143,651 research outputs found
Returning culture to peacebuilding : contesting the liberal peace in Sierra Leone
No full textThis thesis investigates the advantages and limitations of applying culture to the analysis of violent conflict and peacebuilding, with a particular focus on liberal peacebuilding in Sierra Leone. While fully aware of the critique of the concept of culture in terms of its uses for the production of difference and ‘otherness,’ it also seeks to respond to the critique of liberal peacebuilding on the account of its low sensitivity towards local culture, which allegedly undermines the peace effort. After a careful examination of the terms of discussion about culture enabled by theoretical approaches to conflict in Chapter 2, the thesis presents a theoretical framework for the analysis of cultural aspects of conflict and peace based on the processes and effects of meaning-generation (Chapter 3), developing the conceptual apparatus and vocabulary for the subsequent empirical study. Instead of bracketing out the recursive nature of cultural theorising, the developed approach embraces the recursive dynamics which arise as a result of cultural ‘embeddedness’ of the analyst and the processes which s/he seeks to elucidate, mirroring similar dynamics in the cultural production of meaning and knowledge. The framework of ‘embedded cultural enquiry’ is then used to analyse the practices of liberal peacebuilding as a particular culture, which shapes the interaction of the liberal peace with its ‘subjects’ and critics as well as framing its reception of the cultural problematic generally (Chapter 4). The application of the analytical framework to the case study investigates the interaction between the liberal peace and ‘local culture,’ offering an alternative reading of the conflict and peace process in Sierra Leone (Chapter 5). The study concludes that a greater attention to cultural meaning-making offers a largely untapped potential for peacebuilding, although any decisions with regard to its deployment will inevitably be made from within an inherently biased cultural perspective
Collective Action in Diverse Sierra Leone Communities
No full textScholars have pointed to ethnic and other social divisions as a leading cause of economic underdevelopment, due in part to their adverse effects on public good provision and collective action. We investigate this issue in post-war Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest countries. To address concerns over endogenous local ethnic composition, and in an advance over most existing work, we use an instrumental variables strategy relying on historical ethnic diversity data from the 1963 Sierra Leone Census. We find that local ethnic diversity is not associated with worse local public goods provision across a variety of outcomes, regression specifications, and diversity measures, and that these “zeros” are precisely estimated. We investigate the role that two leading mechanisms proposed in the literature – enforcement of collective action by strong local government authorities, and the existence of a common national identity and language – in generating these perhaps surprising findings.
Post-conflict transition and development in Sierra Leone: a case for the transformative-justice model
No full textIncludes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The focus of this mini-dissertation is the Sierra Leone post-conflict transitional and development process. The civil war in Sierra Leone lasted some eight years before finally ending with the signing of the Lòme Peace Accord on 7 July 1999. This Accord outlined the post-conflict transitional instruments to be employed in Sierra Leone, namely an investigative truth commission and a legal tribunal referred to as the Special Court. After the completion of the mandates of these two instruments, many developmental gaps still existed in post-conflict Sierra Leonean society. This particularly applied to women who continued to suffer from widespread inequalities and discrimination. This thesis suggests that a model of transformative justice, which advocates an integrated approach to postconflict transitions and the development process in general, would better have served the needs of women in Sierra Leone
Literacy and Numeracy in Faith-Based and Government Schools in Sierra Leone
No full textThis paper provides a comparative assessment of the market share, reach to the poor, and performance of faith-based and public schools in Sierra Leone using data from the 2004 Integrated Household Survey. One-third of primary school students attend government schools and more than half are in faith-based government-assisted schools. Faith-based schools tend to serve children who live in poverty more than public schools, and after controlling for student and household characteristics and school choice, they also perform slightly better than public schools.Primary education; faith-based; poverty; performance; Sierra Leone
Impact of rural poverty reduction strategies: The case of smallholders in Sierra Leone
