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Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts. By David C. Engerman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 480p. $34.95.Know Your Enemy is a sociology of knowledge of the rise of post–World War II Russian and Soviet Studies, written by intellectual historian David C. Engerman. While it is not a work of political science, it offers an important historical analysis of a foundational episode in the history of the political science discipline. It is an account of the evolution of a specific field—Soviet Studies—but it is more than this, because this particular field was at the heart of the development of post–World War II area studies in general, and the intellectual and political engagements linked to the evolution of area studies were crucial to the development of modern political and social science. This symposium thus brings together scholars of Soviet Studies, contemporary post-Soviet Russian politics, comparative politics and international relations more generally, and the history of the discipline, to reflect on this book. While participants were asked to critically evaluate the book's analysis, they were also asked to comment more generally on the rise (and fall?) of area studies, and the history of political science more broadly. The issues raised by the book relate to the history and evolution of the current discipline, but also bear upon its future. For in response to post–Cold War crises (many connected to the discourse of the "war on terror"), there have been new calls for security-related area research made by such institutions as the Department of Defense (the Minerva Program, administered by the National Science Foundation), the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Education (in connection with Title VI funding of area studies). What does the history of Soviet Studies tell us about these recent developments, and about how individual political scientists and indeed the institutions of professional political science should respond to them?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts. By David C. Engerman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 480p. $34.95.Know Your Enemy is a sociology of knowledge of the rise of post–World War II Russian and Soviet Studies, written by intellectual historian David C. Engerman. While it is not a work of political science, it offers an important historical analysis of a foundational episode in the history of the political science discipline. It is an account of the evolution of a specific field—Soviet Studies—but it is more than this, because this particular field was at the heart of the development of post–World War II area studies in general, and the intellectual and political engagements linked to the evolution of area studies were crucial to the development of modern political and social science. This symposium thus brings together scholars of Soviet Studies, contemporary post-Soviet Russian politics, comparative politics and international relations more generally, and the history of the discipline, to reflect on this book. While participants were asked to critically evaluate the book's analysis, they were also asked to comment more generally on the rise (and fall?) of area studies, and the history of political science more broadly. The issues raised by the book relate to the history and evolution of the current discipline, but also bear upon its future. For in response to post–Cold War crises (many connected to the discourse of the "war on terror"), there have been new calls for security-related area research made by such institutions as the Department of Defense (the Minerva Program, administered by the National Science Foundation), the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Education (in connection with Title VI funding of area studies). What does the history of Soviet Studies tell us about these recent developments, and about how individual political scientists and indeed the institutions of professional political science should respond to them?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Background  As institutions for people with intellectual disabilities have been replaced with community services, health care provision has developed to provide assessment and treatment, low and medium secure units for people with challenging behaviour or mental health problems. These include both public and private sector provision. Little is known about these services. The aim of this study was to describe the characteristics of the services studied and to compare the different types of service.Methods  A survey was carried out of National Health Service (NHS) and independent sector (IH) health settings providing specialist inpatient services for people with intellectual disabilities. Data were collected on setting and patient characteristics, staffing and management and care processes and outcomes.Results  Services were very unevenly distributed across England. There were differences between NHS and IH settings. IH assessment and treatment units were bigger, had higher occupancy and lower staff ratio. In all three types of unit, IH units had fewer visits to patients, used more seclusion, physical restraint and had more locked areas. They had more complaints in more services from users and (for assessment and treatment units and low secure units only) from relatives. In low secure units, they had more adult protection referrals. On the other hand, IH units used fewer agency staff in assessment and treatment units (though more in medium secure units) and provided more appraisals, more visits from commissioners, more consultations with GPs and dentists and more use of whistleblowing procedures by staff. A quarter of people in NHS assessment and treatment units had finished treatment but had no plan for discharge.Conclusions  Further research is required to determine the reasons for differences observed between IH and NHS units. The large number of people who have finished treatment emphasizes the importance of developing housing in the community with sufficiently skilled support. The large number of patients in low secure services raises the question whether this type of service is recreating the intellectual disability institutions which government policy intends to close.

