Alternative Development Model Research Articles

A Typology of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) for Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case study of Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, and Nigeria

In the bid to improve teaching quality and promote an approach to teacher development that is grounded in the context in which teachers are inserted, Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have become a popular alternative model of teacher professional development in many countries. PLCs, however, have been more widely studied in high-resource contexts. In a recognition that existing conceptualizations from the Western literature may not reflect how PLCs are functioning in developing countries, this research aims to inductively create a typology of PLCs that incorporates elements that might be specific to these countries, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa in general and based on the cases of Equatorial Guinea, Ghana and Nigeria in particular. This study employs a multimethod approach, encompassing document analysis, semi-structured interviews with PLC experts and expert validation. The resulting typology categorizes PLCs into three models - autonomous, structured and scripted. This typology of PLCs is further integrated with dimensions previously proposed by the Western literature to form one cohesive conceptual framework. By acknowledging PLC variability, we are able to incorporate into a framework modes of PLC operation that are specific to our case countries, and possibly to Sub-Saharan African and low- and middle-income countries more generally.

Fighting gentrification from the boxing ring: how community gyms reclaim the right to the city

ABSTRACT This article explores ‘community gyms’ as prefigurative counter spaces where sport is experienced as a political practice. Emerging in the framework of political squats in Italy and beyond, community gyms constitute an integral part of today’s right to the city mobilization, with two unique contributions. Firstly, they reclaim the right to leisure space as a fundamental component of the struggle against gentrification. Secondly, they introduce to a critical approach to urban development also individuals who would otherwise not embrace anti-systemic politics. Specifically, the article analyses the spatial dimension of community gyms. It exposes how they constitute a bulwark against the commodification and gentrification of the urban habitat, recovering vacant or abandoned buildings to return them to the locals and embodying an alternative model of urban development centered on people rather than profit. The article also explores the gyms’ relational dimension, showing how community gyms nurture novel relationships of care, in three ways: they include and give agency to marginalized subjects, they forge militants through sport practice, and seek to mitigate the socio-economic needs of their social surroundings. In so doing, the article shows that leisure, too, can create moments of disruption able to generate change, and that sport, when understood as a political act, can unsettle the capitalist logic of commodification of leisure. Inspired by a carnal sociology approach to social research, this article is based on original data gathered by means of in-depth interviewing, ethnographic observation and document analysis.

Sociological Comprehension of the Preset-Day Ukrainian Society Modernization

Introduction. Despite its widespread usage, the concept of “modernization” is not clearly defined. Concretization of its meaning depends on the researcher’s worldview position. Problem Statement. The introduction of neoliberal economic principles did not lead to the improvement of society and the growth of human well-being. It transformed Ukraine into a raw-material appendage of global capitalism and the poorest country in Europe. Purpose. To analyze public opinion on the modernization of Ukrainian society and identify the prospects for science and innovative development in Ukraine. Materials and Methods. Analysis of statistical information and scientific publications on the problems of modernization, data of the sociological monitoring of social changes in Ukrainian society and two expert surveys (scientists of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and specialists on innovative development). Results. The author has proved that the transformation of Ukrainian society is not, in essence, a modernization. It is a neoliberal experiment under the guise of modernism, which rejected Ukraine from the cohort of the most industrially and scientifically developed countries to the periphery of the modern world, led to impoverishment and total despair of the majority of citizens. The author substantiates that it is impossible to modernize Ukraine and turn to innovative development within the existing neoliberal model and the oligarchic power rooting. As a result of financial genocide and the lack of state support, science in Ukraine is deprived of the opportunity to effectively perform its public functions, in particular, to be one of the decisive agents of modernization of society in the interests of all citizens. Conclusions. The specific political and ideological interests of a global capital stand behind the theory of modernization as an ideological and theoretical construct of modernity. The theory and practice of neoliberal modernization imposed on Ukraine as the main mean of reaching the path of successful socio-economic development have not lived up to the expectations and led to a chronic crisis state of the society. It requires finding another alternative model of development.

