Bottom-up Development Research Articles

Sentiment and success potential of farmers’ producer organizations: A systematic literature review

Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) are a viable alternative to cooperative farming, offering a commercialization model and improved income for smallholders. However, their adoption is often met with mixed sentiment among farmers, who lack capital, technical expertise, and institutional innovations. This study aims to explore the sentiments related to the adoption and success of FPOs in establishing a beneficial platform for small and marginal farmers, using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), sentiment and thematic analysis. The findings suggest that FPOs can enhance marketing strategies and agricultural productivity, but their impact on agriculture is case-sensitive. Cooperatives, characterized by member ownership and bottom-up development approaches, are essential factors in the context. A programmatic and comprehensive understanding of FPOs can help to develop a better agricultural and allied business ecosystem for diversified categories of farmers. Study aims to assess the sentiments and success potential of FPOs under an abundance of small and marginal farmers, comparing them to cooperative and contract farming legislation, to encourage a sustainable agribusiness ecosystem in India.

Bandung as a Creative City in Indonesia: The Role of Community in Developing a Creative Tourism Urban Village Initiative

Bandung City Government, in collaboration with the Bandung City Culture and Tourism Office, has implemented the activation of creative tourism urban villages as a strategic measure to promote regional autonomy through the development of the creative economy. Prior studies have not extensively addressed the concept of creative tourism in urban villages as an alternative form of tourism. Therefore, this research aims to explore the involvement of communities in the management of creative tourism urban villages in Bandung, seeing them as the primary stakeholders. The objective of this study is to chart the potential and obstacles facing creative tourism urban villages in Bandung City from the perspective of tourism awareness groups as managers of creative tourism urban villages. The study employed qualitative methodologies with a phenomenological approach, specifically in-depth interviews with managers of creative tourism urban villages, as well as field observations of 8 activated creative tourism urban villages in Bandung city. The activation of creative tourism urban villages in the city of Bandung to promote the sustainable development goal is characterized by three primary themes: community dynamics, infrastructure readiness and external support. Community dynamics refers to the interactions that take place among community members as they collaborate to establish creative tourism urban villages in different regions through stories, conflicts and the active involvement of community members. The availability of infrastructure is contingent upon the presence of tangible assets that facilitate the execution of creative tourism urban village business operations, encompassing aspects such as road accessibility, parking availability, and building structures. Assistance from external entities refers to the support provided by external parties to foster the growth of creative tourism in urban villages, including mentoring, training, sponsorship, and collaboration networks. The activation of creative tourism urban villages needs to be accompanied by community independence and involvement in a bottom-up development process, not just a top-down one, so as to maintain the sustainability of creative tourism urban villages after the government no longer supports activities carried out by tourism awareness groups.

Bottom-up development as framed freedom: developmentality and donor power

ABSTRACT International development assistance is founded on and reproduces a set of conceptual and structural binaries. Development actors themselves have attempted to alter lopsided aid relations, as illustrated by the prominent policy agendas of ownership and localisation in the 2010s. These are both expressions of bottom-up approaches to international aid, which challenge the very hierarchical nature of development as a particular Western instrument and historical project of intervention. This article argues that the top-heavy, donor-driven policies to turn development bottom-up fail not simply because of these discursive challenges. Aid asymmetries also persist because of the neoliberal audit culture evolving in tandem with the liberal contours of ownership and localisation agendas. This is analysed in terms of developmentality, which, as a tacit and indirect form of power, is both produced by and simultaneously undermines the liberal tenets of bottom-up approaches.

