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The drastic and manifold difficulties Africa faces suggest that something more than mere delay, unfavorable conditions or misguided policies is obstructing the goal of development. The suggestion calls for a serious reflection on the experience of colonialism, but in a way different from those studies tracing African predicaments back to colonial or imperialist misdeeds. This does not mean colonialism is not the real culprit, just that such a stance is necessary in light of the fact that many studies have not focused on the real source of Africa's ills: the phenomenon of mental colonization. Those scholars who bring out the detrimental impact of mental alienation either fail to totally emancipate their views from Western constructs, or cannot produce an alternative to Eurocentrism. This paper discusses the contributions of African philosophical debates to the elucidation of the negative impacts of colonial discourse on Africa's development effort, ft draws attention to the limitations of the contributions and proposes an alternative conception vindicating the view that the great task of freeing the African mind from Eurocentric constructions takes priority over the design of development policies.

Ever since the French Revolution, political actors locate themselves by distinguishing "Left" & "Right." But increasingly, the emphasis is on middle positions or new directions "beyond Left & Right." Does this trend mark the two categories obsolete? Or does their persistence blind us from new perspectives on the political landscape? The essay starts by discussing the role of the Left-Right scheme as a tool for orientation of political actors & voters. Then, the content of the scheme is compared to other means of categorizing politics: the Cultural Theory triangle of Hierarchists, Egalitarians, & Individualists, & the two-dimensional mapping of Herbert Kitschelt. In conclusion, a network theory of party systems is presented, with the political landscape as a symbolic matrix of identity construction & mutual distancing of political parties. The Left-Right scheme reduces this political landscape to one dimension. Thus, the scheme accomplishes an important translation of political positions into the logics of the political system with its interplay between government & opposition. On the other hand, this reduction also makes for the blinding of certain political issues. 6 Diagrams, 42 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article shows experiences of a group of voluntary teachers dedicated to carry out emotional recuperation workshops far displaced children from marginal areas. Conscious of this social problem and of the lack of resources that the government offers to create communal schools, those voluntary teachers have tumed institutions and ONG to complete this project. The emotional recuperation workshops consist of the construction of participation spaces that allow children to become the protagoníst of their own development without taking them away from the reality oftheir context, ; Este artículo expone experiencias de trabajo de un grupo de maestros voluntarios, que realiza talleres de "recuperación emocional" con poblaciones de niños desplazados en zonas marginales. Conscientes de esta problemática social, y de los escasos recursos que ofrece el Estado para la formación de Escuelas comunitarias, los maestros voluntarios han recurrido al apoyo de instituciones y O G para sacar adelante este proyecto. Los talleres de "recuperación emocional" consisten en la construcción de espacios de participación, que permitan al niño convertir se en protagonista de su desarrollo, sin alejarlo de la realidad de su contexto.

Activists need to construct & manage multiple identities as activists, as well as negotiate their activist identities in relation to identity positions in other social realms such as paid work or parenting. This research is an empirical application of Melucci's concept of metamorphosis to the processes through which committed activists manage identity work. Metamorphosis facilitates an understanding of how activists maintain a sense of continuity through changes in identity. From life-history interviews with twenty long-term Australian activists this research operationalizes the four concepts associated with metamorphosis: being present or "in the moment," taking responsibility for action, being reflexive, & having a rhythm for managing the identity process. The analysis of these concepts demonstrates the need to extend understandings of identity to incorporate non-instrumental aspects of cognition, such as emotion, the body, & passion. These facilitate an activist's capacity to metamorphose, & therefore manage various aspects of identity construction. Activism is therefore sustained when activists can maintain their passionate participation in creating social change, regardless of circumstances, rather than simply enhancing their commitment to a particular organization. 1 Appendix, 49 References. Adapted from the source document.

Civil engineering decision support systems (construction, building life cycle, refurbishment, total quality management, innovation, etc.) created in Lithuania are described in this paper. The above decision support systems comprise of the following constituent parts: data (database and its management system), models (model base and its management system) and a user interface. Presentation of information in databases may be in conceptual (digital, textual, graphical, photographic, video) and quantitative forms. Quantitative information presented involves criteria systems and subsystems, units of measurement, values and initial weight fully defining the variants provided. The databases were developed providing a multiple criteria analysis of alternatives from economical, infrastructure, technical, technological, qualitative, legislative, social and other perspectives. This information is provided in a user-oriented way. Since the analysis of alternatives is usually performed by taking into account economical, infrastructure, technical, technological, qualitative and other factors, a model-base include models which enable a decision maker to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the variants available and make a proper choice. These systems, related questions and practical case study were analysed the paper.

