Diaspora and Development? London‐based Nigerian Organisations and the Transnational Politics of Socio‐economic Status and Gender

Diaspora organisations are increasingly being lauded as important actors in the development of their communities and countries of origin. Focusing on London‐based Nigerian organisations and their interventions in Nigeria, this article assesses the particular claims that diaspora organisations reach, benefit and ‘empower’ women and ‘the poor’ at ‘home’. It argues that, while many London‐based Nigerian organisations do connect with and support these groups, they often do so in ways that reinforce rather than transform established gender relations and socio‐economic inequalities. If international agencies are to support the progressive potential of the organised diaspora, it will be necessary to acknowledge the alternative and socially mediated ways in which development might be imagined and enacted both in diaspora and at ‘home’.     

Developing integrated rural tourism: Actor practices in the English/Welsh border

This paper examines community attitudes and distinctive practices that shape local responses to integrated rural tourism (IRT) development in the lagging rural region of the English/Welsh border area. The focus is on how actors acquire attributes as a result of their relations with others and how these assumed identities are performed in, by and through these relations. The location of this lagging rural region is particularly interesting as it is divided by a national boundary which not only impacts on administrative, planning and tourism marketing structures, but also contributes to the construction of fluid place identities (Murdoch and Pratt, 1997 describe ‘fluid space’ as having ‘no fixed points of reference, no privileged points of view, simply a swirling, viscous, partially stable, partially enclosed movement of social entities’ (p. 64) that may be described as Welsh, English, or a mixture of both. In order to reflect the variety of opinions and concerns in the region, responses were drawn from different actor-groups: local businesses, resource controllers, gatekeepers, institutions, community members and visitors. Results indicate that, while most were in favour of a greater integration of tourism with actors' aspirations, local resources and activities, there was an element of longing for a deux ex machina to put in place real change in the region.     

Impact assessment of the EU structural funds to support regional economic development in rural areas of Germany

Rural areas in Germany have been subject to major structural changes in agriculture and other economic sectors due to the combined effects of CAP reform and socio-economic adjustments resulting from German reunification. By comparing the different approaches to assistance for rural economic development in the two groups of rural areas the paper will focus on the following topics: analysis of initial conditions with respect to agricultural, demographic and economic indicators; design of the delivery system for financial assistance with regard to strategic aims and the policy mix of the programmes; organizational and operational aspects of the required system for monitoring and evaluation of operations according to EU regulations; indication of intended and immediate impacts of some measures, e.g. changing conditions on the labour markets in different types of rural areas. Conclusions will be drawn from comparison of observable changes based on experiences with impact assessment and evaluation of support schemes in the two different types of rural areas during the current phase 1989–1993 with a view to the next phase of the reform of the EU structural funds 1994–1999.     

Intergenerational Support and Depression Among Elders in Rural China: Do Daughters‐In‐Law Matter?

This study examined the influence of intergenerational assistance with household chores and personal care from sons, daughters, and daughters‐in‐law on the depressive symptoms of older adults in rural China. The sample derived from rural Anhui Province, a region with a strong hierarchy of support preferences that leads with sons and their families. We used data from a random sample of 1,281 adults aged 60 and over, who were interviewed in 2001 and 2003. Analyses indicated that depressive symptoms were usually reduced by assistance from daughters‐in‐law and increased sometimes when such support was from sons. These relationships held most strongly when mothers coresided with their daughters‐in‐law. This research suggests that the benefits of intergenerational support are conditional on culturally prescribed expectations.     

