Participation,education, and pluralism: towards a new extension ethic

The concern driving current debate on agricultural extension is increasingly that of how to help farmers learn how to deal with the complex world around them responsibly and profitably, in such a way that the extension worker is ancillary. This article seeks to deconstruct and provide a more reasoned assessment of agricultural extension services through a reflection on development paradigms, adult education, individual empowerment, and institutional pluralism. By calling into question the underlying ethical dimensions of agricultural extension, it is possible to develop an alternative paradigm and thereby generate new insights into it. The article concludes that the raison d'être of agricultural extension today must be to create an ethical basis which ensures that extension practices are more inclusive and thus responsive to the needs of farmers and other rural populations, integrating individual expectations into the wider socio-economic, cultural, political, and geographical environment.     

Communicating company objectives

Knowing and understanding company objectives will not help employees solve every work-related problem, but, in the long run, such knowledge will contribute to more efficient and productive operations.     

African peasants and revolution

The last thirteen years have seen important peasant uprisings in Angola, Guiné and Mozambique, conflicts which must be judged to some extent within the context of traditional colonial wars. Although the influence of events in neighbouring countries and urban notions of freedom and nationalism is undeniable, it is argued that these struggles reveal the rising trend of ‘modern’ resistance and its final dependence on mass participation by local communities conscious of their particular oppressions and fighting together to overcome them. The role of such revolutionary movements as the MPLA has been to organise and guide rebellions which would have occurred spontaneously if less successfully without them.     

Of cabbages and King Cobra: Populist politics and Zambia's 2006 election

Zambia's 2006 election was won by incumbent President Levy Mwanawasaand his Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD). However, itis argued here that the most important outcome of the campaignwas the successful articulation of a new populist politics byMichael Sata's Patriotic Front (PF), which won a significantmajority in urban areas. Sata's attacks on foreign investors(particularly from China) for their abuse of the workforce andtheir supposedly corrupt relationship with the MMD resonatedwith urban Zambians, already angered by the negative impactof economic liberalization. PF's campaign injected popular socialdemands into what had become a moribund political debate. TheMMD government is now adopting PF policies in an attempt torestore its own urban support base. The article describes thecampaign and its outcomes, contrasting the political discourseof the MMD and PF and analysing the differences in voting behaviourbetween rural and urban Zambians. It argues that recent reliefof 92 percent of Zambia's international debt, along with therenewed profitability of the copper mining industry, have createdconditions for the re-emergence of a nationalist-developmentalpolitical framework.     

Advancing the study of political cleavages through experimentation: Revisiting regionalism and redistributive preferences in Canada

The maintenance of welfare state policies requires citizen support for the provision of a social safety net through taxation and redistribution. Research has shown that a diverse political polity presents a risk to the welfare state; however, Canada bucks the trend and does not see citizen support for economic redistribution decline in response to immigration-based population diversity. Using Canada as our case, we argue that scholars of welfare state politics and redistribution should turn their attention to other sources of population heterogeneity in an effort to better understand how different political cleavages affect citizens’ redistributive preferences. We use an online experimental survey to manipulate the in-group identity of 500 Canadians. The survey enables respondents to identify with other in-group identities along regional, linguistic, income-group, and urban/rural characteristics. Our results find that while Canadians do have a strong baseline preference for redistributive behaviour, regional and linguistic cleavages moderate this outcome.     

Foreign Terrorist Fighters: managing a twenty-first century threat

In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have emerged as a significant security challenge. Since the 1980s and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the notion of a ‘foreign fighter’ has been closely linked, if not synonymous, with those ideologically or religiously motivated individuals who have travelled to join conflicts in Islamic lands. This article will explore the contemporary FTF movement, offering a comparison of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Syria in the contemporary period. It will explore the international community’s expansive responses to the challenge of FTFs, with special focus on the role of the United Nations.