Civil engineering decision support systems (construction, building life cycle, refurbishment, total quality management, innovation, etc.) created in Lithuania are described in this paper. The above decision support systems comprise of the following constituent parts: data (database and its management system), models (model base and its management system) and a user interface. Presentation of information in databases may be in conceptual (digital, textual, graphical, photographic, video) and quantitative forms. Quantitative information presented involves criteria systems and subsystems, units of measurement, values and initial weight fully defining the variants provided. The databases were developed providing a multiple criteria analysis of alternatives from economical, infrastructure, technical, technological, qualitative, legislative, social and other perspectives. This information is provided in a user-oriented way. Since the analysis of alternatives is usually performed by taking into account economical, infrastructure, technical, technological, qualitative and other factors, a model-base include models which enable a decision maker to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the variants available and make a proper choice. These systems, related questions and practical case study were analysed the paper.

Qu'entend-on lorsqu'on soutient la vérité de quelque chose ? Une fois qu'on a établi la vérité d'un jugement, cette vérité reste-t-elle valable pour toujours ? Les vérités que nous croyons acquises et auxquelles nous confions notre quotidienneté sont-elles fiables ? Si l'on se pose des questions de ce genre, l'on s'aperçoit que le jugement de vérité n'est pas un jugement banal, qu'il dépend des points de vue à partir desquels il est énoncé et que cela a des incidences sur les temps historiques utilises. L'épistémologie contemporaine s'est rendu compte que l'idée d'une vérité comme correspondance et comme reflet est désormais périmée et qu'il faut penser la vérité comme une construction et un mouvement, voire comme une multiplicité. Par un détour dans l'histoire de la philosophie, de Thomas d'Aquin à Vico et à Wittgenstein, on peut aisément saisir la façon complexe et très articulée dont les philosophes ont essayé, non pas de résoudre, mais de poser la question de la vérité. On aboutit enfin à une conception pluraliste et dynamique du vrai, qui est soutenue par les courants les plus actuels de l'épistémologie.

Que deviennent les forces de sécurité intérieure pendant le processus d'introduction des principes démocratiques et de l'économie de marché ? Si la démocratisation de l'administration publique consiste notamment à séparer les structures étatiques, y compris policières, du pouvoir politique, la question est particulièrement sensible dans les pays qui ont connu une « transition guerrière ». Or les normes démocratiques sont-elles en mesure de réguler un champ social jusqu'alors dominé par la guerre, les sanctions économiques internationales et un régime perverti ? Quelle est la place de la criminalité organisée lors de la "reconversion" des anciens combattants ? Quel est le statut des unités spéciales après la guerre ? Comment l'État de droit (en cours de construction) envisage-t-il de prendre le contrôle sur les unités spéciales de la police liées au fonctionnement de l'ancien régime ? Nous avons considéré la question de l'Unité pour les opérations spéciales de la police comme un critère d'évaluation de la démocratisation réalisée en Serbie depuis la chute du régime de S. Milosevic car, avec la législation, la réforme de la sécurité intérieure constitue un facteur du bon fonctionnement de l'État de droit.

Rita Franceschini has edited a book that deals with various elements of auto-/ biographical and multicultural studies. Most of the authors' arguments draw on linguistic, literary and ethnological approaches. In several chapters attempts are made to exemplify the interdependencies between biography and culture, specifically between individual and collective constructions of reality. In addition, various chapters focus on biographical structural effects resulting from speakers' experience with foreign language challenges in bilingual or even trilingual contact situations. The review of the volume is framed by a cultural heuristic of an understanding explaining concept (Max Weber); the reviewer's criticism is supported by qualitative standards of socio-pragmalinguistic and textlinguistic work. From this point of view evidence is provided that explains why literary studies' approaches tend to employ individual
sampling procedures as well as other default procedures in gaining methodically controlled insights into properties and dimensions at issue. The linguistic contributions are discussed at length because of their efforts to connect micro- and macro-theoretical perspectives to each other, as such efforts are viewed as building blocks of a cultural
studies' approach to research on (language) biographies.

Este artigo aborda as mudanças nas formas de apropriação, gestão e transmissão desencadeadas com a criação, em 1990, da Reserva Extrativista do rio Ouro Preto, município de Guajará-Mirim, Estado de Rondônia. Tal conjuntura abriu às famílias nela residentes a possibilidade de transmissão da área florestal por elas ocupada e explorada. Assim, a colocação de seringa passa a ser um patrimônio em construção através do trabalho e do zelo, passível de ser transmitida de uma geração à outra mediante herança. Whoever does not want again does not care": processes of inheritance among Rondônia rubber tappers Abstract This article deals with the changes in the forms of appropriation, management and inheritance originated with the creation, in 1990, of the Extractive Reserves of the Ouro Preto river, in the municipality of Guajará-Mirim, State of Rondônia. Such situation opens up, for the families that live there, the possibility of inheriting forest area which have already been occupied and exploited by them. This area – named "colocação" – consequently becomes a patrimony in construction through work and zeal, susceptible of being transmitted from one generation to another by means of inheritance.

