Big Governance Research: Institutional Constraints, the Validity Gap and BIM

The pressing questions about governance today require research on a scale, and of a complexity, that the existing institutional environment for research has great difficulty supporting. This article identifies some of the current institutional constraints on governance research, and examines a set of institutional innovations that enable a form of 'big governance research' that begins to meet the information and knowledge requirements of contemporary governance questions. It presents the organisation and methodology of the multi-country study 'Modes of Service Delivery, Collective Action and Social Accountability in Brazil, India and Mexico' (henceforth BIM, for Brazil, India and Mexico). The authors argue that the organisational and funding model that this study has created permits the type of interdisciplinary, process-oriented, and multi-country or multi-region research needed to answer governance questions of international concern

Nutrition In HIV: A Review

Knowledge about the relationship between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), nutritional status, treatment, food and nutrition interventions continues to accumulate. This article provides an overview of the main nutrition related issues for people living with HIV (PLHIV) and a review of the potential benefits of nutrition interventions for people affected by HIV. Nutrition plays a vital role in the immune system of all people, including (PLHIV). Good nutrition strengthens the immune system, while HIV infection and poor nutrition have a cumulative effect in damaging it. PLHIV are more vulnerable to malnutrition than the general population and nutritional status is a good predictor of their mortality risk. Malnutrition in PLHIV often occurs in a background of poverty and lack of access to food. It is not always possible to identify one single cause as the main contributor to declining nutritional status or malnutrition in HIV. Inadequate food intake, increased requirements and malabsorption are the main reasons for weight loss in PLHIV. Asymptomatic adults with HIV infection have a 10% higher energy requirement and symptomatic PLHIV have 20-30% higher energy requirements than the general population. Kilojoule/kilocalorie requirements increase by 50-100% in children experiencing weight loss. Evidence for increasing protein and micronutrient intake in healthy PLHIV is inadequate. Nutritional education should be an essential component of HIV care and treatment, as it can help PLHIV cope with symptoms of disease, prevent weight loss and manage side effects of medication. In resource limited settings, food support programs may be required in addition to nutrition support to optimise nutritional status and health outcomes in PLHIV who are food insecure. Key words: Nutrition, HIV, weight loss, malnutrition, diarrhoea, macronutrients, micronutrients, food securit

Bilingual advantages in middle-aged and elderly populations

Deze dissertatie rapporteert over een onderzoeksproject naar verschillen tussen eentalige Duitsers en tweetalige Friezen, Duitsers en Nederlanders wat betreft algemeen cognitief functioneren en lexicale productie. Daarbij keken we naar volwassenen van middelbare leeftijd en ouderen. Cognitief functioneren werd gemeten met een task-switching test en lexicale productie met een verbal fluency test. De task-switching test liet zien dat de tweetaligen een grotere mentale flexibiliteit hadden dan eentalige proefpersonen. Dit voordeel werd veroorzaakt door de prestaties van ouderen. De leeftijd waarop men tweetalig was geworden, het aantal jaren dat men twee talen had gesproken, en het taalvaardigheidsniveau in de tweede taal speelden geen rol in de grootte van dit effect. In de verbal fluency test deden de Friese, vroeg-tweetaligen, nergens onder voor de eentaligen, misschien doordat Fries en Nederlands veel woorden gemeen hebben. Op het onderdeel letter fluency presteerden de ouderen zelfs beter dan eentalige leeftijdsgenoten, wat mogelijk duidt op betere zoekstrategieën. Mede gezien de tegenstrijdige resultaten uit eerdere studies moeten we deze resultaten echter voorzichtig interpreteren en niet generaliseren naar andere groepen tweetaligen. Bovendien kunnen allerlei factoren, zoals immigratiestatus, resultaten in groepsstudies verstoren. Daarom benadrukken we het belang van de correlatie die we vonden tussen de mate van taalbalans en mentale flexibiliteit binnen onze groep vroeg-tweetalige Friezen. Studies die zich richten op effecten van taalgerelateerde factoren binnen een homogene populatie lijken in de toekomst dan ook het meest geëigend om meer helderheid te verschaffen over de kwestie van eventuele cognitieve voordelen van tweetaligheid

The Movement of the Landless (MST) and the juridical field in Brazil

What modalities of legal change can social movements set in motion to diminish systemic and durable forms of social exclusion? This paper focuses on the Movement of the Landless (MST) in Brazil, which through a number of legal strategies has helped produce watershed high court rulings, contributed to the process of constitutionalising law, and made access to land more equitable in parts of Brazil by redefining property rights in practice. The paper explores legal change triggered by the strategic action through what Bourdieu (1987) calls the juridical field. The MST has been successful in pushing forward legal change through this field, I argue, for two broad reasons. First, it has a remarkable ability to concentrate the talents of diverse juridical actors – lawyers, judges, law school professors – on defending its claims. This ability has been built by mobilising across multiple fields, including the political, and not just in the juridical field. Second, the movement’s capacity for strategic legal action, and the impact of such action, has been contingent on substantial changes during the 1990s in both the social movement and juridical fields triggered by the unfolding of the country’s democratic transition and shifts in the transnational Catholic Church. Keywords: access to justice, social movement, Movement of the Landless (MST), Brazil, property right

Civil Society Innovation and Resilience in the Struggle for the Right to Food in India

India’s national network of social justice activists and civil society organisations helped achieve legal recognition for the Right to Food in the early 2000’s and are engaged in an ongoing struggle to implement the right to food in practice. The legal strategy of the Right to Food Campaign, and the shortcomings of India’s primary right to food vehicle, the Public Distribution System (PDS) are well documented. There is relatively little on the Campaign’s contribution to innovation and improvement in the PDS, and its role in blocking a rollback of both the Right to Food and the PDS. After a decade, following the trajectory of the RTF campaign and the activism to implement PDS effectively, we believe that the composition of the national activist network and, related, its multi-scalar strategy, have been vital to its ability to shape national political debate and government policy in a first period (2001–08), and subsequently to defend advances in reform of the Right to Food from rollback in a subsequent openly hostile political environment (2009–2015). Based on new research carried out in 2015 we explain what happens to a network when one of its members enters electoral politics, and the campaign’s resilience in a hostile political environment. In this paper we combine social network analysis, informant interviews, participant observation, and archival research to identify the formation of ties between individuals that connect diverse activist networks, and how, in different political environments these networks first helped generate new ideas and practices for the Right to Food, and then defended those from reversal

Big Governance Research: Institutional Constraints, the Validity Gap and BIM

The pressing questions about governance today require research on a scale, and of a complexity, that the existing institutional environment for research has great difficulty supporting. This article identifies some of the current institutional constraints on governance research, and examines a set of institutional innovations that enable a form of 'big governance research' that begins to meet the information and knowledge requirements of contemporary governance questions. It presents the organisation and methodology of the multi-country study 'Modes of Service Delivery, Collective Action and Social Accountability in Brazil, India and Mexico' (henceforth BIM, for Brazil, India and Mexico). The authors argue that the organisational and funding model that this study has created permits the type of interdisciplinary, process-oriented, and multi-country or multi-region research needed to answer governance questions of international concern