The ethnographic approach has much to contribute to our understanding of social mobility. This paper provides a discussion on ethnography as a method and approach to writing and description, and reviews some ways in which themes related to social mobility in the developing world have been...

Bride price, which is payment from the groom and/or the groom's family to the bride's family at the time of marriage, is a common cultural practice in many African societies. It is often argued that the practice may have negative effects for girls and women because it may: incentivize early...

Presenting gifts at funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies held by fellow villagers have been regarded as social norms in Chinese villages for thousands of years. However, it is more burdensome for the poor to take part in these social occasions than for the rich. Because the poor often lack...

This review paper focuses on the literature that studies the interactions between the family and culture. It does not attempt to be comprehensive, but instead illustrates via some representative papers the interaction between the family, its cultural beliefs and practices, and economic outcomes.

Data on female labour force participation in Bangladesh suggest that, despite the increase in female-intensive employment opportunities through microfinance, export garment manufacturing, and community-based services, the majority of working women are concentrated in home-based activities. There...

Community or interpersonal support as a critical source of livelihood sustenance in the Global South can exhibit unequal dynamics. An understanding of these practices is primarily tied to the conceptual space of poverty or small communities. Less is known about how social support systems might...

It is widely accepted that the distribution of power between ethnic groups within a country plays a key role in major social, political, and economic outcomes. Researchers working on the topic have various measures of ethnic dominance and exclusion, and other closely related aspects such as...

In this paper, we study the impact of ethnic fragmentation on the provision of private and public schools, separately. The distinction is made because the two types of schools have different objective functions, a factor which can influence the relationship between ethnic fragmentation and...

Legal empowerment has become widely accepted in development policy circles as an approach to addressing poverty and exclusion. At the same time, it has received relatively little attention from political scientists and sociologists working on overlapping and closely related topics. Research on...