Horizontal Inequalities

Obviously, people are not born with a sense of which group they belong to, who are friends and who enemies - this is socially constructed by family, community, state, etc. Each category may accentuate differences or reject them, changing perceptions and hence group mobilisation. Studies show a number of different ways groups have been differentiated and mobilised in contemporary conflicts. Group identity is largely ‘constructed’ by political leaders, who find group cohesion and mobilisation a powerful mechanism in their competition for power and resources, adopting a strategy of ‘reworking of historical memories’ to engender group identity. Numerous examples have shown how ‘ethnicity was used by political and intellectual elites prior to, or in the course of , wars’ (Alexander et al., p 5). In the Balkans it was religion that was used for the major categorising feature which resulted to mass ethnic cleansing. Another source of differentiation is often regional location, which can, but does not always, coincide with ethnic or language divisions.

The type of conflicts with which we are recently confronted most are organised group conflicts: that is to say they are not exclusively a matter of individuals randomly committing violence against others. What is involved is group mobilisation, and we need to understand the underlying motivation for such mobilisation. Group organisation may be quite informal, but it exists, implying that there is a degree of agreement (often implicit) on purposes and activities within the group. Normally there are those within any group instigating conflict, who lead or orchestrate the conflict, including constructing or enhancing the perception of group identity in order to achieve group mobilisation; and those who actively carry out the fighting, or give it some support - these two categories acting as leaders and followers, though there can be considerable overlap between the two. In ‘On Violence’, Hannah Arendt distinguishes between justification and legitimacy in terms of power and the use of violence. For Arendt, violence is always instrumental; it is always a means to an end. Power, on the other hand, is an end in itself. Power rests on legitimacy, which appeals to the past, while violence and its justification, situated within a means-end schema, is directed toward the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate;; it can never lead to power, and it only appears where power is in jeopardy (Arendt, 1972). Hence, violence as an instrument is used in order to achieve other ends; where the declared objective is political, is to secure or sustain power; while power is wanted for the advantages it offers, especially the possibilities of economic gains. However, power relations- the politics- of the contemporary world order tend to operate through a continuum of violence, the common substance through which various modes of power manifest.

It should be noted that it is not necessarily the relatively deprived who instigate violence. The
privileged may do so, fearing loss of position. For example, the prospect of possible loss of political power can act as a powerful motive for state-sponsored violence which occurs with the aim of suppressing opposition and maintaining power. Since the government has access to an organised force (police/army) and to finance, state terrorism is sometimes an important source of humanitarian emergencies. It has been pointed out that state violence is more often
than not the initiating cause in recent conflicts. The state can deliberately foster violence to undermine opposition groups, often provoking violent reactions by its actions to justify militarization and its budget allocation.

It must be noted that democratic institutions are not sufficient to prevent inequalities, partly because majorities can discriminate against minorities, and partly because even with ‘shared’ power at the top, lower level elements may involve inequalities. Inequalities in political power often lead to (and/or stem from) similar inequalities in economic dimensions, biased distribution of government jobs, infrastructure and so on is common with the group in power discriminating in its favour. There are important elements of ‘rational’ choice and costs of conflict to group members who are involved in conflicts. Individual action might be as a result of a calculus of individual or private costs and benefits of action. Of course, especially at times of high tension, group gains or losses also enter individual welfare functions. In some situations, people have been observed to take action which is completely counter to their private interests - as it is usually the case in revolutions or riots; for example, rioters have burned down factories in Sri Lanka where they themselves work, thereby destroying their own employment. Individuals and groups may gain from conflict - e.g. by looting, use of forced labour, changes in the terms of trade in their favour, the creation of new economic opportunities, controlling emergency aid. Keen has analysed such gains in the Sudan and elsewhere (Keen, 1994; 1998).

Policy formulation aimed at preventing, or ending, conflict needs to address the underlying causes systematically. Policy formulation should consider both the issues of horizontal inequality among groups and that of the private incentives to leaders and followers. The government is rarely broad based and normally represents only a subset of the groups potentially involved in conflict. It would often be naive to think that the government even wants to promote peace, given the prevalence of state-instigated violence. The most universal requirement is for political inclusivity because it is monopolisation of political
power by one group or another that is normally responsible for many of the other inequalities. Yet achieving political inclusivity is among the most difficult changes to bring about. It is not just a matter of democracy, defined as rule with the support of the majority, as majority rule can be consistent with abuse of minorities.

In every major conflict there is an interaction between economic, political and cultural factors, with group perceptions and identity (normally historically formed), being enhanced by sharp group differentiation in political participation, economic assets and income
and social access and well-being. Both general analysis and some of the econometric evidence suggests a connection between predisposition to conflict and levels and growth of per capita incomes, although the correlation is not strong. Economic growth would be likely to reduce the propensity to conflict, if it is equitably distributed.

Inequality in income distribution is a summary measure of the incomes/employment dimension but fails to capture, or gives only a partial indicator of, the others. Moreover, income distribution is a vertical measure, i.e. it takes everyone in society from ‘top’ to ‘bottom’ and measures their incomes and the consequent inequality. What is needed for our analysis is a horizontal measure of inequality which measures inequality between groups, where groups are defined by region/ethnicity/class/religion, according to the most
appropriate type of group identification in the particular society. Strong intra-group vertical inequality may actually reduce the potential for inter-group conflict for any given degree of horizontal inequality because it may be more difficult to get group cohesion where there is high intra-group inequality, and because elite members of a group may identify more
with members of the elite from other groups than with lower-income members of their own group.

Equitable and poverty reducing growth would normally be likely to reduce horizontal inequality, and might make persisting inequalities more tolerable. Hence policies that succeed in promoting such growth should form part of any pro-peace policy package. But a great deal of policy analysis has been devoted to delineating the conditions for widely shared growth. Policies include measures to promote human development especially through the spread of education; measures to increase savings and investment; price and technology policies to encourage labour-intensive technologies; new credit institutions to extend credit to the low-income; measures to encourage the informal sector; land reform and support for small farmers; international policies to improve market access and terms of trade and reduce debt burdens.

Many of these policies can be designed specifically to reduce horizontal inequality as well as to promote growth and reduce poverty. For those who had previously been active soldiers (the ‘followers’) preparation for income-earning employment is necessary to reduce conflicts - finance or jobs in works schemes can be offered in exchange for arms, or, where appropriate land or agricultural credit.

Conflict proneness may be identified by the following characteristics: (a) serious past
conflict at some time over the previous twenty years; (b) evidence of a considerable degree of horizontal inequality; (c) low-incomes; and (d) economic stagnation. These are the conditions which predispose to conflict, and statistical work.





References:

Alexander, J., J. McGregor and T. Ranger, forthcoming, 'Ethnicity and the Politics of Conflict: The Case of Matabeleland', in E.W. Nafziger, F. Stewart and R. Väyrynen, (eds), The Origin of Humanitarian Emergencies: War and Displacement in Developing Countries, Oxford: OUP.

Keen, D., 1994, The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine relief in
Southwestern Sudan, 1983-1989, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Keen, D., 1998, ‘The economic functions of civil wars’, Adelphi Paper 320, 1-88, London: International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Stewart, F., Crisis Prevention: Tackling Horizontal Inequalities; Working Paper Number 33, Oxford University

Good governance

Democracy is no more susceptible to a single, universal, fixed, and final definition than any other key concept. On the contrary, notions of rule (kratia) by the people (demos) have varied enormously across different historical times, cultural settings and political commitments since the world was coined in ancient Greece. That said, the diverse notions all broadly concur that governance is democratic when decision-taking power lies with the people, a public, a community of fate, whom the regulations in question affect. But, what builds a general concession is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting diverse social groups; for, under democratic system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others: and this admirable agreement between interest and justice gives to the common deliberations an equitable character. Of course democracy is not the only core human and social value. Its promotion must be integrated with the pursuit of other primary concerns such as cultural promotion, ecological care, economic efficiency, and peace. Often democracy and these other pillars of a good society can be mutually reinforcing, so that more of one is also more of the other. It is sometimes assumed, that greater democracy comes at a cost of reduced efficiency. Some critics have maintained democratic constructions are inherently deficient, what ever the cultural context. From this perspective globalization would need to promote different kinds of public self rule in order to be truly democratic. Democracy, according to this view, requires more than multiplicity of political parties, periodic elections to representative state institutions, respect of civil rights, and non partisan bureaucracies. At best, these sceptics say, liberal arrangements can achieve a low-intensity democracy that does little to mobilize the majority and to empower marginalized circles(Gills et al., 1993). Chronic low voter turnouts in many countries and widespread cynicism about political parties and politicians would seem to reflect these limitations of liberal democracy (IDEA, 1997). For some social commentators, then supplementary or alternative means are required to move from a democracy of form to a democracy of substance. On its won, liberal democracy cannot generate levels and types of public awareness, participation and accountability that would constitute a veritable democracy. An engaged citizenry is strongly correlated with the effectiveness and responsiveness in government that is a prerequisite to addressing sustainability problems.

As Churchill famously observed, democracy in general is ‘the worst form of government.‘ The glories of the fabled Athenian polis rested on a foundation of slavery. “Citizenship was an ethos, a creative art, indeed, a civic cult rather than a demanding body of duties and a palliative body of rights. At his best, the Athenian citizen tried not only to participate as fully as possible in a far-reaching network of institutions that elicited his presence a s an active being; the democracy turned his participation into a drama that found visible and emotional expression in rituals, games, artwork, a civic religion - in short, a collective sense of feeling and solidarity that underpinned a collective sense of responsibility and duty.(1) This was different from the modern notion of the good citizen holding the right to vote, a tax payer, and not so political.

