The Role of Schools in Assisting Children and Young People with a Parent in Prison – findings from the COPING Project

Children who experience parental incarceration are vulnerable to facing poor outcomes in terms of their mental health and education. Schools have the potential to provide a point of stability during a parent's prison sentence, thereby assisting children affected by parental imprisonment to remain resilient. This paper will present school related findings from COPING, a three year pan-European research project that investigated the impact of parental imprisonment on children in the UK, Romania, Germany and Sweden. It will focus on good practice points for schools regarding how they can most effectively support children of prisoners by drawing on the views expressed by young people and families affected by imprisonment, as well as professionals who work in a school setting. Young people placed a high value on support from trusted school staff that had a general awareness of issues relating to parental imprisonment as well as knowledge of their own particular situation. This paper will therefore stress the need for all school staff to be trained with regard to the impact upon children of parental imprisonment. The paper will also include a discussion of workshops involving young people in Secondary education that were designed to enable them to think about the impact of parental imprisonment

The historical origins of Tanzania's working class

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 35INTRODUCTION: This paper discusses the historical conditions which prevented the emergence of a strong capitalist ruling class along the Kenyan lines in Tanzania. In Kenya, a nascent big bourgeoisie controlled African political associations as early as the 1930s, while in Tanzania, teachers, traders, and clerks were the mainstay of the independence movement, with kulak farmers participating (Awiti, 1972; Bienen, 1969; Hyden, 1968; Maguire, 1969), but never predominating as a class "to the extent where they could become an important political force at the national level" (Shivji, 1976: 50). A productive class of capitalists thereby came to engineer the state in independent Kenya, while in Tanzania the dominant force rested with an unproductive "bureaucratic bourgeoisie," a class awkwardly termed and poorly understood. The result in the case of Kenya was a capitalism which matured along rather classic lines, that is by increasing the productivity of labor without resulting in absolute immiseration, whereas in Tanzania, capitalism was retarded along the lines suggested by the Narodniks with the predictable consequences of absolute pauperization described by Lenin. [TRUNCATED

Age group, location or pedagogue: factors affecting parental choice of kindergartens in Hungary

Hungary has experienced significant political, economic, demographic and social changes since the end of Soviet domination in the 1990s. The gradual move towards liberal-democracy has been accompanied by growing emphasis on individualism, choice and diversity. Universal kindergarten provision for 5-6 year olds is a long established feature of the Hungarian education system, but little is known about parental choice (Török, 2004). A case study (Yin, 2004) of factors influencing parental choice and satisfaction was undertaken in one Hungarian town. This was based on a survey of 251 parents of children attending both mixed-age and same-age groups across 12 kindergartens. Parents suggested that the most important influences were geographical location and the individual pedagogue(s). Given that traditionally each pedagogue follows ‘their’ cohort from kindergarten entry to primary school, their influence appears heightened. Although generally satisfied with their chosen arrangement, parents from same-age groups expressed significantly more confidence and satisfaction, particularly in relation to cognitive development and preparation for school. Parents appear less convinced about the trend towards mixed-age groups and questions are raised about sufficiency of evidence of their benefits in a Hungarian context and the driving factors behind change

The agrarian question in Tanzania: the case of tobacco

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 32Since independence in 1961, Tanzania has pursued a policy of institutionalizing a middle peasantry, while stymieing the development of capitalism's principal classes. The policy has taken an extreme form following a 1973 decision to forcibly reorganize the majority of Tanzania's peasants on individual block farms within nucleated villages and to bring the sphere of production more directly under the control of the state and international finance capital. This attempt to subordinate peasant labor to capital by perpetuating middle peasant households increasingly confines capital to its most primitive state. The pursuit of this policy in an export-oriented agricultural economy has particular contradictions and limitations. As long as labor and capital are not separated, they cannot be combined in their technically most advanced form. Hence the contradiction of the state's attempts to extract greater surplus value while simultaneously acting to expand and preserve middle peasant households. This paper explores the implications of such a course of action within the framework of Marxist writings on the agrarian question. Using tobacco production as, an example, it discusses the ways in which middle peasant households are being squeezed and pauperized by this backward capitalist system. It argues that the system inhibits the formal and real subordination of labor to capital and tends to perpetuate the extraction of absolute as opposed to relative surplus value. Household production fetters the concentration of capital and prevents the socialization of labor, while perpetuating the hoe as the main instrument of production

Back to software "profitable piracy": the role of information diffusion

Can software piracy be profitable for a software editor? We tackle this issue in a simple model where software is an experience good and where the potential users can choose to adopt or pirate software or to delay their adoption. In that context, we show that a moderate piracy can be profitable for a software editor to foster users' adoption.

Serving highly vulnerable families in home-visitation programs

Home-visitation programs for families with young children are growing in popularity in the US. These programs typically seek to prevent child abuse and neglect and/or promote optimal development for infants, toddlers, and/or preschool-age children. This paper focuses on improving the capacity of home-visitation programs to meet the complex needs of highly vulnerable families with young children. Poverty, maternal depression and substance abuse, and domestic violence are noted as factors that place young children at risk for poor outcomes. The challenges of providing home-visitation services to families in which these risk factors are present are discussed. Family engagement, matching services to families’ needs, and staff capabilities are highlighted as areas in which improvements can be made to enhance home-visitation programs’ capacity to serve highly vulnerable families. Recommendations are given for improving the effectiveness of home-visitation programs in serving these families, as well for addressing policy and research issues related to the further development and evaluation of these programs.First author draf

MEASURING IMPACTS ON DEMAND OF AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY PROMOTION

Demand and Price Analysis,

Back to software "profitable piracy": the role of information diffusion

Can software piracy be profitable for a software editor? We tackle this issue in a simple model where software is an experience good and where the potential users can choose to adopt or pirate software or to delay their adoption. In that context, we show that a moderate piracy can be profitable for a software editor to foster users' adoption.

A Brief History of Aid in East Africa: The Political Economy of Convergence

Entwicklungshilfe; Entwicklungspolitik; Entwicklung; Systemvergleich; Tansania; Uganda; Kenia; Ostafrika