Search results for ""Author Ian Scoones""

Soils are critical to agriculture and, in turn, to food supply and livelihoods. Sustainable management of soils is crucial for a large proportion of the population of Africa. Contrary to many claims, soil fertility is improved and managed successfully by small-scale farmers there. Careful studies from widely different areas reveal how closely bound up soil management is with complex social, cultural and ecological factors - requiring a far more subtly tuned approach to development policy and practice. This work is a study of how the context of livelihood systems has to inform development policy and practice.

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Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it's climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don't know what the future will hold. For many contemporary challenges, navigating uncertainty where we cannot predict what may happen is essential and, as the book explores, this is much more than just managing risk. But how is this done, and what can we learn from different contexts about responding to and living with uncertainty? Indeed, what might it mean to livefromuncertainty?Drawing on experiences from across the world, the chapters in this book explore finance and banking, technology regulation, critical infrastructures, pandemics, natural disasters and climate change. Each chapter contrasts an approach centred on risk and control, where we assume we know about and can manage the future, with one that is more flexible, responding to uncertainty.The book argues that we need to adjust our modernist, controlling view and to de

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Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it's climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don't know what the future will hold. For many contemporary challenges, navigating uncertainty where we cannot predict what may happen is essential and, as the book explores, this is much more than just managing risk. But how is this done, and what can we learn from different contexts about responding to and living with uncertainty? Indeed, what might it mean to livefromuncertainty?Drawing on experiences from across the world, the chapters in this book explore finance and banking, technology regulation, critical infrastructures, pandemics, natural disasters and climate change. Each chapter contrasts an approach centred on risk and control, where we assume we know about and can manage the future, with one that is more flexible, responding to uncertainty.The book argues that we need to adjust our modernist, controlling view and to de

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The message of Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development is clear: livelihood approaches are an essential lens to view questions of rural development, but these questions need to be situated in a better understanding of political economy. Ian Scoones delves into the history of livelihoods thinking, reflects on the links to studies of poverty and wellbeing and discusses the array of livelihood frameworks and their potentials and limitations.

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Over the past decade, substantial resources have been spent on tackling avian influenza and building a global capacity for a pandemic response. The catastrophic costs of the 1918 influenza pandemic are well documented, and the swine flu pandemic of 2009-10 has raised the alarm yet again. Across the world, surveillance systems have been upgraded, stockpiles of antiviral drugs and influenza vaccines have been created, veterinary and public health systems have been improved and poultry production and marketing has been dramatically restructured. What are the lessons from this experience? And what does this suggest for the future? This book explores how virus genetics, ecology and epidemiology intersect with economic, political and policy processes in a variety of places - from Bangkok to Washington, to Jakarta, Cairo, Rome and London. It focuses on the interaction of the international and national responses - and in particular the experiences of Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. It asks how effective is the disease surveillance and response system - can it respond to a new pandemic threat? The comparative analysis reveals the challenges and limitations of a technocratic, centralised response, and the need to take seriously local contexts. Drawing from these experiences, the book concludes with a discussion of future prospects and challenges, examining in particular what a 'One World, One Health' approach - where approaches to animal, human and ecosystem health are integrated - would look like in practice. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

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Challenges the commonly held myths about Zimbabwe's land reform. Ten years after the land invasions of 2000, this book provides the first full account of the consequences of these dramatic events. This land reform overturned a century-old pattern of land use, one dominated by a small group of large-scale commercial farmers, many of whom were white. But what replaced it? This book challenges five myths through the examination of the field data from Masvingo province: Myth 1 Zimbabwean land reform has been a total failure Myth 2 The beneficiaries of Zimbabwean land reform have been largely political 'cronies' Myth 3 There is no investment in the new resettlements Myth 4 Agriculture is in complete ruins creating chronic food insecurity Myth 5 The rural economy has collapsed By challenging these myths, and suggesting alternative policy narratives, this book presents the story as it has been observed on the ground: warts and all. What comes through very strongly is the complexity, the differences, almost farm by farm: there is no single, simple story of the Zimbabwe land reform as sometimes assumed by press reports, political commentators, or indeedmuch academic study. Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, with co-authors Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Chrispen Sukume. Zimbabwe: Weaver Press Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana): Jacana

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This book tells the story of development studies in practice over the last fifty years through the work of one remarkable individual, Robert Chambers. His work has taken him from being a colonial officer in Kenya through training and managing large rural development projects to a fundamental critique of top-down development and the championing of participatory approaches. The contributors eloquently demonstrate how he has been at the centre of major shifts in development thinking and practice over this period, popularising terms that are now at the centre of the development lexicon such as vulnerability, multi-dimensional poverty, sustainable livelihoods and 'farmer first'. Robert Chambers played a major role in the massive growth in participatory approaches to development, and particularly the application of participatory methods in development research and appraisal. This has led to fundamental challenges to development practice, ranging from approaches to monitoring and evaluation to institutional learning and professional training. There is probably no-one who has had more influence on approaches to development in the past decades. Revolutionizing Development offers a unique overview of these contributions in thirty-two concise chapters from authors who have been intimately involved as collaborators, critics and colleagues of Robert Chambers.