Building the Biodiversity Heritage Library's Technical Strategy

In 2016 the United Nations published the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It quickly became clear that information is a catalyst for almost every goal, and enhancing information access is necessary to achieve and ultimately improve global community life. The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is therefore an invaluable resource for redressing inequallities as it provides information and literature as an open access library. But there are also still hurdles to overcome to ensure information for all. In the following, we will focus on technical developments outlined in the BHL’s technical strategy. One challenge is the different digital infrastructures resulting in limited access to the web-based BHL. In 2019, only 53.6% of the global population accessed the internet (Clement 2020). Even if the reasons for this are diverse, we assume that network coverage is a problem we have to address. One focus of the BHL's technical strategy is to support and provide solutions for remote areas with no or low bandwidth connection. Furthermore the technical strategy focuses on the provision of services and tools for various usage scenarios by implementing a responsive design. In 2019, mobile devices, such as mobile phones and tablets, accounted for 54% of all page views worldwide (Poleshova 2020). Even though a differentiated view must be taken of which devices are used for which scenario, it can be assumed that mobile devices will be used more frequently in everyday scientific life, for example in field research. By a responsive design of the BHL website, we address this trend in technological development and media usage in order to remain a user-friendly research infrastructure in the future. Another challenge is the multilingual user experience. The multilingualism of BHL will become an essential part of the technological development to address the global biodiversity community and to reflect the worldwide biodiversity research. We aim to achieve this through a multilingual user interface and multilingual search options. The services and tools mentioned above require a high quality database, especially machine-readable text. The improvement of optical character recognition (OCR) is fundamentally important for further technological developments. Good OCR results ensure a comprehensive search in the entire corpus, and with further technological possibilities, data could be added that goes beyond the pure text. Currently taxonomic names are parsed and linked to the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), giving users the opportunities to search for taxonomic synonyms. In the future, this enrichment could be used for more data, such as collection data, geographical names, etc. In the challenge of improving and enriching the data, the BHL will depend on its large community, for example in crowdsourcing transcription projects. In order to reach those objectives and to continue to offer BHL's services to the global community in the best possible way, we need to monitor best practices in digital library and bioinformatics developments and implement them wherever possible. The BHL consortium will have to rely on partnerships and collaborations to fulfill this plan. We are therefore looking into cooperation with other consortia and will also explore alternative technological development models where third parties would develop apps and services from open BHL data. Taking all the mentioned approaches into account, the BHL will develop from a mainly literature library to a data library. It will be our task to create open source software and tools, like better APIs, to support the re-use of the data. This goes along with the aim to increase the awareness of the BHL within the biodiversity community as it is set in the BHL Strategic Plan 2020-2025 (Biodiversity Heritage Library 2020). To draw a conclusion, the BHL's technical strategy focuses on five main objectives to advance information access for the biodiversity community worldwide: Improve global awareness and accessibility Enhance machine-readability of BHL content for data re-use Identify resources needed to achieve the technical plan Ensure continued priorities and leadership for technical infrastructure Implement BHL 2020 Technical Priority Plan (Biodiversity Heritage Library 2020). Improve global awareness and accessibility Enhance machine-readability of BHL content for data re-use Identify resources needed to achieve the technical plan Ensure continued priorities and leadership for technical infrastructure Implement BHL 2020 Technical Priority Plan (Biodiversity Heritage Library 2020). The principle of our work is to adapt BHL to current technological, scientific and social developments in order to provide the global community with the best possible research tool for biodiversity research and to enhance the achievement of the SDGs.

