Articles

This paper investigates how, why, and when community-based strategies are effective in promoting corporate accountability (CA) to the poor. It argues that mainstream approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) underestimate the importance of power in the relationship between corporations and the communities in which they invest, which limits their applicability to many developing country contexts in particular.

Few issues in the development process raise as much heat as the role of the international private sector in the form of transnational corporations (TNCs) and foreign direct investment (FDI). This article reviews the most recent research on the impact of FDI on economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. A brief history of FDI is given. This is followed by discussion of the conceptual transmission mechanisms linking FDI, growth, and poverty. The available empirical evidence is then discussed.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) has long been used as a methodology for understanding organisational learning and change. This paper discusses its applications to interview-based field research within the development context. While AI begins by looking at the best of an organisation or individual's experience, it can help researchers to gain a textured and detailed understanding of both their subjects' greatest successes and their most serious obstacles.

Following the Renamo/Frelimo conflict and the 1992 Rome Accord ending hostilities, the Christian Council of Mozambique undertook to remove arms from the civilian population by trading them for development tools. The weapons were given to artists associated with a collective in the capital, Maputo. The weapons were cut into pieces and converted to sculptures that subsequently focused international attention on the Tools for Arms project, or TAE (Transformação de Armas em Enxadas).

HIV/AIDS is having profound impacts on livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. These include the deaths of working-age adults, the diversion of resources to caring, and the rupture of traditional chains of knowledge transmission. NGOs are responding by providing assistance to communities affected by the epidemic in the fields of agriculture, skills training, and microfinance, as well as by offering home care and support. A key feature of such initiatives is the focus on previously neglected groups such as women, school dropouts, and orphans.

This paper describes the research methodology followed in the ‘Livelihoods of the Extreme Poor Project’, a collaborative research project in Bangladesh between PROSHIKA (a large national NGO) and DFID (the UK government department for international development). The dual purpose of this project was to learn about poor people’s livelihoods and train the PROSHIKA research team in the use of qualitative research methods. The research findings were to be fed directly into policy formulation and the planning of new development interventions for the poorest people in Bangladesh.

Fair Trade has become a dynamic and successful dimension of an emerging counter-tendency to the neo-liberal globalisation regime. This study explores some of the dilemmas facing the Fair Trade movement as it seeks to broaden and deepen its impact among the rural poor of Latin America’s coffee sector. We argue that the efforts to broaden Fair Trade’s economic impact among poor, small-scale producers are creating challenges for deepening the political impact of a movement that is based on social justice and environmental sustainability.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis With the inability of international economic integration to create opportunities for important segments of society, many Mexicans are searching for ways to forge their own alternatives. These strategies are the concrete manifestations of the realisation that the `mainstream' path of the search for proletarian employment is no longer viable and that a return to traditional forms of cooperation, organised around mechanisms for ecosystem management, might offer greater security and a better quality of life.

Epidemiological combined with experiential evidence from communities can produce important and sometimes surprising insights into gender relations, to inform policies that address changing needs. CIET has standardised a community-based cross-design for the gender-sensitive collection and analysis of three types of evidence: impact, coverage, and costs. Five steps help to ensure that women’s voices are heard in planning. Gender-stratified analysis of existing data is a starting point.

Scaling-up local innovations in natural resource management (NRM) involves learning that is centred around three themes: promoting local-level innovation, understanding why local innovations work in specific contexts, and reflecting on their relevance in other geographical and social contexts. Successful scalin- up depends in part upon the relationships among multiple stakeholders at different levels around this learning. The experiences of researchers supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) provide insights into four questions: What is scaling-up? Why scale-up?