Re-conceptualising rural resources as countryside capital: The case of rural tourism

Commentators tend to agree that the rural resource is becoming increasingly subject to pressures arising from an ever wider range of economic, social, political and environmental influences. This paper focuses on the case of rural tourism in illustrating the advantages of adopting a sustainable development approach to identifying suitable policies and strategic action plans to assist in addressing these increasingly complex challenges. The central proposition is that much can be achieved in raising the profile of rural tourism and the nature of its interdependence with rural resources by re-conceptualising the rural resource as a kind of ‘capital asset’ of the rural tourism industry. Drawing on recent thinking by ecological economists, an approach based on the concept of the constant capital rule is set out. The paper then outlines some of the benefits of re-casting the rural resource as ‘countryside capital’, using two case-study vignettes by way of illustration. A major conclusion is that re-conceptualising the rural resource as countryside capital provides a more holistic and integrated understanding of the rural tourism production system, which will be required if rural communities are to capture more effectively the potential benefits rural tourism has to offer them. This, in turn, enables a much clearer articulation of the rationale for public-, private- and voluntary-sector investment in rural resources to be made.     

建设国际旅游岛背景下海南城乡一体化模式探讨

国际旅游岛是海南发展的大战略。当前,在建设国际旅游岛的背景下,需要整合城乡旅游资源,实现城乡协调发展。本文分析了海南城乡一体化的现实需求和国际旅游岛框架下推进城乡一体化的突出矛盾,在此基础上,提出把经济一体化、社会一体化、行政一体化作为推进海南城乡一体化的具体思路。     

Report of the President of the Australian Association of Social Workers

Currently there appears to be a spate of world, national and local disasters. Always there is concern, not only about how to manage the immediate emergency, but how to facilitate the long-term recovery period. This paper presents a six-months perspective of a particular disaster and recovery period, based on the experiences of a recovery worker. It emphasises the importance of routine training for workers in organisations who may be called upon in a disaster. It notes that because of the unique situation in every disaster, decision making on recovery structures and processes needs to remain invested in the local community, with assistance from external resources. It makes other suggestions for consideration in the continuing building of recovery theory. Finally, it underlines the importance of the social work role in most aspects of disaster recovery work, and the need to prepare not only undergraduates, but professional workers, for this role.     

An Inside‐Out Marketing Strategy for Innovation among Human Service Nonprofits in South Korea

In the increasingly competitive nonprofit market, innovation may be the only choice for survival among human service nonprofits. Considering the importance of service encounters and high dependence on human resources, internal marketing has potential as a management strategy to improve innovative activities in human service nonprofits. To examine the effect of internal marketing strategy focusing on employees, this study investigates the mediating effect of customer orientation in the pathway from internal marketing to innovation. The findings from 258 community‐based social service centers in South Korea support the positive impact of internal marketing on customer orientation and innovation, although the significant evidence for the mediating effect of customer orientation is not found. The current study suggests implications for practice and future research.     

Breaking New Ground: Diverse Routes to College in Rural America*

Abstract Rural communities pose a challenge to status attainment models that explain children's educational attainment primarily in terms of the parents' education and professional status. Alongside the rural professional class are farmers of similar social status but with less education and other families that lack the status and resources of both professional‐class and farm families. The prolonged agricultural crisis in the American Midwest has turned rural youths toward college and has raised questions about the educational value of resources provided by farm parents and other rural parents. We classified youths from the Iowa Youth and Families Project into three SES groups: professional‐managerial, farm, and lower‐status. We compared these groups on resource levels and on the extent to which the resources predicted enrollment in a four‐year college one year after high school. Findings indicated three distinct routes to four‐year college. Professional‐managerial youths tended to follow the traditional path from parents' educational and other resources and support to their own academic involvement and aspirations for higher education. Successful farm youths, in lieu of parental educational advantages, drew on parents' community ties. Resourceful lower‐status youths, in the absence of family background advantages, generated educational attainment through early educational ambition and varied community and school involvements. Even relatively low levels of involvement were valuable to these youths' educational attainment.     