Feminist Participatory Action Research as a tool for climate justice

ABSTRACT The Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) uses Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) to strengthen grassroots women’s movements to advocate for an alternative development model – the ‘Feminist Fossil Fuel Free Future’ (5Fs) – to ensure new, gender-just, economic, political, and social relationships in a world free from climate injustices. Grassroots women of the global South face the extreme impacts of climate change resulting in reinforced and exacerbated inequalities driven by a patriarchal capitalist economy. APWLD’s Climate Justice-FPAR 2017–2019 (CJ-FPAR) supported young women researchers across Asia to lead grassroots research to expose the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women to demand climate justice. The programme evaluation found that CJ-FPAR proved highly successful as a feminist political tool in enhancing grassroots women’s activism through capacity building, producing new knowledge, tools and resources, undertaking impactful advocacy, and strengthening the movements’ architecture. We argue that FPAR is a useful methodology for grassroots feminist climate justice activists to collectively document lived experiences of climate change and strengthen women’s movements to engage in strategic activism and advocacy for rights-based policy change.

El Movimiento de Mujeres Indígenas por el Buen Vivir. Intersticios de una lucha feminista, antiextractivista y por la Plurinacionalidad

El Movimiento de Mujeres Indígenas por el Buen Vivir condensa la complejidad del escenario latinoamericano actual, signado por la emergencia de formas de resistencia y expresiones de alteridad que se reconfiguran al calor de las transformaciones políticas y económicas de la región. Este artículo se propone analizar las estrategias de visibilización y comunicación desarrolladas por el Movimiento desde su primera aparición pública, indagando el modo en que, desde un espacio alternativo, expresan la reivindicación de la Plurinacionalidad, la construcción de liderazgos femeninos y la relación con los Estados locales y nacionales frente al avance del neoextractivismo.

Social and Solidarity Economy in Ecuador: Fostering an Alternative Development Model?

The social and solidarity economy (SSE) has gained worldwide attention over the last decade. It represents a host of diverse economic activities which take different forms in each country, but which share solidarity values that are alternatives to mainstream market economic logics. In Ecuador, the SSE acquired legal status in the 2008 Constitution that aimed to foster an alternative development model based on the Buen Vivir (BV) paradigm. However, despite a broad new regulatory framework for the SSE, the implementation of specific policies faces significant challenges. This article, based on fieldwork and interviews with many stakeholders, critically analyzes the transformative scope of the policies of the main newly created institution (IEPS—Instituto de Economía Popular y Solidaria). We discuss policy challenges focusing on trade-offs for small rural producers due to their dependent market integration and overall flaws in fulfilling SSE solidarity values.

On-farm evaluation of farming system modules for improving profitability and livelihood of small and marginal tribal farmers in high altitudes tribal zone of Andhra Pradesh

Small and fragmented land holdings do not allow a farmer to keep independent farm resources like draught animals, tractors, bore wells/ tube wells and other sophisticated machineries for various cultural operations. Further, most of the inputs have become costly and out of reach of these resource poor farmers which has resulted farming as an uneconomic and unsustainable enterprise. To fulfil the basic needs of household including food (cereal, pulses, oilseeds, milk, fruit, honey, fish meat, etc.) for human, feed and fodder for animals and fuel and fibre for general use warrant an attention about integrated farming system. The emergence of integrated farming systems (IFS) has enabled us to develop a framework for an alternative development model to improve the feasibility of small sized farming operations in relation to larger ones. Integrated farming system is a commonly and broadly used word to explain a more integrated approach to farming as compared to monoculture approaches. AICRP-IFS, Seethampeta, ANGRAU centre implemented on farm research on “on-farm evaluation of farming system modules for improving profitability and livelihood of small and marginal farmers” with financial and technical assistance from Indian Institute of Farming System Research, Modipuram in 12 small and marginal tribal farmers’ households in Seetampeta mandal of Srikkakulam district of Andhra Pradesh objectives of to address critical constraints of small and marginal farm holders for overall improvement of productivity and to increase the profitability of small and marginal households and ensure livelihood. By diversification in all enterprises farmers realized Rs. 62755, 65387, 82235 and 88967 gross returns and Rs.32125, 34117, 47075and 49747 net returns was more than the bench mark Rs.46720, 47856, 58240 and Rs. 62376 with the additional interventions costs of Rs.3770 in 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16, respectively. Further, with integration of enterprises viz., Crops+Poultry, Crops+Dairy and Crops+Poultry+Dairy farmers realized Rs. 65387, 82235and 88967 gross returns and Rs.34117, 47075 and 49747 net returns when compared to crops only i.e., Rs. 62755 and Rs.32125, respectively. The increase income is attributed to increase in income from intervention in paddy crop and ragi crop, feeding of supplement feed to the cattle and also the introduction of Vanaraja and Rajshri back yard poultry birds. In addition to this not only due to diversification of existing enterprises, but also addition of enterprises in farming system modules. Gross income in all farming systems increased when compared to cropping system only. Gross income increased in crop – poultry farming system due to different modules from Rs. 47856/house hold to Rs. 65387/house hold with B: C ratio 2.09 and Gross income increased in crop – dairy farming system due to different modules from Rs. 58240/house hold to Rs. 85235/house hold with B: C ratio 2.23. Gross income increased in crop – dairy -poultry farming system due to different modules from Rs. 62376/house hold to Rs. 88967 /house hold with B: C ratio 2.26.