Even so, the state, being territorially grounded, is not sufficient by itself as an agent of democracy in a world where many social relations are substantially supra-territorial. A statist framework of democracy cannot adequately subject Trans world flows to public direction. Global democracy needs more than a democratic state. For veritable democracy in a more global world, rule by the people has to extend beyond the relationship between states and their respective national populations. No state can fully control its jurisdiction’s involvement with global flows. Even the most powerful national governments cannot by themselves effectively regulate global health problems, global financial markets, global communications flows, global migratory movements, and global environmental changes. Each states rules over a limited territory, while global processes encompass the planet, often defying country borders. In this sense global flows can undermine even the best national democracy. The growth of sub-state, trans-state and no territorial identities and solidarities has reconfigured the public.

In so far democracy through the state is focused in the first place on education, of participation by, and accountability to the nation. The people has many identities in the contemporary globalizing world, and state based democracy often proves to be an unsatisfactory framework for self determination by collectivises other than state-nations. The mode of governance now has moved towards polycentrism. In the contemporary globalizing world, public awareness, participation and control need to be achieved not only in relation to the state, but also in respect of the various other parts of a multicolour and diffuse regulatory apparatus. With polycentrism a host of sub-state, trans-state, supra-state and private governance mechanisms have acquired a significant degree of autonomy from state based democratic processes. Democratic deficits cannot be corrected through the state alone in today’s globalized world.

More often a working democracy depends on knowledgeable citizens. A public that is unaware of its situation, and thus immobilized, cannot pursue meaningful self determination. To be democratically competent, people must have access to relevant information and an adequate understanding of the issues, concepts, principles, policies, procedures, and evidence at hand. Public participation in, and public control of, governance are ineffective if citizens are ignorant. Unfortunately, widespread public ignorance prevails today about globality and its governance. Most people recognize the term globalization, but few are clear about what, more precisely, the process entails and why it is significant. Public awareness of the nature, scope, scale, intensity, causes and impacts of globalization is deplorably low. Likewise, few citizens have well grasped the polycentric character of contemporary governance. Many individuals are ignorant of the involvement of their national and local governments in the governance of globalization.

Most people have not even heard of many of the supra-state and private agencies that figure in the regulation of global flows. Even activists in the politics of globalization often confuse, say the IMF with the World Bank. Few citizens have more than a loose intuitive sense of how arbitrary social hierarchies of country, class, gender, race and other structures are compromising democracy in polycentric governance of today’s world. This democratically unacceptable ignorance has by no means resulted from inherent stupidity on the part of citizens. Rather the problem has bee a general lack of sufficient opportunities to become cognizant of globalization and its governance. These failures of public education have been systemic across all the main sites of knowledge production: schools, universities, mass media, civil society, and governance agencies themselves.

(1) Bookchin, M., from Urbanization to Cities: Towards a new politics of citizenship, (London: Cassel, 1995), p. 63

Prugh, T., Costanza, R., Daly, H., The local politics of Global sustainability, Island Press, 2000

Scholte, J. A., Globalization: A critical introduction, second edition, Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2005

Gills, B., et al. (eds), Low intensity democracy: political power in the New World Order, London: Pluto, 1993

IDEA, Voter turnout from 1945 to 1997: A global report. Stockholm: institute for democracy and electoral assistance, 1997

Central Asia: BBC Research

Poverty

Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. It was hit by famine in 2001 and food insecurity remains a major concern.
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan earn less than many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but health indicators are generally better and literacy levels rival those in industrialised countries.
Despite their oil and gas wealth, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan still lag behind some of their poorer neighbours on issues such as hunger and poverty.
Pollution
Soviet nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining have contaminated many sites with radioactivity.
Intense irrigation for cotton production has damaged large swathes of land, especially near the Aral Sea which has shrunk 90% in 40 years.
Salt deposits and agricultural chemical residues form toxic dust which is damaging locals' health.
Obsolete industrial plants, pockets of air pollution, chemical and biological weapons test sites and damage from oil production are additional concerns.

Economy
Soviet leaders developed Central Asia as a major supplier of metals, minerals and agricultural produce, particularly cotton.
The collapse of the USSR plunged the area into decline as subsidies dried up and Soviet markets disappeared.
Recovery has depended on countries' natural resources and commitment to reform.
Kazakhstan has fared best. Reforms have paved the way for foreign investors to develop its copious energy resources, but over-reliance on oil and gas is a concern.
In contrast, Turkmenistan has significant gas reserves but has implemented little change and struggled to exploit and sell the commodity.
Uzbekistan also has oil and gas, and although slow to attract investment, is increasing production.
Tajikstan and Kyrgystan lack energy resources and rely on exports such as cotton, gold, aluminium and, in Kyrgystan's case, hydroelectricity.

Oil and gas

Kazakhstan has the second largest oil and gas reserves in the region, behind Russia. Its oil production has more than doubled since 1999 and the government hopes to triple this by 2015.
The 2001 opening of a pipeline from western Kazakhstan to the Black Sea helped raise export levels. A pipeline to China is now being built.
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have substantial gas reserves, but lack of pipeline capacity limits exports.
Major export markets are Russia (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) and the Ukraine and Iran (Turkmenistan).

Politics

Central Asia was incorporated into the Soviet Union in the 1920s and ruled by communists for nearly 70 years.
Since the five countries gained independence in 1991 they have all faced the challenge of building their own political structures.
Turkmenistan
System: Turkmenistan is an autocratic, one party state. The president is head of state and of government, assisted by a People's Council and an elected 50-member legislative body. Although elections have been held, there is no genuine opposition to the president, and in 1999 the legislature voted to make the current presidency a life-long appointment.
Leader: President Saparmyrat Niyazov became Turkmen Communist Party chief in 1985 and was elected leader of newly-independent Turkmenistan in 1991. He has been president ever since, building up a personality cult and crushing dissent ruthlessly.
Media: There are no independent media outlets in Turkmenistan.

Kazakhstan

System: Elected president with extensive powers is head of state, and appoints prime minister and cabinet members. Two elected chambers form the legislature, which can amend the constitution.
Leader: The former communist leader Nursultan Nazarbayev has led Kazakhstan since 1989 - two years before independence. He has concentrated extensive powers in his own hands. His term was extended in a referendum in 1995, and he won a fresh seven-year term in 1999 elections in which his main rival was banned. Western observers criticised 2004 parliamentary elections as flawed. Presidential elections are due in December 2005.
Media: Press freedom is enshrined in Kazakhstan's constitution, but media rights monitors say the privately-owned and opposition media are subject to harassment and censorship. The government controls the printing presses and most radio and TV transmission facilities. Criticising the president is a criminal offence.
Uzbekistan
System: President is head of state and, together with a 150-member legislature, is elected by popular vote. The president appoints the cabinet and high-court justices, and can repeal laws made by local administrative bodies. The legislature can alter the constitution.
Leader: President Islam Karimov became leader of Soviet Uzbekistan in 1990 and remained in post after independence. Referendums held in 1995 and 2002 have extended his term in office until 2007. He has crushed opposition and the country is known for its poor human rights record. Violence in the city of Andijan hit the headlines in May 2005, after troops opened fire on a protest against the jailing of several alleged Islamic extremists.
Media: The state maintains tight control of the media. Although the constitution outlaws censorship and guarantees press freedom, the media rights body Reporters Without Borders said in 2005 that the use of violence against journalists and disinformation by the authorities were commonplace.

Kyrgyzstan

System: President is head of state and - supported by a prime minister - head of government. A 35-member Legislative Assembly is responsible for day-to-day law-making, a 70-member Assembly of Peoples Representatives represents regional and ethnic communities. Both chambers are elected by popular vote.
Current leader: Former Prime Minister Kurmanbek Bakiyev won elections in July 2005 after former president Askar Akayev was swept from power by nation-wide protests against alleged fraud in parliamentary elections. Mr Akayev was the communist leader in 1991 when the country gained independence and maintained his position throughout several elections, although these drew accusations of foul play.
Media: Freer press than in other central Asian countries, but subject to increasing pressure in recent years. Informal government censorship and self-censorship said to shape coverage. Most media supported Mr Bakiyev in 2005 elections.

Tajikistan

System: Elected president, with a parliament made up of two chambers - one elected, one part elected and part appointed. Politics was dominated by civil war between the government and Islamists from 1992 - 1997.
Leader: President Emomali Rahmonov has been in power since he was elected in 1994 in a ballot deemed by international observers to be neither free nor fair. He did, however, include Islamist opponents in his government as part of the 1997 peace deal that ended the civil war. As the only central Asian country with an established religious opposition party, the country has been considered more politically open than its neighbours, although Mr Rahmonov has recently moved to increase his grip on power. In a 2003 referendum he secured the right to run for two further consecutive seven year terms and his supporters took most seats in parliamentary elections in 2005. Both votes were heavily criticised.
Media: Some private newspaper, TV and radio media outlets are operating, but media rights organisations report that press freedom is not widely respected in Tajikistan, despite being provided for in the constitution

People

Central Asia's inhabitants are largely descended from nomadic tribes who have lived under powers ranging from Alexander the Great and Mongol leaders to Soviet communists.
Each Central Asian nation has its own indigenous population, although all these speak languages with similar Turkic roots and are mainly sunni Muslim.
Kazakhstan is the most ethnically mixed. Under Soviet rule, natives became outnumbered by an influx of Russians, Ukrainians and Germans, although many of the immigrants have now left.
Turkmenistan is the most ethnically homogeneous - indigenous Turkmen account for 85% of the population.
Uzbeks are most widespread, forming the second largest population group in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.
Central Asia is also home to minorities such as the Karakalpaks in Uzbekistan and Uighurs - Turkic Muslims concentrated mainly in Western China.
The region's inhabitants cluster most densely in the lush valleys of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and populate Soviet-built industrial cities.

