Voiceless but empowered farmers in corporate supply chains: contradictory imagery and instrumental approach to empowerment

There have been calls for a shift of focus towards the political and power-laden aspects of transitioning towards socially equitable global supply chains. This paper offers an empirically grounded response to these calls from a critical realist stance in the context of global food supply chains. We examine how an imaginary for sustainable farming structured around an instrumental construction of empowerment limits what is viewed as permissible, desirable and possible in global food supply chains. We adopt a multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the sustainable farming imaginary for smallholder farmers constructed by one large organization, Unilever, in a series of videos produced and disseminated on YouTube. We expose the underlying mechanisms of power and marginalization at work within the sustainability imaginary and show how “empowerment” has the potential to create of new dependencies for these farmers. We recontextualize the representations to show that while the imaginary may be commercially feasible, it is less achievable in terms of empowering smallholder farmers

Development Discourse and Practice: Alternatives and New Directions from Postcolonial Perspectives

Development and aid programs, such as those aimed at promoting economic growth and prosperity in ‘Third World’ nations and transition economies, often arise out of Western and neo-liberal policy ideologies and practices. These programs may, in some cases, provide useful guidelines for restructuring institutional structures and governance mechanisms in nations that have long struggled with poverty, economic instability, health crises, and social and political turmoil. However, a growing number of critical voices are raising concerns over the guiding assumptions and inclusiveness of these policies and programs in their aims to promote economic development and social well-being in non-Western nations. We join these critical perspectives by way of postcolonial frameworks to highlight some of the problematic assumptions and oversights of development programs, while offering new alternatives and directions. By doing so, we contribute to organizational theorizing in a global context, as postcolonial insights provide much needed engagement with international aid policies and programs, as well as development organizations and institutions. To accomplish this, we offer a historical perspective on development, present a critique of the policies and practices guiding many aid programs, and conclude with suggestions emanating from postcoloniality

Participatory transport planning the experience of eight european metropolitan regions

This chapter presents experience with participatory transport planning in eight European metropolitan regions: Ljubljana, Oslo, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Budapest, Rome, Porto and Barcelona. These metropolitan regions answered the questionnaire on strengths, weaknesses and needs and an in-depth questionnaire on participatory transport planning. The results were presented at a workshop, where representatives from these eight metropolitan regions shared their experience in two workshop sessions, one dealing with the key stakeholders in participatory transport planning and the other dealing with ways to get them involved. The findings show that stakeholder involvement differs between the local and regional levels. Participants engagement is greater at the local level, where measures are more concrete and less abstract. The participatory planning process takes longer than the traditional planning processes, but it can ease the implementation of the project/measure to the extent that it justifies the additional resources and time. It is of crucial importance to include all the relevant stakeholders, to provide an experienced facilitator and, above all, to include the results in the final plans and policies. Although there are differences in the participatory planning culture between the countries and regions involved, the use of participatory methods in transport planning is becoming increasingly important. Document type: Part of book or chapter of boo

Bartonella species in wild small mammals in Western Black Sea Region of Turkey [Batı Karadeniz Bölgesinde yabani küçük memelilerde Bartonella türleri]

The species within the genus Bartonella are intracellular bacteria causing long-lasting bacteremia in humans and animals. In this study, Bartonella spp. in 173 small mammals, which were Apodemus flavicollis, A. witherbyi, A. uralensis, A. mystacinus, Myodes glareolus, Crocidura suaveolens, Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus species captured from Western Black Sea Region of Turkey, were investigated by blood culture and molecular methods. The positivity of Bartonella was 63.6% (110/173) by blood culture of small mammalian. The gltA gene regions for the isolated strains were identified by DNA sequencing analysis. Isolates were identified as Bartonella taylorii, B. birtlesii, B. coopersplainsensis and a zoonotic B. grahamii. © 2015 Chartered Inst. of Building Services Engineers. All rights reserved

Reconstructing the indigenous in African management research: implications for international management studies in a globalized world

The primary aim of this article is to help lay the foundations for mainstreaming indigenous research within international and cross-cultural management studies, taking sub-Saharan Africa as the primary and initial focus, and using the informal economy as an example. It sets out to critically examine the concept of indigenous, looking at how concepts and scholarship have been shaped by global dynamics, and the implications for developing empirical research. It then discusses a research agenda and methods for undertaking indigenous management research, going on to discuss the importance of this to the further development of international and cross-cultural management within a global and changing context. Its contribution to scholarship is a more systematic re-examining of the concepts of indigenousness and indigenous knowledge and what these concepts mean to undertaking management research that more thoroughly reflect global realities, while evaluating indigenous research methods that could be used effectively and appropriately in this endeavour