Richard Settersten and Barbara Ray examine the lengthening transition to adulthood over the past several decades, as well as the challenges the new schedule poses for young people, families, and society. The authors begin with a brief history of becoming an adult, noting that the schedule that youth follow to arrive at adulthood changes to meet the social realities of each era. For youth to leave home at an early age during the 1950s, for example, was "normal" because opportunities for work were plentiful and social expectations of the time reinforced the need to do so. But the prosperity that made it possible for young adults of that era to move quickly into adult roles did not last. The economic and employment uncertainties that arose during the 1970s complicated enormously the decisions that young adults had to make about living arrangements, educational investments, and family formation. The authors next take a closer look at changes in the core timing shifts in the new transition—the lengthening time it now takes youth to leave home, complete school, enter the workforce, marry, and have children. They stress that today's new schedule for attaining independence leaves many families overburdened as they support their children for an extended period. The continued need to rely on families for financial assistance, the authors say, exacerbates the plight of young people from a variety of vulnerable backgrounds. It also raises complex questions about who is responsible for the welfare of young people and whether the risks and costs newly associated with the early adult years should be absorbed by markets, by families, or by governments. Settersten and Ray stress that the longer transition to adulthood strains not only families but also the institutions that have traditionally supported young Americans in making that transition—such as residential colleges and universities, community colleges, military service, and national service programs. They emphasize the need to strengthen existing social institutions and create new ones to reflect more accurately the realities of a longer and more complex passage into adult life.

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the evolution of the Ethiopian cut flower industry, illustrating how rapidly a potential comparative advantage can be realised. But the question is to what extent a country benefits from this in the long run, if foreign direct investment is the principal driving force. Will the new industry become an enclave, or will it be accompanied by a process of building local capabilities, a process which we denominate endogenisation? A value chain framework is used to analyse the industry and to develop a number of indicators on the development direction. The cut flower industry in Ethiopia is characterised by a dominant role of Dutch foreign investors, Dutch trade auctions which dominate the export trade, and the Dutch development cooperation which plays an important role in the development of the sector. This raises the question to what extent this triple role of the Dutch contributes to endogenisation or to enclave formation.We conclude that endogenisation is a two-way process. It depends both on the degree to which FDI has an interest to draw on domestic firms, enter into relationships and share technologies; and on the interest and ability of domestic firms to take up such opportunities, and on the creation of supporting institutions and infrastructures to make this take-up possible. The latter rests largely with government. Endogenisation is taking place to some extent and at a very incipient stage. Dutch FDI has little direct interest to share technologies, but there is joint collective action on non-core activities, notably transport, which constitutes the largest item in the total cost. Dutch cooperative flower auctions are an open and vital trade channel giving Ethiopian flower growers access to international markets. The Ethiopian government has promoted the industry, making available land and low cost finance; and with the assistance of Dutch bilateral cooperation it is creating trade standards and supporting knowledge institutions to train skilled staff. The main challenge is Ethiopian entrepreneurship: many are attracted by the high growth and profitability of the industry and can run a business in Ethiopia, but lack the technical competence to meet growing competition in the industry.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) are developing all over the world as well as in the developed countries. In Central Europe, with the post socialist transition and the integration to the EU, the needs in infrastructure are striking with insufficient means of financing. The complex contractual modalities of the PPP present major limits, of which that of the information asymmetry, offering a power on market for multinationals there. The evaluation of the PPP is analyzed through different methods from choice and from monitoring of the projects at the European and national level, offering a possibility of reducing the information asymmetry to every stage of the life cycle of the contract. However, to raise the necessary conditions for the positive contribution of the PPP to the development of infrastructures, the democratic regulation allowing the confrontation of the interests of all the partners, including the users, appears as the means to exceed the intrinsic limits of the PPP. The micro-institutions implementation would stimulate the development of good practices, wages of a win-win partnership. ; Les Partenariats Public-Privé (PPP) se développent dans le monde entier aussi bien dans les pays développés, que dans ceux en voie de développement. En Europe centrale, avec la transition postsocialiste et l'intégration à l'UE, les besoins en infrastructure sont criants avec des moyens de financement insuffisants. Les modalités contractuelles complexes des PPP présentent des limites majeures, dont celle de l'asymétrie d'information, offrant là un pouvoir de marché certain aux firmes multinationales. L'évaluation des PPP est analysée à travers des méthodes différentes de choix et d'arbitrage des projets au niveau communautaire et national offrant une possibilité de réduire l'asymétrie d'information à chaque étape du cycle de vie du contrat. Toutefois, afin de dresser les conditions nécessaires à la contribution positive des PPP au développement des infrastructures, la régulation démocratique permettant la confrontation des intérêts de tous les partenaires, y compris les usagers, se présente comme le moyen de dépasser les limites intrinsèques du PPP. La mise en place de micro-institutions stimulerait le développement de bonnes pratiques, gages d'un partenariat gagnant-gagnant.