Sustainable Marketing Development Strategy of Bakery and Coffee Teaching Factory Politeknik Negeri Jember

Bakery and Coffee Teaching Factory faces challenges in developing their marketing strategy such as marketing range, quality standard with the producer of the same products, and ability to make a product as the customer desired precisely. These will threaten the sustainability dimensions of Tefa Bakery and Coffee Politeknik Negeri Jember. Thorough efforts shall be made to overcome those problems by identifying the sustainability attributes, especially on the social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Later, the efforts shall be synchronized to the policy of the institution to improve the main performance indicator of Politeknik Negeri Jember. The problems of this research include what attributes that become the leverage factors, how the leverage factors related to the strategy, and what policy that could improve the main performance indicator. This research aims to: formulate the marketing development sustainability dimensions and formulate performance improvement priority strategy in developing Tefa. Research method: analysing sustainability through multidimensional scaling technique; processing data by using application R that includes analysis of ordination, leverage, monte carlo, and kite diagram. The targeted output covers: levelled marketing development strategy based on the level of importance and Tefa development policy that combines the bottom-up development strategy and institutional policy. The results showed that the environmental dimension is less sustainable, the social dimension is less sustainable, and the economic dimension is quite sustainable.

Drawing up the public national Rational Pharmacotherapy Action Plan as part of social and health services reform in Finland: a bottom-up approach involving stakeholders

BackgroundEnsuring equal access to medicines and their appropriate and safe use at reasonable costs are core functions of health systems. Despite that, few descriptions of national medicines policies' development processes and implementation strategies have been published. This study aimed to describe the government program-based development of the Rational Pharmacotherapy Action Plan in Finland as a part of the undergoing major health and social service system reform, also covering the implementation of rational pharmacotherapy in the reformed system and processes.MethodsThe data of this qualitative study consisted of public reports and Steering Group meeting memos related to the development of the national Rational Pharmacotherapy Action Plan that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health coordinated. Qualitative content analysis applying systems theory and the conceptual framework of integrated services as theoretical frameworks was used as an analysis method.ResultsThe national Rational Pharmacotherapy Action Plan covering 2018–2022 was created in a bottom-up development process involving a wide range of stakeholders. Rational pharmacotherapy was redefined by adding equality as the fifth pillar to complement the previously defined pillars of being effective, safe, high-quality, and cost-effective. The Action Plan formed a normative framework for long-term development, with a vision and principles focusing on people-centeredness, better coordination and management of the medication use processes, the continuity of treatment paths and the flow of patient and medicines information through partnerships, and evidence-informed policies and practices.ConclusionThrough intensive stakeholder participation, the bottom-up approach created a national vision and principles of rational pharmacotherapy along with strong commitment to implementing the goals and measures. The concern lies in ensuring the continuity of the Action Plan implementation and achieving a balanced long-term development aligned with the integrated and reformed national social and health services system. The development of the pharmaceutical system has several national and EU-level dependencies requiring political long-term commitment. While the Action Plan differs from the national medicines policy, it forms a good basis for long-term development covering important parts of medicine policy at the micro, meso, and macro levels of the service system.

The evolution of spatial codes in informal urbanism: analysis of residential patterns in Palestinian-Israeli towns

ABSTRACT This research explores the impact of urbanization on familial spatial codes within informal settings and sheds light on their adaptation to contemporary processes. Through comparing residential patterns between traditionally clan-based neighbourhoods alongside urbanized mixed-familial ones in the Palestinian-Israeli town of Sakhnin, the study seeks to scrutinize the socio-economic and political influences on the conduct of traditional code-based systems. Employing GIS analysis, the study examines a two-decade development period of residential patterns in both types of neighbourhoods and uncovers distinct spatial configurations. However, comprehensive interviews with residents reveal that despite urbanization constraints, the familial code continues to guide bottom-up development.

