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Volume 50 - March 2012

Contents

Page 2 of 4

Research Article

  • Market institutions benefiting smallholders in contemporary Meru, Tanzania*

  • Ellen Hillbom
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 November 2012, pp. 657-679

  • Smallholders in developing countries can potentially benefit from access to local, regional, national and international markets as they intermediate between rural and urban demand for agricultural products and smallholder supply. This study investigates how smallholders in Meru, Tanzania make use of the various marketing channels that are available to them, and argues that the variety of potential marketing channels and easily accessible market information enables smallholders to weigh advantages and disadvantages with varying market opportunities and form rational decisions. It presents a case where producers, consumers and traders are the principal agents in building market institutions through what should be characterised as endogenous processes. As these market institutions correspond to smallholders' needs, they may be able to play an important role in the overall process of agricultural development in the area.

  • The grabbed state: lawyers, politics and public land in Kenya*

  • Ambreena Manji
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    14 September 2012, pp. 467-492

  • In 2002, Kenya's new National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) undertook to investigate and ensure the recovery of all public lands illegally allocated by the outgoing government. A Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land, chaired by the lawyer Paul Ndung'u, was appointed. The commission's report sets out the illegal land awards made to powerful individuals and families, provides important information about the mechanisms by which public land was misallocated, and shows how the doctrine that public land should be administered and allocated ‘in the public interest’ was consistently perverted. This paper explores what the Ndung'u report tells us about the role of the legal profession in the illegal and irregular misallocation of public land. It makes clear that the legal profession, far from upholding the rule of law, has played a central role in land corruption, using its professional skills and networks to accumulate personal wealth for itself and others. This stands in contrast to the role of the legal profession in promoting good governance and the rule of law envisaged by donors of international development aid. This paper focuses on ‘local’ land grabbing, and argues that the ‘global land grab’ or ‘investor rush’ needs to be understood alongside local manifestations of land privatisation.

  • Cultural translation of mobile telephones: mediation of strained communication among Ethiopian married couples*

  • Setargew Kenaw
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 February 2012, pp. 131-155

  • Primarily aiming to highlight and exemplify how a technology can be socially and culturally appropriated, this article draws attention to the role of mobile phone communication in straining relations between married couples on the basis of material from Ethiopia. The findings show that mobile phone-mediated interactions between spouses are filled with monitoring and controlling activities, expressed in such forms as checking call logs, text messages, making casual calls, and switching-off phones, leading to highly strained relations that may result in the marital relation as a whole falling apart. These findings show how a technology can actively shape or influence interactions, and reveal interactions that might otherwise be concealed.

  • Executive dominance and the politics of quota representation in Uganda*

  • Ragnhild L. Muriaas, Vibeke Wang
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    18 May 2012, pp. 309-338

  • Quota policies securing the presence of marginalised groups in decision-making bodies have been adopted across sub-Saharan Africa. These policies are frequently understood through the lens of a pluralist perspective. This stance is not appropriate in African regimes characterised by executive dominance. Through a qualitative study of official documents, newspaper articles and interviews conducted during two field studies in Uganda in 2005 and 2010, this article shows how the understanding of quota policies in Africa may gain from the corporatist debate on interest representation. The analysis reveals that the incumbent National Resistance Movement has employed the reserved seat policy strategically to maintain its dominant position, and that strategies for using the quota system have evolved gradually over time in response to key political events, and the interests of group activists at the local and national levels with vested interests in its survival.

Review Article

Reviews

Research Article

  • Free market economy, ‘developmental state’ and party-state hegemony in Ethiopia: the case of the ‘model farmers’

  • René Lefort
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 November 2012, pp. 681-706

  • Ethiopia's development strategy rests on the promotion of a market economy, driven by ‘new entrepreneurs’, both urban and rural, while, to bring it to ‘maturity’ and to compensate for its present ‘failures’, the resolute intervention of a ‘developmental state’ is essential. Simultaneously, the ruling party aims to sustain its political hegemony by enrolling massively among those at the top of the social pyramid, to which most of these ‘new entrepreneurs’ belong, so as to build its new constituency on them. In the rural areas (83% of the population), the merger of these two objectives leads to the mobilisation of the upper group of smallholder farmers, recruited both as ‘model farmers’ to become the engine for the growth, notably with the support of a massive public Agricultural Extension Programme, and also as members of the ruling party. However, the subordination of the regime's economic objectives to its political agenda undermines the implementation of its development strategy at the field level. This raises questions about the efficiency of the programme and the room left for entrepreneurship, even though this is a mainstay of the market economy that the regime sees as ‘vital’ for Ethiopia's ‘survival’ (Meles 2006).

  • Memorial politics: challenging the dominant party's narrative in Namibia *

  • Elke Zuern
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    14 September 2012, pp. 493-518

  • Greater international attention to human rights, particularly genocide, has offered activists opportunities to draw on transnational networks and norms. Many examples have been documented of the varying successes of domestic movement organisations employing international support. Much less attention has been paid to cases lacking significant organisations, but small groups and even individuals can draw attention to their demands if they effectively engage transnational interest. Genocide offers a particularly potent means of generating attention. Namibia is engaged in domestic debates over crimes committed by German forces over a century ago. In a country with no large opposition party and no significant social movement mobilisation, a number of relatively small groups of activists are indirectly challenging the power of the dominant party by correcting its one-sided narrative of the country's anti-colonial heroes. German efforts to respond to crimes committed in the past offer further opportunities for activists to draw attention to heroes and histories beyond those celebrated by the dominant party.

Review Article

Reviews

Review Article

Reviews

Page 2 of 4