Technical Assistance Agencies Research Articles

Problems of Irrigation in Developing Countries

This paper describes the crucial importance of irrigated agriculture to developing countries and to the world as a whole. This is followed by a summary of key problems that restrict and diminish the benefits of irrigated agriculture. Solution of these problems will above all require a holistic approach and will require changes in the institutions involved. These institutions include those of the developing countries, of the developed countries that provide aid, and of the international financing and technical-assistance agencies. Engineers in the developed countries have had, and will continue to have, a leading role but will need some redirection. ASCE could provide valuable assistance in this redirection.

INCube Inc. and the TAP Programme — An Innovative Programme for Consumer‐Run Business Development in New York City

With financial support from the New York City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services, INCube Inc., a consumer‐run technical assistance agency, helps people with mental health problems to start their own businesses. Gerold Schwarz has been seconded to INCube for the past year from FAF, the German social firm support agency. Here, he gives a general overview of the activities of INCube, Inc. and describes INCube's latest business development programme — TAP.

The Strategic Approach to Contraceptive Introduction

The introduction of new contraceptive technologies has great potential for expanding contraceptive choice, but in practice, benefits have not always materialized as new methods have been added to public-sector programs. In response to lessons from the past, the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) has taken major steps to develop a new approach and to support governments interested in its implementation. After reviewing previous experience with contraceptive introduction, the article outlines the strategic approach and discusses lessons from eight countries. This new approach shifts attention from promotion of a particular technology to an emphasis on the method mix, the capacity to provide services with quality of care, reproductive choice, and users' perspectives and needs. It also suggests that technology choice should be undertaken through a participatory process that begins with an assessment of the need for contraceptive introduction and is followed by research and policy and program development. Initial results from Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Myanmar, South Africa, Vietnam, and Zambia confirm the value of the new approach.

The promotion of women's cooperatives in Mexico: Is feminist technical assistance an Oxymoron?

Abstract This article examines one of the fundamental dilemmas in grass roots planning practice—how to provide planning expertise to disenfranchised clients while not creating systems of dependence among those clients on that expertise. Specifically, the article investigates attempts to provide feminist technical assistance to women in rural production cooperatives in three communities in central Mexico. The three cases provide both positive and negative insights into how to provide empowering, and feminist, technical assistance. The cases raise questions about two issues in local development planning for women: why is it that a ‘cult of expertise’ tends to develop in technical assistance agencies, and how can we develop alternative approaches that respect women's ‘local knowledge'?; and how can cooperatives construct a feminist labour process’ that integrates domestic and market relations.

A Political Sociology of Education and Development in Latin America: The Conditioned State, Neoliberalism, and Educational Policy

In this article, we argue that a political sociology perspective facilitates analysis of the potential and limitations of education to contribute to national development in Latin America. Such a perspective enables policy makers, practitioners, and researchers to take into account historical forces, institutional contradictions, and contextual factors, both national and international, that shape the possibilities of educational and social change occurring - and whether such change benefits the least privileged members of a society. We take the position that a political sociology of education in Latin America must begin with an examination of the role of the state in determining what type of development will take place and who will benefit from social policy. There is a need to consider what type of state and political regime supports which kind of education, for whom, and for what purposes (La Belle, 1986). After defining the state and its relationship to education, we make the case that the state in Latin America is further conditioned by the neoliberal economic and social policies being followed by countries in the region in order to gain access to international capital and markets. We examine how the structural adjustment policies recommended by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and national technical assistance agencies like USAID have affected the governance, financing, and provision of education to various populations. We argue that gains made in extending education to previously neglected populations during the period from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s have been substantially eroded by the introduction of market-based policies designed to decentralize and privatize education. We illustrate how these policies have affected equality of educational opportunity in several countries, notably Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. At the same time, we provide examples of grassroots movements that counter education policies that serve elite interests. Such programs provide an alternative to externally imposed and top-down reforms, while equipping individuals and their collectivities with the means to articulate their interests and gain access to needed resources and services. Defining the State and Its Relationship to Education Generally, we view the state as a pact of domination, as an arena of conflict, and a purposeful actor that must select among competing political projects. We agree with Cardoso (1979:38) that the state should be considered the basic pact of domination that exists among social classes or factions of dominant classes and the norms which guarantee their dominance over subordinate strata. As an arena of confrontation, the state displays the tensions and contradictions of competing political projects as well as the political agreements of civil society. Moreover, social class, racial, ethnic, gender, geographical, ethical-moral and religious factors influence the actions of the state in legislating and executing social policies. According to Offe (1984, 1985), one of the central issues confronting the state is the contradiction between the state's need for capitalist accumulation and the need to legitimate the capitalist system itself. For Offe, the state also is a mediator in the central crisis of capitalism, which is the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private appropriation of surplus value. In order to mitigate these fundamental contradictions, the state is forced to increase its institutional functions (also Carnoy, 1984; and Torres, 1989). Although the state in a capitalist society, by its very nature, favors policies that are directed toward the constitution and reproduction of the capitalist system (Offe, 1975 and 1984), it also is the representative of the nation as a whole and, in liberal democratic societies, is a proponent of the extension of personal rights and greater mass participation in the determination of public policy (Carnoy and Levin, 1985; and Bowles and Gintis, 1986). …

