Suchergebnisse

AbstractSub-Saharan African countries have the highest population growth rates in the world, and are also the poorest. In response to a variety of global and local forces, during the 1980s and 1990s two thirds of sub- Saharan African countries adopted national population policies to reduce population growth. Drawing from existing research and using the texts of population policies to illustrate key points, this article summarises the factors that drove population policy adoption in the region. Globally, powerful donors with significant leverage promoted population policies as a solution to lagging socioeconomic development while international organizations spread norms about women's rights and reproductive health. Locally, technocrats working within relevant ministries backed efforts to increase contraceptive prevalence, and population policies furthered political projects unrelated to population. The interplay of global and local forces led to governments adopting population policies. Ultimately, continued high desired fertility and limited implementation capacity have prevented population policies from significantly lowering fertility, but these policies have likely increased the availability of contraception, created important discursive space related to gender and sexuality, and provided countries with an opportunity to test procedures and approaches for policy-making on sensitive issues.

The theory that land holding is inexorably evolving from common to private or state tenure is challenged by facts on the ground that this paper will examine. 'Tenure' is interpreted both in terms of formal law and informal practices. While the association between privatization and land fragmentation is clear, property theory has influenced privatization so the process cannot be used to validate the evolutionary model of transitions from open access to common property to private property. Although in many settings common and state property has given way to privatization, in other cases private or state property has reverted to common holdings. A dynamic tenure model would demonstrate the conditions under which tenure transitions occur between common, private and state property, as the balance between transaction and exclusion costs shifts, or when the boundaries of tenure forms weaken to allow open access to occur. Examining three scenes of tenure transitions involving Kenyan pastoralists (Laikipia County, the Rift Valley, Narok County and Kajiado County), this paper examines cases in which transaction and exclusion dynamics – which are metaphors for the institutional effects of social and territorial relations- lead to changing land-use practices and tenure transitions. In semi-arid pastoral regions, we find more fluid systems of tenure than the inexorable spread of privatization through formalized land rights and increasing land fragmentation would have suggested should occur in the 21st century.

This article illustrates how episodes in local and international political economy shape urban transport in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana's oil city, and how resultant dynamics in the global economy make the attainment of sustainable urban development illusory. Investment in road production and maintenance is overwhelmed by the recent rapid increase in the number and use of automobiles in the city. At the same time, official disinterest persists in planning for alternative sustainable forms of transportation. While another scenario is possible, by showing the structural and administrative orientation toward productivist sustainable development ideals and its ecologically destructive consequences, I argue that it is increasingly likely that the Sekondi-Takoradi of the future will come to exhibit the contradictions in the capitalist drive to "annihilate space through time."