This paper challenges the uselfullness of the cluster-based development strategy to diversify and increase the competitiveness of Kazakhstan's economy, regarding the case of the country's agro-food sector. For this it refers to insights of the Austrian Market Process Theory. It is argued that already the theoretical foundations of the cluster concept suffer from severe difficiencies, because it widely neglects the function of competition as a discovery procedure with alert entrepreuneurs as the driving force. Moreover, it ignores the knowledge requirements and limitations in a modern market economy for any outside third party to identify and promote successful industry structures. The closer examination of the implementation of the cluster development program in Kazakhstan's agro-food sectors shows that cluster facilitation in practice turned out to be another form of social engineering and picking winners. In the light of the Austrian understanding of the market system as an entrepreneurial discovery process the paper suggestes as alternative policy option to concentrate on the establishment of a stable institutional framework for the whole economy that stimulates the entrepreneurial discoveries of profitable businesses. Yet, such an Austrian approach is politically less appealing, for it might bring no quick results due to the prevalence of conflicting informal institutions which in the short run might be difficult to change. ; Der Beitrag diskutiert die Eignung der Clusterförderungspolitik zur Diversifizierung und Verbesserung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der Volkswirtschaft Kasachstans am Beispiel der Agrar- und Ernährungswirtschaft des Landes. Dazu wird auf Erkenntnisse der Marktprozeßtheorie der Österreichischen Schule zurückgegriffen. Es wird argumentiert, daß allein schon die theoretische Fundierung der Clusterförderungspolitik fraglich ist, weil sie die Funktion des Wettbewerbs als eines Entdeckungsverfahrens mit findigen Unternehmern als treibende Kraft vernachlässigt. Darüber hinaus unterschätzt sie die Anforderungen an das Wissen, das staatliche Akteure und beratende Ökonomen haben müßten, um erfolgversprechende Industrie- und Unternehmensstrukturen identifizieren und fördern zu können. Die Analyse der Umsetzung der Clusterförderungspolitik in Kasachstans Agrar-und Ernährungswirtschaft zeigt, daß sie praktisch nichts anderes ist als eine weitere Form von staatlichem Konstruktivismus und einer Politik der picking winners. Ausgehend vom Verständnis der Österreichischen Schule des Marktsystems als eines von findigen Unternehmern getragenen Entdeckungsverfahrens schlägt der Beitrag als alternative Strategie vor, sich auf den Aufbau von verlässlichen institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen zu konzentrieren, die für alle Sektoren der kasachstanischen Volkswirtschaft gleichermaßen gelten und die geeignet sind, den unternehmerischen Entdeckungsprozeß zu fördern. Aus politischen Gründen dürfte jedoch diese österreichische Politikoption wenig attraktiv sein, da sie langfristig angelegt ist und kurzfristig nicht zuletzt aufgrund des Konflikts zwischen formalen und informalen Institutionen keine sichtbaren Resultate erwarten lässt.

Floods are a major source of risk for the agricultural sector. Flood risk in the agricultural sector primarily arises from river flooding, flash floods, and coastal flooding. The impacts of floods can result in sizable agricultural damages at the local level. Floods in agricultural zones expose agricultural producers, agricultural supply chains, rural financial institutions (such as agricultural banks), and governments to financial risks due to the loss of crops, delinquency on seasonal production loans, damage to infrastructure and loss of public revenues. The costs associated with these damages are often absorbed by households directly or governments that provide compensation to agricultural producers in the aftermath of catastrophic flood events. Rural financial institutions also absorb the cost of floods through loan rescheduling or, in catastrophic cases, loan cancellation. In many developing countries, floods are dealt with in a reactive, rather than proactive, manner and little is done to be financially prepared for a catastrophic outcome of floods. Going forward, government and donors can play an important role to facilitate the development of risk spreading mechanisms in general and agricultural flood insurance in particular. First, this includes investment in the generation of public goods to support disaster risk reduction and recovery, risk management, and ultimately insurance applications. Second, awareness building and risk education are essential for better risk management and insurance. In that vein, identifying and assessing flood risk is critical first steps. Third, many of the technologies described here have applications beyond insurance, including for better planning, risk reduction, early warning, and disaster response. Insurance can complement such activities, but is only viable if carried out jointly as part of a broader risk management framework. Fourth, more research and technical assistance is needed to develop simple and financially viable products for flood risk transfer at aggregate levels; there is increasing demand expressed for such products from flood-prone countries. Finally, donors and government can support international and regional centers involved in flood modeling and facilitate a platform that convenes the technical expertise required for flood risk insurance development. Several of such centers and core expertises were identified through this work.