Support Network Connectedness in the Lives of Community-Dwelling Rural Elders and Their Families

Rural elders face challenges when accessing assistance from family, neighbors, and paid helpers. This support is essential to allow them to remain community dwelling as they develop physical challenges that limit their ability to care for themselves. This qualitative study followed a group of 16 rural elders with physical limitations for 1 year. In-depth interviews were conducted with them and eight members of their support networks, including five family members, to explore how rural older adults create and maintain support networks that allow them to remain community dwelling despite physical challenges that limit their self-care. The research question is, “How do members of the support network connect with each other to maximize the effectiveness of the network?” Family members coordinated assistance to maximize the abilities and availability of various network members. In addition, family members worked together with other family members, neighbors, and paid helpers to assist the elder. These strategies enhanced the ability of the network to assist the rural elder and also lessened the burden of care by dispersing it among network members.     

Financing Empowerment? How Foreign Aid to Southern Ngos and Social Movements Undermines Grass‐Roots Mobilization

The article examines why many foreign‐funded, resource‐ rich movements in developing countries have been unable to produce the massive mobilization found in other successful social movements with access to fewer resources. While foreign ties have brought substantial benefits to local movements, many such social movements have limited grass‐roots support. The issue of external aid is at the core of an emerging research agenda in the fields of international relations, social movements, and development studies that focuses on the relationship between participatory development, democratization, and the process of transnationalization. Drawing on research work from these different fields, the article argues that by making constituency support irrelevant, internationalization through financial assistance has transformed conflict movements into consensus movements that follow an institutional, resource‐dependent, non‐conflictual strategy with no deep roots in the community. The article specifies the mechanisms by which foreign funding affects grass‐roots mobilization. These arguments are examined with respect to evidence from around the world.     

When Battlefields become Marketplaces: Migrant Workers and the Role of Civil Society and NGO Activism in Thailand

The vast majority of migrant workers in Thailand are employed predominantly in low‐paying occupations commonly described as “3‐D jobs” (dangerous, dirty, and difficult). Currently, there are nearly two million documented and undocumented migrant workers, mostly from neighbouring Burma, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Cambodia, employed in various industries, including domestic service, throughout the country. While over half a million migrants are officially registered to work in the country, both documented and undocumented migrant workers remain unprotected primarily due to the lack of concrete measures to monitor, implement and enforce laws regarding working and living conditions. Regardless of where they are employed, migrant workers face common problems: low wages; harmful working conditions, poor living conditions; discrimination and harassment, the threat of arrest and deportation; and lack of access to basic resources such as medical care and legal assistance. Based on preliminary research conducted in the summer of 2005, this article looks at the situation of migrant factory and domestic workers in Thailand and explores the ways in which local activists, NGOs, community‐based organisations, and international bodies have been looking to assist and protect migrant workers. Successful migrant workers’ struggles and ongoing efforts of mobilization have been made possible with the help of these support groups, and raise the possibility that union and NGO activity have the potential to improve the situation of migrants in Thailand. This also raises the question of whether advocacy groups should be acting in lieu of the state rather than alongside the state, especially when it appears that they are fulfilling their civic duty as enforcer and monitor of migrant workers’ problems.     

Local Support Organisations: An Exit Strategy for Rural Development NGOs

Rural development NGOs are often trapped into indefinite support for the grassroots organisations they help to create. This article explores an exit strategy whereby such NGOs help to establish multi‐tier apex organisations of, rather than for, the people, that are able to replace them. This enables them to move on to other communities or to address their resource constraints as donor funding becomes tighter. Drawing on fieldwork, it argues that a gradual withdrawal and building on community social capital are more likely to lead to the success of such a strategy.     

Spatial Inequality in Access to Food Assistance in Indiana

This project is an analysis of the spatial inequality that exists between rural and urban areas in access to food assistance agencies. I gathered the population of all food pantries and soup kitchens in 24 sample counties in Indiana and mapped the location of these agencies using geographic information system analysis. Using the population center of the census block group, I measured the distance from the population center to the nearest food assistance agency. If the closest agency was more than a mile away, the census block group was considered a food assistance desert, a concept I created that draws on the food desert measurement. I found that rural high‐poverty counties in my sample are the most likely to contain census block groups that are food assistance deserts, and urban high‐poverty counties are the least likely to contain food assistance deserts. From these findings, I determine that access to assistance agencies needs to be increased in rural areas, especially rural areas with high‐poverty rates.     

