Social stratification of an Arab village in Hadramaut.

The theme of the thesis centres around the system of social stratification of Hureidah. I give a general description of the system as it operates in the village and then show how the processes of change in the country and outside, are affecting the situation in Hureidah. Hadramaut, sometimes aptly referred to as "madinat al-muhadjirin" (the country of the emigrants) has as a basic feature, a constant economic crisis in producing enough food for its population. As a result, migration and emigration have been going on since time immemorial. The country has thus never been isolated and its overseas ties have always played a major, if not dominating, role in the country. The Qu'aity Sultanate which was created by Hadramis based in Hyderabad (India) is a crowning example of this. Recently, this 'overseas' dependence has, if anything, increased. But world wide changes have shifted this dependence from India and the Far East, to the neighbouring Arab countries, thus incorporating Hadramaut in the wider processes taking place in the Arab World. This is to say, the history of Hadrami society has been shaped considerably by its ties with India and the Far East, while the present social organisation is being dramatically affected by its participation in the wider field of the Arab society. Social stratification is a dominant feature in Hadrami society. In studying its operation in Hureidah, one cannot isolate the village in space or in time. The people "commute" constantly between Hureidah and the surrounding countries, ignoring geographical (physical) and political boundaries. Similarly, the Far Eastern 'Alawi-Irshadi conflict of the past, the Pan-Arab Nationalism of the present, and the 'coming Revolution' of the future, all influence the social life as it exists. Thus my analysis of the historical conflict, the continuing process of migration, and the political forces operating at different levels (in the country and outside), is essential in understanding the processes behind the formal social hierarchy of present day Hureidah

Editorial: African women's struggles in a gender perspective

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Rational Asymmetric Development, Piketty and the Spirit of Poverty in Africa

The study extends the implications of Piketty’s celebrated literature from developed countries to the nexus between developed nations and African countries by building on responses from Rogoff (2014) & Stiglitz (2014), post Washington Consensus paradigms and underpinnings from Solow-Swan & Boyce-Fofack-Ndikumana. The central argument presented is that the inequality problem is at the heart of rational asymmetric development between rich and poor countries. Piketty has shown that inequality increases when the return of capital is higher than the growth rate, because the poor cannot catch-up with the rich. We argue that, when the return of political economy (or capitalism-fuelled illicit capital flight) is higher than the growth rate in African countries, inequality in development increases and African may not catch-up with the developed world. As an ideal solution, Piketty has proposed progressive income taxation based on automatic exchange of bank information. The ideal analogy proposed in tackling the spirit of African poverty is a holistic commitment to fighting illicit capital flight based on automatic exchange of bank information. Hence, contrary to theoretical underpinnings of exogenous growth models, catch-up may not be so apparent. Implications for the corresponding upward bias in endogenous development and catch-up literature are discussed

A Development Consensus reconciling the Beijing Model and Washington Consensus: Views and Agenda

Reconciling the two dominant development models of the Washington Consensus (WC) and Beijing Model (BM) remains a critical challenge in the literature. The challenge is even more demanding when emerging development paradigms like the Liberal Institutional Pluralism (LIP) and New Structural Economics (NSE) schools have to be integrated. While the latter has recognized both State and market failures but failed to provide a unified theory, the former has left the challenging concern of how institutional diversity matter in the development process. We synthesize perspectives from over 150 recently published papers on development and Sino-African relations in order to present the relevance of both the WC and BM in the long-term and short-run respectively. While the paper provides a unified theory by reconciling the WC and the BM to complement the NSE, it at the same time presents a case for economic rights and political rights as short-run and long-run development priorities respectively. By reconciling the WC with the BM, the study contributes at the same to macroeconomic NSE literature of unifying a development theory and to the LIP literature on institutional preferences with stages of development. Hence, the proposed reconciliation takes into account the structural and institutional realities of nations at difference stages of the process of development

Reinventing foreign aid for inclusive and sustainable development: a survey

This survey essay reviews over 200 papers in arguing that in order to achieve sustainable and inclusive development, foreign aid should not orient developing countries towards industrialisation in the perspective of Kuznets but in the view of Piketty. Abandoning the former’s view that inequality will fall with progress in industrialisation and placing more emphasis on inequality in foreign aid policy will lead to more sustainable development outcomes. Inter alia: mitigate short-term poverty; address concerns of burgeoning population growth; train recipient governments on inclusive development; fight corruption and mismanagement and; avoid the shortfalls of celebrated Kuznets’ conjectures. We discuss how the essay addresses post-2015 development challenges and provide foreign aid policy instruments with which discussed objectives can be achieved. In summary, the essay provides useful policy measures to avoid past pitfalls. ‘Output may be growing, and yet the mass of the people may be becoming poorer’ (Lewis, 1955). ‘Lewis led all developing countries to water, proverbially speaking, some African countries have so far chosen not to drink’ (Amavilah, 2014). Piketty (2014) has led all developing countries to the stream again and a challenging policy syndrome of our time is how foreign aid can help them to drink