The end of stigma? Understanding the dynamics of legitimisation in the context of TV series consumption

This research contributes to prior work on stigmatisation by looking at stigmatisation and legitimisation as social processes in the context of TV series consumption. Using in-depth interviews, we show that the dynamics of legitimisation are complex and accompanied by the reproduction of existing stigmas and creation of new stigmas

“Scholarly Communications at Duke” Blog, December 2006-April 2016

This work contains all of the blog posts spanning the years 2006-2016 from the "Scholarly Communications @ Duke" blog by Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S, J.D. It is being made available in both PDF and XML formats to facilitate use of the material.The "Scholarly Communications at Duke" blog addressed current issues in scholarly communications, and also tried to provide information, from the most basic to complex issues, about how copyright law impacted higher education as it moved more fully into a digital age

The Political Dynamics of Electricity Sector Performance in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire

What factors drive variation in policy choices related to the electricity sector and, ultimately, in sectoral performance over time? This dissertation argues that differences in the form and intensity of competitive political pressures affect the choice and implementation of electricity sector policies and thus sectoral performance. First, I explore bivariate relationships between commonly cited external factors – natural resource endowments, economic shocks, investment climate, droughts, and civil wars – and sectoral performance across Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings confirm associations between these factors and sectoral performance. Yet they indicate considerable unexplained variation in sectoral performance, which requires qualitative analysis. Second, I analyze the politics of electricity sector management in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. In the 1980s and 1990s, these two countries faced similar economic and climatic crises that brought the electricity sector to its knees. Yet when the World Bank and the IMF pushed neoliberal policies as solutions for sectoral challenges, they responded differently. Liberalization and privatization policies moved forward more quickly in Côte d’Ivoire than in Ghana. Moreover, electricity sector performance differed in the two countries during 1990-2019. Electrification rates accelerated in Ghana, but they slowed in Côte d’Ivoire. Côte d’Ivoire improved the reliability of electricity supply more than Ghana. Electricity prices also reflected costs of service in Côte d’Ivoire but not in Ghana. The comparative political analysis traces how different forms and intensity of competitive political pressures, especially coups d’état, electoral threats, civil wars, and risks of civil wars, affect the implementation of electricity sector policies and then sectoral performance in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. I argue that intense political competition encourages Ghanaian politicians to extend electricity access to rural areas to mobilize political support and to set artificially low tariffs to appease urban residents and swing voters. Politically motivated low tariffs, coupled with unpaid subsidies and governments’ failure to pay their own electricity bills, result in inadequate investments in power utilities and, in turn, recurrent power shortages and outages. On the other hand, I argue that existential threats, mainly contestations over Ivorian identity and citizenship and civil war, slowed electrification programs with governments prioritizing regime and national stability. My study shows that (the risks of) civil wars crowd out ordinary concerns like electricity provision. However, when political life returns to normal, high competition drives governments to mollify voters by extending access to electricity and setting below-cost tariffs. Low competition allows governments to make policy changes they view as solutions for sectoral challenges but might defer short-term voter gratification. I demonstrate that low electoral threats encouraged the privatization of the state-owned electricity company in Côte d’Ivoire. In contrast, intense political competition discouraged ruling elites from privatizing the national electricity distributor in Ghana

Social Development in the World Bank

This open access book honors the work of Michael Cernea, who was the World Bank’s first professional sociologist, by taking on and extending his arguments for "putting people first.” Cernea led a community of social scientists in formulating and promoting a comprehensive set of innovative and original social policies on development issues, which the World Bank adopted and implemented. This book includes globally significant work on urban and rural development, the epistemology of using social science knowledge in national and international development, methodologies for using social organization for more effective poverty reduction, and the experience of crafting social policies to become normative frameworks for purposive collective social action. And by including contributions from senior policy makers in the World Bank who helped shepherd social science's entry into development policy and practice, it provides a unique look at how organizational change can happen

Knowledge for Governance

This open access book focuses on theoretical and empirical intersections between governance, knowledge and space from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributions elucidate how knowledge is a prerequisite as well as a driver of governance efficacy, and conversely, how governance affects the creation and use of knowledge and innovation in geographical context. Scholars from the fields of anthropology, economics, geography, public administration, political science, sociology, and organization studies provide original theoretical discussions along these interdependencies. Moreover, a variety of empirical chapters on governance issues, ranging from regional and national to global scales and covering case studies in Australia, Europe, Latina America, North America and South Africa demonstrate that geography and space are not only important contexts for governance that affect the contingent outcomes of governance blueprints. Governance also creates spaces. It affects the geographical confines as well as the quality of opportunities and constraints that actors enjoy to establish legitimate and sustainable ways of social and environmental co-existence