ההבניה הקהילתית של קריית הבבא סאלי בנתיבות

Studies that have focused on the expanding phenomenon of the popular veneration of holy leaders in Israel in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, have indicated the various factors at its core: the unique ethnic tradition of believers, the underlying historical-political currents, and class struggles for dominance-hegemony at an international level. In this study, which centers on a distinct and popular site – Kiryat Baba Sali in Netivot – I will turn the spotlight on additional influence factors: 1. Urban political culture; 2. Spontaneous, bottom-up development of heritage communities; 3. Initiatives by higher-ups in the government and business world. Results show that all actors in the abovementioned categories (most of whom born and grew up in a specific area in Morocco) share separate spatial cells and yet all work in synergy and orbit the same shared circle – the legacy of the Abuhatzeira family. Unlike the central theme of the studies that were held at that time, which attributed the veneration of holy leaders with underprivileged believers, in this case, the actors come from the top of the political, civil, and business worlds, whether national or local. Moreover, in contrast to traditional explanations that emphasized the power relations, status, ethnicity, and geographic and political marginality as the foundations of this phenomenon, this study will expose (through a biographic-interpretive examination) a different, more 'human', source of influence: values, collective memory, identity, sentiments, childhood experiences, reflexivity, tradition, family. The human factor caused internal combustion and brought about a mobilization that is very much voluntary-authentic, toward the renewal and restoration of the heritage.

Structural plasticity for neuromorphic networks with electropolymerized dendritic PEDOT connections

Neural networks are powerful tools for solving complex problems, but finding the right network topology for a given task remains an open question. Biology uses neurogenesis and structural plasticity to solve this problem. Advanced neural network algorithms are mostly relying on synaptic plasticity and learning. The main limitation in reconciling these two approaches is the lack of a viable hardware solution that could reproduce the bottom-up development of biological neural networks. Here, we show how the dendritic growth of PEDOT:PSS-based fibers through AC electropolymerization can implement structural plasticity during network development. We find that this strategy follows Hebbian principles and is able to define topologies that leverage better computing performances with sparse synaptic connectivity for solving non-trivial tasks. This approach is validated in software simulation, and offers up to 61% better network sparsity on classification and 50% in signal reconstruction tasks.

Breaking in Morocco: Opportunities and challenges for professionalization and gender equality in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games

In Morocco, breaking’s formalization through governmental bodies already took off years ago and federations have played a crucial role in the organization, implementation and control of competitions. Formal institutions have shaped the local scenes and provided opportunities but also posed challenges for breakers on the ground. In this article, we explore formalization, gender inequalities and pathways for professionalization in Morocco in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Utilizing ethnographic vignettes, interviews and survey data, we investigate how dancers navigate the top-down institutionalization of breaking and we give voice to their criticisms. We discuss how the formalization of breaking affects the Moroccan breaking scene, what critical opinions about this formalization exist and how formalization can be organized in culturally sustaining ways. In our investigation we paid particular attention to opportunities for professionalization and achieving gender equality for dancers from the Global South as well as the question of access to the western structure of the Olympics. We found that institutional formalization is perceived as disappointing and detrimental to the long-term and bottom-up development and self-organization, while nevertheless also opening up support and new opportunities for professionalization and achieving equality for b-girls.

"It has to be better, otherwise we will get stuck." A Review of Novel Directions for Mental Health Reform and Introducing Pilot Work in the Netherlands.

The current state of mental health care in the Netherlands faces challenges such as fragmentation, inequality, inaccessibility, and a narrow specialist focus on individual diagnosis and symptom reduction. A review suggests that in order to address these challenges, an integrated public health approach to mental health care that encompasses the broader social, cultural, and existential context of mental distress is required. A Mental Health Ecosystem social trial seeks to pilot such an approach in the Netherlands, focusing on empowering patients and promoting collaboration among various healthcare providers, social care organizations, and peer-support community organizations, working together in a regional ecosystem of care and committed to a set of shared values. In the ecosystem, mental health problems are examined through the prism of mental variation in context whilst scaling up the capacity of group-based treatment and introducing a flexible and modular approach of (2nd order) treatment by specialists across the ecosystem. The approach is to empower naturally available resources in the community beyond professionally run care facilities. Digital platforms such as psychosenet.nl and proud2bme.nl, which complement traditional mental health care services and enhance public mental health, will be expanded. The capacity of recovery colleges will be increased, forming a national network covering the entire country. GEM will be evaluated using a population-based approach, encompassing a broad range of small-area indicators related to mental health care consumption, social predictors, and clinical outcomes. The success of GEM relies heavily on bottom-up development backed by stakeholder involvement, including insurers and policy-making institutions, and cocreation. By embracing a social trial and leveraging digital platforms, the Dutch mental health care system can overcome challenges and provide more equitable, accessible, and high-quality care to individuals.

