2008: Volume 39
Volume 39 Number 6 November 2008
Edited by: Andrea Cornwall, Jasmine Gideon and Kalpana Wilson
Even the most devoted believers in the neoliberal paradigm will have had their convictions shaken recently, as the world’s markets have played havoc with their faith. For those who have long questioned the purported benefits of neoliberal economic policies and highlighted their injurious consequences, it comes as little surprise that this 'grab-bag of ideas' is in freefall.
The focus of this IDS Bulletin is particularly apposite at a time when much-cherished axioms are being re-inspected and where new possibilities and directions are so badly needed. Contributors add to a growing, vibrant debate about Gender and Development. This issue arises from a conference held at IDS in July 2007 in collaboration with Birkbeck College, under the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium, where participants reflected on the relationship between feminisms and neoliberalism, in the context of international development.
What emerges from many of these articles is a sense of unease with the extent to which G&D discourses have lent themselves to appropriation – and with what stories they tell about women and their assumed relationships with men and with each other. Revisioning feminist engagement calls for reflexivity, repositioning and canny appraisal of what it takes to make change happen. Challenging and transforming existing power relations involves empowerment and resistance, which may run directly counter to the neoliberal model. To reclaim agency and empowerment we need to reaffirm their liberating dimensions, reasserting their association with forms of collective action that involve possibilities of social transformation. The debates thrown up by this diverse and stimulating collection suggest that this process has already begun.
2009: Volume 40
Volume 40 Number 1 January 2009
Edited by: Joy Moncrieffe
This IDS Bulletin reflects, as the first in the 40th anniversary volume, on some of the core areas of research and policy advocacy that are central to IDS’ work: inequalities, poverty, power, social protection, transformational education, HIV/AIDS, gender and climate change. It is also forward-looking, discussing emerging work on the future of our children. The issue explores the question of intergenerational transmissions and whether and how states, societies, development actors and parents are building the conditions under which children can imagine and realise better futures.
The concept of IGTs could convey path dependence, but they are not necessarily negative or uni-directional; and children can be vibrant agents of social change. Articles discuss how patterns of poverty, inequalities, violence and other such problems for development are transmitted across generations, as well as the conditions under which children exercise ‘agency’. There is no assumption that agency is inherent and automatic; the authors agree that agency is also cultivated. Neither is there an assumption that agency is innately productive; rather, the articles illustrate its complexity in differing contexts.
They show how the power relations that emerge within certain environments influence children’s perceptions. Policymakers must do more to recognise the relational and subjective dimensions to vulnerabilities, poverty and inequalities in multiple dimensions; transformative approaches can provide a more comprehensive policy framework. This requires self-reflection on the part of development actors and the genuine inclusion of children, who should not be regarded as mere objects of policy but as persons capable of making purposive, productive choices and translating these into actions.
Volume 40 Number 2 March 2009
Edited by: Robin Luckham with Niagale Bagayoko, Lucia Dammert, Claudio Fuentes and Michael Solis
Wide gaps have opened between a vision of a prosperous and secure post-Cold War world and the realities of violent conflict and chronic poverty experienced by much of the world’s population. These gaps reflect failures of understanding, conflicts of interest, resource constraints, and poor implementation.
Security, like development, is seen as something the North delivers through its policy interventions and aid programmes, rather than as the product of changes in the developing South, reflecting the priorities and interests of those most at risk.
This IDS Bulletin aims to redress this imbalance. Re-thinking security demands innovative yet rigorous empirical analysis of the sources of insecurity in a world divided by profound inequality and ongoing conflict. It should identify spaces existing for change to empower and protect those most at risk. In a first step towards such an analysis, contributors re-think security from the point of view of the most vulnerable, excluded and insecure. Security (and peace) is a global as well as a national public good, with large externalities and diffuse benefits.
This IDS Bulletin provides inspiring examples of how active citizens, civil society groups, media and social movements have mobilised to challenge accepted definitions of security and to work for the rights of the vulnerable and oppressed. But the issue remains of how such efforts can be aggregated to construct an embryonic global public able to ensure security is truly treated as a public good, rather than managed as if it were an asset of powerful states and global capital.
Volume 40 Number 3 May 2009
Edited by: Rosemary McGee and Jenny Pearce
There are many studies of violence within specific fields of the social sciences, but the next stage in our evolving understanding of violence may lie with interdisciplinary approaches. By traversing traditional academic categories, violence as a variable may become more visible in its multiple modes. It is through our ability to see the linkages between interpersonal, cultural, collective, political, state, interstate and structural violences that we can gain a better understanding of its persistence in human interactions.
Researchers for this Bulletin set out not only to understand contemporary dynamics of violence, but also to work with people trapped in violent places, spaces and histories who were willing to talk about and act upon their situation. Researching violence in an interactive way with those living in the thick of it posed many ethical, safety, epistemological and methodological challenges. These are documented in the Bulletin alongside findings on the dimensions and impact of violence in different contexts.
Volume 40 Number 4 July 2009
Edited by: Lawrence Haddad and Sushila Zeitlyn
'Economic powerhouse and nutritional weakling' – how does India move away from this Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde existence? This is the focus of the authors in this IDS Bulletin, nearly all of whom are Indian or India-based. The Bulletin first reviews child nutrition in India: what is going up and what is going down, and for whom and where? As we will see while the direction of change is far from clear, movement is sluggish.
We then ask why economic growth is not doing more to reduce undernutrition. We know that income and nutrition are not always tightly wedded, but are at least related. In India, they seem to be ships passing in the night. Why is this? The articles conclude that it is a rather toxic mix of incentives than prioritise the delivery of social inputs over outputs and practices that exclude large groups of individuals, including women and girls, from access to quality services.
