Genealogies of Slavery

This chapter addresses the concept of slavery, exploring its character and significance as a dark page in history, but also as a specifically criminological and zemiological problem, in the context of international law and human rights. By tracing the ambiguities of slavery in international law and international development, the harms associated with slavery are considered. Harms include both those statutorily proscribed, and those that are not, but that can still be regarded as socially destructive. Traditionally, antislavery has been considered within the parameters of abolition and criminalization. In this context recently, anti-trafficking has emerged as a key issue in contemporary anti-slavery work. While valuable, anti-trafficking is shown to have significant limitations. It advances criminalization and stigmatization of the most vulnerable and further perpetuates harm. At the same time, it identifies structural conditions like poverty, vulnerability, and “unfreedom” of movement only to put them aside. Linked to exploitation, violence and zemia, the chapter brings to the fore some crucial questions concerning the prospects of systemic theory in the investigation of slavery, that highlight the root causes of slavery, primarily poverty and inequality. Therefore, the chapter counterposes an alternative approach in which the orienting target is not abolition of slavery but advancing structural changes against social harm

Socially and biologically inspired computing for self-organizing communications networks

The design and development of future communications networks call for a careful examination of biological and social systems. New technological developments like self-driving cars, wireless sensor networks, drones swarm, Internet of Things, Big Data, and Blockchain are promoting an integration process that will bring together all those technologies in a large-scale heterogeneous network. Most of the challenges related to these new developments cannot be faced using traditional approaches, and require to explore novel paradigms for building computational mechanisms that allow us to deal with the emergent complexity of these new applications. In this article, we show that it is possible to use biologically and socially inspired computing for designing and implementing self-organizing communication systems. We argue that an abstract analysis of biological and social phenomena can be made to develop computational models that provide a suitable conceptual framework for building new networking technologies: biologically inspired computing for achieving efficient and scalable networking under uncertain environments; socially inspired computing for increasing the capacity of a system for solving problems through collective actions. We aim to enhance the state-of-the-art of these approaches and encourage other researchers to use these models in their future work

Why Some Development Works: Understanding Success

Why do some development projects succeed where others fail? This book looks at some macro and some less known micro success stories and considers what enabled them to bring change in some of the world's most deprived communities. Using case studies from ten countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, Tiwari's innovative approach offers a multi-layered understanding of poverty which provides insights into causal, enabling and impeding factors. While a macro level analysis of development is a common feature of the current literature, there has been little attempt to develop a micro level understanding of development at the grassroots. Tiwari's work fills this important gap while drawing attention to the importance of engaging local actors at an individual, collective, and state level, demonstrating how achieving a “convergence” of goals among all actors is a crucial component to a development project's success. Looking beyond the case studies to consider how this unique “convergence framework” might be usefully applied to other contexts, the book has profound implications for how we view fragile states and conflict zones, and the ability of the international agencies to take effective action. A unique study based on extensive empirical research, Why Some Development Works will make essential reading for students and researchers studying international development across the social sciences, as well as humanitarian and development practitioners and policy makers.publishedVersio

Why Some Development Works: Understanding Success

Why do some development projects succeed where others fail? This book looks at some macro and some less known micro success stories and considers what enabled them to bring change in some of the world's most deprived communities. Using case studies from ten countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, Tiwari's innovative approach offers a multi-layered understanding of poverty which provides insights into causal, enabling and impeding factors. While a macro level analysis of development is a common feature of the current literature, there has been little attempt to develop a micro level understanding of development at the grassroots. Tiwari's work fills this important gap while drawing attention to the importance of engaging local actors at an individual, collective, and state level, demonstrating how achieving a “convergence” of goals among all actors is a crucial component to a development project's success. Looking beyond the case studies to consider how this unique “convergence framework” might be usefully applied to other contexts, the book has profound implications for how we view fragile states and conflict zones, and the ability of the international agencies to take effective action. A unique study based on extensive empirical research, Why Some Development Works will make essential reading for students and researchers studying international development across the social sciences, as well as humanitarian and development practitioners and policy makers

Rural poverty and the role of nonfarm sector in economic development : the Indian experience

This dissertation examines certain issues of rural economic backwardness and the nonfarm sector relevant to many developing countries within the context of the Indian rural sector. The study focuses on the causes of the persistence of rural poverty and suggests the expansion of the modern nonfarm sector as a strategy to stimulate development in rural areas. The thesis consists of an overview paper which underlines the contributions made in this study in the context of the work already carried out in the field. Three independent papers follow this.The first paper applies Sen's (1981) entitlement approach to look into the persistence of poverty and the presence of multiple groups with different productive resources within the rural economy. It builds on the existing literature relating to the causes of rural poverty by seeking to establish a relationship between the rural households and the anti-poverty policies through the ownership bundles of the households. A theoretical framework is presented within which the collective response of the households that determines the success or the failure of a policy can be examined.The second paper examines expansion of the nonfarm sector as a strategy to strengthen the consumption bundles of resource poor rural households using a theoretical framework. The model here is based on the regional characteristics of eastern parts of the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. The work extends the increasing awareness of the potential role of the nonfarm sector in the development process. This is done by focusing on the expansion of the modern nonfarm sector and linkages running from it to the rural economy.The third paper explores the income enhancing potential of nonfarm sector by empirically appraising a nonfarm employment project of Social Forestry in the region under study using a simulation model. The model simulates the inter-dependencies in the local economy and evaluates the income profile of both types households, those that directly participated in the project and the others that did not, over a period of ten years.</p

ICTs and poverty reduction: user perspective study of rural Madhya Pradesh, India

This paper presents findings of a user perspective study on the impact of ICTs (information and communications technology) in rural India. The study is based on primary research conducted by the author in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh, India. The aim of the primary research is to explore whether ICTs can be deployed to enable the improvement of rural human capital and increase participation in market opportunities. Amidst growing literature on the supply-side debates on ICTs in the rural sector, this study addresses the sparsely explored demand-side factors. Further, the outcomes of the fieldwork challenge and validate the 'ICT-rural poverty linkages' conceptual framework for ICT growth to be good for poverty, developed by the author in an earlier publication (2006). The paper further identifies issues critical to enhancing the accessibility of ICT services to the poorest rural households.ICT, rural poverty, digital divide, India,