Suchergebnisse

This article looks at the nature of the impact of macroeconomic strategies on consumption practices, with emphasis on poverty and vulnerability. It goes on to document the changes in employment opportunities experienced under the adjustment process. Ultimately, the paper assesses the extent to which "transitional costs of adjustment" have impaired the social sectors ability to effect wealth creation. (DSE/DÜI)

The Sourcebook introduces a framework for social analysis in Poverty and Social Impact Analysis along with a set of practical tools that address the institutional, political, and social dimensions of policy design and implementation and how these impact poverty and distributional equity. It is designed for country practitioners working in policy analysis in a range of areas, including macroeconomic, sectoral, and public sector policy

Over the past decade there has been an increasingly receptive audience for participatory and qualitative research methods by policy makers, development practitioners and academics working in applied research. At the same time there is an increasing awareness that the value of research can be enhanced through a more systematic combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. While this recent interest has begun to provide useful pointers as to how development research might be improved, it has also given rise to certain problems.This book will draw together lessons about emerging best practice with regard to combining qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches to generate `numbersz from qualitative/participatory methods and to monitor and evaluation development processes. It will build and expand upon innovation and reflection from practice in developing and developed societies, from within development agencies and academia, government departments and civil society organizations.By drawing on current research in many sectors and countries, the book will situate current development research issues squarely within debates about development policy and social research and it will help begin the process of defining best practice in the use of participatory/ qualitative and quantitative methods, and issues of methodological triangulation which are of considerable interest to academics, practitioners and policy-makers.

Throughout the 1990s the debates about human rights and development have increasingly converged. The article asks whether the emerging human rights‐based approach to development, honed in the period of revisionist neo‐liberalism, can deliver meaningful improvements to the African crisis.It begins by outlining the evolution of the rights‐based development agenda in order to understand how the present agenda is defined. The next section examines the theoretical underpinnings of the current rights‐based development agenda and summarises two recent reports which place such concerns at their centre. From there we examine the implementation of rights‐based procedures in Africa and assess the moral and practical implications of the rights agenda for Africa. We conclude by arguing that the emphasis on economic and developmental rights should be welcomed, because it raises the possibility of cementing the right to a decent standard of living. However, the potential exists for the rights‐based agenda to be used as a new form of conditionality which usurps national sovereignty and by handing the responsibility for defending rights to authoritarian states the process does little to challenge the power structures which may have precipitated rights abuses in the first place. Finally, the emphasis on universal rights, as defined through largely western experiences, limits the relevance of rights to local circumstances and thereby effects another form of Eurocentric violence which seeks to normalise a self‐serving social vision. Hence, only by embedding discussions of rights in the locally meaningful struggles that confront impoverished Africans and by promoting broader and direct participation which, crucially, promotes self‐determination can a rights agenda more thoroughly promote African development.

"This document offers an excellent explanation of the concept of empowerment and develops a very useful framework for disentangling and clarifying the concept. It is both practical and well justified on the basis of the literature. The approach and survey instruments developed to measure empowerment are innovative and very useful. Developing an approach to empirically measure empowerment, and to track empowerment indicators over time in a way that is operationally feasible and consistent with World Bank standards is certainly an outstanding achievement."Reginer Birner, Senior Research FellowInternational Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.