on the role of ideas in UN activities. The focus here is on security, an issue often regarded as the organisation's raison d'être. The article argues that over the past two decades the ideology of human security has been the driving normative force behind the global policies advocated by the UN in the area of security. The first part analyses the UN's official discourse, and demonstrates the political importance that it ascribes to the concept of human security. The second section examines a set of global policies that illustrate how the world body has sought to put the principles of human security into practice. While recognising that these policies fall short of the ambitions articulated in UN rhetoric, the article suggests that they have opened a small but very real breach in the epistemic framework underlying the traditional conception of security.     

Development assistance on the brink

The international aid regime is currently faced with a major paradox. On the one hand, officials in bilateral and multlateral agencies increasingly agree that 'aid matters' and can contribute significantly to development. This confidence has been reinforced by the fact that, after a decade dominated by the objective of structural adjustment, the much less controversial one of sustainable development has taken over as the new mantra of aid policies. On the other hand, development assistance appears to be a declining priority for foreign policy-makers in the developed countries. The generosity of donors has diminished to the point that aid reached an all-time low in 1997. The aim of this article is to make sense of this paradox. After examining the grounds for optimism within the aid community, the article then explains why there is reason to doubt that foreign assistance can effectively foster sustainable development over the course of the next generation.     

'Something nasty down below': The challenges facing cultural studies in English departments

ABSTRACT

This article examines the controversial impact that English literary studies is having upon cultural studies. Instead of reconstructing itself in the light of moving onto the terrain of cultural studies, English literary studies is in danger of over-textualising cultural studies, and remains captive to appropriating texts ethically to suit its historical mission as a 'surrogate religion'. These prevent English literary studies from properly engaging with the recent shift within cultural studies to notions of the 'active audience'. However, the preoccupation of English studies with postmodern textualist theories can enable cultural studies to break with the damaging opposition between 'text' and 'social context'.     

The Relationship between Maternal Overprotection,Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Problems,and Psychological Need Frustration: A Multi-Informant Study Using Response Surface Analysis

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Parents and adolescents may hold discrepant views about parents’ behaviors, which may be related to adolescent maladjustment. The goal of the present...     

Smallholder Drip Irrigation in Burkina Faso: The Role of Development Brokers

Smallholder drip irrigation is widely held as a promising technology for water saving, poverty reduction and food security, despite a dearth of evidence of benefits to farmers, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In this article, we document three development programmes promoting drip irrigation in Burkina Faso. Using actor network theory and insights from critical development studies, we show that development brokers play a key role in aligning interests, shaping activities and interpreting project outcomes. They are accountable towards each other rather than to farmers. This means that success is interpreted through development agencies lenses and with the intention of continuing involvement in future projects. Small farmers’ interests and uptake of the technology are of secondary importance.     

Debating foreign aid: Right versus left

Foreign aid is a complex international institution which, over the years, has experienced a number of transformations. Most of these changes, however, cannot be understood outside the ideological environment in which they were engendered. Building on this analytical insight, the article argues that the debate on development assistance has always been framed in terms of an opposition between forces of the Right and forces of the Left. The first part of the article explains how the very definition of aid has been influenced by the Right-Left opposition. The second section uses the Right-Left distinction to re-examine the key stages in the history of the aid regime. The third part summarises the assessment that the Right and the Left each make of a half-century of development assistance. Finally, the conclusion discusses the significance of this contribution to the study of aid and international relations.     

Are Internet protocol addresses personal data? The fight against online copyright infringement

Internet Protocol addresses [IP addresses] are central for Internet electronic communications. They individualize computers and their users to make the delivery of data packets possible. IP addresses are also often used to identify websurfers for litigation purposes. In particular, they constitute a key in the fight against online copyright infringement to identify infringers. However, it is a matter of dispute to know if IP addresses are personal data. In a review of relevant case law, the present paper seeks to identify when IP addresses are - or should be - considered as personal data. It suggests a contextual approach to the concept of personal data.