Power
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
The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies
Why are policies created they way they are? This question is particularly interesting when the policies do not appear to function well. It may be that the ‘failing’ policies are not actually failing, but serving another, often unstated, purpose. A classic, essential read on this question is “Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political […]
Tags: #Agricultural policy #Agriculture #Political Basis of Agricultural Policies #Politics #Power
The Arts of Resistance
James C. Scott wrote “Weapons of the Weak” (1985) and “Seeing like a State” (1998), which have been widely influential (cited over 10,000 times each), and each are covered in earlier posts. Scott’s 1990 book “Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts” has similar been widely read and referenced (also over 10,000 citations) and […]
Tags: #Domination and the Arts of Resistance #Hidden Transcripts #Infrapolitics #James C. Scott #Power
Decolonizing the Mind
Linda Tuhiwai Smith wrote “Decolonizing methodologies” (1999). Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote “Decolonizing the Mind” (1986). This is essential reading and the insights are numerous – from curricula design and literary critique to social transformation and liberation. In this post I focus on one of Ngugi’s central and influential arguments about the power of language. The […]
Tags: #decolonization #Decolonizing the Mind #Language #Ngugi wa Thiongo #Power
Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
Two of the prominent front runners of the US presidential election positions themselves as “anti-establishment” and campaigned to take away the power of the elites and return that power to the people. Reich’s recent book “Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few” (2015) took on many of the issues; essentially questions about democracy, power, […]
Tags: #Capitalism #Elite #Politics #Power #Rules of the Game
Orientalism
Few books have been as widely read and cited as Orientalism (1978) by Edward Said. Reading Orientalism now, it is hard to understand its importance because so many of Said’s ideas have become part of a broader cultural and post-colonial critiques. Despite its influence, in a 2003 Preface, the author writes: “The disheartening part is […]
Tags: #Authority #Orientalism #Power #Representation #Responsibility
Pathologies of Power
Paul Farmer’s (2005) “Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor” is a “physician-anthropologist’s effort to reveal the ways in which the most basic right – the right to survive – is trampled in an age of great affluence” (p. 6). However, Farmer covers much more than the right to […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Human Rights #Paul Farmer #Power #Social Justice
Post-doc: Power, Poverty & Politics
The International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam the Netherlands is seeking to fill three full-time (100%) vacancies for the position of Post-Doctoral Researcher for a two year period from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2018. We welcome applications from prospective postdoc researchers who are interested in doing operational research on […]
New Publication: Participation & Empowerment
Corbett, J., Cochrane, L. and Gill, M. (2016) Powering Up: Revisiting Participatory GIS and Empowerment. The Cartographic Journal http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00087041.2016.1209624 Since 1996, participatory GIS (PGIS) has facilitated avenues through which public participation can occur. One of the ways practitioners articulate social change associated with PGIS interventions has been to qualify success using the term ’empowerment’. This […]
Funded MAs: Corporate Mapping Project
Up to three Research Assistantships for Masters students are available to work under the supervision of Professor Fiona MacPhail and/or Professor Paul Bowles (Department of Economics, University of Northern British Columbia) as part of the Corporate Mapping Project (CMP). UNBC, in partnership with the University of Victoria, Parkland Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, is conducting a […]
Tags: #Canada #Hydrocarbon Development #Mapping #Power #Social Responsibility
About me
Logan Cochrane
Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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