Enriching Cultural Heritage through the Integration of Art and Digital Technologies

Digital technologies are reshaping traditional static urban typologies, as the museum, urging a rethinking of how Cultural Heritage (CH) is experienced. The work presents the PALIMPSEST Project, an Interreg V-A Greece–Italy funded project, which proposes a dynamic, interactive, participatory, and personalized museum experience in the urban context of Ioannina, Greece, establishing an open-air, immaterial, immersive museum route in the city. The project’s innovative approach involved three methodological stages. In the first stage, a collection of past stories of the city was achieved through transgenerational collaboration of students and older generations. In the second stage, the collected material was organized to create an interactive mobile app, allowing users to access existing and add new stories, fostering bottom-up development. In the last stage, a museum experience was built around interactive installations from selected stories through co-creation processes and dispersed throughout the city’s public space, activated by the visitors via the app. PALIMPSEST established a hybrid, open-air museum route, connecting the ICH with the urban landscape, and creating personalized and unexpected experiences of the city. The project offers a novel way to reconceptualize the museum by integrating digital technologies, arts, storytelling, and active participation, bringing the museum into the open urban space.

‘Beyond places of safety’ – a qualitative study exploring the implementation of mental health crisis care innovations across England

BackgroundMental health acute and crisis care consumes a large share of mental health budgets internationally but is often experienced as unsatisfactory and difficult to access. As a result, there is an increasing move towards developing innovative community crisis services, to improve patient experience and relieve pressure on inpatient and emergency services. This study aims to understand what helps and hinders the implementation of innovative mental health crisis care projects in England.MethodsUsing a qualitative approach, 18 interviews were conducted with crisis care service managers exploring their experiences and views of the development and implementation of their service developed with support from an English national capital funding programme. A framework analysis was conducted informed by implementation science.ResultsKey facilitators to implementation of innovative crisis services included bottom-up development, service user involvement, strong collaborative working, and leadership and management buy-in. Key barriers that affected the projects implementation included the complexities of crisis care, workforce challenges and resourcing issues.ConclusionThere is a recognised need to improve, update, and innovate current crisis care offers. Results from this study suggest that a range of models can help address the heterogenous needs of local populations and that new approaches can be implemented where they utilise a whole-systems approach, involving service users and relevant professional stakeholders beyond mental health services in planning and developing the service.

Sustainable Endogenous Development Path Based on Rural Local Elite Governance Model: A Case Study of Xiamen

Under the background of the decline of rural society, the brain drain and the lack of endogenous development power are one of the main reasons restricting the development of rural China. Although village committees and village Party committees, as grassroots governance instictutions, have played a great role in the process of rural revitalization, it is still difficult to achieve effective governance in rural areas with only top-down bureaucratic power. Therefore, activating the vitality of local elites and promoting the bottom-up development of rural areas is the internal driving force of rural revitalization. However, local elites have neither the institutional power of grassroots cadres nor the same prestige as clan elders. Therefore, for local elites to gain effective governance power, they must go through a process of empowerment, that is, gaining recognition from various forces within the village. Taking the Yuanqian Community of Xiamen city in Fujian Province as an example, this paper analyzes the formation process of local elite power. In this process, local elites gained the trinity of administrative, social and economic empowerment, and became the subject of governance power and the leader of rural revitalization. A new rural governance network with local elites as the core was constructed in the Yuanqian Community. Under the role of the new governance network, the material space and industrial space of the village have been transformed, thus promoting the revitalization of the countryside. At the same time, the village gradually expanded its influence and eventually became a model village in the field of rural revitalization. Due to its growing influence, the Yuanqian Community has achieved sustainable development. The case of Xiamen shows that local elites could gain effective governance power through an empowerment process. Then, by reconstructing the rural governance network, local elites could be the important social foundation of rural sustainable endogenous development.

