Socio-economic Complexities Research Articles

Micro-Finance Operations and Socio-Economic Development of Nigeria Rural Communities

This paper focused on the role of Microfinance banks on the socio-economic development of rural communities in Nigeria. The operations of microfinance institutions date back to the pre – independence period in Nigeria when traditional thrift saving systems and activities of local people could not really handle the growing expansion and needs of the rural people and transformation. Also, the failure of conventional banking in Nigeria to meet the socio-economic complexities of the rural communities that consistently experiences rapid growth and changes as well as government desire to reach rural areas in development, gave rise to the emergence of microfinance institutions as a way of providing financial answers to the low income people so as to finance and improve their income generating activities. Key concepts such as conceptual overview and basic issues in microfinance, the role of microfinance banks in the socio-economic development of rural communities among others were analyzed. The paper adopted the demand following and supply leading hypothesis to support its argument. The paper concluded following its findings that small scale business men and women especially those operating within the rural communities are always confronted with the problem of financing their business; getting proper education to sustain the business and enlarge same. Therefore, the paper recommended that government should set up a more practical and result oriented monitoring and evaluation team to facilitate a cordial link between small scale business enterprises and microfinance banks in rural com munities. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p742

The Causes of Political Party Alliances and Coalitions and Their Effects on National Cohesion in India

Electoral politics in India has long been considered a challenge for comparative politics; from the distinctiveness of the transition and consolidation of democracy and through the understanding of the way in which the socio-economic complexities of such a heterogeneous society have adapted to and interacted with the institutions of parliamentary politics. Since the 1990s India has experienced the conjunction of a period of complex electoral fractionalisation with considerable and sustained economic growth. This has confounded expectations that the political context that is most conducive to economic development is one of strong and stable government. Rather, the contemporary experience of Indian development has occurred against the backdrop of a dynamic and regionalised party system, with coherence provided by a weakened central executive which has had to limit direct control over economic and social policy. To some extent this has been achieved because of an institutional structure of governance which has responded to the evolution of popular politics, providing a framework of governance which has reflected some of the national diversity and filled some of the power vacuums left unfilled by the fiercely competitive but often corrupt and inefficient party political system. However, a major factor has been the way in which electoral alliances and government coalitions have become an accepted feature of Indian democratic politics, forcing acceptance that compromise, power-sharing, and recognition of diversity are essential elements of successful government.

Socio-economic Complexities of Flood Memory in Building Resilience: An Overview of Research

Shocks such as flooding are sudden events that can affect the wellbeing of people, whether it's a single household or business or the entire community. Repeated flood shocks is one of the least researched phenomena associated with understanding the socio-economic dynamics in flood disaster but is acknowledged to be a significant factor in flood impacts. The memory within, and its dynamics interrelated with, the complex socio-ecological system is therefore the main focus of this research. It is virtually impossible to understand the dynamics of socio-economic complexities of flood memory of a system without accounting for the human dimension of vulnerability and interrelated feedbacks associated with it that alter the overall resilience within the system. The concept of memory within the context of disasters has largely been restricted to studies of a psychological nature, however, it is realized that to understand the components of adaptability in environmental, social, and economic contexts, with reference to memory and resilience to repeated physical stress, is equally important. Previous research has identified a number of factors that affect the socio-economic vulnerability of affected population but few attempts has been made to integrate the factors to develop an aggregated system structure. This research adopts a method of structured literature review to identify the concepts and scope of memory in the system and explores those multi-faceted aspects of multi-scale and multi-level processes of memory and socio-ecological patterns to identify how such complexities react to changing stresses. Based on the combined insights a new approach is presented in the form of conceptual map illustrating the need to highlight the role of memory in the process of enhanced resilience.