The increasing migration of the European nations are increasingly faced with different populations. Probably the first time of these, traditionally migration nations have to accept the new immigration of people identity. This process affects a range of institutions and their functions in society. Particularly noticeable changes in government policy, law and education. There is multiculturalism for a long time in latter area in Europe. Today's classrooms have united many different cultures, languages, ethnicities, religions, etc. Master's thesis object – Education of Intercultural Competence in Primary School. Work objective – to analyse the substance of the primary school. Hypothesis - intercultural communication competence (ICC) paid little attention to primary education. Intercultural topics are common considered in the class of world knowledge. Objectives: Explore the concept of competence, explore competence types; reveal the main features of intercultural competence; Examine education of intercultural competence in primary school characteristics, evolution; To analyze the importance and specificity of intercultural competence in primary school; Master's work may be useful to educational institutions and educators, publishers and textbook creation groups, for teachers, students and educators of communication, culture, events management disciplines. Master's work is based on the promotion of intercultural communication standards of Europe, common programs and educational standards, scientific and methodical literature, articles. Work consists of three parts, which are distributed into sub-chapters. The work analyses and examines the concept of competence, features, qualities of intercultural education and the meaning of competence in details. Research tables have been prepared by using analysed methodical and scientific literature in accordance with the criteria by WB Gudykunst ICC model. Research object - substance of the textbooks of 1-4 classes primary education. Practical part analyzes received results and presents common statistics of the ICC topics. Formulated and presented the findings, the literature list and schedule. Research results are illustrated by pictures and tables. These results suggest the need for the expansion of primary school pupils ICC in education and learning process. Master's work originality and relevance to the present helps to find a clear ICC situation of primary education program.

El propósito de esta presentación es exhibir algunas reflexiones teórico-prácticas en torno a las Herramientas y Estrategias Competitivas en las instituciones educativas Cartageneras, tales como la "Corporación Universitaria Rafael Núñez", ubicada en la ciudad antigua de Cartagena, "Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano", situada en el anillo vial, "Universidad de San Buenaventura", hallada en el barrio ternera y "Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar" anidada en el sector de ternera, en el contexto de la universidad. A partir de una perspectiva de la didáctica de las asignaturas Tendencias Administrativas Modernas, Mercados II, Legislación Comercial II, Ideas de Negocios, Desarrollo Organizacional, Comportamiento Humano en las Organizaciones y Administración Financiera, todas ellas, se conciben como proceso académico de VI Semestre de Administración de la Corporación Universitaria Rafael Núñez y la revisión entre asesores académicos a través de sustentación de sus logros durante el semestre, como una significativa herramienta de trabajo en la producción de investigaciones académicas, con miras sociales, donde los estudiantes logran identificar los enfoques administrativos que utilizan las instituciones a través del conocimiento recibido. ; The purpose of this presentation is to exhibit some theoretical and practical considerations about Competitive Tools and Strategies in Educational Institutions in Cartagena, specifically in the University context, like "Corporación Universitaria Rafael Núñez" (Rafael Núñez Universitary Corporation), located in Cartagena's downtown, "Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano" (Jorge Tadeo Lozano University), placed in the ring road of the city, "Universidad de San Buenaventura" (San Buenaventura University), located in Ternera neighborhood, and "Universidad Tecnológica de Bolivar" (Technologic University of Bolivar), placed outside Ternera neighborhood. Using a didactic perspective of subjects like Modern Administrative Trends, Markets II, Commercial Legislation II, Business Ideas, Organizational Development, Human Behavior in Organizations and Financial Administration, they can be conceived as an academic process for VI Semester of Corporación Universitaria Rafael Núñez Administration Program, and with a revision from academic assessors through achievements' sustentation during the semester, they established an important work tool that can be used in academic researching, with social approaches, where the students can identify the administrative approaches used by institutions through the received knowledge.

