666 research outputs found
The International Forestry Review: special issue: the social impacts of logging
Global Challenges (FSW
Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Self-Government in the Diverse Americas
Across the Americas, Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples have demanded autonomy, self-determination, and self-governance. By exerting their collective rights, they have engaged with domestic and international standards on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, implemented full-fledged mechanisms for autonomous governance, and promoted political and constitutional reform aimed at expanding understandings of multicultural citizenship and the plurinational state. Yet these achievements come in conflict with national governmentsâ adoption of neoliberal economic and neo-extractive policies which advance their interests over those of Indigenous communities.
Available for the first time in English, Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Self-Government in the Diverse Americas explores current and historical struggles for autonomy within ancestral territories, experiences of self-governance in operation, and presents an overview of achievements, challenges, and threats across three decades. Case studies across Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, and Canada provide a detailed discussion of autonomy and self-governance in development and in practice.
Paying special attention to the role of Indigenous peoplesâ organizations and activism in pursuing sociopolitical transformation, securing rights, and confronting multiple dynamics of dispossession, this book engages with current debates on Indigenous politics, relationships with national governments and economies, and the multicultural and plurinational state. This book will spark critical reflection on political experience and further exploration of the possibilities of the self-determination of peoples through territorial autonomies
Emerging trends in labour legislation and policy in the SADC region : the experiences of Botswana and Swaziland in the context of the ILO convention on freedom of association and protection of the right to organise (C.87)
The advent of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) brought with it a · euphoric expectation of instantaneous transformation of the sub-region into a vibrant, viable economic haven for its inhabitants. Time and reality have since reduced this euphoria to disillusionment. This state of affairs has resulted in a lot of introspection leading to vital questions about the readiness and capacity of the member states to let go of their national sovereignty as a price for more meaningful regional integration. Embedded in this is the major question of how the labour law regimes have lent themselves to change and whether they can be transformed into engines of growth that can facilitate employment within internationally acceptable environments. To attempt to answer this question, one needs to examine closely the individual domestic situations in order to determine how strong differences are in the context of international labour standards such as the very basic freedom of association and protection of the right to organise. The examination of ⹠Botswana and Swaziland was therefore undertaken for this purpose. It has led us to the conclusion that essentially, labour legislation in these countries is common in many significant respects, unwilling to approximate to expected international standards but flexible enough for potential harmonization and transformation. This dissertation is however fairly inconclusive given the size of the SADC itself. It is therefore only a pointer, a part of the critical foundation of enquiry. It is thus only part of the preliminary survey for the roadmap that needs to be drawn on which a workable integration in the SADC could be built in the future
Religion and Politics in Swaziland
The author offers a candid reflection on the interface between politics and religion in Swaziland by reflecting on the works of Joshua Mzizi. The strength of the book lies in the fact that the author, a public theologian, gives insight into the bigger story â the interface between politics and religion in Africa
Decentralised governance: crafting effective democracies around the world
For developing countries, decentralising power from central government to local authorities holds the promise of deepening democracy, empowering citizens, improving public services and boosting economic growth. But the evidence on when and how decentralisation can bring these benefits has been mixed. Under the wrong conditions, decentralised power can be captured by unrepresentative elites or undermined by corruption and the clientelistic distribution of public resources. The picture is complex, and we still do not understand enough about what factors can contribute to creating better local government, and to what effect. Decentralised Governance brings together a new generation of political economy studies that explore these questions analytically, blending theoretical insights with empirical innovation. Individual chapters provide fresh evidence from around the world, including broad cross-country data as well as detailed studies of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya and Colombia. They investigate the pros and cons of decentralisation in both democratic and autocratic regimes, and the effects of critical factors such as advances in technology, citizen-based data systems, political entrepreneurship in ethnically diverse societies, and reforms aimed at improving transparency and monitoring. This wide-ranging volume examines the conditions under which devolving power can intensify democratic competition, boost transparency, and improve local governance, providing examples of good and bad practice in both. It is essential reading for researchers investigating decentralised governance, development and democratisation, and for policymakers and practitioners drawing lessons for future reforms
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The making of female scientific legends: Career narratives of the OWSD-Elsevier award winning early-career research scientists
This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonMany nations have been resolute in their pursuit of gender parity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, the underrepresentation of women in STEM careers continues to pose significant global challenges. âHowâ and âwhyâ women experience work differently in such male-dominated environments has been the subject of extensive research in recent times. This thesis offers new, original, and fresh perspectives to move forward the conversation on how women in âmasculineâ careers experience work by throwing the spotlight on a peculiar group of people who, despite their immense contribution to science, are often side-lined in contemporary discourse on careers in management research. Drawing on career construction theory and intersectionality scholarship as a lens, and âmicrostoriaâ as an interpretive frame, the study explores contemporaneous scientific career stories as narrated by female early career researchers (ECRs) from developing countries where resource paucity tends to stymie the âdoingâ of cutting-edge scientific research.
