Recent cgirs_rw items

Nigeria: Mapping the Shari`a Restorationist Movement

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Nigeria: Mapping the Shari`a Restorationist Movement

Migrant Civil Society: Ten Propositions for Discussion

Thu, 4 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Migrant Civil Society: Ten Propositions for Discussion

’There is No Orient’: Hodgson and Said

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

’There is No Orient’: Hodgson and Said

Coalitions and networks

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Coalitions are partnerships among distinct actors that coordinate action in pursuit of shared goals. But what distinguishes them from other kinds of partnerships? The term is widely used to describe joint ventures in a wide range of arenas, most notably in international geopolitics or political party competition and governance. The literature on coalitions is dominated by discussions of war and peace, election campaigns, and parliamentary dynamics. Just as in war or politics, successful collective action in civil society often depends on the formation and survival of coalitions – insofar as the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts.

Scarce, costly and uncertain: water access in Kibera, Nairobi

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores three stories in partial answer to the question: why is water scarce, costly and uncertain. First, it describes the ways that households and particularly the women who are the most frequent collectors of water experience scarcity through heavy expenditures of time and money, considerable investments in water storage and routinized sequences of deferred household tasks. Second, the paper describes some of the ‘public private partnerships’ for water supply which have grown up in this stateless location. A history of state antagonism to informal settlements like Kibera and the concomitant absence of property rights, institutions and market regulation have contributed to the growth of these partnerships, which academics call corruption and residents call cartels. Third, the paper describes three experiments in water and social engineering undertaken by sociologists in the Nairobi Water Company. These experiments constitute an attempt to invent municipal institutions...

Visualizing Relationships between Global Indicators

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Visualizing Relationships between Global Indicators

Visualizing Global Inequality on the Web

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In this work, we simplify and enhance the visualization currently supported by the UC Atlas Website for mapping global inequality by (i) creating a simple user interface, (ii) supporting time series animation of global maps, and (iii) simplifying and integrating theline graphs, bar graphs, and ranked bar graphs. The visualization system is accessible at http://atlas-dev.ucsc.edu/ian. Our vision is to enhance the visualization system by adding additional types of charts including scatter plots, star plots, parallel coordinates, and small multiples visualization while keeping the user interface simple and integrated.

Visualizing Health Determinants in a Global Context

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In this work, our objective is to visualize the relationship between the variables that impact health in a global context. Recently, Cornia et al. [1] have proposed five main determinants of global health – material deprivation, progress in health technology, acute psychosocial stress, unhealthy lifestyle, and income inequality etc. Results of regression analysis worldwide indicate that almost 90% of the variation in health can be attributed to twelve variables representing these five determinants. We compute correlations between the health variables and its determinants and apply a visualization tool [2] to display these correlations globally and at country level in order to gain a better understanding. We observe that the country-level results obtained through easy-to-understand graphs and simple correlation analysis pose an anomaly to the worldwide regression results and require further analysis to close the gap between correlation and regression analysis and the gap between...

Lessons from action-research partnerships: LASA/Oxfam America 2004 Martin Diskin Memorial Lecture

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I am very grateful to the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for sharing this great honour with me. Martin Diskin was first my teacher and mentor, then a research and teaching colleague, and always a friend. Not so long ago, I was thinking about Martin a great deal as I read his brother Saul’s moving memoir (Diskin 2001). Here one can learn what it takes to face the life-threatening illness that was looming behind Martin’s smile for so many years, unbeknown to all but family. Like so many defenders of human rights, he sustained an intense commitment to justice for all, in spite of an ever-present arbitrary threat to his own existence.

I’d like to begin by recognising some of the many different ways of bridging scholarly and activist commitments. Martin’s own trajectory reflected many of them, including his deep commitment to teaching (outside as well as inside the university), his behind-the-scenes contribution to building progressive organisations for the long...

Mapping Mexican Migrant Civil Society

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Presented at "Mexican Migrant Civic and Political Participation,"Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, co-sponsored by: Latin American and Latino Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, November, 2005

Lost, Dysfunctional or Evolving? A View of Business Schools from Silicon Valley

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Recent articles have rekindled discussions around the direction and relevance of US business schools. The two main viewpoints are distinct but equally critical. On one hand, business schools are considered overly focused on “scientific research” and having lost their connection to “real world” and management issues. On the other hand, schools are considered “dysfunctionally” focused on media rankings and short-term superficial marketing fixes. Our study of educational opportunities and workforce development in Silicon Valley suggests a different viewpoint. We agree that both approaches correctly identify the challenge of preparing managers in globalized world. However, we believe they misdiagnose the cause of the failure. Rather than being lost or dysfunctional, we believe business programs — like the firms and students they serve — are in the process of evolving to meet a shifting global and local environment. Our findings indicate that business schools face structural,...

