1987: Volume 18
Volume 18 Number 4 October 1987
Edited by: Hugh Roberts
the articles which make up this issue of the IDS Bulletin. They come from different sources and express variety of viewpoints. Four of them (Fontaine,Booth, Harriss and Manor) were presented as papers to a workshop on 'The Developmental State in Retreat' held at IDS on 30 June-! July, 1987. Mick Moore's article is a critical rejoinder to the debate on the state in Africa which was published in the January 1986 issue of this journal. Gordon White's article could be grouped with the first four since, while it was not presented at the workshop, it too deals with the 'retreat of the state', albeit in the highly specific Chinese context. Roberts's article, in contrast, represents a somewhat isolated, if not eccentric, approach to understanding the peculiar experience of economic policy reorientation in contemporary Algeria.
Volume 18 Number 3 July 1987
Edited by: Gordon White
We are currently witnessing a global process of economic restructuring in both North and South, East and West. Though country contexts may differ, there is one strikingly common element: the criticism of statist modes of development and provision and the move towards greater use of market mechanisms in the delivery of goods and services.
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.
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.
1986: Volume 17
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.