Land
Sandwiched between China, Russia and Europe, the five countries usually classed as Central Asia form something of a geographical crossroads.
Mountains tower to the south and east, dominating Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Kazakhstan's vast grasslands stretch north towards Siberia and, to the south, give way to the desert that covers 80% of Turkmenistan.
Landlocked and arid with hot summers and harsh, icy winters, much of central Asia is remote, inhospitable and sparsely populated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/guides
/456900/456938/html/nn6page1.stm

Migration

Refugees make up 9 per cent of the global migrant total; most of these are in developing countries, with only 3 million in developed countries. Utterly important is that refugees right to remain in safety and dignity should have been protected in the first place. According to Goodwin-Gill, the right to remain is conceived as ‘sense of not having to become a refugee, not having to flee, not being displaced by force or want, together with the felt security that comes with being protected’. Protection and security indeed are both future critical issues which need rethinking.

Countries throughout the world have attempted to curb immigration, either in an attempt to bolster their political identity or to reassure their increasingly vocal domestic population that they will not be outnumbered by new immigrants who are increasingly tenacious to seize scarce resources. Voluntary migrants move for economic reasons and are not entitled to humanitarian protection under law. There are of course areas at the ‘migration asylum nexus’ where the two categories overlap, for example persecution of minorities such as the Roma in Eastern Europe has a strong dimension of economic exclusion.

Overall, while migrants do access infrastructure and public services, there are many economic, social, cultural and fiscal benefits for receiving countries. Indeed, the evidence increasingly suggests that migration stimulates the economy, enhances competitiveness and contributes £2.5bn a year net to the UK Treasury (Oxfam, 2003) (1).

In developing countries the impact on the host country also depends on the scale of the migration. A mass influx of refugees to a neighbouring country can have vast economic repercussions for example in labour market by surplus of labour and its effects on lowering wages. It can also have extremely negative development impact as already stretched local resources, including water, land and firewood, are put under extreme pressure, particularly where international humanitarian assistance is not working to full capacity. Over populated developing countries with large families struggling for basic necessities are faced with extreme poverty particularly for lack of job opportunities. This is aggravated in countries Where the society becomes over crowded, resource-demanding, and technologically complex, large families impose loads of problems on the public as well as the environment.

Forced migration


Migration policy can be joined up with asylum, development, humanitarian, trade and foreign policies in order to effectively identifies the root causes of migration, safeguard the legal obligations towards forced migrants to prevent human disasters and turn it to new opportunities for development as well as ensures the equitable migration outcome for the individual, host and sending countries. Migrants, in the most part, move from developing countries due to livelihood insecurities or lack of employment opportunities.

Forced migrants include asylum seekers, refugees and those in need of other forms of international protection from violence, conflict and persecution. They also include internally displaced people, IDPs, who flee for the same reasons as refugees or are affected by natural disaster but do not cross an international border. In recent decade with a change in the nature of the world’s conflicts, there has been an increase in internal displacement. According to the Global Internally Displaced People (IDP) Project, in the first part of 2002, about 25 million people were estimated to be internally displaced, up from an estimated 5 million in the 1970s and outnumbering refugees by two to one. (2)

In terms of forced migration global trends, predictions are hard to make as large outflows are caused by unpredictable large scale conflict or human rights abuses. The numbers of refugees in the world rose from 2.4 million in 1975 to a peak of 18.2 million at the end of the cold war in 1993. By 2000, the numbers had declined to 12.1 million. Political rhetoric also suggests that there is a significant year on year rise in the number of asylum applications made in Europe, however statistics show that there has been an overall decrease in the last ten years and a specific decrease from 1999-2002 of 3.8% (Oxfam, 2003).

Conflict driven migration

Most types of social, political, and economic change involve conflict of some sort, and one could argue that many of the positive changes in world history have occurred as a result of conflict. Violent conflicts emerging since the end of the Cold War have commonly been called ethnic conflict, social conflict, and civil conflict, along with international social conflict where there is some cross-border activity of other states are involved.

Competing identities are often added to the list of root causes, whether conceived in terms of an essentialist ethnicity, or regionalism, or tensions over state formation, or marginality to the global economy (Miall et al. 1999). Traditional cultures and livelihoods in the south have been devastated by modern warfare, conflict induced famine, armed militia groups and proliferation of small arms and light weapons. The abuse and proliferation of small arms is often characteristic of suppression of pressure for democratic change. The threatening use of such arms by security forces, armed groups, or others in positions of authority against political activists, journalists, trade unionists, and peaceful demonstrators has been well-documented for a number of developing countries, as well as for some developed countries.

Taking measures

More recently, with the extension of conflict resolution into post conflict policies, gender issues have come to be seen as far more central, and as directly affecting the efficacy of peace-building initiatives, even if women still remain marginalised at the point of brokering a settlement. There has been a surge of interest in women who have negotiated peace between groups of warring men (Berhane-Selassie 1994; El-Bushra 2000), or who have even courageously intervened in battles to force peace (in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan, for instance). These women have sometimes called on and expressed values, behaviour, and codes which are explicitly associated with their gender. Women less concern with ego involvement have played crucial role in consensus building that needs to be done in forging a peace for people that are being so divided. There are possibilities of introducing new paradigms in conflict resolution, because, women are experienced in conflict resolution and conflict transformation in the domestic sphere, that can be played out into the way public negotiations take place.

Supporting women as groups of individuals (rather than in organisations) is also a common strategy in trying to promote peace building (United Nations 1985, 1995, 1998). A common request from peace activists and commentators is that there should be more of a female presence at the sites of peace making, as well as at discussions that may take place as part of peace building (European Commission 1996b; United Nations 1995). Merely being invited to attend talks or peace conferences is insufficient, however. Very few women have the education, training, or confidence to participate fully, even if they are in attendance. There are lessons here from development policies which have attempted to expand the participation of women in the political process by offering them special training and educational opportunities. Moreover, where peace education is taken seriously as part of the new curriculum, this frees women from what might be seen as a private responsibility (that of educating their children for peace) and makes it a public activity, in which men can also play a part.


Nurturing a human-rights culture and support for human-rights organisations is a common mechanism used in peace building. For example, the Nariobi based New Sudan Council of Churches NSCC that has a deep religious commitment to justice and peace, believes that there is no conflict, whether latent or violent, which is so small that it can be ignored. The people to people peace initiative is a locally owned process based on traditional methods of reconciliation in an environment where formal institutions are non existent. Since the late 1990s locally convened conferences have resolved a series of ethnic and communal conflicts and brought hope and stability to some of the areas most affected by hostilities. Formerly hostile communities have realised that peaceful coexistence promotes the establishment of sustainable livelihoods that create hope for a better future where the economic, political, social and cultural contribution of every citizen is valued and treasured.

Developed countries have undertaken further action in the field by promoting human rights and democracy, as well as stabilization and regional security, using financial incentives. In order to further the aims mentioned above, a number of projects have been initiated, such as the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), the MEDA Democracy Programme (implemented in the framework of EIDHR) for 12 countries in North Africa and the Middle East, or the Cotonou Agreement, pertaining to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Separate programmes have been put into operation targeting the Balkans (CARDS Assistance Program to the Western Balkans, involving Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia & Montenegro and Macedonia) and the former Soviet republics (TACIS). Of special importance for Europe, for security reasons, is the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (in view of the large number of Muslim states in geographic proximity to Europe).

The UK and EU governments should do more to reframe their migration policies to integrate social and economic development in migrants’ home countries with entry and integration in host societies. The UK Government should ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families and to take active steps to enforce the protection of these rights. The rights, needs and vulnerabilities of refugee women and girls must be an integral and active consideration in humanitarian assistance and in asylum systems of the UK and other developed countries.





(1) See Sarah Spencer Mousetraps are not enough The Guardian Oct 28th, 2003; Sarah Spencer (ed.)
(2) Internally Displaced People : A global Survey. Norwegian Refugee Council, 2002.