Alternative model of curriculum development for vocational higher education: Indonesian perspective

The enactment of national standards of higher education in Indonesia requires vocational higher education (VHE) to carry out curriculum improvements. Unfortunately, curriculum changes which are routine activities often leave new problems, such as differences in understanding how to reconstruct the higher education curriculum that is still very diverse, both between similar study programs and between universities. In fact, even though the government has published detailed guidelines, the curriculum compilers in VHE have not all been able to understand, especially how to link study materials to learning outcomes and determine the weight of courses in an accountable manner. Therefore, this article presents a practice of curriculum development in VHE that is more accountable and traceable, where each study material is equipped with an estimated time to master it. A new method is proposed, without changing the standard of the curriculum development steps in VHE that has been set by the government. Through the proposed method, we find that the weight of the course can be calculated accountably through the estimated time to reach the learning outcomes, which represents the depth and breadth of the study material.

A Knife to a Gunfight: Endogenous Development Through Leader as Contradictory Policy Prescription

Abstract By now a preferred EU instrument aimed at stirring rural development, LEADER initially constituted an alleged departure from the top-down productivist agenda of the CAP towards locally-led development. The exogenous-endogenous explanatory model legitimized the adoption of economistic assumptions into EU rural development policy. As the CAP policy genealogy conveys, agricultural policies occurred at the intersection of internal and external factors, whereas the endogenous framework evicts structural explanations for territorial marginalization. A case study from North-western Romania provides details on the implementation of the endogenous agenda from the perspective of public actors. Rather than inducing an alleged alternative development model, LEADER acts as adjuvant to other policies and, overall, as a pedagogical exercise in uneven development.

Sustainable livelihood alternatives among Nile perch (Lates niloticus) fishers in Lake Victoria Tanzania: analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach

Sustainable livelihood has been a focal point in many development initiatives by private and public sectors in most African countries. However artisanal fishers in the main lakes of Africa are faced with several alternative decisions to improve their livelihood sustainably. Several studies which have been conducted in Africa offered various options using different models such as sustainable livelihood approach/framework (SLA). This study provides different decision-making alternatives using multi-criteria decision model known as analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to assess the most economical and sustainable livelihood options for Nile perch fishers in Lake Victoria Tanzania. Using structured questionnaires and key informant interviews, different strategic criteria such as environment, economic, social and technology were analyzed and the study found that, important factor in the strategic criteria is environment. Moreover, different livelihood alternatives which include livelihood diversification, fisheries co-management and promotion of aquaculture were analyzed. The study found that livelihood diversification which implies diversifying income-generating activities was identified as the best alternative model for sustainable livelihood development. The study recommends proper income diversification interventions and environment management for the sustainability of Nile perch fishers’ livelihood and fishery resources in Lake Victoria.

