Informal cross border trading and poverty reduction in the Southern Africa development community: the case of Zimbabwe

This study investigates the impact of informal cross border trading on poverty reduction in Zimbabwe. In the context of this study, the term Informal Cross Border Trade (ICBT), is used to describe the activities of small entrepreneurs who are involved in buying and selling across national borders. The study focuses on whether the stated activities are lifting those participating out of poverty. The research problem is examined through an assessment of the income levels, assets acquirement, expenditures patterns, food security and family relations. The hypotheses tested in the research are that, “The extent of ICBT is significant in Zimbabwe; ICBT in the Southern Africa region is mainly dominated by women; and that ICBT contributes positively to poverty reduction”. In this context, poverty reduction is said to have occurred when informal cross border trading would have resulted in an improvement in the socio-economic wellbeing of traders‟ households. The Poverty Datum Line (PDL) is used as the measure of households‟ well-being. To assess the impact of ICBT on well-being, a survey was conducted whereby in-depth interviews using the questionnaire method were used to collect primary data. Secondary information was obtained from documentary searches at institutions and also using internet searches. From this study it has been found that ICBT has both positive and negative impacts with regard to social welfare. With regard to economic welfare, based on poverty indicator measures used in the study, ICBT contributes positively to Poverty Reduction. Thus the analysis revealed that informal cross border trade plays an important role in alleviating economic hardships, reducing poverty and enhancing welfare and human development in Zimbabwe

Theatre, an empty space : a thought performance after Gilles Deleuze.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN037625 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Taxonomic revision of true morels (Morchella) in Canada and the United States

Recent molecular phylogenetic studies have revealed the existence of at least 50 species of Morchella worldwide and demonstrated a high degree of continental endemism within the genus. Here we describe 19 phylogenetic species of Morchella from North America, 14 of which are new (M. diminutiva, M. virginiana, M. esculentoides, M. prava, M. cryptica, M. frustrata, M. populiphila, M. sextelata, M. septimelata, M. capitata, M. importuna, M. snyderi, M. brunnea and M. septentrionalis). Existing species names (M. rufobrunnea, M. tomentosa, M. punctipes and M. angusticeps) are applied to four phylogenetic species, and formal description of one species (M. sp. Mel-8 ) is deferred pending study of additional material. Methods for assessing morphological features in Morchella are delineated, and a key to the known phylogenetic species of Morchella in North America is provided. Type studies of M. crassistipa, M. hotsonii, M. angusticeps and M. punctipes are provided. Morchella crassistipa is designated nomen dubium

Taxonomic revision of true morels (Morchella) in Canada and the United States

Recent molecular phylogenetic studies have revealed the existence of at least 50 species of Morchella worldwide and demonstrated a high degree of continental endemism within the genus. Here we describe 19 phylogenetic species of Morchella from North America, 14 of which are new (M. diminutiva, M. virginiana, M. esculentoides, M. prava, M. cryptica, M. frustrata, M. populiphila, M. sextelata, M. septimelata, M. capitata, M. importuna, M. snyderi, M. brunnea and M. septentrionalis). Existing species names (M. rufobrunnea, M. tomentosa, M. punctipes and M. angusticeps) are applied to four phylogenetic species, and formal description of one species (M. sp. Mel-8 ) is deferred pending study of additional material. Methods for assessing morphological features in Morchella are delineated, and a key to the known phylogenetic species of Morchella in North America is provided. Type studies of M. crassistipa, M. hotsonii, M. angusticeps and M. punctipes are provided. Morchella crassistipa is designated nomen dubium

Habit and the Politics of Social Change: A comparison of nudge theory and pragmatist philosophy

Rethinking the political workings of habit and habituation, this paper suggests, is vital to understanding the logics and possibilities of social change today. Any endeavour to explore habit’s affirmative potential, however, must confront its legacies as a colonialist, imperialist and capitalist technology. As a means to explore what it is that differentiates contemporary neoliberal modes of governing through habit from more critical approaches, this article compares contemporary ‘nudge’ theory and policy, as espoused by the behavioural economist Richard Thaler and the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, with the pragmatist philosophies of habit offered by John Dewey, William James and Shannon Sullivan. While nudge advocates focus on how policymakers and corporate leaders can intervene in the ‘choice architectures’ that surround us to outsmart or bypass problematic human tendencies, I argue, pragmatist philosophers appreciate the necessity of collective efforts to develop new and flexible forms of habituation in order to engender more enduring and democratic forms of social transformation

Comparative Energetic and Economic Analysis of anaerobic digestion of organic and farm animal waste for regional digesters in Tasmania.

The goal of this research is to increase awareness of various benefits of using animal manure and food wastes as Anaerobic Digestion (AD) inputs to produce renewable energy in regional areas of Tasmania. The results of this research will provide useful guidance to policy makers, the public, energy investors, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO owners), food waste generators, and businesses that are specialized in Anaerobic Digestion (AD applications). The analysis and tools developed will allow waste planners, haulers, entrepreneurs, and others to obtain many combinations of information about commercially generated organic wastes in Tasmania. This will facilitate decisions about how to best target wastes for collection, which generators to target, how to structure collection routes and infrastructure, and where to site AD systems. This paper outlines: the development of geo- spatial database to identify and locate concentrated organic waste resources in Tasmania; the design and development of a software tool to help quantify the production of food waste (especially food processing waste / municipal organic waste), and The development of an economic model to simulate the costs and benefits of on-farm co-digestion systems and or specific built facilities

The Minute Interventions of Stewart Lee: The affirmative conditions of possibility in comedy, repetition and affect

The popular performer speaks in an already recognizable tongue, producing pleasure by an affirmation of what the audience already knows and feels. Yet affirmation is, at its best, much more than this, involving an openness into the coming into being of something that is genuinely new. In this article we explore the way that humour-and specifically the stand-up comedy of Stewart Lee-can cultivate an audience's bodily receptivity to novel modes of thinking and being which are never recognisable in any immediate sense. Affirmation, if it is to be more than a mere confirmation of what is already given, necessarily eschews reactivity. Certainly, Lee's comedy operates through a form of critique that goes beyond the negativity that we would associate with conventional modes of critical thinking and practice. Most obvious in Lee's lampooning of the popularity of the representationally-laden form of observational comedy, critique here works affectively at least as much as it does cognitively. Through his attention to the form rather than the content of humour, and through his use of repetition and the creation and maintenance of tension, Lee provides a slow motion capture of those habitual modes of anticipation that foreclose other possibilities for thought and action. In examining the comedic and performative affects of Lee's comedy, we give a sense of the conditions in and through which new modes of attention, new dispositions and forms of bodily attunement might be produced. Drawing on more recent affect theory focused on the minute perceptions of the body, we argue that wit has a special relation to the new, less because it effects an irruptive change in the existing state of affairs, than because it exposes us to the affective conditions of possibility for the production of novelty