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

Management at grassroots level for integrated rural development in Africa with special reference to churches

The paper begins by questioning the relevance and utility of Western management models and techniques in an African rural development setting of a minimally controllable environment. It goes on to review the problems and paradoxes of incorporating development into existing church structures and further suggests that the "integrated" development approach used so far and based on multi-sector coupling has proven to be dysfunctional. It is suggested that a human and community-centred approach based on a five-element 'functional-group' system answers the above shortcomings, in part because it is derived from actual development implementation experience. The features of such a system are explained and the possible role of the church as an "intermediate organisation" is discussed. The paper concludes by looking at some of the management implications of such a human and community-centred approach. In addition tentative suggestions for more appropriate African management features are made based on community rather than individual or institution, dialogue rather than paper work and respect for traditional social systems

The later work of Jean Ricardou

This thesis examines the career of Jean Ricardou after 1982. The introduction indicates the obscurity in which he Ricardou’s reputation languishes currently. Chapter 1 sketches Ricardou’s career until 1982 and examines the denunciations of him by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon pronounced in that year, and how critics have subsequently portrayed him. Chapter 2 describes Ricardou’s involvement in writing workshops in France and the role he played in developing them and exercises to be used in such workshops, in particular the Bestiaire. Chapter 3 introduces the new discipline of textique which aims to provide a theoretical description of all phenomena associated with writing starting from the simplest mark. Chapter 4 suggests that textique, because of its militant materialism, might be susceptible to ultra-left tendencies. Chapters 5 and 6 examine textique as literary criticism, the former with reference to Une Maladie chronique, the latter to sonnets by Heredia and Mallarmé. Chapter 7 examines Ricardou’s later fiction, the concept of the “mixte” as developed in Le théâtre des métamorphoses and Hommage à Jean Paulhan and in these texts and La cathédrale de Sens, it explores the commonly held opinion that Ricardou’s work is “anti-referential”. The conclusion looks at factors that could influence the expansion of textique’s influence, its difficulty or reluctance to find an audience and its relation to those that Ricardou considers to be the great thinkers of the modern era, Mallarmé, Freud and Marx

Civic Driven Change: A Guide to the Basics

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