A Political Sociology of Education and Development in Latin America

This article argues that a political sociological perspective facilitates analysis of the potential and limitations of education to contribute to national development in Latin America. Such a perspective enables policy makers, practitioners, and researchers to take into account historical forces, institutional contradictions, and contextual factors, both national and international, that shape the possibilities of educational and social change occurring-and whether such change benefits the least privileged members of a society. A political sociology perspective necessarily involves an analysis of the role of the state and how conditioned capitalist development shapes education policy in the region. In particular, the authors examine how the structural adjustment policies recommend by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and national technical assistance agencies like the USAID have affected the governance, financing, and provision of education to various populations. Case studies of Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil illustrate how these policies have affected equality of educational opportunity and outcomes.

The effect of product development on educational change for the handicapped

The effectiveness of product development as a component of technical assistance services offered to demonstration projects is examined. Technical assistance agencies have committed a great amount of time and money to product development because they have viewed product development as an important method of educational change that culminates in improved services for handicapped individuals. The authors conclude that written documents produced by technical assistance agencies do not appear to have a direct effect on programs delivering services to the handicapped.

Effectiveness of Vegetated Buffer Strips in Controlling Pollution from Feedlot Runoff

AbstractA rainulator was used to test vegetative buffer strips for their ability to control pollution from feedlot runoff. Cropped buffer strips on a 4% slope reduced runoff and total solids transported from a feedlot by 67 and 79%, respectively. Total N and P were reduced by an average of 84 and 83%, respectively. Ammonium‐N and PO4‐P were similarly reduced, but average NO3‐N in the runoff increased because some NO3‐N was gained from the sorghum (Sorghum vulgare L.)‐sudangrass (Sorghum sudanense L.) and the oat (Avena sativa L.) buffer strips. During both years, the number of coliform organisms in the runoff water was reduced after runoff passed through the vegetated buffer strips. These results indicated that nonstructural feedlot discharge control practices are a promising alternative method for controlling pollution from feedlot runoff.

Administrative training and modernisation in Zaire

This paper analyses the rise and fall of the Ecole Nationale d’ Administration (ENDA) of Kinshasa from 1961 to 1971 in the context of the modernisation forces of a new country. Alongside the historical peculiarities of the setting, the ENDA experience illustrates strikingly many of the themes surrounding similar institutions in other developing countries [Schaffer, 1974]. These themes include the institution's search for an appropriate role and for security, its struggle for status and survival, its conflict with the university establishment, the competitive bids for influence of technical assistance agencies, and the need to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

Agricultural Development in Latin America

EVEN in the jet and rocket age, agricultural development in Latin America is a large topic for a fifteen-minute discussion. A Boeing 707 might be expected to take at least twelve hours for the 6,000 mile trip from Tiajuana, Mexico, to Cape Horn. The passengers would see little en route but a haze of desert and jungle with no time for more than the roughest outlines of land and water features below. Human influences upon the natural terrain would be obscured and political boundaries totally insignificant. Fortunately there is a substantial body of knowledge about this land mass, the collection and analysis of which has been greatly accelerated during the last twenty years. The search for this information has been stimulated by the pressures of war and the clamoring problems which are emphasized by explosive population growth and shrinking frontiers. The miracles of modern transportation and communication both multiply the need for knowledge about the countries of Latin America and facilitate the processes of research. Statistical analysis of the agricultural situation is still based on fragmentary information, much of it the result of not very precise guessing on the part of experts and, occasionally, biased politicians. Nevertheless, the broad outlines are reliable and the dynamics of change are everywhere unmistakable. Of great significance is the fact that statistics and their interpretation have now become a concern of responsible leaders in each of the countries and not solely a concern of the technical assistance agencies of the United States, the Organization of American States, or the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The total area of the twenty Latin American republics, plus the Guianas and Surinam, is about two and two-thirds the size of the United States. Recent studies conclude that less than 5 per cent is cultivated. Another 20 per cent is in pasture lands; 45 to 50 per cent is estimated to be in forests; and one-fourth to one-third of the total is economically unproductive. Climatic and soil conditions are extremely varied, ranging from temperate to tropical. The tropics in particular have been favorable to the specialty crops in the past, with plantation sugar, coffee, cacao and rubber playing significant roles in the rise and fall of colonial empires. Food crops have been grown on a primitive and subsistence basis which still prevails in parts of most of the countries, as typified by the fire agriculture of the Amazon or the crazy-quilt pattern of minifundia grain and potatoes in the high Andes. 1358