Blog

Awarded: Robert M. Netting Graduate Paper Prize

The Robert M. Netting award is given out by the Culture and Agriculture section of the American Anthropological Association. I was awarded this prize for my paper “Worldviews Apart: Agriculture Extension and Ethiopian Smallholder Farmers.” As a part of the award, I will now work with the editors of the journal Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment for its […]

Tags: #American Anthropological Association #Culture Agriculture Food and Environment #Robert M. Netting

Research
Creating Capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011)

Creating Capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011)

The following quotes are taken from Nussbaum’s Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, 2011. Largely building on Sen, and forging new paths for the capabilities approach, in this book Nussbaum attempts to summarize the approach for broader audiences, as it is often bogged down in weighty philosophical texts. On the Capabilities Approach: “The Capabilities Approach […]

Tags: #Capabilities Approach #Creating Capabilities #Human Development Approach #Nussbaum #Sen

Thought Provokers
U.S. Development as Foreign Policy in Ethiopia (McVety, 2012)

U.S. Development as Foreign Policy in Ethiopia (McVety, 2012)

On US foreign aid: “In its most optimistic moments, the U.S. government truly believed that by doing good it could indeed do well. The problem is that foreign aid seems to have done more harm than it has good, which means that the United States has not done nearly as well as it hoped.” (p. […]

Tags: #Ethiopia #Expectations of Development #Foreign Aid #Foreign Policy #politics of famine

Thought Provokers

New Publication in Global Humanities

Cochrane, L. and Chellan, W. (2015) “We Were Extremely Poor But We Were Pious”: Exploring the Interrelationships between Religious Adherence and Economic Status in the Muslim World. Global Humanities 2: 112-128. Abstract: This paper analyzes theological, quantitative and qualitative data regarding the relationships between economic status and religious adherence, with specific reference to Islam and […]

Tags: #Economic Status #Household Income #Poverty #Religiosity #Religious Adherence

Research
Practicing “Development” (Ferguson, 1990)

Practicing “Development” (Ferguson, 1990)

Following an earlier post on the construction of “development”, the following are thought provoking quotes from Ferguson’s (1990) The Anti-Politics Machine on the practice of “development”: Context: “The argument, in brief, is the following: “development” institutions generate their own form of discourse, and this discourse simultaneously constructs Lesotho as a particular kind of object of […]

Tags: #(a)political #Development #Ferguson #Practice of Development #Practicing Development

Thought Provokers
Constructing “Development” (Ferguson, 1990)

Constructing “Development” (Ferguson, 1990)

Quotes on the construction of “development” from Ferguson’s influential Anti-Politics Machine (1990): “The argument, in brief, is the following: “development” institutions generate their own form of discourse, and this discourse simultaneously constructs Lesotho as a particular kind of object of knowledge, and creates a structure of knowledge around that object. Interventions are then organized on […]

Tags: #Constructing Development #Development discourse #Framing Development #Politics of Development

Thought Provokers