Bridging Indigenous and Western knowledge-systems in knowledge co-production with Amazonian Indigenous communities: a systematic realist review

ABSTRACT Researchers have sought to understand how Indigenous and Western knowledge systems can be bridged for development research to be (a) more inclusive of local actors and knowledge and (b) more relevant to the problems it aims to address. Research in Amazonian Indigenous contexts remains dominated by a ‘Western’ science struggling to accommodate bottom-up development research. This paper examines how Indigenous and Western knowledge is bridged in knowledge co-production with Amazonian Indigenous communities, and what outcomes such bridging incurs. The paper uses a systematic realist review analysing 22 studies. It finds that the bridging of Indigenous and Western knowledge, in co-production with Amazonian Indigenous communities, was based on partnership between Indigenous and scholarly communities. Emphasising mutual respect, power-sharing, and empowerment of Indigenous communities, this bridging contributes to generation of knowledge that is more legitimate and beneficial for all actors involved in the co-production process. However, the paper also observes a gap between knowledge co-production in theory and practice. Power-relations between Western scientists and Indigenous communities need to be further addressed in development research. More work is needed to enhance the legitimacy of knowledge, in order to further empower Indigenous communities to address local challenges according to their own contexts and needs.

‘We Did Many Projects Together’: Boundary-Spanning Strategies of Councillors in Rural Ghana

A thematic gap in decentralization research is how rural councillors with limited political scope assert agency in rural transformation processes. Analysis of councillors’ strategic interfaces with local organisations and international agencies outside the elected councils explores how they construct access to resources for rural development. Drawing on fieldwork in rural Ghana, the article demonstrates how creative boundary-spanning links councillors to different structures of rural governance and development intervention outside the remit of the district council. Clearly emergent from this study is that the cross-boundary collaborations create privileged access to outside resources and support for local political action but with significant political and economic consequences for councillors. These collaborative engagements offer a wider framework to understand councillors’ individual agency for rural transformation beyond conventional analyses of state-led or bottom-up development planning and the dominant critique of external intervention.

Identifying the merits of bottom-up urban development: theory-based evaluation using a value map model

ABSTRACT Comprehensive understanding of the merits of bottom-up urban development is lacking, thus hampering and complicating associated collaborative processes. Therefore, and given the assumed relevancies, we mapped the social, environmental and economic values generated by bottom-up developments in two Dutch urban areas, using theory-based evaluation principles. These evaluations raised insights into the values, beneficiaries and path dependencies between successive values, confirming the assumed effect of placemaking accelerating further spatial developments. It also revealed broader impacts of bottom-up endeavors, such as influences on local policies and innovations in urban development.

Analysing the Scope of Local Authorities (LAs) in Facilitating and Influencing the Sustainability of Foreign Direct Investment in Namibia: A Case Study of the Windhoek and Walvis Bay LAs

The negative and neutral developmental experiences of the Windhoek and Walvis Bay local authorities (LAs) with facilitating foreign direct investment (FDI) are disconcerting and contradict the bottom-up development approach in Namibia. The objective of this study is to analyse the legislative scope of LAs in facilitating and influencing FDI sustainability. A qualitative research method was followed by analysing secondary data and interviewing purposely selected key respondents. The thematic analysis of data was guided by two independent variables of interest: (1) decentralised functions of FDI facilitation in a multi-level governance (MLG) system; and (2) policy and legislative harmonisation in an MLG system. The key findings of this study indicate that the current scope of Namibian LA FDI facilitation functions are insufficient for influencing FDI sustainability for local development. The theoretical implications of this study are that it contributes to the sustenance of the MLG theory—which is inept at explaining the dynamics LAs experience in MLG systems. In the absence of an enabling legislative framework, the current study suggests the following practical implications: (1) bottom-up development using FDI cannot be achieved; (2) LAs cannot influence the sustainability of FDI for local development impact; and (3) LAs cannot protect local communities against the capitalist wrath and exploitative tendencies of FDI.