Ref.:

MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT; Oxfam GB Written Submission For The International Development Committee, Nov 2003

Human Development and the Environment, edited by Hans van Ginkel, Brendan Barrett, Julius Court, and Jerry Velasquez; United Nation University Press, 2002

Kropotkin, P., Fields, Factory, and Workshops: Brain work and manual work, (first published 1912), Transaction publishers, UK, 1992

Oxfam, Iansa, Amnesty Intl; Guns or Growth, Control Arms Campaign; Assessing the impact of arms sales on sustainable development, June 2004

Ouko, M., From Warriors to Peace Makers, Oxford University, Refugees Studies Centre, 2005

Pankhurst, D., The ‘sex war’ and other wars: towards a feminist approach to peace Building, Oxfam GB, www.oxfam.org.uk

Stewart, F. and V. Fitzgerald (eds.) War and Underdevelopment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000

Pankhurst, D. and J. Pearce, ‘Engendering the analysis of conflict: perspectives from the South’, in H. Afshar (ed.) Women and Empowerment, London: Routledge, 2000

Miall, H., O. Ramsbotham, and T. Woodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999

El-Bushra, J., ‘Transforming conflict: some thoughts on a gendered understanding of conflict processes’, in Jacobs et al. (eds.), 2000

Elson, D. (ed.), Male Bias in the Development Process, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995

International Alert Gender Campaign, Women Building Peace: From the Village Council to the Negotiating Table, London: International Alert, 1999 (www.internationalalert.org)

Garcia, E. (ed.), Pilgrim Voices: Citizens as Peacemakers, London: International Alert, 1994

Turshen, M., ‘Women’s war stories’, in Turshen and Twagiramariya (eds.), 1998

United Nations, Report of the Expert Group Meeting on Adolescent Girls and their Rights, Addis Ababa: United Nations, Division for the Advancement of Women, 1997

United Nations, Resolution on Women and Armed Conflict, United Nations, Commission for the Status of Women, 1998

Science in culture and politics

Science and technology account for many of the signature characteristics of contemporary societies; the uncertainty, unaccountability and speed that contribute, at the level of personal experience, to feelings of being perpetually of balance, the reduction of individuals to standard classifications that demarcate the normal form, the deviant and authorize varieties of social control, the scepticism, alienation and distrust that threaten the legitimacy of public action, and the oscillation between visions of doom and visions of progress that destabilize the future. Both doing and being, whether in the high citadels of modernity or its distant outposts, play out in territories shaped by scientific and technological invention. Our methods of understanding and manipulating the world curve back and reorder our collective experience along unforeseen pathways, like the seemingly domesticated chlorofluorocarbons released from spray cans and air conditioners that silently ate away the earth’s stratospheric ozone layer. Just as environmental scientists are hard put to find on earth an ecological system that has not been affected by human activity, so it is difficult for social scientist to locate forms of human organization or behaviour anywhere in the world whose structure and function have not been affected, to some extent, by science and technology.

Take culture, in particular, or more accurately cultures. Although science and technology are present everywhere, the rambunctious storyline of modernity refuses to conform to any singular narrative of enlightenment or progress. The familiar ingredients of modern life continually rearrange themselves in unpredicted patterns, creating rupture, violence and difference alongside the sense of increasing liberation, convergence and control. The terrorist attacks in 9/11 acted out in brutal reality and on global television screens many contradictions that were already seething below the surface. This was suicidal violence on a previously unimagined scale. Yet at the threshold of a new millennium, this violence only dramatized in horrific form much that was already known.

Industrial societies, despite their many commonalities, articulate their needs and desires in different voices. Despite the global homogeneity that they signal the din of multimodality rises rapidly as one leaves the havens of the industrial west. Politicians and citizens have met the challenges and dislocations of the present with disparate resources and divergent criteria of what makes life worth living. The world is not a single place, and even the west accommodates technological innovations such as genetically modified foods with divided expectations and multiple rationalities. Cultural specificity survives with astonishing reliance in the face of the levelling forces of modernity. Not only the sameness but also the diversity of contemporary cultures derive, it seems, from specific, contingent accommodations that societies make with their scientific and technological capabilities.

In terms of identities, whether human or non human, individual or collective, it is one of the most potent resources with which people restore sense out of disorder. When the world one knows is in disarray, redefining identities is a way of putting things back into familiar places. It is no surprise, then, that co-productionist writing in science and technology studies, concerned as it so often is with emergent and controversial phenomena, has consistently been absorbed with questions of identity. The formation and maintenance of identities plays an important role in several fields and writings. The identity of the expert, in particular, that quintessential bridging figure of modernity, makes a prominent appearance in several texts. But collective identities are also contested or under negotiation in the working out of scientific and technological orders. What does it mean to be European, African, intelligent or a member of a research community, learned profession or disease group? And what roles do knowledge and its production play in shaping and sustaining these social roles or in giving them power and meaning?

How do new socio-technical objects - such as climate change or endangered species, or Europe, Africa or democracy - swim into our ken, achieving cognitive as well as moral and political standing? How is knowledge taken up in societies, and how does it affect people’s collective and individual identities, permitting some to be experts, others to be research subjects, and still others to be resisters or revolutionaries? By making visible such questions, and proposing answers that were not previously on the table, co-productionist analysis performs a neglected critical function. More conventionally, though no less importantly, it enables normative analysis by following power into places where current social theory seldom thinks to look for it; for example, in genes, climate models, research methods, cross examinations, accounting systems or the composition and practices of expert bodies.

Prediction is the hardest case, and one may well wonder why in our surprise prone societies any social science ever purports to tell the future. But to the extent that co production makes apparent deep cultural regularities, to the extent that it explains the contingency or durability of particular socio technical formation, it also allows us to imagine the pathways by which change could conceivably occur. It illuminates, in this way, new possibilities for human development.

Perhaps the field of science and technology studies is insufficiently normative and has little to contribute to macro social analyses of culture and power. Or that they demonstrate that some of the most enduring topics in politics and government lend themselves well to elucidation in a co-productionist mode. Among these are the emergence of new authority structures and forms of governance, the selective durability and self replication of cultures, and the bases of expert conflict over knowledge in rational, democratic societies. A point has become also clear that historical and contemporary voices in the field have a lot more in common than has been permitted to surface across institutionalized disciplinary boundaries. Regardless of the observer’s standpoint in time, there is in these pieces a shared outlook on the nature of knowledge and its embeddeness in material and social forms.

Perhaps as important, in one after another of these findings, the distinction between micro and macro that has played so foundational a role in traditional social theory is shown to be, in significant part, an artifice of our own thought processes. The practical experience, the scales of analysis and action are frequently scrambled together. The national or global constitutional orders we recognize and live by are constantly remade in innumerable, localized engagements; without this perpetual reperformance they might as well cease to exist. Co production then allows the bringing together of insights from anthropology and history law and politics, cultural studies and social theory. it is an integrative as well as an interdisciplinary framework.

Science and technology as a field has been criticized, for making science too social to the point, some say, of representing science as no different from any other exercise in the accumulation of authority. It is indicated that this thin reading misrepresents the breadth and sophistication of the field’s engagement with the social worlds in which science and technology function today as indispensable players. The cultural uniqueness of science has been acknowledged, insisting only that their special ness arises from repeated, situated encounters between scientific, technical and other forms of life. Science and technology are infused by other ways of knowing, perceiving, and making accommodations with the world. Unlike laws of nature, the idiom of co-production does not seek to foreclose competing explanations by laying claim to one dominant and all powerful truth. It offers instead a new way of exploring the waters of human history, where politics, knowledge and invention are continually in flux.

Jasanoff, S., (2004) States of Knowledge, The co-production science and social order, Routledge publishing

Bourdieu, P., (1976), knowledge and social imagery, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

Anderson, B., (1991), Imagined Communities. 2nd edn, London: Verso

Latour, B. (1999) Politiques de la nature; comment faire entrer les sciences en democratie, Paris: Decouverte

Nowotny, H. (1990), Knowledge for certainty: poverty, welfare institutions and the institutionalization of social science; in Discourses on Society: the shaping of the social science disciplines; Sociology of the Sciences, vol. 15 Dordrecht:kluwer

Hacking, I., 1992, World Making by Kind Making; in how classification works: Nelson Goodman among the social sciences, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ Press

Koertge, N. 1998, A house built on sand; exposing postmodernist myths about science, New York: Oxford Univ Press

UK Economy

UK managers as an occupational group

In spite of downsizing and restructuring of modern organisations to "flatten" management hierarchies, the ranks of managers in the UK are actually reported to be growing. Global competition has highlighted the need for adoption of modern management initiatives to deliver enhanced quality and cost-effectiveness in UK business operations. With the emphasis placed upon empowerment of employees to achieve these operational aims, the issue of development of managerial competencies within the workforce becomes paramount. According to the Labour Force Survey, in Autumn 2004 the highest proportion of employees in the UK (14.9 per cent) worked in the "managers and senior officials" occupational group.1 This group, as defined by the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC), includes corporate managers and managers in agriculture and services. Based upon average hourly wage, the "managers and senior officials" occupational group is one of the highest paid across all occupational sectors in the UK, according to the autumn 2004 Labour Force Survey.2 The UK relies less upon family members of company owners to manage corporations and more on professional managers. The UK also has a lower proportion of managers with advanced formal educations compared with other countries, but this may be due to the higher proportion of UK employees that are classed as managers.3 The Changes in Employer Practices survey (4) reports a net recorded growth in the number of managers being recruited since 1999 in all sectors. This trend was especially prominent in financial and business services, public administration, health, education, manufacturing and construction. The smallest increase in management recruitment was expressed in the transport, storage and communications sectors yet still more respondents reported increases in management recruitment than decreases. A survey study of large service organisations showed that half the organisations studied used Competency Based Management Training (CBMT) programmes to train their managers, with the aim of increasing the availability of skills that were of direct business value. CBMT represents a significant investment for organisations in managerial competencies, with 2/3 of the organisations studied spending over £1,000 per manager and 1/3 investing over £2,000 in the training of each manager(5). The Management Standards Centre (MSC) defines managerial competencies based upon definition of criteria associated with effective management of people, finances, operations and information. The table below outlines six key functions associated with effective management and leadership, according to the MSC, which may be used to structure management training and competency development programs(6).