A modern-day early childhood teacher education initiative on Tajikistan’s historic silk road: Dushanbe to the roof of the world

ABSTRACT This article is on early childhood teacher education in Tajikistan. It is contextualized by the collapse of the Soviet Union and Tajikistan’s rebirth in 1992, followed by Tajikistan’s immediate spiral into a five-year civil war. Established as a presidential republic and having existed for fewer than 25 years as war-free, Tajikistan has made recovery efforts toward establishing stability and developing government, military, business, health, and education. One aspect of Tajikistan’s rapid growth efforts is early childhood education, specifically, to provide early childhood programs aligned with alternative early childhood development (ECD) models (i.e., alternative to the teacher-centered Soviet-era kindergarten programs). With limited wealth and lack of a developed infrastructure, Tajikistan’s early education leaders work diligently on alternative models with a variety of funding partners. Building on this foundation, the authors shared collaborative, culturally responsive, early childhood teacher training initiatives in two diverse Tajik cities along the historic silk trade route. Reflections on how the trainings were delivered and received provide teacher educators, particularly in international settings, insights into strategies that build upon the history while sharing current practices.

Anxieties of an emerging donor: The Korean development experience and the politics of international development cooperation

This article examines recent knowledge sharing initiatives aimed at promoting South Korea’s development experience as a ‘development alternative’ and questions the coherence of the narratives being shared. Drawing upon an idea first put forward by Anna Tsing , I discuss how South Korea’s development cooperation initiatives occupy a zone of awkward engagement in which multiple meanings of its experience have proliferated and explore the anxieties that this engagement creates for practitioners. In particular, the article finds that practitioner anxiety is informed by a triple set of pressures for Korea to export an alternative development model, extend the overseas activities of domestic businesses, and entertain the ambitions of ruling political blocs. By focusing on questions of anxious engagement and the seemingly strategic ambiguity of knowledge sharing efforts it produces, the article highlights some of the limits and possibilities that shape the promotion of the Korean developmental state as an alternative development model for South–South cooperation and extends the emotional register of literature on emerging donors by questioning discursive claims that privilege empathy and reciprocity as drivers of development cooperation.

The question of an alternative to the EU membership of Bosnia and Herzegovina

In a recent survey conducted by the Directorate for European Integration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it appears that 43.6% of respondents believe that there is an alternative to the European Union (EU) membership. The survey was conducted by using the Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) method, on a sample that is representative for the entire country. Therefore, this article will explore the possibility of pursuing foreign policy that is geared towards several geopolitical centres and implications for the country. Primarily, this refers to alternative development models offered by international actors such as China, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Although the EU often emphasises commitment to the Western Balkan region, both internal and external processes are becoming heavily politicised. In this regard, the author will also attempt to examine some of these processes and the main stakeholders (both in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union), who could stall the future European integration.

Melacak Daya Jalar Neoliberalisme Global, Penderitaan Sebagai Basis Etis Pembangunan dan Opsi Pengembangan Masyarakat Versi Gereja Katolik

This paper aims to show controversy surrounding development. Therefore, there are two basic ideas that will be used by the author in this paper. First, the author rejects the theoretical framework and dominant paradigm in the study of development, power and poverty which places neoliberal capitalism as the main weapon used by the power to carry out development in order to reduce poverty. Second, the author will demonstrate an alternative development model which essentially places suffering as the main proposition of development. Here development is seen as a way of liberating people from suffering. Thus, the concept of liberating people from suffering is an inspiration used by the author to show Christian vision of development