Paper or Plastic? The Privatization of Global Forestry Regulation

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

In 1992, representatives of 180 of the world’s nations met in Rio de Janeiro at the UN Conference on Environment and Development. Among the submissions debated and considered at the “Earth Summit,” as it was called, was one addressing sustainable forestry, with the unwieldy title "Non-legally binding authoritative statement of principles for a global consensus on the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests" Opposition to the Forest Principles was much broader than support for them, and they crashed and burned. Over the intervening years, there have been repeated efforts to launch an International Forest Convention; although UN-sponsored panels, commissions, and forums on forests have worked continuously on the matter since 1995, these efforts have, so far, not been consummated in either an agreement or an organization. The absence of a global forestry convention does not mean the absence of “international” forestry regulations, although...

Inequality and Globalization: A Comment on Firebaugh and Goesling

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The September 2004 issue of the American Journal of Sociology contains an article by Firebaugh and Goesling arguing that global income inequality has declined in recent decades as a result of economic globalization. This paper examines the methodological choices made by the authors, and some alternative estimates they overlooked. It concludes that there are many reasons to be cautious about accepting the claim that global income inequality is falling. At the least we have to (a) acknowledge evidence to the contrary, (b) explain why the counter evidence is not to be counted, and (c) acknowledge that even by the measures and data sources that show falling overall inequality, the result depends mostly on China.

American Thinking About Violence in the Middle East

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

A Nation of Puritan Engineers, a.k.a. the USA, is singularly ill-equipped to understand something as complicated, as paradoxical, and as deeply historically rooted as Middle Eastern violence. As the heirs of the Puritans, we tend to be self-righteous in our certainty that we have the truth. Further, we believe that the truth is singular, and we are confident that vengeful violence in defending that truth is divinely sanctioned. As engineers, we believe that all problems have solutions, and that the past (and history) don’t matter, and that our new technology, and our organizational prowess, will always find a solution.

None of these perspectives is useful if one wants to reduce the suffering spawned by violence, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. Our mind-set repeatedly leads us astray, and we become lost in a wilderness of complexity our minds cannot comprehend.

Development Studies and the Marxists

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

In British universities in the 1960s and 1970s, the institutionalization of Development Studies as a distinct field of teaching and research coincided with the rapid growth of Marxist ideas in the social sciences. This chapter considers aspects of Development Studies and Marxist work over the last 40 years or so, including some intrinsic tensions that each brings to their encounters. I try to identify conditions and issues of intellectual production and its practical applications that may be useful to constructing and pursuing the project of an historical, and critical, sociology of knowledge of Development Studies.

Emancipating Labor Internationalism

Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The secular trinity of c19th socialism was Labor-Internationalism-Emancipation. As early-industrial capitalism developed into a national-industrial-colonial capitalism, the internationalism of labor became literally international, and simultaneously lost its emancipatory aspiration and capacity (or vice versa). The dramatic – and labor-devastating – development of a globalised-networked-informatised capitalism is raising the necessity and possibility of a new kind of labor internationalism, capable not only of defence against neo-liberal globalisation but also of an emancipatory challenge to capitalism as such. This implies self-liberation from the traditional (understanding of the) working-class, the trade-union form and socialist ideology. Such an emancipation can be assisted by a recognition of the work and workers produced by a globalized-networked-informatized capitalism. Positively it requires a close articulation of labor with the global justice movement (a.k.a. 'anti-globalization',...

Gender Relations and Access to Water: What We Want to Know About Social Relations and Women's Time Allocation

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Inadequate access to safe water has severe consequences for health and livelihood. More than one billion people do not have access to safe water. This paper addresses three questions: 1) How could a focus on social relations illuminate access to water? 2) Is there statistical evidence of a water-poverty connection? 3) How could time allocation studies improve our understanding of access to water? First, evidence suggests that in much of the rural global South, gender relations in particular mediate the social relations of water in numerous, interconnecting ways. Analysis of gender relations could then improve our understanding of the multiple connections among poverty, the position of women and access to water. Second, statistical evidence from the Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment Report 2000 and from the World Development Report 2000 indicates that there is a correlation between lack of access to water and material poverty. When people lack access to water...

