Addressing rural social exclusion through African social purpose ventures

Objectives. The overarching aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between social entrepreneurship and rural development, and as a mechanism to address social exclusion in the Global South, with specific reference to Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing upon a number of case examples of social purpose ventures in Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia the objectives of this paper are: - To provide a synthesis of existing literature on the interaction between social purpose ventures and rural BoP communities in the developing world; - To explore extant social exclusion literature including economic, political and international development dimensions; and - To analyse the case study examples to consider the channels through which social purpose ventures contribute to tackling social exclusion amongst the rural BoP. Prior Work. There is growing interest in the role that social enterprises and wider social purpose ventures can play in sustainable development in the Global South. In many developing countries the majority of the population still reside in rural areas with these areas often particularly marginalised and underdeveloped. Previous studies have provided anecdotal examples where social purpose ventures have the potential to provide innovative solutions to the development challenges faced by rural households and communities. Yet research in this area remains relatively nascent and fragmented. In depth empirical studies examining social purpose ventures and rural development in the Global South are furthermore limited. Approach. Data was collected during in-depth case study research with social purpose ventures in Zambia, Kenya and Mozambique. Cases were selected through a purposive sample with access negotiated to rural BoP communities through gatekeeper partners. Qualitative research methods were primarily employed including interviews, stakeholder focus groups and observational research. Results Six channels through which social purpose ventures contribute to tackling social exclusion amongst rural BoP communities are identified. These include ventures with the BoP as employees, producers, consumers, entrepreneurs, service users and shareholders. A number of shared characteristics for successful social purpose ventures are also outlined. Finally implications for policy, practice and research are discussed. Implications. Despite the increasing attention being given to social purpose ventures as a mechanism for global sustainable development many questions remain unanswered. Limited empirical work has been undertaken on such ventures operating in rural settings in the developing world, particularly Africa. The paper will add to academic and practitioner knowledge in this area especially in relation to up-scaling impact, the long term sustainability and viability of social purpose enterprise ventures, and effective supporting interventions. This paper adds to knowledge in the field of social purpose venturing in the developing world. It identifies various channels through which such ventures help tackle rural social exclusion and also factors influencing their success. The paper provides insights for practitioners and policy makers, particularly in relation to facilitating successful social purpose venturing. Value This paper will provide insights relevant to both academic and practitioner audiences. It addresses a subject area and geographical region that has received limited research attention to date. The paper adds to knowledge on social purpose ventures and social entrepreneurship in Africa and wider developing world environments, and contributes to debates on its potential and present limitations as a vehicle for development and societal transformation

The ebbing hegemon? An evolutionary perspective on the emergence of holistic governance and the efficient role of Institutional Investors in Environmental, Social and Governance issues (ESG)

This paper seeks to chronicle the roots of corporate governance form its narrow shareholder perspective to the current bourgeoning stakeholder approach while giving cognizance to institutional investors and their effective role in ESG in light of the King Report III of South Africa. It is aimed at a critical review of the extant literature from the shareholder Cadbury epoch to the present day King Report novelty. We aim to: (i) offer an analytical state of corporate governance in the Anglo-Saxon world, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Far East Asia and Africa; and (ii) illuminate the lead role the king Report of South Africa is playing as the bellwether of the stakeholder approach to corporate governance as well as guiding the role of institutional investors in ESG.

iPad use in fieldwork: formal and informal use to enhance pedagogical practice in a bring your own technology world