Prehrambena suverenost (food sovereignty) u uporednom pravu

Food sovereignty is a specific concept that is, at the same time, an overarching right, an alternative model of development and a political framework, which objective is realization of the rights of local food producers and rural people to determine their own food and agriculture systems. It is about a specific “right to right to food”. The origin of the concept is in the global social movement lobbying for food sovereignty. As a result, at the end of 2018 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. It calls upon the states to urgently undertake measures for promoting sustainable food systems and ensuring the right to healthy and adequate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods that respect their cultures. Up-to-date, about twenty states have already integrated food sovereignty in their constitutions and legislation. There are also regional initiatives, such as those of the Latin American and Caribbean Parliament and of the Pan-African Parliament, to develop a model law that would assist states to include food sovereignty in their legislation. The subject of this paper is exploring the Latin American states’ legal practice with this respect, as these states are pioneers in this field. The qualitative analysis has shown that they differ with respect to legal solutions regarding food sovereignty, due to their efforts to build upon the specificities of the rural population and the needs of local communities. The objective of the paper is to indicate the increasing practice of states in including food sovereignty in designing legislation aiming at protecting the right to adequate food, health, healthy environment, and other basic human rights.

Developing an Interdisciplinary Bio-Sensor STEM Module for Secondary School Teachers: An Exploratory Study

Educators have suggested that citizens need the ability to engage in self-directed inquiry and problem solving. In line with the trend, current reforms in Taiwanese schools advocate the development of these core competencies. One way to achieve this goal is through STEM education. STEM modules which integrate science, math, technology, and engineering have become a prime catalyst for inquiry-based multidisciplinary teaching and learning. Although the demands and the benefits of STEM modules are often highlighted, the challenges of the development and implementation of such an interdisciplinary module are less discussed. This paper describes the process of the development of a bio-sensor module that uses Arduino to analyze glucose level of concentration.This multidisciplinary module integrates physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, electronics, and programming. The goal of the program is for students to construct a device that imitates a commercial glucose meter. Teacher workshops were conducted for educators to learn the concepts and the procedures. A set of questionnaires collected from 21 workshop participants revealed that teachers face various challenges in the process of understanding and modifying the STEM module, as well as preparing students so they are ready to learn with the module. A group interview after the workshop revealed the teachers’ difficulties in implementing a module that requires advanced technical skills and materials. The potential usefulness for the students, and the emergence of a different goal than the original plan, provide challenging and enlightening lessons. Rather than an engineering-centered model, this study proposes an alternative science-centered model for STEM material development.

Ceremonias letradas: representaciones del campo cultural en la narrativa de autoras latinoamericanas y caribeñas de la primera mitad del siglo XX

The purpose of this article is to analyze the representation of the cultural field in the narratives of Caribbean and Latin American women writers during the first half of the 20th century. Despite the modernization of the cultural field and its impact on their literary and intellectual endeavors, these women writers chose not to represent their experiences in the lettered spheres explicitly in their work. We view this representational absence not as disinterest in reflecting on and imagining their professional practice as writers, but rather as the particular way in which these women expressed the difficulties and exclusions they experienced in their contemporary cultural fields. We show how these narratives display a series of scenes in which the main characters engage in reading and cultural activities within private and intimate settings. By analyzing the particular characteristics of these images, we demonstrate how they offer an alternative model of development and cultural interaction to the existing lettered fields of their time.

Was Maoist China a Clone of the Soviet Union?