Working Through Outsourcing: Software Practice, Industry Organization and Industry Evolution in India

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Current debates surrounding “outsourcing” and “offshore” limit our understanding of the dynamics of services in the global environment by failing to 1) carefully define terms and 2) delineate key differences in production architectures, practices and regional impacts. Defining offshore and outsourcing is important because such definitions inform the unique structure of services in general and software services in particular. They also open a pathway to understanding similarities or differences with new IT enabled-services. The changing nature of the definitions is really a reflection of questions surrounding the costs and benefits of variations on how services are developed globally. This paper begins by considering definitions of “offshore” to work through the unique aspects of IT services, and how they have affected the evolution of specific regions in the global economy.

A central case to begin to evaluate these issues is the emergence and evolution of the Indian industry....

The Determinants of the Global Digital Divide: A cross-country analysis of computer and internet penetration

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

To identify the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and Internet penetration, we examine a panel of 161 countries over the 1999-2001 period. Our candidate variables include economic variables (income per capita, years of schooling, illiteracy, trade openness), demographic variables (youth and aged dependency ratios, urbanization rate), infrastructure indicators (telephone density, electricity consumption), telecommunications pricing measures, and regulatory quality. With the exception of trade openness and the telecom pricing measures, these variables enter in as statistically significant in most specifications for computer use. A similar pattern holds true for Internet use, except that telephone density and aged dependency matter less. The global digital divide is mainly – but by no means entirely – accounted for by income differentials. For computers, telephone density and regulatory quality are of second and third importance, while for the Internet,...

Collective Action and Discursive Shifts: A Comparative Historical Perspective

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

As a world historian interested in both the history of European orientalism and modern Islamic history, I have long been struck by the similarities between the indeterminacy of our present time and that of the early twentieth century. One place where these indeterminacies come together is the Middle East. Unpredicted by all observers, an Islamic political revival is under way. Since the Islamic revolution in Iran (1978-79), secular nationalism is in retreat in the region, confounding both Left and Right alike. Why is there an Islamist movement in Algeria (the erstwhile center of Third Worldism)? Why is Egypt, which was the leader of progressive Arab nationalism under Nasser, itself increasingly exposed to an Islamist challenge? How are we to understand these developments? Do they represent a retreat from modernity? Accounting for the Islamist movement in the Middle East has thus far confounded all theories. For those concerned with theory and history this gap should induce...

Regulation for the Rest of Us? Global Social Activism, Corporate Citizenship, and the Disappearance of the Political

Sat, 30 Aug 2003 00:00:00 +0000

In the context of globalization, transnational social regulation is increasingly the product of private (as opposed to public) interventions into the sphere of global trade. In recognition of the widespread failure of corporations to sufficiently address the socio-economic externalities borne by workers (inadequate wages, poor working conditions, forced overtime, child labor, and lack of the right to free association), various non-governmental organizations have begun to design and implement systems of rules intended to influence corporations and bring to an end a transnational "race to the bottom." Drawing on publicly available materials, interviews, and fieldwork in Southeast Asia, I propose that what matters as much as improvements to life on the factory floor are "spillover" effects whose force extend beyond building walls into the broader society of the host country. I question whether consumer behavior alone can create the conditions in which workers will be free to...

Incomes, Exchange Rates and the U.S. Trade Deficit, Once Again

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 00:00:00 +0000

This paper discusses recent developments in the empirical modeling of U.S. import and export flows, and the implications for adjustment of the trade balance in response to changes in the value of the dollar and relative incomes. The results of examining the behavior of trade flows in the period spanning the late 1990’s boom and dollar appreciation are also reported. The estimates for the updated data do not exhibit the income asymmetry typically found in other studies, although a reduction in the current account would require a substantial real depreciation, holding all else constant.

Explaining the Appeal of Islamic Radicals

Tue, 10 Dec 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Why do “Islamic radicals”—including the partisans of al-Qaeda and other followers of Osama bin Laden--enjoy so much sympathy

in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world? Understanding

such a phenomenon is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for crafting a strategy to cope with the murderous violence of September 11, 2001.

This GLOBAL POLICY BRIEF explores these socioeconomic roots of Islamic radicalism:

- The multidimensional crisis of the Muslim world

- The rage of the young, a majority of the population in the Middle East, faced with poor prospects

- Increasing poverty and collapsing cities

- Failures of government

Information Technology: History, Practice and Implications for Development