According to a review of UK competitiveness by the Department of Trade and Industry in 2003(7), there is some evidence to suggest that UK companies are slower and less likely to adopt contemporary management programmes such as Total Quality Management, then their foreign counterparts, especially in the manufacturing industry. A number of explanations for this trend have been proposed, including: resistance to change, inadequate training, low private and public investment in R&D, and lack of collaborative institutions for the dissemination of management best practices. Small and medium-sized enterprises provide more employment and business turnover in the UK than large firms and public organisations together. In 1998, firms with fewer than 250 employees employed 57 per cent of the workforce and accounted for 54 per cent of turnover(8).

Small and medium-sized enterprises provide more employment and business turnover in the UK than large firms and public organisations together. In 1998, firms with fewer than 250 employees employed 57 per cent of the workforce and accounted for 54 per cent of turnover(9). Effective management of SMEs provides certain challenges, including the control of innovation, marketing and training needs, compared with larger enterprises that possess specific departments to deal with these functions. Effective management of SMEs provides certain challenges, including the control of innovation, marketing and training needs, compared with larger enterprises that possess specific departments to deal with these functions. Effective management is essential to secure competitive viability in globalised markets and the emerging knowledge-based economy. Increasing availability of information technology and Internet business means increases in the levels and strength of competition. The challenge for modern managers lies in effective "knowledge management"(10) and the creation of perpetually "learning organisations"(11) to achieve valued innovation in both products and business processes.

Employability of young people

The most disadvantaged young people in Britain should be offered basic life skills lessons covering anger management, speaking in groups and waking up on time, a government report says (Guardian, 24 Nov 05, p. 9). The study, by the government’s Social Exclusion Unit, concedes that even the most low level employment programmes are not working for some 200,000 young people, who the authors say are far from ready to start work or training. There are about one million young people not in education, employment or training in the UK, who represent a far higher proportion than in many comparable countries (Foyer Federation).

The key drivers for anti social behaviour are due to long term unemployment, poverty, egoistic culture, decline of deference, and most important lack of meaningful human relationship that binds people together. The decline of that puritan tradition that commitment to self discipline and temperance, which were the bases of social relation engendered moral laissez faire. The prevalent lack of self esteem is socially justified, or at best is replaced by rebellious character.


The Labour Force Survey in the Largest Regular Household in the UK




Labour Force Survey LFS interviews are conducted continuously throughout the year. In any 3 months period, a nationally representative sample of approx 102.000 people aged 16 or over in around 57000 households are interviewed. Each household is interviewed five times, at 3 monthly intervals. The initial interview is done face to face by an interviewer visiting the address. The other interviews are done by telephone wherever possible. The survey asks a series of questions about respondent’s personal circumstances and their labour market activity. Most questions refer to activity in the week before the interview. The concepts and definitions used in the LFS are agreed by the ILO.

The definitions are used by EU member countries and members of the OECD. The LFS was carried out every two years from 1983. The ILO definition was first used in 1984. This was also the first year in which the survey was conducted on an annual basis with results available for every spring quarter (representing an average of the period from March to May). The survey moved to a continuous bases in spring 92 in Great Britain and in winter 94/5 in Northern Ireland, with average quarterly results published 4 times a year for seasonal quarters: spring (March to May)., summer (June to August) autumn (Sept to Nov) and winter (Dec to Feb). From April 98, results are published 12 times a year for the average of 3 consecutive months.

The LFS collects info on a sample of the population. To convert this info to give estimates for the population the data must be grossed. This is achieved by calculating weighting factors (after referred to simply as weights) which can be applied to each sampled individual in such a way that the weighted-up results match estimates or projections of the total population in terms of age distribution, sex, and region of residence.

Strength and limitations of the LFS

The LFS produces coherent labour market info on the basis of internationally standard concepts and definitions. It is a rich source of data on a wide variety of labour market and personal characteristics. It is the most suitable source for making comparisons between countries. The LFS is designed so that households interviewed in each three months period constitute a representative sample of UK households. The survey covers those living in private households and nurses in NHS accommodation. Students living in halls of residence have been included since 1992 as information about them is collected at their parents address. However the LFS has its limitations. It is a sample survey and is therefore subject to sampling variability. The survey does not include people living in institutions such as hostels or residential houses. ’Proxy’ reporting (when members of the household are not present at the interview, another member of the household answers the question on their behalf) can affect the quality of info on topics such as earnings, hours worked, benefit receipt and qualifications. Around one third of interviews are conducted by proxy usually by a spouse or partner but sometimes by a parent or other near relation.



Sampling Variability

Survey estimates are prone to sampling variability. The easiest way to explain this concept is by example. In the Sept to Nov 97 period, ILO unemployment in Great Britain (seasonally adjusted) stood at 1,847,000. If we drew another sample for the same period we could get a different result, perhaps 1,900,000 or 1,820,000. In theory, we could draw many samples, and each would give a different result. This is because each sample would be made up of different people who would give different answers to the questions. The spread of these results is the sampling variability. Sampling variability is determined by a number of factors including the sample size. The variability of the population from which the sample is drawn and the sample design. Once we know the sampling variability we can calculate a range of values about the sample estimate that represents the expected variation with a given level of assurance. This is called a confidence interval. For a 95% confidence interval we expect that in 95% of the samples (19 times out of 20) the confidence interval will contain the true value that would be obtained by surveying the entire population. For the example given above, we can be 95% confident that the true value was in the range 1,791,000 to 1,903,000.

Unreliable estimates

Very small estimates have relatively wide confidence intervals making them unreliable. For this reason, the ONS does not publish LFS estimates below 10,000.

Non-response
Non-response can introduce bias to a survey particularly if the people not responding have characteristics that are different from those who do respond. The LFS has a response rate of around 80% to the first interview and over 90% of those who are interviewed, once go on to complete all five interviews. There are relatively high levels for a household survey. Any bias from non-response is minimised by weighting the results.

Weighting or grossing converts sample date to represent the full population in the LFS, the data are weighted separately by age, sex and area of residence to population estimates based on the census. Weighting also adjusts for people not in the survey and thus minimises non-response bias.

LFS concepts and definitions

Discouraged workers - a sub-group of the economically inactive population, defined as those neither in employment nor unemployed (on the ILO measure) who said they would like a job and whose main reason for not seeking work was because they believed there were no jobs available.

Economically active - people aged 16 and over who are either in employment or unemployed.

Economic activity rate - the percentage of people aged 16 and over who are economically active.

Economically inactive - people who are neither in employment nor unemployed this group includes, for example, all those who were looking after a home or retired.

Employment - people aged 16 or over who did at least one hour of paid work in the reference week (whether as an employee or self employed) those who had a job that they were temporarily away from (on holiday, for example), those or govt supported training and employment programs (from spring 1983), and those doing unpaid family work (from spring 1992).

Employees - the division between employees and self employed is based on survey respondents own assessment of their employment status. Full time - the classification of employees, self employed and unpaid family workers in their main job as full time or part time is on the basis of self assessment. Up until autumn 95, people who were on govt work related training programs are classified as full time or part time according to whether their usual hours of work per week were over 30 or 30 and under, from winter 95/96 onwards, the full time/part time classification for this group has been changed to self assist in line with the other groups outlined above. People on govt supported training and employment programs who are at college in the survey reference week are classified, by conention as part time.

Government supported training and employment programs comprise all people aged 16 and over participating in one of the govt’s employment and training programs (youths training, training for work and community action) together with those on similar programs administered by training and enterprise councils in England and Wales, or local Enterprise companies in Scotland.

Unemployment - unemployment figures from the LFS, which are based upon the ILO definition, were relabelled ‘unemployment’ rather than ILO unemployment in Jan 03. This emphasis that the LFS figures provide the official and only internationally comparable measure of unemployment in the UK. For more details see the National Statistics web www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=251. The ILO measure of unemployment used through out this supplement refers to people without a job who were available to start work in the two weeks following their LFS interview and who had either looked for work in the four weeks prior to interview or were waiting to start a job they had already obtained. This definition of unemployment is in accordance with that adopted by the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians further clarified at the 14th ICLS, and promulgated by the ILO in its publication.

Unemployment (rate) - the percentage of economically active people who are unemployed on the ILO measure.

Unemployment (duration) - defined as the shorter of the following two periods:
a) duration of active search for works
b) length of time since employment

Temp employees - in the LFS these are defined as those employees who say that their main job is non permanent in one of the following ways, fixed period contract, agency temping, casual work, seasonal work, other temporary work.

Unpaid family workers - the separate identification from spring 92 of this group in the LFS is in accordance with international recommendations he group comprises persons doing unpaid work for a business t hey own or for a business that a relative owns.

Sources:

[i] Occupational sectors defined by SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) 2000. Data source: Office of National Statistics website (2004) Labour Force Survey Historical Quarterly Supplement - Table 16: All in employment by occupation (not seasonally adjusted). Available at: www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=7916
2 Source: Office of National Statistics website (2004) Labour Force Survey Historical Quarterly Supplement - Table 36: Average of gross weekly/hourly earnings by occupation (£s - not seasonally adjusted). Available at: www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=7936
3 DTI (2003) UKCompetitiveness: Moving to the next stage. DTI Economics Paper No. 3.
4 As described in: ESRC (2003) Managing Workplace Change. Future of Work Programme Seminar Series. Swindon: Economic and Social Research Council.
5 Strebler, M. T. & Bevan, S. (1996) Competence Based Management Training. IES Report 302.
6 Adapted from: Management Standards Centre website (2004) Available at: www.management-standards.org
7 Data Source: International Institute for Management Development (2004). Data available from: www.dtistats.net/competitiveness5/
8 DTI (2003) UK Competitiveness: Moving to the next stage. DTI Economics Paper No. 3.
[9]Cooke, P. N. & Clifton, N. C. (2002) Social Capital and Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Performance, 2000-2002. SN4605 ESRC Grant R000238356. Available at: www.data-archive.ac.uk
10 Stewart, T. A. (1998) Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organisations (Updated Edition). London: Nicholas Brealey.
11 Senge, P. M. (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. London: Random House.