This paper provides a statistical evaluation of the methodology of the NSF funded Six Cities Project. The project develops a methodology for surveying densely inhabited areas by processing diachronic remote sensing imagery to create habitation strata or urban classes. These classes become part of a sampling strategy which gives every pixel associated with habitation a specified chance of selection and then draws a representative sample of pixels. These pixels become center points for household surveys which can study a variety of issues including health, environment, livelihood strategies, demographics and household labor, expenditures and income. The methodology lends itself to GIS construction and the generation of data that can be easily compared and can be of maximal use to municipalities, governments, scholars and NGOs. It also provides a long term basis for inexpensive surveys that can have a high claim to reliability and representativity.Key words: remote sensing, urbanism, survey methodology, National Science Foundation, health, environment, livelihood strategies, demographic, household labor, expenditures, income, Africa, Middle East, Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Tanzania, Botswana, Marrakech, Dakar, Bamako, Niamey, Dodoma, Gaborone.

This essay develops a theoretical framework for understanding the connection between technological transformations and change in the international system and puts the information revolution in its proper context — as another in a line of technology-system transformations. The analysis proceeds in two steps: first I conceptualise technology as politics. Technology is inherently political in at least two ways: the construction of technologies is subject to political contestation and technology can be understood as a certain kind of practical knowledge, embedded in material artefacts and in the institutions built to manage them. The second step draws on Buzan and Little's idea of interaction capacity to conceptualise technology as a component of the international political system. This two-step approach draws our attention to the national and transnational institutions that develop new technologies and to the international systemic dimension of certain socio-technical systems. In the end, this approach provides a framework for understanding technological change, including the information revolution, in an international political context. In particular, it draws attention to political debate over the shape and content of a global information infrastructure.

Recent debate over the federal HOPE VI program has focused primarily on whether local applications have met administrative pledges to provide adequate affordable housing to displaced residents of newly demolished public‐housing developments. In this research we take a different direction, examining local processes of political mobilization and strategic framing around a specific type of HOPE VI redevelopment—one that includes construction of a big‐box superstore as part of proposed urban renewal. We argue that the HOPE VI program's formal alignment with New Urbanism created a political opportunity for competing actors to adopt and espouse selective new urbanist themes and imagery to construct and advance divergent visions of what urban space ought to be. Through these framing strategies and struggles, the developer, displaced residents, and opposition groups produced "the City" as a rhetorical object that each then used to advocate specific redevelopment proposals while de‐legitimating competing claims. In this way, the HOPE VI program constitutes more than a new federal housing policy; it offers a new vocabulary for framing and mobilizing collective action in contemporary urban centers.

AbstractThis article analyses private sector delivery of water and sanitation services in Uganda. Uganda's policies of decentralization and privatization, combined with enhanced sector funding through debt relief, provide the context for the work described. After a brief description of the attributes of small water sector enterprises, the findings of extensive interviews with all the major stakeholders in eight of Uganda's 56 districts are set out under eight thematic headings (corruption; community participation; role of NGOs; private sector support services; networks and associations; local Government procurement procedures; construction quality; business viability) and two sets of root causes. The paper concludes that a sector strategy requires a limited number of focus areas in order to avoid overwhelming the institutions and local ownership. The strategy should lie between the extremes of prescriptive and process oriented approaches. Monitoring mechanisms should balance quantitative with qualitative data. Finally, a balance is needed between the drive for short‐term impact through physical outputs and the long‐term sustainability of water and sanitation services so delivered. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractWhereas scholars have often described the material interests served by any given social group's selective narration of history, this article catches scholars in the act of selectively narrating Yorùbá‐Atlantic cultural history in the service of their own faraway activist projects. Anthropologist Ruth Landes' re‐casting of the Afro‐Brazilian Candomblá religion as an instance of primitive matriarchy not only encouraged feminists abroad but also led Brazilian nationalist power‐brokers to marginalise the male, and often reputedly homosexual, priests who give the lie to Landes's interpretation. In the service of a longdistance Yorùbá nationalist agenda, sociologist Oyeronke Oyewumi has declared traditional Yorùbá society 'genderless', and found, among both North American feminist scholars and Yorùbá male scholars, allies in concealing the copious evidence of gender and gender inequality in Yorùbá cultural history. What these historical constructions lack in truth value they make up for in their power to mobilise new communities and alliances around the defence of a shared secret. The article addresses how politically tendentious scholarship on gender has inspired new social hierarchies and boundaries through the truths that some high‐profile scholars have chosen to silence.