We report on use of iPads (and other IOS devices) for student fieldwork use and as electronic field notebooks and to promote active. We have used questionnaires and interviews of tutors and students to elicit their views and technology and iPad use for fieldwork. There is some reluctance for academic staff to relinquish paper notebooks for iPad use, whether in the classroom or on fieldwork, as well as use them for observational and measurement purposes. Students too are largely unaware of the potential of iPads for enhancing fieldwork. Apps can be configured for a wide variety of specific uses that make iPads useful for educational as well as social uses. Such abilities should be used to enhance existing practice as well as make new functionality. For example, for disabled students who find it difficult to use conventional note taking. iPads can be used to develop student self-directed learning and for group contributions. The technology becomes part of the students’ personal learning environments as well as at the heart of their knowledge spaces – academic and social. This blurring of boundaries is due to iPads’ usability to cultivate field use, instruction, assessment and feedback processes. iPads can become field microscopes and entries to citizen science and we see the iPad as the main ‘computing’ device for students in the near future. As part of the Bring Your Own Technology/Device (BYOD) the iPad has much to offer although, both staff and students need to be guided in the most effective use for self-directed education via development of Personal Learning Environments. A more student-oriented pedagogy is suggested to correspond to the increasing use of tablet technologies by students

Evolving corporate social responsibility in China

With a unique cultural background and fast economic development, China’s adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become the center of discussion worldwide, and its successful implementation will have great significance for global sustainability. This paper aims to explore how CSR has given way to economic growth in China since the start of economic transition and its cultural, historical and political background, and how this has affected or been affected by the economic performance of firms. Thus, the recent calls for China to adopt CSR in its industries follow a period where the country arguably had one of the strongest implementations of CSR approaches in the world. This transition is considered in the context of a case study of a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) and a group of small private firms in the same industrial sector in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province over a time span of eight years. While the CSR of the SOE has been steadily decreasing along with the change of ownership structure, its economic performance did not improve as expected. On the other hand, with a steady improvement in economic performance, the small private firms are showing a great reluctance to engage in CSR. The results indicate that implementation of CSR in China needs both the manager’s ethical awareness and the change of institutional framework. The results also raise the question as to whether CSR is a universal concept with a desired means of implementation across the developed and developing world.

Oxytocin increases eye contact during a real-time, naturalistic social interaction in males with and without autism

Autism spectrum conditions (autism) affect ~1% of the population and are characterized by deficits in social communication. Oxytocin has been widely reported to affect social-communicative function and its neural underpinnings. Here we report the first evidence that intranasal oxytocin administration improves a core problem that individuals with autism have in using eye contact appropriately in real-world social settings. A randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects design is used to examine how intranasal administration of 24 IU of oxytocin affects gaze behavior for 32 adult males with autism and 34 controls in a real-time interaction with a researcher. This interactive paradigm bypasses many of the limitations encountered with conventional static or computer-based stimuli. Eye movements are recorded using eye tracking, providing an objective measurement of looking patterns. The measure is shown to be sensitive to the reduced eye contact commonly reported in autism, with the autism group spending less time looking to the eye region of the face than controls. Oxytocin administration selectively enhanced gaze to the eyes in both the autism and control groups (transformed mean eye-fixation difference per second=0.082; 95% CI:0.025–0.14, P=0.006). Within the autism group, oxytocin has the most effect on fixation duration in individuals with impaired levels of eye contact at baseline (Cohen’s d=0.86). These findings demonstrate that the potential benefits of oxytocin in autism extend to a real-time interaction, providing evidence of a therapeutic effect in a key aspect of social communication.

Sustainable social housing: examination of global best practice

This report reviews best social housing schemes from around the world, and makes recommendations for a more sustainable approach.

Real estate and social inequality in Latin America: approaches in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia

Latin America is known as the most unequal region in the world, where extreme displays of wealth and exposure to scarcity lay bare in the urban landscape. Inequality is not just a social issue; it has considerable impact on economic development. This is because social inequality generates instability and conflict, which can create unsettling conditions for investment. At the macro level, social inequality can also present barriers to economic development, as most government policies and resources tend to be directed in solving social conflict rather than to promote and generate growth. This is one of the reasons usually cited in explaining the development gap between Latin America and other emerging economies, take East Asia for example - they have similar policies to those applied recently in Latin America, but are achieving better growth. The other reason cited is institutional; this includes governance as well as property rights and enforcement of contracts. The latter is the focus of this chapter.