Urge the UK government to help the people of Uganda

25,000 children have been abducted as soldiers and sexual slaves, and nearly 2 million people have fled their homes during Uganda’s civil war. The UK Government can help the people of Uganda – when it has the presidency of the UN Security Council in December. But we need you to tell them to.

Please write to Jack Straw, the UK Foreign Secretary, and in your own words:

Highlight the desperate plight of over 2 million people living in fear in Northern Uganda.
1. Write to Jack Straw


By post:

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP,
Foreign Office,
House of Commons,
London, SW1A 0AA

or By fax: 0207 839 2417
Send your name and
supporter number (if you
have one) to:



campaigning@oxfam.org.uk

with the word JACK in
the subject line.


Ask him to ensure the UK uses its presidency of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution challenging the Government of Uganda to act now.

Tell him that the resolution must call for the Ugandan Government to protect its people, guarantee safe unimpeded access for aid agencies, and pursue a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Why is Oxfam asking us to take this urgent action?

For 19 years, the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) has waged a civil war against the Government of Uganda. This has led to a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions: almost 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes and live in camps; over half a million have been killed. The Government of Uganda persists in pursuing an aggressive military approach to this conflict. We believe this strategy is not working and is in fact putting communities at greater risk.

Over the past few weeks we have seen an escalation of violence. Brutal LRA attacks have left three aid workers dead and several injured. As a result, aid agencies have been forced to temporarily suspend or limit their relief work, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without enough food, clean water and basic health care.

The Government of Uganda is not living up to its responsibility to protect civilians and ensure they have access to humanitarian aid. The international community must pressure them to meet this responsibility.


So why are we asked to write to Jack Straw now?

In December the UK will take over the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, the organisation charged with maintaining world security.

After 20 years of almost total lack of action, the Security Council must pass a resolution urging the government of Uganda to make the protection of communities its first priority. The UK, during its presidency, could be pivotal in making this happen. As Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw is a position to take this forward.

During its current presidency of the European Union, the UK has shown its leadership in getting governments to come together and agree a joint EU statement urging the government of Uganda to take action. They should use their presidency of the Security Council to do the same.


Lives and communities continue to be destroyed

Despite the Government of Uganda’s constant claims that the end of this conflict is in sight, for most people safety and security are still distant dreams. The people caught up in this conflict experience horrendous suffering on a daily basis.

Over 25,000 children have been abducted by the LRA and forced into fighting and sexual slavery. Abductions continue to occur regularly.
Up to 40,000 children are forced from their homes to commute nightly to sleep in safe centres in towns to avoid abduction.
Over 1.7 million people are currently confined to camps for displaced people.
Each week, 1,000 civilians die from war-related deaths, including from preventable diseases.
Oxfam believes that the Government of Uganda and the international community need to live up to their responsibility to protect the hundreds of thousands of people suffering as a result of this horrific conflict.

A UN Security Council resolution to protect communities would be a strong statement of the international community's commitment to prevent the long term suffering of the people of northern Uganda, and a strident step towards bringing about a just and lasting peace.


Summary

Now is the time to urge the UK government to use its position within the Security Council.

We have already seen groundbreaking progress lead by the UK in Europe on this issue, but this is not enough.

The Security Council must pass a resolution and during its presidency the UK could be instrumental in ensuring that communities once again feel safe in northern Uganda.


Write to:

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP,
Foreign Office,
House of Commons,
London, SW1A 0AA.

or fax Jack Straw on: 0207 839 2417.

Please send your letter or fax by 1 December. The earlier you write, the more impact you will have. Let Oxfam know that you’ve written to Jack Straw MP by:

Emailing your name and supporter number to campaigning@oxfam.org.uk with the word JACK in the subject line.

Alternatively, text the word JACK, your name and supporter number to 87099.

It’s important to tell Oxfam that you have written to Jack Straw MP so that they can follow up on the action you’ve taken.

Loving Nature: A tale of two mountains

Nature protectionists relate to nature in ways that can be described, in a broader sense, as religious or scientific. These two idioms do not, by any means, exhaust ways of relating to nature, but they are prominently expressed in discourses about nature protection. Debates about the differences between religion and science have arisen repeatedly in anthropology and related disciplines throughout the past century. The question is raised about how nature protectionists relate to nature, to find a way of identifying key ideas that might help us to understand how people engaged in the protection of nature come to think, feel and act as they do towards the objects of their concern. Both scientific and religious ways of relating to nature are present in today’s discourses about nature protection. It is important to identify those ideas about science and religion that might be useful in explaining what motivates nature protection. Science will conjure up in most readers’ minds a body of knowledge generated through systematic observation, knowledge which is seen as authoritative because of the controlled manner in which it is generated. Religion will suggest a concern with ultimate meanings as a basis for moral rules, rules which are often, though not always, believed to be sanctioned by a sacred authority, in the form of a divine being or beings.

Problems in nature are defined as such on the basis of scientific knowledge. We know about pollution, ozone depletion and climate change because scientists have told us about them. Science explains how these problems have arisen and what might be done to solve them. Some nature protectionists, those whom are referred to as conservationists, employ a scientific model of nature as an array of living and non living things and substances which interact with one another. In summary, the main function of science in nature protection is to be used as an arbiter of truth. Even though scientific knowledge is open ended and constantly changing, it is treated by environmental activists and policy makers as the main authority on the state of nature, and therefore as the most reliable foundation on which to base decision and is believed to provide impartial knowledge.

The role of religion on the other hand is harder to describe, perhaps because religion is a less precise concept than science. Many influential writers suggest that the sustenance of life on earth is presented, both explicitly and implicitly, as a sacred purpose, and the protection of nature as a spiritual commitment tot that purpose. This is particularly so for those who see the modern development of technology, based on science, as the main cause of environmental destruction, and who seek fundamental changes in the way societies relate to nature. Deep ecologists have argued that science and technology have disenchanted nature, destroying the sense of respect and awe with which it was treated before. They seek a re-enchantment of nature, a restoration of respect and the establishment of harmony in human nature relations. Recognizing the powerful influence of religion in the lives of many people, nature protectionists have sought to enlist religious world views in the promotion of an environmental ethic. Religious leaders and church organizations have also, on their own initiative, expressed their concern for nature and sought to define their role inits protection, often against the background of broader national and international discussions such as the Rio Earth summit in 1992.

There are powerful arguments that science should form the basis for environmental ethics with religion playing a supporting role, and that scientific knowledge might not be able to provide people with moral values. It appears that religion provides the only sound basis for moral motivation for many people.

Science, meanwhile, through the influence of philosophers, historians (Popper 1965, Khun 1970) and practising scientists is now more narrowly defined than it was by Malinowski, though again, definitions vary. Most would agree that science is a systematic search for knowledge, characterized by induction (verification through observation) and reduction (explanation of phenomena in terms of their progressively smaller components). It is open ended and continually generates new knowledge and it employs a rigorous methodology. According to this view, science has to obey rules which do not constrain common sense. In more recent debates about science and religion, common sense has replaced magic as the middle ground (Richards, 1997), the connecting territory through which the similarities and contrasts between science and religion are identified.

Theory places things in a causal context wider than that provided by common sense (Horton, 1967). Where common sense seeks the obvious and immediate cause, theory searches further afield. Common sense tells us that the crop failed because of a storm, but we need theory to explain that the storm was caused by witchcraft, or an angry god, or by unseasonal temperatures produced by carbon dioxide emissions.

Lines are drawn and connections made on the basis of different criteria, but in all of them science and religion fall on opposite sides of an analytical divide; the sense of opposition between them could hardly be clearer. In current widespread acceptance science is said to have arisen only twice in human history - in ancient Greece and early modern Europe, and possibly just once if the latter instance is assumed to be a continuation of the former. Religion, in contrast, is assumed to have arisen in more or less every known human society. As Maliowski employed a very broad concept of science which made it as common as religion, others, by separating it from technology and common sense, have made it rare. Religion too has been subjected to various definitions. There is the question about whether religion is more natural than science. In any case, religion and science are both components of human culture while we should recognize that ‘nature’ has several meanings. It is illogical to suggest that some cultural phenomena may be more natural than others. But nature can also refer to the inner essence of things as in the expression ‘human nature’. On this understanding, one cultural phenomenon might be more natural than another if it is more closely related to what makes us human, to what we all hold in common as ‘human beings‘. Conversely, it could be seen as less natural if it depends more on variable factors, such as personal experiences including experiences of particular cultural institutions.

The opposition between scientific and religious is a myth, in at least two senses of that term; in the popular sense that it is false, adnin the anthropological sense that it is believed in and dogmatically asserted because it protects particular interests and ideologies (Robinson 1968, Milton 1996). All areas of public discourse are characterized by this myth. We see it whenever people’s attachments to non market interest challenge t he operationof the market. Nature protection is just one area of public debate in which the myth is prominently expressed, in which accusations of emotionality are used as instruments of power, as mechanisms for putting down opponents and winning arguments.

