Power

PhD Studentships: Anthropology (Oslo)

Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Social Anthropology Job Description The Department of Social Anthropology invites candidates to apply for 2 Ph.D. Research Fellowships, with starting date in January 2017. The Department wishes to recruit two Ph.D. candidates with excellent research qualifications within Social Anthropology. Applicants should relate to one or more of the Department’s core […]

Tags: #Anthropology #Globalization #Migration #Politics #Power

Jobs
Envisioning Power

Envisioning Power

Anthropologist Eric Wolf (1923-1999) last book, Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Power (1999) is not his most well-known work, but is a book that should be read by those seeking to understand how anthropological studies, and comparative cultural studies, can contribute to our understand of power and politics and their relation to ideas and […]

Tags: #Anthropology #Culture #Ideology #Interdisciplinary #Power

Thought Provokers
Sweetness and Power

Sweetness and Power

The American Anthropologist Sidney Mintz (1922-2015) spent a career understanding and writing about the intersections between food, slavery and colonialism, largely in the Caribbean. His book Sweetness and Power (1985) is one of the most widely read and influential books in cultural anthropology. Mintz takes Anthropologists to task for often being ahistorical, in the introduction […]

Tags: #Colonialism #Food #Power #Slavery #Sugar

Thought Provokers

New Publication: Searching for Social Justice in GIScience

Article is available here, from Cartography and Geographic Information Science. Abstract: Maps are explicitly positioned within the realms of power, representation, and epistemology; this article sets out to explore how these ideas are manifest in the academic Geographic Information Science (GIScience) literature. We analyze 10 years of literature (2005–2014) from top tier GIScience journals specific […]

Tags: #Empowerment #GIScience #Marginalization #Power #Social Justice

Uncategorized

Co-opting Aid for Political Purposes

Guest blog on WhyDev: Donors face difficult challenges. Sometimes they face choices between conflicting priorities. For example: (1) governments should have the right to determine how and where resources are used, and (2) individual human rights should be upheld and protected. These principles often conflict, particularly in countries where democratic governance is weak. Rosalind Eyben […]

Tags: #International development #Politics #Power #Practice #Process

Research
Contesting Power

Contesting Power

Acemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail (2012) offers insight into why wealth and poverty exists (see post here). It also provides direction as to how more inclusive political and economic institutions are formed, which draws on their 2006 book, On the Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship. They open with a comment about the Arab Spring: […]

Tags: #Democracy #Inclusive #Institutions #Power #Rule of law

Thought Provokers
Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail (2012), by Acemoglu and Robinson, is probably one of the most influential development studies books of the last decade. Although the idea itself is not new, the authors make a details and persuasive argument that institutions are a primary reason for national wealth and poverty. They write: “The central thesis of this […]

Tags: #Economic growth #Institutions #Politics #Power #Why Nations Fail

Thought Provokers
Power tends to corrupt…

Power tends to corrupt…

Fiction (1945): “…out from the door of the farmhouse came a long file of pigs, all walking on their hind legs…out came Napoleon himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him. He carried a whip in his trotter. There was a deadly silence. Amazed, terrified, huddling […]

Tags: #Animal Farm #Corruption #Derg #Power #Revolution

Thought Provokers

Ethiopia’s Safety Net: Power, Politics and Practice

Cochrane, L. and Tamiru, Y. (2016) Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program: Power, Politics and Practice. Journal of International Development 28(5): 649-665. Abstract With one third of the population living in poverty and millions experiencing chronic food insecurity, the government of Ethiopia faces difcult and complex challenges. One of the most robust and effective social protection […]

Tags: #Ethiopia #Participation #Politics #Power #Productive Safety Net Program

Research
Navigating Complexity in International Development

Navigating Complexity in International Development

Danny Burns and Stuart Worsley offer one of the best development studies reads of 2015 with their book “Navigating Complexity in International Development: Facilitating Sustainable Change at Scale.” There are shelves of books that cover similar topics in development studies, with much repetition and little innovative thinking. Burns and Stuart offer just that by viewing […]

Tags: #Complex systems #Complexity #International development #Power #Sustainability

Thought Provokers