Was Maoist China a Clone of the Soviet Union? Felix Wemheuer Lucien Bianco, Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, translated by Krystyna Horko. 448 pp. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-9882370654. $65.00. Elizabeth McGuire, Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. 462 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0190640552. $34.95. It has become fashionable in Western China studies to write about transnational entanglements between the People's Republic (PRC) and the Soviet Union or to compare the development of both countries. The similarities of Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China are obviously many, making it impossible to cover them all in a single text. Two new books approach this comparison from different angles. Lucian Bianco looks at the great leaders and macropolitics in Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, while Elizabeth McGuire uses a focus on personal relations and microhistory in Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. This review discusses the two monographs within the larger context of Western China studies and with attention to paradigm shifts in Sino-Soviet relations. Paradigm Shifts in Western China Studies Since the mid-1930s, Western scholarship regarding the impact of the Soviet Union on the Chinese Revolution and later the PRC underwent several paradigm shifts. During World War II and under the alliance of the United States and China against the Japanese Empire, Chinese Communists were often considered anti-imperialists and nationalists. The bestseller Red Star over China, written by the American journalist Edgar Snow, contributed to [End Page 442] the view of Mao Zedong as a grassroots revolutionary. The lives of communist leaders in the revolutionary base area in Yan'an were presented by Snow as simple and egalitarian. Therefore, Snow saw Chinese communism as an alternative to bureaucratic state socialism in the Soviet Union.1 When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949, the Cold War had already started. Anticommunist hardliners in the McCarthy era blamed "liberals" of the former Roosevelt administration and scholars in China studies for underestimating the communist threat and causing the "loss of China." In the 1950s, the newly founded PRC was often seen in the West as a "Soviet satellite state" and "totalitarian dictatorship." Western perception started to change significantly due to the rise of the Anti–Vietnam War movement and the New Left around 1968. Activists and many scholars then saw Maoist China through the lenses of anti-imperialism and Third World liberation movements.2 The New Left considered the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) an experiment in mass participation and rural based-development strategies. Western media reports about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were often ignored as "anticommunist propaganda"; violence was rationalized, because "revolution is not a dinner party," as Chairman Mao had said. The guerilla fighter and the "barefoot doctor" became poster children for an alternative development model to Western and Soviet modernity. CCP criticism of "Soviet revisionism," and in part Western scholarship, emphasized the "Chinese way" of building socialism.3 From the 1930s until the early 1990s, the history of the CCP was often written as step-by-step emancipation from domination by the Comintern and the Soviet Union. The departure from revolutionary Maoism in China after "Reform and Opening" in 1978 destroyed many dreams and illusions. However, it was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives of the Comintern and CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), that the history of the Chinese Revolution was rewritten again. The new findings from archives deconstructed the myths that the CCP had taken an independent path from the Soviet Union. Stalin's guidance and Soviet support had played [End Page 443] a crucial role in creating the second United Front with the Nationalists (GMD) against Japan in 1937 and in bringing the CCP into power in 1949.4 Archival documents show that Soviet advisers influenced the development of the political and economic system in China in the early 1950s based on the Stalinist model. In the fields of culture, education, agriculture, and policies...

Contextualizing alternative development perspectives in local governance systems and communities of Nepal

There has been an increasing shift of focus of scholars and practitioners in viewing development from traditional approaches of development towards alternative approaches. Social capital and assets based community development approaches are prominent among such alternative views on development. This research, by contextualizing the focal concepts of these approaches in the local governance systems of Nepal, aims to understand and describe the local realities. From a centralized state, Nepal adopted federalism in 2015 and local level elections were held in 2017, after twenty years since the last local election. In this light, it is timely and relevant to explore how alternative theories and models of rural community development could operate in the new system. Extensive review of literature on this field was done to understand the focal concepts and their relationships. It was followed by document analysis to contextualize these concepts by understanding the local systems and settings of local governments in Nepal. Scholarly sources such as books, journals and official documents such as the Constitution of Nepal 2015, official reports from sources of government, national and international agencies and organizations, statistical surveys, census data, etc. were valuable sources of secondary data and information. The findings of this research suggest that heterogeneity in Nepalese communities has had its effects on social capital accumulation and effective participation. It also found that lack of meaningful interaction between marginalized rural communities and public institutions have limited their economic opportunities and development capacity. However, with institutional arrangements of inclusive representation, affirmative action and other policy measures adopted in the new system of governance as guaranteed by the provisions of the new constitution, foundations have been laid to increase the stock of bridging social capital and promote community action. Furthermore, with the emergence of new leaders elected in the local level election of 2017 and other informal community leaderships, a ‘mediating agency’ is identified who could act as a link between communities and public institutions and mobilize local assets to create economic opportunities through their linking ties.