Markets and diversity : annotated bibliography

This document represents the first and second phase of a project to build an inventory of key literature on the subject of ‘markets and diversity’. The first phase involved a literature search and compilation of 100 bibliographic items. The second phase involved the annotation of 40 of these items. The third phase consisted of a synthetic overview of this literature, and was published as an MMG Working Paper 11-03, ‘Markets and Diversity: An Overview’. The literature was compiled using various databases, web search tools, and a range of search terms. I combined search terms indicating the type or region of markets (i.e. ‘Bazaar’, ‘souq’, ‘fea’, ‘feira’, ‘open-air market’, ‘open market’, ‘farmer’s market’, ‘street market’) with indicators of diversity (i.e. ‘ethnic’, ‘immigrant’, ‘class’, ‘race’, ‘gender’). Other more specific thematic terms (i.e. ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘inclusion’, ‘interaction’, ‘Orientalism’ and so on) were also used. There were no restrictions as to time period, region, or publishing date, although the emphasis is on recent work in the field. The entries focusing most specifically on diverse markets were selected for more thorough annotation. Section I of this paper presents the bibliographic abstracts, organized by research theme (please see WP 11-03 for a detailed explanation). This section includes only published abstracts. Where no abstract was supplied, I provide a brief summary of the entry. Note: the research themes are not mutually exclusive, and the abstracts may appear under more than one heading. An * preceding an entry indicates that the source is annotated in section II. Section II contains the annotations, organized alphabetically, by the author’s last name. For each of these annotations, I provide the 1) disciplinary background of the author(s) and, where possible, their institution; 2) research questions; 3) conceptual framework; 4) group studied; 5) methodology; 6) findings; and 7) significance of the research to the field. In Section III, the references are organized by region (I use the United Nations regional scheme)

Cooperation against the odds: a study on the political economy of local development in a country with small firms and small farms

Is it possible to get economic actors to work together in order to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes in unfavourable settings? Established theories of cooperation suggest that overcoming the obstacles to cooperation requires either a robust framework of formal institutions or a long-established culture of trust. Many places in the world are endowed with neither of those characteristics. Yet, in the presence of fragmented ownership structures, sustained cooperation among economic actors is important for processes of economic development, which themselves have major implications for domestic political dynamics. My dissertation approaches the puzzle of the emergence of cooperation in unfavourable settings by drawing on qualitative empirical evidence collected through fieldwork in four areas of Greece where specific types of cooperation were observed, compared to four otherwise similar (matching) cases where such patterns of cooperation failed to occur. I argue that for cooperation to emerge against the odds, the crucial variable is leadership. A small group of boundary-spanning leading actors can trigger a process of creating local-level cooperative institutions by performing three specific types of difficult and costly institutional work. Successful leaders tend to be translocally embedded, highly skilled, well connected actors, who have a subjective conception of their self-interest as encapsulating the interests of others. The institutional work of a small group of local-level leading actors can only catalyse broad-based, sustained cooperation if it is nested within a framework of facilitative overarching institutions. Crucially, supranational actors such as the EU can also provide such facilitative macro-level institutions, thereby to an extent compensating for deficiencies in national institutional frameworks. By combining analysis of local-level agency and processes, on the one hand, and macro-level institutional frameworks, on the other, my thesis makes a contribution to our understanding of institutional change, the emergence of cooperation, and the political economy of local development in fragmented economies

Risky encounters : institutions and interventions in response to recurrent disasters and conflict

The thesis focuses on local level responses to recurrent small disasters and conflict in Afghanistan, Indonesia and the Philippines. It critically reflects on Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) approaches to understand the gap between CBDRR policy and actual outcomes. It considers the multi-level institutions through with meaning and implementation of CBDRR policy are negotiated and transformed, from the conceptual policy design stage until the arena where decisions on risk solutions and resource allocation are made. Disasters and conflict are both understood as the product of a cumulative set of institutional arrangements and policy decisions over a long period of time. Vice versa, disasters and conflict affect institutional arrangements and re-order power relations. Interventions like CBDRR are not isolated, distinct entities, but are very much embedded in a context of particular institutional arrangements, which constrain or enable local actors to advance their risk-solutions. Through CBDRR interventions actors defend and mobilize around CBDRR practices that are meaningful to them, or resist institutions and practices that carry meanings they find disagreeable. This results in the manifold manifestations of CBDRR practices and outcomes. The research concludes that there is no such thing as the CBDRR approach. Instead, there are different processes through which local NGOs, civil society organizations, funding agencies and government agencies arrive at a specific framing of local realities and their responses in the context they live and work. These are related to their histories, current state - civil society relationships, and their mandate on how they legitimize their interventions. These actors either underscore the politics of their interventions or rather de-politicize them. From the experiences of this research it is plausible to conclude that when one ignores to view CBDRR interventions in a political and institutional manner, the out­comes of the interventions are likely to reproduce the status quo and are not supporting the vulnerable populations. The implication for humanitarian aid agencies is to include an institutional and political analysis in risk and vulnerability assessments to explain people’ vulnerability. This is crucial for strategizing actions and to engage in the political arena of disaster risk reduction with the aim to create safe and resilient communities. Rather than simply aiming for isolated village-level project objectives, CBDRR interventions have to think ahead of results to be achieved at district and even national level.</p