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Major advances have been made recently in environmental social science but the context and importance of this research has also changed. Social and natural science studies of the environment have begun to interact more closely with each other and many analysts now agree that an understanding of environmental problems often depends on an understanding of the attitudes and behaviour of people and organisations. Moreover, policy and public debates have also shown that many assumptions that underpin arguments about sustainable development need to be reconsidered and re-framed.This book by leading researchers presents a critical review of debates in environmental social science over the past decade. Three broad areas are covered in ten chapters: the problems of scientific uncertainty and its role in shaping environmental policy and decisions; the development of institutional frameworks for governing natural resources; and the link between economic and technological change and the environment. The book begins with an overview essay examining how perspectives across environmental social science have shifted over the past decade and looking forward to the emergence of new research agendas.The book is essential reading for all students and scholars interested in social sciences and the environment.

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Examines the new challenges facing Africa's pastoral drylands from large-scale investments and how this might affect the economic and political landscape for the regions affected and their peoples. More than ever before, the gaze of global investment has been directed to the drylands of Africa, but what does this mean for these regions' pastoralists and other livestock-keepers and their livelihoods? Will those who have occupied drylands over generations benefit from the developments, as claimed, or is this a new type of territorialisation, exacerbating social inequality? This book's detailed local studies of investments at various stages of development - from Kenya, Tanzania, Somaliland, Ethiopia - explore, for the first time, how large land, resource and infrastructure projects shape local politics and livelihoods. Land and resources use, based on ancestral precedenceand communal practices, and embedded regional systems of trade, are unique to these areas, yet these lands are now seen as the new frontier for development of national wealth. By examining the ways in which large-scale investmentsenmesh with local political and social relations, the chapters show how even the most elaborate plans of financiers, contractors and national governments come unstuck and are re-made in the guise of not only states' grand modernist visions, but also those of herders and small-town entrepreneurs in the pastoral drylands. The contributors also demonstrate how and why large-scale investments have advanced in a more piecemeal way as the challenges of implementation have mounted. JEREMY LIND is Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. DORIS OKENWA holds a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics. IAN SCOONES is a Professorial Fellow at the IDS, University of Sussex and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre.

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Major advances have been made recently in environmental social science but the context and importance of this research has also changed. Social and natural science studies of the environment have begun to interact more closely with each other and many analysts now agree that an understanding of environmental problems often depends on an understanding of the attitudes and behaviour of people and organisations. Moreover, policy and public debates have also shown that many assumptions that underpin arguments about sustainable development need to be reconsidered and re-framed.This book by leading researchers presents a critical review of debates in environmental social science over the past decade. Three broad areas are covered in ten chapters: the problems of scientific uncertainty and its role in shaping environmental policy and decisions; the development of institutional frameworks for governing natural resources; and the link between economic and technological change and the environment. The book begins with an overview essay examining how perspectives across environmental social science have shifted over the past decade and looking forward to the emergence of new research agendas.The book is essential reading for all students and scholars interested in social sciences and the environment.

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Examines the new challenges facing Africa's pastoral drylands from large-scale investments and how this might affect the economic and political landscape for the regions affected and their peoples. More than ever before, the gaze of global investment has been directed to the drylands of Africa, but what does this mean for these regions' pastoralists and other livestock-keepers and their livelihoods? Will those who have occupied drylands over generations benefit from the developments, as claimed, or is this a new type of territorialisation, exacerbating social inequality? This book's detailed local studies of investments at various stages of development - from Kenya, Tanzania, Somaliland, Ethiopia - explore, for the first time, how large land, resource and infrastructure projects shape local politics and livelihoods. Land and resources use, based on ancestral precedenceand communal practices, and embedded regional systems of trade, are unique to these areas, yet these lands are now seen as the new frontier for development of national wealth. By examining the ways in which large-scale investmentsenmesh with local political and social relations, the chapters show how even the most elaborate plans of financiers, contractors and national governments come unstuck and are re-made in the guise of not only states' grand modernist visions, but also those of herders and small-town entrepreneurs in the pastoral drylands. The contributors also demonstrate how and why large-scale investments have advanced in a more piecemeal way as the challenges of implementation have mounted. JEREMY LIND is Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. DORIS OKENWA holds a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics. IAN SCOONES is a Professorial Fellow at the IDS, University of Sussex and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre.

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Interrogates the narratives of "land grabbing" and "agricultural investment" through detailed local studies that illuminate how these are experienced on the ground and the implications for Africa's land and agricultural economy. Africa has been at the centre of a "land grab" in recent years, with investors lured by projections of rising food prices, growing demand for "green" energy, and cheap land and water rights. But such land is often also used or claimed through custom by communities. What does this mean for Africa? In what ways are rural people's lives and livelihoods being transformed as a result? And who will control its land and agricultural futures? The case studies explore the processes through which land deals are being made; the implications for agrarian structure, rural livelihoods and food security; and the historical context of changing land uses, revealing that these land grabs may resonate with, even resurrect, forms of large-scale production associated with the colonial and early independence eras. The book depicts the striking diversity of deals and dealers: white Zimbabwean farmers in northern Nigeria,Dutch and American joint ventures in Ghana, an Indian agricultural company in Ethiopia's hinterland, European investors in Kenya's drylands and a Canadian biofuel company on its coast, South African sugar agribusiness in Tanzania's southern growth corridor, in Malawi's "Greenbelt" and in southern Mozambique, and white South African farmers venturing onto former state farms in the Congo. Ruth Hall is Associate Professor at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa; Ian Scoones is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex and Director of the ESRC STEPS Centre; Dzodzi Tsikata is Associate Professor at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana, Legon.

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