The paper explores the significance of counting communication skills in one of the earliest societies to achieve mass literacy. The Millennium Development Goals in education reflect structures of practice and thinking rooted in the 19th century. The notion of a goal itself, the measurable output...

The concept and practice of social protection in developing countries has advanced at an astonishing pace over the last decade or so. There is a growing consensus around the view that social protection constitutes an effective response to poverty and vulnerability in developing countries, and an...

A recurring theme in the literature on common violence is that it stems from the combined impact of divided societies (poverty, ethnic diversity, economic inequality) and weak institutions (non-democratic, authoritarian government). This statistical regularity may hold in the aggregate, but as...

In this paper, realist findings from the philosophy of social science are summarised and implications for rural research methodology are drawn out. Four specific ontological claims are fleshed out. These ontological claims act as grounding assumptions for social research and knowledge, but are...

This study explores the extent to which inequality affects the impact of income growth on the rates of poverty changes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to non-SSA, based on a global sample of 1977-2004 unbalanced panel data. For both regions and all three measures of poverty – headcount,...

This paper argues that two ideas – human development and results-based management – have been particularly significant in shaping the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These are unlikely intellectual bedfellows, but by charting the evolution of the MDGs their many influences are...

Today rural sector reform is a paramount issue in Indonesian development. Yet, different social actors have different perspectives and stances towards it. Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in Indonesia have established themselves in pivotal positions in the social, economic and political...

The last decade and a half has witnessed a dramatic growth in mining activity in many developing countries. This paper reviews these recent trends and describes the debates and conflicts they have triggered. We review evidence regarding debates on the resource curse and the possibility of an...

Much of recent work has raised the issue that the surge in prices of foodgrains in the last two years cannot be explained satisfactorily in terms of the fundamentals of supply and demand. It has also been suggested that the part that cannot be explained in this way is due largely to speculation....

This paper considers the dynamics of informal social protection in the context of chronic poverty and vulnerability in post-apartheid migrant networks. It argues that in poor and marginalised households in South Africa, the indirect impacts of social grants cannot be adequately understood by...