In doing this, the thesis investigates how the often-invisible identities of positionality and situatedness of these ECRs intersect with their highly visible gender identity as females to shape how they experience work as early career scientific researchers from and based in developing countries. Adopting a constructionist approach and an exploratory qualitative research design, the main data for the empirical inquiry was collected using semi-structured interviews with thirty-five (35) past recipients of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD)-Elsevier award for female ECRs from the developing world. This was supplemented with publicly available documents on the award, and the websites and social media pages (LinkedIn, YouTube, ResearchGate) of the award winners. With emphasis placed on their call to fame and their journeys to worldmaking in male-dominated scientific fields, the study explored and analysed how these âsuccessfulâ female ECR scientists make sense of their identities as scientists, experience scientific work in a context characterised by resource paucity, and craft their scientific careers
The study presents three main findings. First, it suggests that the intersectionality of multiple identities allows ECRs to construct three distinct career identities: a relational career identity based on the concept of familial influence (family, mentors, role models), an altruistic career based on the concept of âcallingâ, and a fluke career orientation based on the concept of luck and chance. Second, the study addresses social inequities for female ECRs by examining the unique enablers and barriers faced by this group at the intersection of gender, positionality, and situatedness. Third, the study identifies several agentic ways in which female ECRs could both survive and thrive in STEM by highlighting the daily practices, strategies and coping behaviours that are utilized consistently to self-manage a career under such contexts of underdevelopment, weak institutions, and patriarchy; and sheds light on seemingly intractable patterns of strategies (passing and revealing), which constitutively help them to counter their feelings of (in)visibility and struggles in their everyday situated practices. Shedding light on the interaction between the self and societal agents and how these influence the career construction narratives of females at the early stages of their scientific research career lives, the study calls attention to several interventions that could be useful in mitigating the occurrences of bottlenecks in organisational career development.Ghana Scholarship Secretaria
Decentralised governance : crafting effective democracies around the world
Published online: 13 September 2023For developing countries, decentralising power from central government to local authorities holds the promise of deepening democracy, empowering citizens, improving public services and boosting economic growth. But the evidence on when and how decentralisation can bring these benefits has been mixed. Under the wrong conditions, decentralised power can be captured by unrepresentative elites or undermined by corruption and the clientelistic distribution of public resources. The picture is complex, and we still do not understand enough about what factors can contribute to creating better local government, and to what effect. Decentralised Governance brings together a new generation of political economy studies that explore these questions analytically, blending theoretical insights with empirical innovation. Individual chapters provide fresh evidence from around the world, including broad cross-country data as well as detailed studies of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya and Colombia. They investigate the pros and cons of decentralisation in both democratic and autocratic regimes, and the effects of critical factors such as advances in technology, citizen-based data systems, political entrepreneurship in ethnically diverse societies, and reforms aimed at improving transparency and monitoring. This wide-ranging volume examines the conditions under which devolving power can intensify democratic competition, boost transparency, and improve local governance, providing examples of good and bad practice in both. It is essential reading for researchers investigating decentralised governance, development and democratisation, and for policymakers and practitioners drawing lessons for future reforms.-- 1. Decentralised governance: crafting effective
-- PART 1. Taking stock of six decades of decentralisation democracies around the world
-- 2. Understanding decentralisation: theory, evidence, and practice
-- 3. Decentralised targeting of transfer programmes: a reassessment
-- PART 2. Politics
-- 4. Realising the promise of partial decentralisation
-- 5. Devolution under autocrazy: evidence from Pakistan
-- 6. Social fragmentation, public goods, and local elections: evidence from China
-- 7. How does fiscal decentralisation affect local polities? Evidence from communities in Indonesia
-- 8. Can parliamentary sanctions strengthen local political accountability? Evidence from Kenya
-- PART 3: MECHANISM DESING
-- 9. Centralised versus decentralised monitoring in developing countries: A survey of recent research
-- 10. Data availability and performance assessment: subnational governance in Ghana
-- 11. Birth registration, child rights, and local governance in Bangladesh
-- 12. Administrative decentralisation and its impacts on educational expenditure and student outcomes: evidence from Colombi
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