The opposition between emotion and rationality as a myth, after all, has been a very useful device for getting decisions made, for guiding public discourse away from open aggression and towards calm negotiations. But clearly, it matters to those who are disadvantaged by the myth, to those for whom non market interest matter most and this, is a sizeable proportion of the population in any democracy. The market systematically destroys whatever it cannot encompass. This includes, not only nature and natural things, but also health, family, friendship, spirituality, knowledge and truth. Any failure to put the things that people hold most sacred at the centre of public decision making makes democracies, at best, undemocratic.

A tale of two mountains

On the Kuscap’s Mountain, also known as Kelly’s Mountain, in 1989, a local company proposed a quarry on the west slope of the mountain to produce rock for road building. It was claimed that the quarry would be operational for up to forty years, and that it would provide over a hundred local jobs. Local residents formed a Society, and objected to the proposal on the grounds that the quarry would cause immense damage to the environment, to health and to local economic operations. Members of the indigenous Mi’kmaq population also protested, claiming that the mountain was a sacred site. The Mi’kmaq prophet Kluscap once lived in a cave on the mountain and would return there some day. There were public demonstrations by Mi’kmaq activists who became known as the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, and later the Sacred Mountain Society. The local company had submitted an environmental impact assessment, but the opposition to the quarry challenged this and requested a federal environmental review. In 1991, the federal and provincial governments decided to hold a joint environmental assessment review, but this does not appear ever to have been completed. Since then the threat of the quarry seems to have subsided, but efforts to protect Kluscap’s Mountain have continued. These have focused on getting it officially designated as a wilderness area, which would give it a degree of legal protection against potentially damaging development proposals. There were, of course, attempts by supporter of the quarry to discredit the case, but what is of interest here is its impact on the opposition to the quarry. Mi’kamaq involvement brought into the debate arguments about the sanctity of the land which would otherwise have been inadmissible.

The recognition of native peoples’ right to defend the land has led to their increasing involvement in environmental activism, both on their own initiative and at the initiation and encouragement of non-indigenous activists. In this sense native people have no obligation to subscribe to scientific rationality. The Mi’kmaq activists come from a different tradition, one in which the sacredness of the land is fundamental. They can legitimately live by different rules, and their right to do so is enshrined in law. This makes them a vehicle through which the sacredness of the land can be defended. Although sacredness is not directly admissible into the formal decision making process, it is indirectly admissible through the legally sanctioned rights of those who by virtue of their membership of a different tradition are permitted to hold beliefs that considers nature as sacred and consequently, bringing about more caring and awareness for environmental issues.


Milton, K., Loving Nature: towards an ecology of emotion, Routledge, 2002

Coding Power

There is much more going on in terms of what power is exercised across the colliding spaces of the urban spaces. It is not that the seduction rather than domination is a more accurate portrayal of what happens on a day to day basis in city life, or that manipulation not authority is what keeps people in their place in such surroundings. Rather, power is likely to be exercised in a variety of ways, from domination through manipulation to seduction and even down to coercion. This is not because power is endowed with some kind of vapid plurality, where the different modalities take it in turn to act out their display. On the contrary, it is the nature of the places themselves, who they are constituted through the practices and the rhythms of the different groups which inhabit them, which gives rise to tangled arrangements of power and their execution.

In the case of the city of London, for instance, the experience of power for many of those who work on the edges of finance, as support staff or ancillary workers, is likely to a take in both acts of domination and manipulation, as constraint operates alongside concealment in the routine suppression of their visibility. Such acts are merely different ways of achieving the kind of smothered presence that comes to mind. Equally, the monumental buildings such as the fortress style Bank of England, do act as a source of authority, yet given the changing role and function of the institution, it is probably now more accurate to talk about its persuasive role in the contemporary world of UK finance.

The meaning and representation of institutions, their rituals, practices and architectural styles, change, reflecting the altered make up and composition of those who use them. It is not the case, therefore, that such institutions represent preformed blocs of power into which various groups are then slotted. Rather, the mixture of groups which inhabit various institutions, and the relationships which establish their presence, fill such institutional spaces with power. And it is from the specific relational ties, the interplay of forces that lie behind the comings and going of those present, that power takes it diverse modal expressions.

Perhaps the more familiar sense in which domination is considered as pervasive stems from the notion of closed space; spaces constructed by groups building walls, sometimes literally, to exclude those who are not the same. If up to this point we have been thinking about the cross cutting nature of people’s lives as they go about their daily business, the idea of spatial enclosure suggests a fixed separation, a boundary line in the sand so to speak, which produces a clear limit to the movement of others. In place of messy coexistences and jumbled lives, closed spaces are about groups walling themselves in, erecting social and physical barriers to the comings and goings of others.

The prohibitive aspect of space reveals itself through practices of discrimination between the comings and goings of those who work alongside one another. Only certain groups are seen and heard on a regular basis, as the lines of visibility and waves of sound suggest unequivocally who is and who is not ‘out of place’. What ever sense of borders one wishes to entertain is, on this account, the outcome of social interaction and an explicit spatial coding.

Borders and boundaries are the result of social interaction and not merely finite barriers. Doors represent both separateness and the possibility of stepping out beyond them - a point clearly illustrated by the swing movement of doors. Thus it is the ability of certain groups within the social space to superimpose their rhythms on others which gives the impression that they are the only ones present. The construction of space in their own likeness through a series of rituals, gestures and mannerisms serves to empty out the spaces of activity other than their own. Codes, function durably, more or less tacitly and ritually; they organise and rhythm time as well as relations (Lefebvre 1996:234).

Through a constant succession of movements and activities, the manner and style in which they are executed, as well as the mood and tempo they generate, the groups are able to dominate space in their own image. Excluded from the membership of such a space, then, are those whose rhythms and movements do not accord with the dominant representation and use of such spaces; such as service workers who pass unnoticed through the offices and buildings. Such groups are not physically excluded; rather their presence is smothered by a dominant coding of space. However, the power of abstract space to erase the traces of others, to reduce differences, is never entirely effective. The very attempts to achieve homogeneity do themselves produce spaces which ‘escape the system’s rule’ (Lefebvre, 1991:382).

Cultural separation, the act of self enclosure, is not only a characteristic of rich communities, however. As a defensive reaction, poor communities may wall themselves in as protection against the more economically or politically powerful in terms of resources. Ethnic groups may opt to draw a line around their community to avoid discrimination or to preserve an identity perceived to be under threat from the ‘outside‘. Such acts are rooted in Hannah Arendt’s mutual action, the solidarity networks that rest upon the mobilization of collective resources. Rather than think in terms of power as instrumental leverage, such acts of closure take their cue from the power to protect themselves, not from some desire to exercise ‘power over’ others. As a result, any notion of order is more likely to stem from informal and negotiated practices rather than prescribed codes of conduct.

Interestingly, the attention paid to the regularized, almost disciplined, styles of behaviour in the rich, gated communities is reminiscent of works done on diagrams of power. While we are moving away from a strict notion of enclosure as the domination of space to a consideration of other possible acts of power; such as inducement, but also the possibility of indirect manipulation or even arm’s length seduction. To suppose that even closed spaces have the last word on domination would be to gloss over the different ways in which closure can be achieved. But the point here is a rather different one from simply drawing attention to the fact that power is exercised in subtle and not so subtle ways. It is that much of what we take to be closed space is usually less closed than it seems and much of what appears open and accessible is not always so .

Most bounded spaces, it seems are relative rather than total and whilst some borders have hardened over time, such as migration, many of the everyday spaces which make up people’s lives - from shopping malls, office spaces and housing estates to public parks, airport lounges and a whole slew of public institutions - are less obviously impermeable. Even in closed, gated communities, boundaries are routinely crossed by all manner of trades people and public officials, as well as friends and relatives, and the supposed stark lines of difference are compromised daily by the service rhythms of domestic care, maintenance and security staff. ‘Open walls’ rather than ‘enclosed worlds’ is perhaps a more apt metaphorical redecoration of the boundaries of such places. The porosity attached to places is something that Doreen Massey (1994), in particular, has long been keen to stress, and what we can take from this observation is that, in many a familiar place, people move in and around one another, sliding across each other’s lives, and establish a presence through interaction in all kinds of powerful and not so powerful ways. And such interactions, disrupt any easy cultural mapping of who is close at hand and who is distant, who belongs and who does not.



Extracted from:

Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago and London: Univ of Chicago Press

Arendt, H. (1961), Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought, London: Faber and Faber

Allen, J., (2003) Lost Geographies of Power, Oxford: Blackwell
Massey, D., (1993), ’Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place’, in Bird, J., Curtis, B., Putnam, T., Roberson, G., and Tickner, L. (eds) Mapping the Futures: local cultures, global change, London: Routledge, 59-69

Massey, D., (1994) a global sense of place, in Place and Gender, Oxford; Polity, 146-56

Lefebvre, H. (1991a) The production of space (trans. D. Nicholson Smith), Oxford: Blackwell

Lefebvre, H. (1996) Writings on Cities (trans. And eds E. Kofman and E. Lebas), Oxford: Blackwell

Poverty-Environment debate

The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. (Thomas Malthus 1798)

The notion that there is a relationship between poverty and environmental degradation is long standing yet constantly being rediscovered and reinvented. Malthus indirectly suggested that the poor are more likely to engage in environmentally deteriorate behaviour because they are incapable of thinking beyond the next meal. This idea was further embraced by the colonial powers in Africa and Asia who frequently identified poor local peasants as key causes of soil degradation, wasteful burning practices and deforestation (Baker 1983, Fairhead and Leach 1996).

