Confronting or Complementing? A Case Study on NGO–State Relations from Kerala, India

NGOs have, of late, found some of their traditional domains, such as provision of micro-credit and participatory development, coinciding with or being taken away by the state. How do they position themselves and retain relevance vis-a-vis the state in the changed scenario? Tracing the trajectory of interventions of a local NGO in Kerala, India, this article shows that NGOs exhibit ‘multiple identities’—selective collaboration, gap-filling and posing alternatives—in the process of engagement with the state. The ‘strategizing’ of such identities may hold the key to their relevance vis-a-vis the state.     

Staying straight: lessons from ex-offenders

This paper reports findings of a qualitative study of the experiences of ex-offenders. Incarceration and release from prison create a particularly challenging set of experiences for individuals and families seeking help with social, emotional, and psychological problems, and present significant barriers to understanding for the practitioner. The broad question posed was: What is the experience of ex-offenders? We presumed that the provision of effective treatment services for ex-offenders would require that they first be empathically understood in depth and in all their complexity. Intensive study of twelve subjects produced findings illustrating their unique experience of external and internal challenges. Practice implications are discussed with the aim of helping clinicians understand and serve this underserved and vulnerable population more effectively.     

SouthNorth Materials Flow: History and Environmental Repercussions

The current literature on the relationship between income and environmental quality is dominated by a notion of an inverted 'U'-shaped curve between both variables. However, a key variable is missing in this kind of study: the extra-territorial environmental effects of national economies. International trade of raw materials may be a good proxy to estimate these 'environmental load displacement' effects. The present work tries to elucidate some patterns in the relationship between economic growth in affluent countries and the quantity of non-renewable materials imported from less-developed countries. The results indicate that a general de-linking between economic growth and Southern resource consumption is not occurring in the industrialized world. Thus, developed countries may be increasingly displacing the environmental costs associated with material throughput to poorer regions of the world.