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Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up?

Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up?

An article in the New York Times in 2015 provoked Michael Truscello and Ajamu Nangwaya to bring together the volume: “Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up? Organizing the Twenty-First Century Resistance” (2017). This book is divided into two sections, one on the Global North and another on the Global South, and is an “anthology of […]

Tags: #collective action #people power #Resistance #Social movements #Struggle

Thought Provokers
False Start in Africa (1962)

False Start in Africa (1962)

Rene Dumont’s “False Start in Africa” (1962) is arguably one of the most influential and widely read texts on agriculture in Africa. The book is more of a conversation, than it is an academic text. However, Dumont was a pioneering voice for identifying key issues such as soil erosion, micronutrient deficiencies, soil type and quality […]

Tags: #Africa #Agriculture #False Start in Africa #Rene Dumont #Rural Development

Thought Provokers
Citizen Action and National Policy Reform

Citizen Action and National Policy Reform

“Citizen Action and National Policy Reform: Making Change Happen” (2010), edited by Gaventa and McGee, presents a series of case studies of citizen movements and advocacy for national policy change. The book fits well within the “How Change Happens” space. Cases are presented from: South Africa, Philippines, Mexico, Chile, India, Brazil, Morocco and Turkey. The […]

Tags: #Advocacy #Citizen Action #Civil society #How change happens #Policy

Thought Provokers
Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic

Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic

As other reviewers of this book have mentioned, there is probably few who are better suited to write this book than Paul Richards, with such a depth of knowledge and experience of the areas where the epidemic occurred. In “Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic” (2016) the author argues that faced “with […]

Tags: #Citizen science #Ebola #Epidemic #Public Health #Social science

Thought Provokers

New Publication: Worldviews Apart: Agriculture Extension and Smallholder Farmers

Cochrane, L. (2017) Worldviews Apart: Agriculture Extension and Ethiopian Smallholder Farmers. Journal of Rural Social Sciences 32: 98-118. Abstract: This paper presents an inquiry-based learning assessment into why farmers in the highlands of Ethiopia were not adopting a new planting methodology promoted by the government and non-governmental organizations. It offers a process of reflexivity whereby assumptions […]

Tags: #Agricultural extension #Agriculture #Ethiopia #Rural Development #Worldviews

Research
The Challenge of Democracy from Below

The Challenge of Democracy from Below

Edited volumes do not tend to have staying power as a publication – collections of essays pass like most academic articles. Rarely does an edited volume remain an essential reading for decades. “Ethiopia: The Challenge of Democracy from Below” edited by Bahru Zewde and Siegfried Pausewang (2002) is one of those books. A number of […]

Tags: #Democracy #Ethiopia #Governance #Participation #Power

Thought Provokers