The poverty environmental degradation idea has taken on renewed vigour since the rise of the sustainable development concept in the late 1980, (Lele 1991; Bryant 1997). Within the context of this discourse poverty and environmental degradation has been described as a two way interactive process. According to the Brundtland report, a document that popularized the sustainable development concept, many parts of the world are caught in a vicious downward spiral. Poor people are forced to over use environmental resources to survive from day to day, and their impoverishment of their environment further impoverishes them , making their survival ever more uncertain and difficult (WCED 1987, 27). Those who praise the Brundtland report say that it defiantly integrated concerns for conservation and development, permanently changing the course of 60s and 70s environmental thinking that viewed industrialization and development as antithetical to conservation (Mellor 88; Beckerman 1992). This integration helped to appease southern nations that were primarily concerned about development, as well as northern environmentalists who increasingly sought to address environmental issues in the global south.

Critics suggest that Brundtland, and subsequent UN meetings, have only allowed the neo-liberal economic agenda to increasingly co-opt environment and development thinking, not to mention the discourse regarding poverty - environment interactions (Bryant 97; Sueddon 2000; Logan 2004).

Indeed, the perspective of poverty environmental interactions as a downward spiral or vicious circle has been reiterated by a multitude of disciplines with different perspectives.

In west Africa, development practitioners have employed the notion of poverty-induced environmental degradation to argue that the continued expansion of export-oriented cotton production is the best way to reduce poverty and encourage conservation in the region because of the wealth it would generate for potential environmental efforts (Moseley 2004).

Geographers elaborate on an increasingly accepted and inter disciplinary approach known as political ecology. Political ecology, or the political economy of human environment interactions seems a particularly well suited approach for examining the poverty-environment interface given its attention to power, scale and discourse. With its emphasis on political economy, much new work on poverty-environment interactions moves away from a stylized view of the relationship, but brings to bear new views of agency, contingency as well as globalized processes.

The way in which we define and conceptualize poverty influences Poverty-Environment analyses. The conception of poverty, defined in terms of monetary wealth and income (GDP/GNP per capita) are fairly limited in many developing country contexts where a high proportion of production and transfers often take place outside the formal economy and where there are significant regional and inter-societal differences. In many rural contexts, for example, rather than cash savings and earnings, wealth is often reflected in cattle holdings, the quality of agricultural implements housing materials, labour resources, access to land, and the ability of the household to produce food. Although, the poor are those less influenced by an external economy and often more apt to manage resources based on local, rather than external demands.

Paradoxically, this is often a recipe for a more sustainable system as traditional subsistence farmers have shown a significant in-situ capacity for sound environmental management and successful adaptation in the face of environmental change. Because poor people are not a homogeneous group, the location and level of poverty is an important determinant of a household’s ability to respond to environment stresses and shocks (UNDP, 1999). Two different types of poverty, structural poverty and conjunctural poverty have different implications for how a household deals with shocks. Structural poverty is long term in nature, and can be apparent as lack of land or labour, while conjunctural poverty represents poverty into which ordinary people can be temporarily thrown in times of crisis and is caused by specific shocks such as climate or political insecurity. In many instances the poor are the most vulnerable and are more deeply affected by climatic shocks or natural disasters.

Science in culture and politics: The co-production science and social order

Science and technology account for many of the signature characteristics of contemporary societies; the uncertainty, unaccountability and speed that contribute, at he level of personal experience, to feelings of being perpetually of balance; the reduction of individuals to standard classifications that demarcate the normal form the deviant and authorize varieties of social control; the scepticism, alienation and distrust that threaten the legitimacy of public action; and the oscillation between visions of doom and visions of progress that destabilize the future. Both doing and being, whether in the high citadels of modernity or its distant outposts, play out in territories shaped by scientific and technological invention. Our methods of understanding and manipulating the world curve back and reorder our collective experience along unforeseen pathways, like the seemingly domesticated chlorofluorocarbons released from spray cans and air conditioners that silently ate away the earth’s stratospheric ozone layer. Just as environmental scientists are hard put to find on earth an ecological system that has not been affected by human activity, so it is difficult for social scientist to locate forms of human organization or behaviour anywhere in the world whose structure and function have not been affected, to some extent, by science and technology.

Take culture, in particular, or more accurately cultures. Although science and technology are present everywhere, the rambunctious storyline of modernity refuses to conform to any singular narrative of enlightenment or progress. The familiar ingredients of modern life continually rearrange themselves in unpredicted patterns, creating rupture, violence and difference alongside the sense of increasing liberation, convergence and control. The terrorist attacks in 9/11 acted out in brutal reality and on global television screens many contradictions that were already seething below the surface. This was suicidal violence on a previously unimagined scale. Yet at the threshold of a new millennium, this violence only dramatized in horrific form much that was already known.

Industrial societies, despite their many commonalities, articulate their needs and desires in different voices. Despite the global homogeneity that they signal the din of multimodality rises rapidly as one leaves the havens of the industrial west. Politicians and citizens have met the challenges and dislocations of the present with disparate resources and divergent criteria of what makes life worth living. The world is not a single place, and even the west accommodates technological innovations such as genetically modified foods with divided expectations and multiple rationalities. Cultural specificity survives with astonishing reliance in the face of the levelling forces of modernity. Not only the sameness but also the diversity of contemporary cultures derive, it seems, from specific, contingent accommodations that societies make with their scientific and technological capabilities.

In terms of identities, whether human or non human, individual or collective, it is one of the most potent resources with which people restore sense out of disorder. When the world one knows is in disarray, redefining identities is a way of putting things back into familiar places. It is no surprise, then, that co-productionist writing in science and technology studies, concerned as it so often is with emergent and controversial phenomena, has consistently been absorbed with questions of identity. The formation and maintenance of identities plays an important role in several fields and writings. The identity of the expert, in particular, that quintessential bridging figure of modernity, makes a prominent appearance in several texts. But collective identities are also contested or under negotiation in the working out of scientific and technological orders. What does it mean to be European, African, intelligent or a member of a research community, learned profession or disease group? And what roles do knowledge and its production play in shaping and sustaining these social roles or in giving them power and meaning?

How do new socio-technical objects - such as climate change or endangered species, or Europe, Africa or democracy - swim into our ken, achieving cognitive as well as moral and political standing? How is knowledge taken up in societies, and how does it affect people’s collective and individual identities, permitting some to be experts, others to be research subjects, and still others to be resisters or revolutionaries? By making visible such questions, and proposing answers that were not previously on the table, co-productionist analysis performs a neglected critical function. More conventionally, though no less importantly, it enables normative analysis by following power into places where current social theory seldom thinks to look for it ; for example, in genes, climate models, research methods, cross examinations, accounting systems or the composition and practices of expert bodies.

Prediction is the hardest case, and one may well wonder why in our surprise prone societies any social science ever purports to tell the future. But to the extent that co production makes apparent deep cultural regularities, to the extent that it explains the contingency or durability of particular socio technical formation, it also allows us to imagine the pathways by which change could conceivably occur. It illuminates, in this way, new possibilities for human development.

Perhaps the field of science and technology studies is insufficiently normative and has little to contribute to macro social analyses of culture and power. Or that they demonstrate that some of the most enduring topics in politics and government lend themselves well to elucidation in a co-productionist mode. Among these are the emergence of new authority structures and forms of governance, the selective durability and self replication of cultures, and the bases of expert conflict over knowledge in rational, democratic societies. A point has become also clear that historical and contemporary voices in the field have a lot more in common than has been permitted to surface across institutionalized disciplinary boundaries. Regardless of the observer’s standpoint in time, there is in these pieces a shared outlook on the nature of knowledge and its embeddeness in material and social forms.

Perhaps as important, in one after another of these findings, the distinction between micro and macro that has played so foundational a role in traditional social theory is shown to be, in significant part, an artifice of our own thought processes. The practical experience, the scales of analysis and action are frequently scrambled together. The national or global constitutional orders we recognize and live by are constantly remade in innumerable, localized engagements; without this perpetual reperformance they might as well cease to exist. Co production then allows the bringing together of insights from anthropology and history law and politics, cultural studies and social theory. it is an integrative as well as an interdisciplinary framework.

Science and technology as a field has been criticized, for making science too social to the point, some say, of representing science as no different from any other exercise in the accumulation of authority. It is indicated that this thin reading misrepresents the breadth and sophistication of the field’s engagement with the social worlds in which science and technology function today as indispensable players. The cultural uniqueness of science has been acknowledged, insisting only that their special ness arises from repeated, situated encounters between scientific, technical and other forms of life. Science and technology are infused by other ways of knowing, perceiving, and making accommodations with the world. Unlike laws of nature, the idiom of co-production does not seek to foreclose competing explanations by laying claim to one dominant and all powerful truth. It offers instead a new way of exploring the waters of human history, where politics, knowledge and invention are continually in flux.

Jasanoff, S., (2004) States of Knowledge, The co-production science and social order, Routledge publishing

Bourdieu, P., (1976), knowledge and social imagery, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

Anderson, B., (1991), imagined communities. 2nd edn, London: Verso

Latour, B. (1999) Politiques de la nature; comment faire entrer les sciences en democratie, Paris: Decouverte

Nowotny, H. (1990) knowledge fro certainty: poverty, welfare institutions and the institutionalization of social science; in Discourses on Society: the shaping of the social science disciplines; Sociology of the Sciences, vol. 15 Dordrecht:kluwer

Hacking, I., 1992, World making by Kind Making, child abuse for example, in how classification works: nelson Goodman among the social sciences, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ Press

Koertge, N. 1998, a house bult on sand; exposing postmodernist myths about science, New York: Oxford Univ Press