This paper describes political culture of university students by using empirical data from quantitative research conducted in 2004. The research was part of a scientific-research project Youth and European Integration Processes, Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. The basic sample (N=2000) consisted of high-school students, employed, unemployed and university students. The subsample of university students (N=446) and a control group (N=532) were extracted from the basic sample of youth representatives. The control group comprised high school students, employed and unemployed young people. The political culture of university students is described using the indicators of political culture that were derived from Almond and Verba's theoretical framework: interest in formal politics, support for democratic values and attitudes and trust in institutions. The analysis indicates that university students, compared to other youth (high school students, employed and unemployed), have more interest in politics, their acceptance of democratic values and attitudes is higher, but they lack trust in institutions. These findings indicate that the political culture of university students in Croatia, compared to that of other youth, has greater potential to contribute to democratic processes. (IN CROATIAN: Rad se bavi političkom kulturom studenata. Analizirani su empirijski podaci dobiveni u kvantitativnom istraživanju provedenom 2004. godine u sklopu znanstveno-istraživačkog projekta Mladi i europski integracijski procesi Instituta za društvena istraživanja. Studenti (N=446) su izdvojeni iz osnovnog uzorka mladih (N=2000) te su uspoređeni sa slučajno izdvojenom kontrolnom grupom mladih (N=532). Kontrolna grupa mladih sastoji se od srednjoškolaca, zaposlenih te nezaposlenih. Politička kultura studenata opisana je indikatorima izvedenima iz teorijskog okvira Almoda i Verbe: interes za formalnu politiku, potpora demokratskim vrijednostima i stavovima te razina povjerenja u institucije. Analizom je utvrđeno da studenti, u odnosu na ostale kategorije mladih, pokazuju veći interes za politiku, u većoj mjeri prihvaćaju demokratske vrijednosti i stavove, no nedostaje im povjerenja u institucije. Ovi nalazi indiciraju da politička kultura studenata u odnosu na onu ostalih mladih ljudi, ima veći potencijal za doprinos demokratskim procesima.)

Religious authority is an extremely wide concept which may become manifest in an infinite variety of ways. It may be embodied in certain notions, in texts, in individual, in groups of persons, and in institutions in the widest sense of the word. For this reason, if a scholar wants to write an article about religious authority, it is essential to make a conceptual breakdown of the idea in order to write meaningfully on the subject. In the present contribution I would like to study the concept of religious authority in Indonesia through the vehicle of the Islamic institution of iftâ', delivering of a fatwa. In its classical form a fatwa consists of two parts: a question addressed to a scholar of Islam about a particular topic which has been addressed to him by one or more believers in order to obtain the scholar's opinion about this topic from the perspective of Islamic law. This part of the fatwa is called istiftâ' , while the person who raises the issue is called the mustaftî. istiftâ ', The second part of the fatwa is the actual answer given by the scholar, called the mufti , " fatwa -giver". The language of the fatwa is very formal and formulaic. In the fatwa, the mufti pronounces about issues which are of topical interest to the believer, by sang mufti referring to the standard manuals of jurisprudence. These topics often deal with ritual issues, but in principle may deal with any conceivable topic, including social and political issues or problems arising from the application and use of modern technology. In the course of time, fatwa's issued by important mufti s have been collected and hese collections can be regarded as manuals of applied legal science. In short, it can be said that fatwa s constitute a meeting, and in many cases a compromise, between the ideals of the Holy Law, as expressed by the 'ulamâ', and the reality of daily life, as experienced by the believers. For a study of the working of religious authority the fatwa is useful, because the fatwa is an important instrument through which the 'ulamâ'

