Value Chain Development and the Agrarian Question: Actor Perspectives on Native Potato Production in the Highlands of Peru

Value chain development seeks to integrate smallholder farmers into competitive markets to promote economic and social development. This article, conceptually based on the agrarian question, considers how the perspectives of various value chain actors, with particular focus on smallholders, have important implications for the outcomes of these market‐oriented initiatives. Utilizing Long’s concept of social interface, we present a mixed‐methods case study that analyzes how smallholders, an NGO, and agrifood corporations, including PepsiCo, partnered to establish value chains for native potatoes in the Peruvian highlands. We find that a thorough understanding of the various perspectives held by value chain actors provides important insight into why value chain initiatives have divergent trajectories. Based on the findings, we conclude that accounting for how actors are responding to development initiatives and one another helps explain development outcomes and that therefore the agrarian question remains relevant in current agricultural development discourse and practice.     

Environmental changes to increase physical activity: perceptions of older urban ethnic-minority women

Despite the numerous benefits of physical activity, older adults continue to be more sedentary than their younger counterparts, and sedentary behavior is more prevalent among older racial and ethnic minorities than among Whites. This study used the nominal group technique (NGT) to examine participants' perceptions of what neighborhood environmental changes would encourage greater physical activity for older African American and Hispanic women. Participants age 50-75 years were recruited from 2 urban community health clinics. Nine NGT sessions (45 participants) were conducted. The women were asked what changes in their neighborhood environment would encourage them to become more physically active. Responses to the research question were tabulated, and qualitative analysis was used to identify themes and categories. Major categories were physical environment changes, safety, and activities/social support. Although the physical environment received the greatest number of points, concerns for personal safety cut across categories. Participants indicated the need for more facilities in which to be active.     

Signs, Social Ontology, and Critical Realism

Even though sign-systems are a crucial part of society, critical realism, as developed by Roy Bhaskar, does not yet have an adequate theory of signs and semiosis. The few suggestions that Bhaskar offers can be advanced through the semiotics of C.S. Peirce. In doing so, however, it becomes necessary to reconsider Bhaskar's ontological domains of the real, the actual, and the subjective, and expand the last domain into one of semiosis. This new understanding of ontological domains, incorporating Peireian semiotics, provides the basis for rethinking the ontology of society: the customary dyad structures/agents becomes the triad structures/agents/discourses, each of which possesses material, sociological, and meaningful aspects.     

中层管理人的新角色

机构要成为学习型组织，迈步向前，惟有实行全面优质管理制度、重整业务或实施任何形式的改革方案。公司上下亦因此要学习一套或以上的新技能，而中层人员以经验见长，是最佳的导师。纵然他们需要先学会有关课题，方能培训他人，但其仍能立即将所学融合到公司的文化和业务中，以培养无数如他们一样，穷于理解如何融入新体制的员工们。     

全球化何时帮助穷人？

全球化与贫穷之间有何联系?发展中经济体长期以来一直将国际贸易和金融作为发展的解决方案,但全球35%的人口仍生活在国际贫困线以下。经济学家和政治学家探究了这种联系,但仍未得出结论。我们回顾了相关文献,认为要理解全球化与贫穷之间的联系,我们必须根本理解针对最贫困人口政策背后的政治动机。具体来说,我们主张学者需要明确发展中国家政府的意识形态立场,这一认同超越了发达国家主流的传统左右翼分歧的观点。我们为学者在全球范围内如何开始推动意识形态起作用以及为什么必须评估全球化与贫穷的联系提供了理论指导。此外,我们还对我们的论点提供了初步的定量和定性检验。最后,两个学科的学者为了评估贸易与贫穷之间的联系,必须开始评估政府对扶贫再分配的承诺(而不是受制于既得精英利益集团的政策)。     

Economic Inequality,Relative Power,and Religiosity*

Objective. What effect does the extent of economic inequality within a country have on the religiosity of the people who live there? As inequality increases, does religion serve primarily as a source of comfort for the deprived and impoverished or as a tool of social control for the rich and powerful? Methods. This article examines these questions with two complementary analyses of inequality and religiosity: a multilevel analysis of countries around the world over two decades and a time‐series analysis of the United States over a half‐century. Results. Economic inequality has a strong positive effect on the religiosity of all members of a society regardless of income. Conclusions. These results support relative power theory, which maintains that greater inequality yields more religiosity by increasing the degree to which wealthy people are attracted to religion and have the power to shape the attitudes and beliefs of those with fewer means.     

A comparison of two programmes for victims of child sexual abuse: a treatment outcome study

This study aimed to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of individual therapy and combined individual and group therapy in the treatment of the psychological sequelae of child sexual abuse. The Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL), the Youth Self Report form (YSR), the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) were administered before treatment and 6 months later to a group of 20 young people who participated in individual therapy (IT) programmes and to a group of 18 young people who participated in programmes that involved combined individual and group therapy (IGT). For both types of programmes, statistically significant improvement occurred on the following scales: the total problems, internalizing problems, externalizing problems, withdrawn, somatic complaints, anxious/depressed, social problems, attention problems and aggressive behaviour problems CBCL scales; the total depression, interpersonal problems and anhedonia CDI scales; and the depression and anger TSCC scales. The only scale for which one therapy programme led to greater improvement than another was the CDI ineffectiveness scale. The IGT programme led to a reduction in the mean CDI ineffectiveness score, whereas a slight increase in the mean ineffectiveness score occurred in the IT group. There were no significant differences in the rates of clinically significant improvement associated with the two treatments and no major differences between cases who improved and those that did not improve over the course of therapy. From this study, it may be concluded that after 6 months, individual therapy and combined individual and group therapy were equally effective in the treatment of the psychological sequelae of child sexual abuse. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conflicting identities: white racial formation among Mennonites, 1960–1985

In this essay, I argue that rather than correlating white identity and whiteness studies first with invisibility, power and privilege, white identity is more accurately correlated with overt conflict and crisis. Moreover, the study of white racial formation in one US-based but internationally focused religious organization between 1960 and 1985 also suggests that white identity is a conflict that results in power and privilege but that the power and privilege do not define the identity itself.