Why is bottom-up more acceptable than top-down? A study on collective psychological ownership and place-technology fit in the Irish Midlands

Previous research has shown that bottom-up governance approaches enjoy higher community acceptance than top-down approaches. However, it is unclear why this is the case. We investigated this in a survey-based field study in a community in the Irish Midlands that is transitioning away from fossil fuel-based (peat) based energy generation to a renewable energy system. Community members evaluated two scenarios that were part of the actual public debate, that is - a scenario proposed by the government and industry (a top-down scenario), and a scenario proposed by some local community members (a bottom-up scenario). The results showed that, compared to the top-down scenario, the bottom-up scenario was more acceptable, community members felt stronger collective psychological ownership over it, and it was perceived as more place-fitting. Mediation analysis confirmed that higher community acceptance of the bottom-up scenario compared to the top-down one was mediated by stronger feelings of collective psychological ownership and perceptions of place-technology fit community members had regarding the proposed bottom-up development than the top-down one. These results imply that community acceptance is higher under bottom-up governance approaches as they strengthen collective psychological ownership and perceptions of place-technology fit among communities where renewable energy projects are being developed.

Feasible bottom-up development of conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) for boosting the deep removal of sulfur dioxide.

A pain-point for material development is that computer-screened structures are usually difficult to realize in experiments. Herein, considering that linkages are crucial for building functional nanoporous polymers with diverse functionalities, we develop an efficient approach for constructing target-specific conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) based on screening feasible polymerization pathways. Taking the deep removal of SO2 from a SO2/CO2 mixture as the specific target, we precisely screen the linkages and fabricate different CMPs by manipulating the porosity and hydrophobicity. Based on the optimized Buchwald-Hartwig amination, the obtained CMPs can achieve SO2/CO2 selectivity as high as 113 and a moderate Qst of 30 kJ mol-1 for feasible regeneration. Furthermore, the potential of CMPs for practical SO2/CO2 separation is demonstrated through continued breakthrough tests. The SO2 binding sites are consistent with the screening results and proved by in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation, providing solid feasibility for synthesis realizability for future boosts of task-specific CMPs.

From a land ‘down under’: the potential role of responsible innovation as practice during the bottom-up development of mission arenas in Australia

ABSTRACT This perspective paper integrates theories of responsible innovation (RI) with the nascent development of the concept of mission-oriented innovation to address wicked socio-institutional challenges. Theoretically, steering a Mission-oriented Innovation System (MIS) and associated ‘mission arena' toward activities that create virtuous cycles of RI practice will lead to cumulative impacts on the evolution of innovation system cultures. We explore this claim using nascent future-oriented ‘missions' developing within the competitive industry setting of Australian agri-food research and development ventures and aligned training exercises (short courses) in RI practice. This example highlights attempts to stimulate the practice of RI from the bottom up through the Australian (national) innovation system, as agri-food ‘missions’ come to be. Such reporting provides a conceptual grounding to foster a cycle (see graphical abstract) of relevance for comparison to other ex-ante MIS as mission-orientation is popularized as a potential solution to intractable and urgent problems throughout the developed world. A mission-oriented innovation cycle where clockwise from left: 1) people and organizations with ‘responsible innovation’ potential contribute as actors to an innovation system (technological, sectoral, regional, national or mission-oriented) that works to… 2) determine and prioritize a ‘challenge’ (‘grand societal’ or more mundane) then. 3) develops a ‘mission/s’ to overcome the ‘challenge’ leading to… 4) results of mission-oriented activities (that are either successful or not given the mission aims) over a given timeframe, circling back to… 5) the cumulative learning and development of language, discourse and practice (or not) of people, organizations, and innovation systems because of the mission-oriented innovation investment.