Kin Expectations and Kin Support Among Rural Older Adults1

Abstract Relatively little attention has been given to the kin ties of rural older adults. To partially fill this gap in knowledge, kin selection theory was used as a conceptual framework to explore two questions on the extent rural older adults expect and receive assistance from the range of affinal and consanquineal kin and the factors that best explain the current level of support provided by each of the kin types in the family system. Analysis was based on interviews conducted in 1985–1986 with 368 rural older adults in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Expectations of kin assistance were much higher than the actual level of support that was provided. Both expected and actual levels of assistance declined as the level of consanguineous kin and associated affinal ties decreased. The level of support provided by kin groups was mainly a function of geographic distance to kin and norms of obligation.     

Digital Inequality and Place: The Effects of Technological Diffusion on Internet Proficiency and Usage across Rural,Suburban, and Urban Counties*

Recently researchers have made efforts to reconceptualize digital inequality into discrete levels. These levels reflect access to and diffusion of technologies, proficiency in Internet usage, and propensity to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by information and communication technologies for assistance in daily life. We assess the utility of this approach for studying digital inequality across rural, suburban, and urban counties. Based on data from a 2005 nationally representative random sample telephone survey of 2,185 adults, the results provide mixed support for using this approach to studying digital inequality. In particular, we find that rural residents use Internet technologies less for assistance in helping with economics and other daily activities when compared with individuals from suburban and urban areas; however, our results suggest that this relationship is the product of the slow diffusion of advanced technologies to rural areas. The implications of these findings for understanding this under‐theorized form of inequality are discussed, and we make contributions to this literature through empirically addressing issues of digital capital.     

Rural tourism and livelihood strategies in Romania

Substantial changes in the Romanian countryside accompanied by the need for more robust economic activities have caused some families to turn to tourism as an economic diversification strategy. A qualitative study of selected rural tourism entrepreneurs indicates positive experiences, both economically and in other aspects of their lives. However, the development of rural tourism is highly uneven spatially and the Romanian Government should act more incisively to support families establishing guesthouses.     

Love thy neighbour: Social identity and public support for humanitarian aid

Humanitarian aid can be contentious. Should finite national resources be sacrificed to serve the needy abroad? Social identity theorists argue that identification with a superordinate group, in this case the larger world community, should increase individual support for policies such as international humanitarian assistance. However, individuals can simultaneously associate with multiple identities. How does the combination of world and national identities affect support for humanitarian assistance? Using cross‐national survey data, we find evidence that support for international humanitarian aid is highest among those with a strong world identity and weak national identity relative to other identity combinations, though even those with a strong world identity and strong national identity can be supportive of aid.     

From Urban to Rural: Lessons for Microfinance from Argentina

The recent success of microfinance for the urban self‐employed contrasts with decades of failure on the part of public development banks for small farmers. This article describes the ways in which rural microfinance organisations have tried to adapt the lessons of urban microfinance to manage the risks and control the costs of the supply of financial services in rural areas. It then asks whether the lessons of urban microfinance are likely to apply in the poorest rural areas of Argentina. The article concludes that microfinance is unlikely to improve access to small loans and small deposits for many of the rural poor in Argentina; distances are too great, farmers too specialised, and wages too high. Improved access depends not on targeting loans by government decree but on strengthening institutions that support financial markets.     

上海为农服务合作社的发展新路初探

上海为农服务合作社应根据上海经济发展的需要,结合各自的实际走发展新路。农业生产合作社应循专业合作社的道路加快发展,区（县）政府应积极帮助并给以政策扶持;信用合作社已改制为农村商业银行,应循商业银行的发展规律,对外拓展、对内做实,同时继续做好为农户和中小企业的服务;供销合作社则应在政府的有力支持下,尽快推进社企分离,下力气把社属企业做大、做强,从而在反哺农村时形成更有效的经济支撑。