Hijab – the Islamic dress code : its historical development, evidence from sacred sources and views of selected Muslim scholars

The issue of a Muslim woman‟s dress code has been debated for centuries. This is of great importance as it is widely used as a criterion to measure the extent of a woman‟s piety or devotion to Allah. A study of the religious texts on the issue is essential. Therefore, Qur‟anic text, Prophetic Traditions and Qur‟anic exegesis of both classical and modern scholars would have been used in determining the correct dress code for Muslim women. While all research indicates that women dress conservatively, in order not to attract the attention of the opposite sex. The extent to which a woman must be covered has not been agreed upon. Even if what has to be covered is established by scholars, the manner in which this is to be done and the type of colours and fabric to be used needs further clarification. The issue of the female dress code needs to be presented from a female perspective.Religious Studies and ArabicM.A. (Islamic Studies

The politics of drugs and conflict: the challenges of insurgency and state-building in Afghanistan

This thesis explores the dynamics of conflict by focusing on two aspects of the problem – (a), links between illicit drugs and conflict and (b), the mechanism and extent to which illicit drug production and trade weaken the state. The research question I have set out for this project is: “what is the impact of illicit drugs on conflict and how does access to drugs affect the strength and ideology of insurgent groups and hampers state-building?” Although Afghanistan is the main case study, in order to understand the phenomenon in a wider context, the study also explores the relationship between drugs economy and conflict through examples of insurgencies in other parts of the world – mainly the FARC in Colombia, PKK in Turkey and LTTE in Sri Lanka. In addition, the thesis offers a unique empirical contribution. Based on first-hand knowledge from the field, this study is unusual in many ways as it critically analyses the impact of illicit drugs on conflict and governance and explores how the patron-client relations in the drug trade create and cement structural corruption. In order to produce a uniquely detailed picture of the conflict in Afghanistan and the overall impact of drugs, this study draws on an extensive field work and more than a hundred original interviews with several actors including insurgents, drug traders/smugglers, poppy farmers, local elders and politicians, government officials as well as experts. It explores, arguably, for the first time, the detailed mechanism and extent to which drug production and trafficking inhibit state-building and facilitate insurgency in Afghanistan. The study argues that the conflict in Afghanistan didn’t start because of drugs; it was the war that created a suitable environment for drug production which now plays a significant role in perpetuating and prolonging the violence. The study examines the Taliban’s evolving involvement in the drugs economy and discusses the insurgent group’s multiple sources of income. It also provides a comprehensive picture of the Taliban’s governance and organisational structure. This research offers a multidisciplinary framework drawing together data from a number of areas of knowledge and sources and examines the nexus between drugs, insurgency and state-building by offering detailed and fresh information on the current state of overlapping fields such as International Relations, Political Economy, Political Anthropology and Development and State-Building. While focusing on the decades-long war in Afghanistan, the thesis attempts to provide an integrated and comprehensive framework for understanding the conflict in general. While discussing the conflicts’ causes and motivations, the existing literature is mostly focused on a few factors including greed, grievance, ethnic and social deprivation. Although these are all valuable and important contributions, the thesis argues that the conflict itself is a complex phenomenon and its understanding and analysis needs a comprehensive approach. Therefore, the thesis also examines other overlooked and overlapping factors including the role of foreign actors, nationalism, criminality and ideology in initiating and perpetuating the conflict. This study fills a conceptual lacuna in the field of conflict studies and devotes considerable attention to the problems of drugs and conflicts, the challenges of state-building and the complexities of insurgency by bringing together various dimensions and factors into one whole. The thesis argues that in an increasingly perplexing and globalising world, conflicts are becoming more complicated involving a variety of actors at local, regional and international levels as well as a combination of a wide range of causes and motivations. While discussing the motivations and causes of conflicts including civil wars, this study suggests the “Hybrid Framework” of conflict to understand the nature of intra-state conflicts. The “Hybrid Framework” takes into account a variety of overlapping causes and motivations as well as the complex web of actors at different levels

Dietary Habits, Beneficial Exercise and Chronic Diseases

Several lines of evidence indicate that healthy diet and exercise can prevent cardiovascular diseases, stroke, diabetes, and some types of cancer such as colon cancer, and smoking-related cancers. Dietary patterns defined as the quantities, proportions, variety, or combination of different foods and drinks, and the frequency with which they are habitually consumed are also associated with an increased or decreased incidence of chronic diseases. Lately, an association has been found between eating habits, exercise, and psychological and/or mental disorders. This Special Issue of Nutrients, entitled “Dietary Habits, Beneficial Exercise, and Chronic Diseases: Latest Advances and Prospects”, contains 20 manuscripts, either describing original research or reviewing the scientific literature, focused on the relationship between dietary habits (macronutrients, micronutrients, etc.) and/or exercise with metabolic, cardiovascular, neurological, mental, rheumatic, inflammatory, gastrointestinal, odontostomatological, and other chronic diseases

Performance, trance, possession and mysticism : an analysis of the Rātib al-Rifāīyah in South Africa

Bibliography: pages 255-275.Our study is an advance as it elucidates the neurobiological aspects of Islamic ritual that is panspecific to all ritual. It reveals that Islamic ritual is remarkably 'structured'to enter what Felicitas Goodman termed 'alternate reality '. The recitals from the Qur'an provide 'sound art' through harmonic triggers for inducing tranc