The Global Development Project Contested: The Local Politics of the PRSP Process in Malawi

Development, in an age of globalizations, has indeed become a global project. However, this project remains contested and contestable. While much attention has been given to this contestation at a macro-policy level, the dynamics of such contestations on the ground remain less studied. Noting that development projects, policies and programs are themselves products of power relations and social struggles, this paper focuses on the dynamics of these relations and struggles in relation to the dissemination of the global development project in Malawi. Drawing from the experiences and fractious journey from 2000 to 2006 of the broad-based civil society network involved in Malawi's ongoing PRSP process, the paper shows how local actors draw creatively on globalized discourses of participation and representation to contest and confound the objectives of the elites, thereby complicating the channels through which the global development project is promulgated.

El desarrollo en la era de la globalización, se ha convertido en un proyecto global. Sin embargo, este proyecto sigue siendo controvertido y cuestionable. Mientras que se le ha dado mucha importancia a esta controversia a nivel macro-político, la dinámica de estos cuestionamientos es menos estudiada a nivel local. Dado que los proyectos, programas y políticas de desarrollo son a su vez el producto de las relaciones de poder y de las luchas sociales, este artículo se centra en la dinámica de estas relaciones y de estas luchas en la diseminación del proyecto global de desarrollo en Malawi. Con base en la experiencia y las dificultades que surgieron entre el 2000 al 2006, entre el proceso PRSP de Malawi y la amplia red de la sociedad civil involucrada en él, el artículo demuestra cómo, de manera creativa, los actores locales, basándose en el discurso globalizado de la participación y representación, protestan y confunden los objetivos de las élites, complicando los canales a través de los cuales se divulga el proyecto de desarrollo global.

在全球化时代,发展问题已然成为一个全球性项目。然而,对这一项目仍然存有争议。不过争议主要集中在宏观政策层面上,对争议在草根层面上的动力学研究不足。本文注意到发展项目、政策和方案本身是权力关系和社会斗争的产物,着重研究涉及马拉维全球发展项目传播过程中这些关系和斗争之间的动态关系。从基础广泛的市民社会网络从2000年到2006年的经验和反抗历程来看（该网络参与了马拉维正在进行的减贫战略文件进程）,本文表明了当地行为者是如何创造性地利用参与权和代表权等全球性话语,来竞争和挫败精英的目标,从而使得全球发展项目的传播路径复杂化。     

Organising time: contraction,synthesis, contemplation

In his exploration of ‘repetition for itself’, Deleuze (2004a), beginning with Hume, invites us to see imagination, prior to understanding, as site of contraction of instants and place of synthesis of time, through contemplation. But synthesis and contemplation here are not the deliberative work of the mind. Rather, they occur ‘in the mind… prior to all memory and all reflection’ (91, original emphasis). Working through Bergson and Butler, Deleuze moves us up and down different levels of his contraction–synthesis–contemplation triptych in dizzying whorls of mutuality of the active and passive. Down to matter, through its contemplation by the ordering of organism; up to memory and its potential for reflection and representation; down again (or is that up?) to reminiscence. In the process time slips. not by but in and out, as variously both condition and agent. Kant and Descartes are contrasted, identity put in its place, the difference between repetitions of the eternal return celebrated. Kierkegaard, Freud, Lacan, Klein and Borges circle this difference, both nurturing and threatening it as they invite in and expel the suffocations of the same. Proust, Joyce, Caroll and, finally, Plato’s Socratic cipher cross the stage of the page as imitation and resemblance transform into simulacra and ‘give… way to repetition’ (156). It is a text about time and organisation and difference worth repeating. In this paper, such repetition is enacted through a close reading of the temporal in Michel Tournier’s Friday or the other island: a repetition of Defoe (his precursors and his political economic apologist followers) through which time, organisation and their sympathies are revealed in the re‐writing of a ‘world without others’ (Deleuze 2004b Deleuze, G. 2004b. “Michel Tournier and the world without others”. In The logic of sense, Edited by: Deleuze, G., Lester, M., Stivale, C. and Boundas, C.V. 341–59. London: Continuum.  [Google Scholar]).     

Agenda Setting and African American Women in State Legislatures

SUMMARY

Political scientists have, in recent years, uncovered substantial evidence that political representation in the United States is influenced by gender and race, yet generally examine the effects of gender entirely separate from the effects of race. In this article, we explore the agenda-setting behavior of African American female state legislators. We find that African American women do respond to both women's interests and black interests. We also find that while the sponsorship of black interest measures by African American women (or other legislators) is not influenced by the proportion of African Americans within the chamber, African American women are less likely to sponsor women's interest measures in legislatures with a relatively high proportion of women present. We conclude that because of their focus on multiple groups, black women occupy a unique place in representation, and that their choices are influenced by the institutional context in which they work.     