Understanding the relationship between socioeconomic status, smoking cessation services provided by the health system and smoking cessation behavior in Brazil

Increasing the effectiveness of smoking cessation policies requires greater consideration of the cultural and socioeconomic complexities of smoking. The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between socioeconomic status and "selected midpoints" linked to smoking cessation in Brazil. Data was collected from a representative sample of urban adult smokers as part of the ITC-Brazil Survey (2009, N = 1,215). After controlling for age and gender, there were no statistically significant differences quit attempts in the last six months between individuals with different socioeconomic status. However, smokers with high socioeconomic status visited a doctor 1.54 times more often than those with low socioeconomic status (p-value = 0.017), and were also 1.65 times more likely to receive advice to quit smoking (p-value = 0.025). Our results demonstrate that disparities in health and socioeconomic status are still a major challenge for policymakers to increase the population impact of tabacco control actions worldwide.

A comparison of approaches to the teaching and learning of science in Chinese and Australian elementary classrooms: Cultural and socioeconomic complexities

AbstractSet in the context of today's globalized approaches to curriculum reform, the purpose of this study was to compare the teaching and learning of science in Chinese and Australian Grade 6 classrooms. A conceptual framework based on notions of culture and socioeconomic status informed the research design. Case study participants were three teachers of science and 140 students from three elementary schools of high, medium, and low socioeconomic status in Hunan Province, China; and three teachers and 105 students from paired schools in Western Australia. The formal curriculum, the curriculum‐in‐action, and the experiential curriculum in all case studies in each country were examined. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected with student questionnaires, lesson observations, teacher interviews, a school tour, and document collection. Findings indicated that participating Chinese students reported a greater proportion of their science lessons involved activities such as reading textbooks and memorizing facts, activities that are consistent with Confucian educational culture. In Australia, where there has been a longer historical influence from social‐constructivist theorists such as Bruner and Vygotsky, students reported their lessons involved a greater proportion of activities such as designing and doing science experiments, and working in small groups. The findings also indicated that in both countries, socioeconomic status was an important factor impacting the implementation of the science curriculum with students in higher socioeconomic status schools participating more frequently in classroom activities consistent with reform curriculum documents. This phenomenon was more apparent in China possibly due to the Confucian educational tradition supporting culturally viable alternative approaches to the teaching and learning of science. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50:33–61, 2013

Mycenaean Dimini in Context: Investigating Regional Variability and Socioeconomic Complexities in Late Bronze Age Greece

Recent excavations at the Mycenaean town of Dimini in the Bay of Volos in Thessaly have led to the interpretation of this site by its excavator as the regional "palatial" administrative center. This article discusses the available archaeological evidence from all three known Mycenaean settlements in the Bay of Volos (Dimini, Kastro, and Pefkakia) and considers aspects of settlement pattern, architecture, artifact distribution, burial practices, and craft specialization in those settlements. In the analysis of the data, notions of different theoretical approaches are employed, such as heterarchy, power-sharing strategies, and factionalism, in addition to the traditional neoevolutionary approach. The varied analytical perspectives of these interpretative models allow for a more complete understanding of the political organization and social change in the Bay of Volos during the Late Bronze Age and can expose regional variability in the Mycenaean world. It is argued that, based on present data, there is not sufficient archaeological evidence to suggest a centralplace hierarchy in the Bay of Volos. Ideological, economic, and political power at both settlement and regional level was not concentrated in one source, as the conventional palatial model proposes, but was shared across different groups and sectors of society.