This dissertation is composed of three self-contained chapters on international trade and economic development, with a special focus on the involvement of the government or public-funded sectors. The first chapter investigates international trade of higher education, specifically its impact on native students and native workers in the exporting country. Theoretically, I show that, in a general equilibrium model with non-profit publicly- subsidized higher education providers (HEPs) that care about both education quality and the enrollment of native students, serving foreign students may improve natives' access to higher education, which eventually benefits all native workers. Empirically, I find that, during the period 2001 to 2007, the enrollment of one more foreign student in an Australian university leads to the enrollment of around 0.75 more native students in this university. The impact is identified using an instrumental variable, generated from the interaction between demand for Australian higher education from different countries during the sample period and student networks these countries had in different Australian HEPs during 1989 to 1994. The second chapter studies commercial development in the presence of economic agglomeration of commercial goods and services, a result of consumers' love of varieties and transportation costs associated with commercial consumption. I show that a low-income community may be under-served with commercial goods and services because a developer cannot capture all the profits of a commercial project. A block grant to a developer can solve the market failure and generate a total profit bigger than the grant. Employment tax abatements alone are much less effective and much more costly. The third chapter examines the long- run impact of trade in higher education. In an overlapping generation (OG) model with a higher education sector composed of non-profit research institutions and for- profit teaching institutions, I show that importing teaching services benefits low-ability individuals by increased number of research workers in production, and that it may also benefit high-ability individuals by providing better training to skilled workers to complement research workers

My research identifies conditions for legislators in emerging presidential democracies to achieve bureaucratic accountability, one of the least studies aspects of legislative politics. To better explain legislators' ability to hold the bureaucracy accountable, I develop a theoretical model of oversight in which resource constraints (i.e., capabilities) and electoral motivations and policy preferences (i.e., incentives) explain legislators' behavior. The model shows that legislators' oversight of bureaucratic behavior is always selective. Legislators' strategy responds to the relevance of every policy area and to legislators' resources for monitoring bureaucratic agencies. Given limited resources, legislative oversight is necessarily discriminatory. An important corollary is that bureaucratic accountability is never complete : There will always be policy areas that are systematically neglected on the oversight agenda. This situation worsens in the absence of alternative mechanisms to keep bureaucratic behavior under control (such as effective legislation to access public information). The model also shows that bureaucratic agencies respond strategically to legislators' actions depending on the probability of being sanctioned. To evaluate my theory, I analyze local legislatures in Mexico (1995-2005). The qualitative analysis shows that Mexican legislators have strong constitutional resources to control and oversee their functioning. However, feeble resources prevent them for making use of the most important strategic device of bureaucratic control (setting the margin of discretion for bureaucratic agencies) and force local legislatures to make use of an active and direct strategy of legislative ex post monitoring : the annual review of public accounts (fiscalización de cuentas públicas) which is usually done by an auxiliary legislative institution, commonly known as supreme auditing institution (SAIs) (chapter three). I also present the analysis of the legislation that regulates SAIs in four Mexican states and show that electoral uncertainty usually works as an incentive to strengthen the legal powers of SAIs ; however, it also has an opposite effect if it increases the fragmentation of power within the legislature (chapter four). In sum, the analysis of how local legislators aim to control the bureaucracy shows that bureaucratic accountability needs resources (e.g., constitutional powers, professional legislators or professional staff) and incentives that help to break the endogenous character of the problem

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5 ; International audience ; This paper presents a part of the results of a study carried out in Mapuche communities of the Araucanía region in the south of Chile regarding Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.). The objective of this study was to assess the key elements of the quinoa story in this region and the role of the different actors (farmers and institutions) involved in the biodiversity dynamics of this crop. First of all, after the Spanish conquest this crop quasi disappeared, replaced by rice and wheat in Mapuche diet. Nevertheless, some families have never stopped to grow quinoa and conserved their family varieties. In 1996, a local NGO have begun to develop projects about quinoa, first acquiring landraces collection, following with revival of this crop through seeds distribution and workshops about agricultural practices and uses. In order to gather all the information regarding Quinoa, cropping systems, seed management and exchanges, we used semi-constructed and qualitative interviews with farmers and institutions of 4 villages representing the two main agroecological zones of the region. The first result is the fact that even though several projects are developed it is clear that the farmers themselves are the main actors of the biodiversity conservation. The second result show that there is two types of exchanges wich take place in the communities and represent the main access to seeds. The first type is an "individual" exchange (persons or families) inside the community or between closed ones. The second type is a sort of traditional market which is organized as a big event with opening ceremony and presentation of each participant. In each type of exchanges, we can notice the same names of main participants, those named "Curadoras". Those farmers seem to be special and can be identified as nodal farmers because they play an essential role in seeds exchanges (high level of diversity, knowledge regarding crops adaptation and seeds management). Finally, these nodal farmers ...