1986: Volume 17
Volume 17 Number 1 January 1986
Edited by: Theo Mars and Gordon White
This Bulletin issue is based on the premise that policy discussions about the current 'crisis' in African agriculture will not prove useful unless they take into account the political and organisational factors which shape the capacity of states to define and deliver policies. We wish to investigate the hypothesis that many of Africa's economic failures have political foundations, and that the economic crisis is fed by and feeds a political crisis in the developmental role of African states. We focus on agriculture because the human problems it poses are the most urgent and since it lies at the roots of both crises.
Volume 17 Number 2 May 1986
Edited by: Michael Lipton
Despite their diverse origins - and despite the deliberate inclusion of one outspokenly sceptical view of aid - these eleven papers imply clear conclusions about aid-effectiveness. 1. Most aid raises growth and/or reduces poverty (Section II). 2. A disturbingly large, possibly rising, proportion does neither. 3. Partly, this is because much aid serves mostly donor interests. 4. Partly, it is because of inappropriate recipient policies (Section III). 5. Donors' interests impede their, and recipients', efforts to improve recipients' policies. 6. Each donor to, and each ministry in, a recipient country is imprisoned in a dilemma. By pursuing self-interested policies, it often harms aid-effectiveness in that country (for a//donors and ministries). By avoiding them, it may lose out to less scrupulous donors and ministries. 'Coordination' is not a magic solution (Section IV). 7. Macroeconomic conditions - unlike sector dialogues - seldom work, but may be implicit in a shift from project to programme aid. 8. That shift, and the associated aid shift to Africa, require better institutional and manpower aid, to maintain adequate effectiveness of other aid (Section V). 9. Many factors - the limitations of conditionality; the record of antipoverty aid; the record of inefficiency, inequality, and arguably near-scandal, in aid allocation among recipients - suggest that major country reallocations are the key to increased aid-effectiveness
Volume 17 Number 3 July 1986
Edited by: Richard Longhurst
Rural poverty in developing tropical countries has a seasonal dimension. There is a simultaneous prevalence of sickness, malnutrition, indebtedness, hard work, discomfort and poor food availability at certain times of the year, usually during the rains.
This period before harvest - 'the hungry season' - is one of considerable stress for rural people, exacerbating their poverty. Poor people are less able to cope with this regular period of stress than rich people, who can usually exploit it to their benefit. The difficulties and stress experienced on a seasonal basis are, of course,anticipated by poor rural people: they are a regular event to be navigated each year.
There are different ways of coping - of moving resources around - in ways that relate to productive activities and social and demographic mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are described in this Bulletin. In calling this issue 'Seasonality and Poverty', the focus is on how seasonality affects poor people, how they respond to it and how development can assist them in the face of these stresses.
1987: Volume 18
Volume 18 Number 1 January 1987
Edited by: Martin Greeley
Energy studies have been an expanding component or sub-category of Development Studies for well over a decade now; this Bulletin explores their treatment of the interactions between energy and poverty. Any description of 'energy studies' would have to grapple with the extreme heterogeneity of the material so defined and, in large part, this is because there are two quite distinct sets of literature - responses to two types of energy crises. These are, of course, the oil price crisis and the biomass crisis. The literature on the first emphasises international trade and balance of payments issues and the linkages to domestic sectors; it is macroeconomic in its policy focus and on the technological front is concerned with conservation of fossil fuels. In stark contrast, the biomass crisis is principally associated with rural domestic woodfuel use; it is typically concerned with analysis at the level of the household and, very often, specifically with the impact of the woodfuel crisis upon poor rural women. Its policy concern is informed by consideration of rural political economy, and its technological front is concerned with the conservation of biomass.
Volume 18 Number 2 May 1987
Edited by: Susanna Davies, Charles Kemp and Angela Little
Historically, plantations can be traced back to the Portuguese Canary Islands in the 15th century. Only later, in the 16th and 17th centuries, were they set up in the New World [Wolf 1982]. Here they produced mainly sugar and cotton for the European market and were based on the use of African slave labour. Subsequently and despite the abolition of slavery in the early 19th century, they spread under the aegis of an expanding western imperialism into parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania. A wider range of food, beverages and other industrial staples were cultivated for the consumer markets and factories of the West. To this day, plantations remain an important form of agricultural production in many parts of the world. However, fundamental changes in global economics and politics within the last few decades have substantially redefined the relationship between developed and less developed countries on the one hand and between capital and labour on the other. This has profound implications for the future development of plantations.