Social representations of history,wars and politics in Latin America,Europe and Africa

Abstract

This study analyzes how people perceive world history on three continents: Latin America, Europe and Africa. A total of 1179 university students form Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde were asked to evaluate world events and leaders in terms of their valence and importance. The results demonstrated that social representations of history show a Euro/North American-centric, long-term positive evaluation, recency, and socio-centric bias. Euro/North American-centric events and leaders were found to be rated as more important and were more positively perceived in general. Distant political events, like French or American Revolution, were considered to be more positive than XX century similar events, which supports the long-term positive evaluation bias hypothesis. The hypothesis on recency bias was partially substantiated. Confirming the existence of such bias, World War II was rated as more important than the previous XX century wars and revolutions. Socio-centric bias also received partial support. African participants rated Mandela as a more important leader than other participants did. Latin Americans rated Che Guevara less positively, which suggests that some leaders are generally idealized icons, not based on group belongingness. However, results did not bring support to the centrality of war hypothesis. Wars were indeed negatively evaluated and World War II was rated as an important and negative event. Nevertheless, war- and politics-related events were not perceived as more important than the Industrial Revolution, suggesting that people appraise the importance of long-term socioeconomic factors of history when responding to close-ended quantitative measures (vs. open-ended salience measures). Results are discussed in the framework of social representations of history.     

“文革”时期版画图式探析

"文革"时期的版画受特殊政治因素的影响,同时也因着其自身的特质因素,形成特定的图示语言。对"文革"版画的红海洋、漫画化、高大全、文字标题四个方面的图示特征进行了研究与探讨。     

直觉与表现:梁宗岱的审美创造论

梁宗岱是现代文学京派文学批评的重镇.1944年,他创作了长篇美学论文<试论直觉与表现>.在此文中,他批判了克罗齐的"直觉即表现"说,并从自己的诗歌创作和审美批评出发,将审美创造过程分为受感、酝酿、结晶和表现四个阶段.这四个阶段深入地揭示了审美期待的表现、审美意象的生成、审美体验的回味及审美传达的整体过程,深化了中国现代美学在审美创造论方面的研究,其理论创新思维对当代美学的建设亦具有重要的启发意义.     

New methodology: Measuring racial or ethnic disparities in child welfare

Understanding the disparate treatment of African American children in the child welfare system requires consideration of the dynamics at a community level and the state level. Looking across a state allows one to target policies and practices to areas within the state that are most in need. This paper argues for a new method of assessing disparate treatment in child welfare that takes into consideration the racial or ethnic makeup of the community in conjunction with the racial or ethnic makeup across the state. This paper uses decision based enumeration which helps to pinpoint decisions where disparities are the greatest, and helps target decisions that most impact disparate treatment. This paper utilizes a methodology that is both accessible to state and county child welfare administrators and utilizes data that is readily available to child welfare policy makers and administrators. Using data from Illinois to illustrate this methodology, this paper highlights the regions within the state where limited resources may be targeted to address disproportionate representation and disparate treatment in Illinois' child welfare system.     

Cute Masquerade and the Pimping of Japan

This essay will consider gendered aspects of Cool Japan ideology as found in government‐sponsored texts and imagery, as well as in other international arenas. Although scholars have recently offered critiques of Cool Japan as a form of nationalistic nation branding, uses of an objectified femininity have rarely been included in these analyses. By displacing female innovations and creativity in cultural production to the margins, Cool Japan reifies and officially promotes male geek culture. We find general dematerialization of the producers of Cool Japan ideology, which in turn becomes characterized as creative, quirky, edgy, and benign, thus masking the way Cool Japan has been produced, critiqued, imagined and endorsed primarily by male elites in Japan and internationally. This discussion suggests that Cool Japan's otaku ethos does not include women and girls who fail to conform to a narrow model of cute femininity, thus maintaining and promoting structures of gender stratification. In addition, the global spread and government exploitation of uncomplicated cuteness (kawaii) often confounds a flat understanding of the aesthetic with a gendered perspective and its expressions in girl culture. Women and girls are contained in Cool Japan ideology, and are not usually represented as shaping, resisting, creating or critiquing Japanese popular culture.     

The politics of indigeneity,identity and representation in literature from north Australia's Gulf Country

The Aboriginal author Alexis Wright's novels Plains of Promise, Carpentaria and The Swan Book have prompted scholars and critics towards enthusiastic comparisons with the ground-breaking work of a range of international writers. With her novels all set partly in the remote Gulf Country of north Australia, Wright's work arises from intellectual and political commitment to Indigenous people, and aspires to the idea of a distinctive ‘Aboriginal sovereignty of the mind’. Much less known yet, we argue, of complementary significance, are a broader suite of writings about this region, and we address representations of cultural identity and connections to place by authors with both Aboriginal and European ancestries. With our interest in a deliberately cross-disciplinary methodology, ethnographic research complements our focus on texts to facilitate analysis of diverse identities in a setting produced through both the resilience of Indigenous cultural traditions and the legacies of European settler colonialism. We argue that the range of authorial representations arising from this sector of Australian society provides a focus for understanding shared and contested postcolonial imaginaries about place, culture and identity.     

Epistemic Communities: Description and Hierarchic Categorization

ABSTRACT

Understanding the structure of knowledge communities, and particularly the organization of “epistemic communities”, or groups of agents sharing common knowledge concerns, is usually based on either social relationships or semantic similarity. To link social and semantic aspects, a formal framework based on Galois lattices (or concept lattices) categorizes epistemic communities in an automated and hierarchically structured way. The process rebuilds a whole community structure and taxonomy, and notably fields and subfields gathering a certain proportion of agents. It is applied to empirical data to exhibit these alleged structural properties, successfully compared with categories given by domain experts.