Cultural economy in post-transitional South Africa

... the dominance of a culture in a society does not require all members to be able to participate in that culture on the same terms. Indeed, a culture may be dominant even if most people can only aspire to participate in it: its dominance is felt to the extent that people's aspirations, their hopes and fears, vocabulary of motives and sense of self are defined in its terms ... While it is important to recognize that the terms of participation in consumer culture are profoundly unequal, these terms are not directly tied (though they might be indirectly related) to economic equality, but are peculiar to the culture itself. (Lury 1996: 7) What then is money? It is a universal measure of value, but its specific form is not yet as universal as the method that humanity has devised to measure time all round the world. It is purchasing power, a means of buying and selling in markets. It counts wealth and status. It is a store of memory linking individuals to their various communities, a kind of memory bank and thus a source of identity. As a symbolic medium, it conveys information through a system of signs that relies more on numbers than words. A lot more circulates with money than the goods and services it buys. (Hart 2007:15) Why political economy no longer tells the whole story The uneven and contradictory interconnections between apartheid and capitalism in South Africa have long been critically debated in political economy terms from both liberal and Marxist perspectives. Recent critical analyses of transformation in South Africa and attempts to describe South Africa's reintegration into the global economy underscore, to varying degrees and from a range of different viewpoints, the growing and troubling 'limits of liberation' (Robins 2005). These studies continue to probe and problematise, within political economy frameworks, the nature of state power and national polities both in Africa and beyond, typically critiquing the domination of state politics, law and institutions, issues of ownership and control, describing how subsequent struggles for power are enacted among various political players, and between these and market actors. These critical inquiries include, but are by no means limited to, Bond 2005, 2006; Chidester, Dexter and James 2003; Daniel, Habib and Southall 2004; Daniel, Southall and Lutchman 2005; Habib and Bentley 2008; Robins 2005; Seekings and Nattrass 2006; Southall and Melber 2009, to name but a handful. Today, post-transitional South Africa comprises a contradictory network of socio-cultural and economic forms of reorganisation, broadly attesting to an accommodation of neoliberal corporate capitalism. This corporate neoliberal environment is marked concurrently by continuing uneven development, ongoing poverty and rising structural unemployment, transforming accumulations of capital, more or less successful procedures of racial redress, elitist and ethnic mechanisms of socio-economic inclusion and exclusion, manifestations of non-racialism and re-racialisation, local mobilisations of social movements and NGOs, refashioned affiliations to traditionally African social practices and hierarchies, and more. During the apartheid regime, crucial in this regard were the ways political and economic factors converged and intersected primarily through strategies of racial discrimination as a means of controlling 'cheap' black labour. However, in post-apartheid South Africa, convergences between economic, ethnic, national and other socio-cultural determinants, and the state-initiated agenda of redress, have generated new socio-economic complexities. Alongside attempts to attain sustainable economic growth and rejoin the global economy, and a desire--however implicit--to forge a sense of national identity, government has also made a point of prioritising an initiative of redress, whereby transformation has been conceptualised in terms of wealth and income redistribution to previously disenfranchised groups (see Habib & Bentley 2008: 24, passim; Innes 2007: 67). …

IMMIGRANTS, IMMIGRATION, BROADER CONTEXTS, AND PUBLIC POLICY DISCONNECTS

This essay attempts to broaden the context of public and policy discourses about the nature and complexities associated with migration to the United States. Several dimensions are examined: (1) global and U.S. migration trends; (2) the effects of migration on both the communities of origin and destination; (3) issues related to the rights and standing of migrants; (4) the gendered dimensions related to migration; (5) patterns of migrants' integration into their host society; (6) the impact of human-capital investment and its consequences; and (7) the limitations of the current policy discussions and initiatives. In the case of the latter, the need to move away from polarizing and simplistic perspectives and to integrate the many socioeconomic and political complexities associated with international migration is discussed. A more comprehensive understanding of migration recognizes that it is not exclusively the result of individual behaviors and motivations. Structural relationships, both domestically and internationally, as well as public policies have also had an effect on migration flows and patterns.

The Politics of Blood:

In The Rag Doll Plagues ( 1992), Alejandro Morales employs the epidemic as a metaphor for sociocultural transformations initiated with the conquest of the Americas and continuing into the twenty-first century. The present essay centers on the trope of blood-in terms of the representation of plagues and the possibilities ofmiscegenation- in order to show how The Rag Doll Plagues highlights the fear of intercultural contact and the shortcomings of concepts such as mestizaje to resolve social inequalities, advocating instead a multicultural agenda able to address the socioeconomic complexities of contemporary society. Morales’s assessment of different forms of transculturation is germane to current debates on cultural hybridity, issues of race and class, and the use of science and technology as forms of social control.