Although great importance is attached to the role of education in national development in Southeast Asia, its role has been ambivalent. In the colonial period, education was a central way in which societies mobilised to challenge and resist European rulers. Yet education has also been the...

This paper commences by examining the evolution of a programme designed to reach the poorest people in Bangladesh, to improve their immediate situation and to give them the assets and other skills to move out of poverty and dramatically reduce their vulnerability – BRAC's Challenging the...

This paper presents an attempt to provide a first overview of the collective activities of conservation non-government organisations (NGOs) working in Sub-Saharan Africa, presenting findings on the work of over 280 organisations. The number of NGOs in existence grew in the 1980s and blossomed in...

Sierra Leone has recently emerged from a long period of political instability and civil war, and is ranked among the world’s poorest countries. Thousands of displaced people are in the process of returning to their villages to rebuild their mainly farming-based livelihoods, and many are...

This paper looks at the establishment and evolution of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. It traces the development of the Bank from its origins, providing microcredit to poor, rural women in Bangladesh, through a period of national expansion and institutionalisation, to the replication around the...

In recent years, a debate about the potential of decentralisation for poverty alleviation has set off among academics and policy-makers. It is often claimed that decentralisation can be effective for improvements in welfare and hence the reduction of poverty. For example, the World Bank explains...

This paper argues that the study of the demand for financial services in developing countries leaves out part of the story if it looks at only one of the three elements of the so-called finance trinity—that is, savings products, loans and insurance—as is largely done in the literature. In...

The paper explores the extent to which people adapt to their deprived living conditions and what kind of form adaptation processes take. The study combines quantitative and qualitative information drawing back on survey data and case studies from two villages in Andhra Pradesh, India. One of the...

This paper concerns the institutional origins of economic development, emphasising the cases of 19th-century India and Africa. Colonial institutions – the law, western style property rights, newspapers and statistical analysis – played an important part in the emergence of Indian public and...

This paper examines the paradox that a borrower's status aspirations may contribute to a situation in which their borrowings exceed their capacity to repay. This paradox was first described by Thorstein Veblen, and has been fleshed out by Pierre Bourdieu. Thus in the theory of consumer culture...