Interventions in social networks: impact on mood and network dynamics

Results from two studies on longitudinal friendship networks are presented, exploring the impact of a gratitude intervention on positive and negative affect dynamics in a social network. The gratitude intervention had been previously shown to increase positive affect and decrease negative affect in an individual but dynamic group effects have not been considered. In the first study the intervention was administered to the whole network. In the second study two social networks are considered and in each only a subset of individuals, initially low/high in negative affect respectively received the intervention as `agents of change'. Data was analyzed using stochastic actor based modelling techniques to identify resulting network changes, impact on positive and negative affect and potential contagion of mood within the group. The first study found a group level increase in positive and a decrease in negative affect. Homophily was detected with regard to positive and negative affect but no evidence of contagion was found. The network itself became more volatile along with a fall in rate of change of negative affect. Centrality measures indicated that the best broadcasters were the individuals with the least negative affect levels at the beginning of the study. In the second study, the positive and negative affect levels for the whole group depended on the initial levels of negative affect of the intervention recipients. There was evidence of positive affect contagion in the group where intervention recipients had low initial level of negative affect and contagion in negative affect for the group where recipients had initially high level of negative affect.

Telefantasy tower blocks: space, place and social realism shake-ups in Misfits

This article considers the ways in which British youth telefantasy Misfits (E4, 2009–13) takes up and makes strange urban spaces familiar from social-realist narratives. Filmed on the sprawling East London estate, Thamesmead, the programme chronicles a group of young offenders who are given powers by a freak storm, turning them into ‘ASBO superheroes’. Misfits depends on its British urban landscapes for the assertion of its ‘authenticity’ within British youth television, using spaces and landscapes familiar from urban youth exploitation cinema and television's narratives of the underclass. After situating the series within existing cultural discourses and recent developments in social-realist representations, the article explores how Misfits disrupts what have become signifiers for the ‘real’ – the brutalism of housing estates, the grey of the concrete and sky – by making them strange, turning them into telefantasy. The series presents the estate as an uncanny place: the domestic, social-realist world shifted into a fantastical space by the storm. Through close analysis, this article explores how the familiar spaces become skewed and unsettling to match our protagonists' isolation, shifting bodies and scrambled sense of self.

Spanish as a World Language: The Interplay of Globalized Localization and Localized Globalization.

This article argues that two movements in constant interplay operate within the historical trajectory of the Spanish language: the localization that becomes globalized and the globalization that becomes localized. Equally, this article illustrates how, at the same time that Spanish is expanding in the world, new idiosyncratic and localized forms of the language are emerging. This article deals with the issues of standardization and language ideology, language contact, and redefinition of identities. The article focuses on three geographic loci: Spain, where Spanish opposes Catalan, Basque, and Galician; the United States, where migrants' Spanish dialects converge and confront English and each other; and finally, Latin America, where Spanish is in contact with Portuguese, indigenous, and Afro-Hispanic languages. The concepts that structure the discussion explain both language expansion and contraction as well as the conflict and constant negotiation between a language's standardized forms and its regional and social varieties.

Linking classroom learning and research to advance ideas about social-ecological resilience

There is an increasing demand in higher education institutions for training in complex environmental problems. Such training requires a careful mix of conventional methods and innovative solutions, a task not always easy to accomplish. In this paper we review literature on this theme, highlight relevant advances in the pedagogical literature, and report on some examples resulting from our recent efforts to teach complex environmental issues. The examples range from full credit courses in sustainable development and research methods to project-based and in-class activity units. A consensus from the literature is that lectures are not sufficient to fully engage students in these issues. A conclusion from the review of examples is that problem-based and project-based, e.g., through case studies, experiential learning opportunities, or real-world applications, learning offers much promise. This could greatly be facilitated by online hubs through which teachers, students, and other members of the practitioner and academic community share experiences in teaching and research, the way that we have done here.

