In convening the third session of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver, the United Nations Human Settlements Program has asked us to focus our attention on the Sustainable City and consider critical challenges across three sub-themes: • Urban Growth And Environment• Partnership And...

This paper explores three important but interrelated issues: The power of example; the fragment as evidence; and finally, the field experience and the possibility of generalisation. These issues are central in the current discourse of social science practice in which serious doubts are being raised...

The promotion of ‘inclusive citizenship’, through which the disadvantaged engage in collective struggles for justice and recognition, has been attracting growing attention as a solution to chronic poverty. This paper problematises this formulation by drawing on a case of landless...

Watershed development is a very important rural development programme in India. This paper studies 60 community groups in 12 micro-watersheds in South India to understand how villagers cooperate to manage watershed related tasks. The paper examines the factors that affect collective...

Scholars have pointed to ethnic and other social divisions as a leading cause of economic underdevelopment, due in part to their adverse effects on public good provision and collective action. We investigate this issue in post-war Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest countries. To...

This paper examines the possibility of using economic instruments, especially pollution taxes and bargaining approaches, as a means to encourage or improve people’s participation in environmental management in India. It provides an intuitive description of methods for designing economic...

The paper is an analysis of food aid, rising food prices and its implications.

What are the constraints to efficient birth registration? How do people view the compulsory registering of births? This paper reports on a Readiness Assessment study on Universal Birth Registration in Nalgonda district in Andhra Pradesh. The study was aimed at assessing and documenting the...

This paper explores some of the challenges ahead in terms of strengthening civil society networks working for ethical globalisation and in turning their shared vision of ethical globalisation into an effective programme of action. It attempts to unpack what is meant by the terms international...

This paper examines changes that have (and have not) occurred – at the village level in Karnataka where most or the state’s residents live, and at higher levels when they impinge upon villages – since 1972. Substantial changes have occurred on many (though certainly not all)...