Citizenship and the Politics of Civic Driven Change

Nation states are premised on the legitimizing presence of a polity comprised of citizens. The politics of this relationship is central to discourse on how societies evolve. Yet in the discipline of international development studies the topic remains peripheral. Reasons can be found in conceptual confusion, in selectivity in donor thinking and policies towards civil society and in the growth-driven political economy of NGO-ism. Remedies for the political lacunae are being sought through a concerted focus on people's rights, citizenship and qualities of leadership that all show valuable progress. This chapter will examine a comprehensive complement to such efforts referred to as civic driven change (CDC). Originating in a grounded empirical approach, the constituent principles and elements of CDC offer a lens that can both sharpen and deepen insights and advance analysis of civic agency in socio-political processes. As an ontologically grounded normative proposition, CDC allows exposure and examination of 'uncivil' forces stemming from contending claims on citizenship. These factors are typically ignored or denied in an historical harmony model of societal change. A CDC narrative is illustrated by reference to contemporary examples of citizen action that play out at multiple sites of governance

Poor Philanthropist II: New approaches to sustainable development

The second title in the Poor Philanthropist Series, this monograph represents the culmination of a six-year journey; a journey characterised in the first three years by in-depth qualitative research which resulted in an understanding of philanthropic traditions among people who are poor in southern Africa and gave rise to new and innovative concepts which formed the focus of the research monograph The Poor Philanthropist: How and Why the Poor Help Each Other, published by the Southern Africa-United States Centre for Leadership and Public Values in 2005

Controlling rotational deformity in ankle fractures: the Bridgend knee grip

No Abstrac

Of Butterfly Wings and Raised Fists: Connecting Complexity, Aided Development and Civic Agency

The central proposal that Fowler makes is that the thinking and practice of aided development would benefit from dedicated attention to a body of ideas that constitute a theory of complexity

Innovation in institutional collaboration

The world is said to be confronted with complex issues working against the long term well-being of people and planet that can only be effectively addressed through (hyper) collective effort. How necessary collaboration comes about and progresses shows numerous approaches, professional specialisations, studies and examples. However, there is little in the way of a comprehensive, comparative perspective examining the instigator(s) of diverse collective action objectives and participants in co-creative relationships for societal change that are maintained over time and brought to fruition. More critically, organisational innovations suggest that what currently exists to tackle intractable problems by getting institutions and their organisational actors to cooperate needs updating. Past approaches to collaboration are not good enough for operating in tomorrow’s conditions. Drawing on Actor Network Theory, this paper therefore explores a category of actant – an interlocutor – as potentially crucial in committing to, arranging and holding together complex collective action engagements. From multiple angles and using examples of organisational innovation, the analysis considers the interplay between interlocutor attributes and interlocution processes. A preliminary conclusion is that a combination of characteristics exhibited by an interlocutor offers a helpful category to explain and bring about multi-institutional problem solving. As importantly, increasing the number and variety of interlocutors across the world may be an agenda worth pursuing

Seasonal aspects of education in eastern and southern Africa

Historically education in Europe, through its timing, was linked to rural labour needs. In Africa the child and youth contribution to the sedentary and pastoral modes of production are significant. Because education in LDCs has become an important drain of rural labour a prima facie case is made for consciously linking educational timing to rural labour demand which is not the case at present. It is shown that a significant increase in rural household production could be achieved at no capital or foreign exchange cost. In addition such a link would reduce the "opportunity cost" of education to the poor. Seasonal aspects of educational timing and curricula are discussed and areas for further research are indicated