Anticipating future risk in social-ecological systems using fuzzy cognitive mapping: the case of wildfire in the Chiquitania, Bolivia

Understanding complex social-ecological systems, and anticipating how they may respond to rapid change, requires an approach that incorporates environmental, social, economic, and policy factors, usually in a context of fragmented data availability. We employed fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to integrate these factors in the assessment of future wildfire risk in the Chiquitania region, Bolivia. In this region, dealing with wildfires is becoming increasingly challenging due to reinforcing feedbacks between multiple drivers. We conducted semi-structured interviews and constructed different FCMs in focus groups to understand the regional dynamics of wildfire from diverse perspectives. We used FCM modelling to evaluate possible adaptation scenarios in the context of future drier climatic conditions. Scenarios also considered possible failure to respond in time to the emergent risk. This approach proved of great potential to support decision-making for risk management. It helped identify key forcing variables and generate insights into potential risks and trade-offs of different strategies. All scenarios showed increased wildfire risk in the event of more droughts. The ‘Hands-off’ scenario resulted in amplified impacts driven by intensifying trends, affecting particularly the agricultural production. The ‘Fire management’ scenario, which adopted a bottom-up approach to improve controlled burning, showed less trade-offs between wildfire risk reduction and production compared to the ‘Fire suppression’ scenario. Findings highlighted the importance of considering strategies that involve all actors who use fire, and the need to nest these strategies for a more systemic approach to manage wildfire risk. The FCM model could be used as a decision-support tool and serve as a ‘boundary object’ to facilitate collaboration and integration of different forms of knowledge and perceptions of fire in the region. This approach has also the potential to support decisions in other dynamic frontier landscapes around the world that are facing increased risk of large wildfires.

Pasolini and Third World hunger: an approach to Cinema Novo through 'La ricotta'

Among the links between Pier Paolo Pasolini and Brazilian Cinema Novo, one of the most inspiring is the political approach to hunger and consumption. In this text, I analyse this topic to look at how some of the aesthetic ideas in Pasolini’s La ricotta (1963) can also be found in some of the most important films of Cinema Novo. In 'La ricotta' (1963), the irresistible need to eat of a subproletarian interacts and clashes with his responsibilities as an actor in a movie version of the Passion of Christ, so that the film creates a complex network of relations between film shooting, social differences, art, hunger, consumption, time and light, which turns the film set into a space for displaying political relations, differences, exploitation and revolution. The correspondences between these concepts and some aggression techniques of Cinema Novo are numerous and confirm the capacity of Pasolini’s film to project ideas on cinema and politics beyond its particular production context.

Fakalakalaka : The impact of a Tongan notion of development in a contemporary transnational world

This paper aims to explore a Tongan notion of development –'fakalakalaka' – in light of Western notions of development. Two case studies of international development aid schemes illustrate the impact of Tongan development ideas in practice. Drawing on a number of ethnographers' work on Tonga, 'fakalakalaka' appears broader than the Western notion of development. The latter is characterised by influential ideals of controllability and industrialisation. The notion of development among Tongans, on the other hand, tends to be directed by an underlying persistence that, for instance, reflects Tongan core values regarding social organisation. The production of textile 'koloa', controlled by women, emerges as central to the accomplishment of this three-dimensional development notion of intertwined physical, mental and spiritual aspects. The importance attributed to this specific kind of textile has increased in recent years and found two additional roles, or development strategies, in Tongans' contemporary transnational world.

The Concept of ’Selling/Buying’ in the Russian Linguistic Picture of the World : from standard to sub-standard

The thesis belongs to the field of lexical semantics studies, associated with describing the Russian linguistic world-image. The research focuses on the universal situation of purchase and sale as reflected in the Russian lexical standard and sub-standard. The work deals also with subjects related to the sphere of social linguistics: the social stratification of the language, the structure of sub-standard, etc. The thesis is a contribution to the description of the Russian linguistic world-image as well as to the further elaboration of the conceptional analysis method. The results are applicable in teaching Russian as a foreign language, particularly in lexis and Russian culture and mentality studies.