Abstracts


Publications    Contact    About    Submissions     Subscribe

Editorial, volume 7, number 4

This is a landmark edition of Development in Practice, for several reasons. The most obvious of these is that, in addition to the usual range of articles, viewpoints, practical notes, and reviews, it contains a collection of original essays that were commissioned from participants in a 1996 Symposium co-sponsored by the Johannesburg-based Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and the South Africa office of Oxfam (United Kingdom and Ireland, hereafter Oxfam).

The two sections of the journal complement each other, addressing conflict-related themes from a range of perspectives. The first part features papers by academics, agency representatives, practitioners, and policy-makers on the ethical and legal dimensions of humanitarian endeavour. Hugo Slim explores the concepts of neutrality, impartiality, and solidarity; and the necessary links between human rights and international humanitarian law. Similar explorations are made by David Bryer and Edmund Cairns in their account of how Oxfam perceives these issues and its own role in trying to intervene in such conflicts for the lasting benefit of those who are most vulnerable. However, Andy Storey shows that much of the international humanitarian response to the 1994 Rwanda crisis fell dismally short of what could possibly be regarded as minimum standards of professionalism, and suggests some of the reasons for this. Indeed, the main lesson to emerge from the 1996 evaluation was that humanitarian interventions cannot substitute for political action.1 Here, Juan Somavía -- architect of the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, and Chile's Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations -- considers how today's expanded definitions of peace and security have, along with changes in the dynamics of war and insecurity, exceeded the capacity of traditional diplomatic methods and international instruments. He reviews the moral, political, and practical options available to the international community; and suggests ways in which the UN Security Council might enhance its ability to stem the abuse of power by governments and other actors. Within Europe, Michel Chossudovsky illustrates how IMF-sponsored economic structural adjustment policies served to exacerbate latent social tensions -- problems which, he argues, have been further intensified through the provisions of the Dayton Peace Accords. There are major lessons here for anyone who is concerned about the relationship between conflict and development. Drawing on the experience of Guatemala, a country with an atrocious history of State-sponsored political violence, Elizabeth Lira shows that, for peace to become a reality, the formal processes for recording human-rights violations must be accompanied by society's willingness to recognise and assimilate its past. For the majority of the victims, such recognition requires material, as well as attitudinal, change.

The papers arising from the Symposium focus more specifically on the day-to-day practice of working for a 'culture of peace'. The event was distinguished by bringing together participants from throughout Southern Africa as well as from Latin America. A keynote paper by Jenny Pearce offers a comparative study between the 'post-conflict' developments in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Peru. She places the accent on local involvement in shaping society, finding that formal peace processes may exclude rather than foster grassroots and popular participation -- an issue taken up in greater detail by Martha Thompson. A recurrent theme is that, although societies and communities must draw on their own self-healing potential, uninformed or badly timed external assistance can easily thwart these often very fragile processes -- an issue highlighted by both Anne Mackintosh and Graeme Simpson. This may also affect how societies acknowledge their past: for while decisions about truth commissions, tribunals, and similar formal processes are taken at the highest political level (often with international support), it is among ordinary people and in mundane events that denial and recrimination must give way to recognition, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Wiseman Chijere Chirwa considers how public symbols can help to establish a collective memory, while Noel Muchenga Chicuecue, Viriato Castelo-Branco, Glenda Caine, and Francisco Tunga Alberto focus on various ways in which to help people consign destructive memories to the past. Together, the two parts of this double issue present an informative account of the moral and practical complexities of crisis and intervention.

In other respects too, this a landmark edition of Development in Practice. Firstly, seven Editorial Advisers will be standing down at the conclusion of this volume. Chaloka Beyani, Carlos Dore-Cabral, Irma Saucedo Gonzalez, Harsh Sethi, and Julio Tan have completed their three-year terms; and we owe thanks to them as well as to Michael Edwards and Jabulani Manombe Ncube, who are also moving on after having been associated with the journal from the outset. We have appreciated their loyalty and support, as well as their active assistance in shaping its development. Next year, we shall be welcoming new Advisers from Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Lebanon, Japan, Senegal, and the United States; and look forward to working with them, and to continued collaboration with our existing group of Advisers.

Secondly, we are pleased to announce that from 1998 Carfax Publishing Company will produce Development in Practice on behalf of Oxfam, whose sponsoring role has thus allowed the journal to mature into independence. Readers will not, we hope, detect any break in the continuity of the journal's development; but for the Editor and Deputy Editor this signals real change. For, as Carfax becomes responsible for matters of publishing and distribution, we shall lose the experienced input behind the scenes of our production editor, Catherine Robinson. She has been with Development in Practice since its inception. Her perfectionism, professionalism, and unfaltering dedication to the journal's well-being have given Development in Practice a better start in life than most journals could ever expect. It is largely thanks to Catherine's nurturing, and to the experienced business guidance of Robert Cornford and Mike Powell, that we are able to embark on this exciting new phase in our history.

For Development in Practice has truly come of age and established itself as the journal of the reflective practitioner. We have undergone major expansion since 1991, having more than doubled in size and updated our design, both consolidating the original format and adding many new features. Last year, Development in Practice became available via the Internet, and we launched the series Development in Practice Readers, in which four titles have now appeared.2 These thematic compilations contain an original introductory essay by one of our Advisers, and also an Annotated Bibliography. The Readers are already proving popular, especially among practitioners and students.

With readers in over 100 countries, distribution in the South now matches that in OECD nations -- something which we seek to encourage by maintaining our preferential rate for developing-country subscribers. Just as significantly, the journal is attracting an ever-widening range of new or lesser-known writers, as well as acknowledged experts from around the world: about two-thirds of our contributors are themselves directly involved in development or humanitarian work, largely (not exclusively) from within the NGO sector. But a solid proportion are scholars and researchers who are concerned to promote new ideas or to challenge existing orthodoxies and current practice. Many readers tell us that it is this blend, and our commitment to bridging theory and practice, that give Development in Practice its unique characteristics.

The aid-agency world is currently obsessed with trying to measure impact -- seen as the key to better performance and accountability. There are many ways to measure a journal's health, some of which have been alluded to above: is it reaching the intended audience, are subscriptions rising (and being renewed), is good material coming in, does the range of (would-be) contributors reflect the journal's editorial purpose, are published papers being cited or otherwise used, and so on. In other words, are 'the right people' reading it, writing for it, buying it, and using it? Going beyond this to measure its impact requires us to ask, however, why the journal matters to its readers, contributors, and subscribers: a matter of critical judgement rather than mere number-crunching. And here, since we aim to bring different worlds together, we should expect diversity of opinion and criteria: a Malawian historian, a Chilean diplomat, a Canadian economist, and the director of a British NGO all find voice in this issue of Development in Practice, but are likely to view (and use) the journal in rather different ways.

That said, the words of Warren Nyamugasira, a Ugandan NGO worker, serve as a real touchstone of success when he says: 'As I read my first copy, I found myself gripped and was soon writing feedback on one of the articles. Development in Practice can be so provocative, because it is written by people with conviction.' We hope to tap into this conviction by launching a Writers' Competition, details of which we shall announce in the course of 1998. We are also bringing out a special issue on Development Management in November 1998, co-edited with Tom Hewitt and Hazel Johnson of the Open University. In the meantime, if you have ideas and experiences to share, we look forward to hearing from you.

Deborah Eade

Oxfam (UK and Ireland)
November 1997

Notes

Previous
Abstracts Main Page
Next Abstract