No full textThe present analysis, which exploits one of the first empirical data collected from smallholders in Sierra Leone since the end of the civil war, compares the impact of two poverty reduction strategies targeting smallholders in Sierra Leone: support to rice production is compared with support to coffee and cocoa production in terms of sustainable income generation and contributing to macroeconomic stability and growth. Supporting rice production is intended to help the country regain self-sufficiency in its traditional principle staple. This will help towards improving food security and reducing dependency on volatile world market prices which, for example, with respect to the recent global spike has had dramatic effects on the lowest incomes. Support to cocoa and coffee production on the other hand aims to create and increase income by producing exportable commodities with higher value added. This research addresses strategic options most successful in improving food security and accelerating economic development. Additionally, bottlenecks in terms of inputs, infrastructure and social and economic factors are identified and analysed in order to isolate those which once improved will impact most on productivity. The results are discussed within a broader economic and socio-economic context in particular with respect to enhanced targeting and impact of Official Development Assistance.Agriculture, Poverty, Official Development Assistance, Sierra Leone, Food Security and Poverty, O1, Q1,
The liberal peace and post-conflict peacebuilding in Africa : Sierra Leone
No full textThis thesis critiques liberal peacebuilding in Africa, with a particular focus on Sierra Leone. In particular, it examines the interface between the liberal peace and the “local”, the forms of agency that various local actors are expressing in response to the liberal peace and the hybrid forms of peace that are emerging in Sierra Leone. The thesis is built from an emerging critical literature that has argued for the need to shift from merely criticising liberal peacebuilding to examining local and contextual responses to it. Such contextualisation is crucial mainly because it helps us to develop a better understanding of the complex dynamics on the ground. The aim of this thesis is not to provide a new theory but to attempt to use the emerging insights from the critical scholarship through adopting the concept of hybridity in order to gain an understanding of the forms of peace that are emerging in post-conflict zones in Africa. This has not been comprehensively addressed in the context of post-conflict societies in Africa. Yet, much contemporary peace support operations are taking place in these societies that are characterised by multiple sources of legitimacy, authority and sovereignty.
The thesis shows that in Sierra Leone local actors – from state elites to chiefs to civil society to ordinary people on the “margins of the state” – are not passive recipients of the liberal peace. It sheds new light on how hybridity can be created “from below” as citizens do not engage in outright resistance, but express various forms of agency including partial acceptance and internalisation of some elements of the liberal peace that they find useful to them; and use them to make demands for reforms against state elites who they do not trust and often criticise for their pre-occupation with political survival and consolidation of power. Further, it notes that in Sierra Leone a “post-liberal peace” that is locally-oriented might emerge on the “margins of the state” where culture, custom and tradition are predominant, and where neo-traditional civil society organisations act as vehicles for both the liberal peace and customary peacebuilding while allowing locals to lead the peacebuilding process. In Sierra Leone, there are also peace processes that are based on custom that are operating in parallel to the liberal peace, particularly in remote parts of the country
R. Giuliani, D. Leone, Indagini archeologiche nell’area di Piano San Giovanni a Canosa: il complesso paleocristiano e le trasformazioni altomedievali
No full textLa stagione di ricerche archeologiche sistematiche inaugurata a Canosa di Puglia agli inizi di questo decennio ha avuto un momento fondamentale nelle indagini di due complessi paleocristiani della città, entrambi legati alla figura del vescovo Sabino, operante nel secondo quarto del VI sec.: il complesso di San Pietro e l’articolato complesso di San Giovanni-Santa Maria-San Salvatore. In quest’ultima area le indagini più recenti hanno potuto verificare la presenza, davanti al monumentale Battistero, di un atrio porticato trasformato nel corso del VII-VIII sec. d.C. in una chiesa, provvista di fossa d’altare, identificata con la basilica del Salvatore. Forse già a partire dal X sec. d.C., probabilmente per tutto il Medioevo, le aree della chiesa, parzialmente coperte dai crolli, furono occupate da una vasta necropoli
Peschiere e tecniche di pesca a Taranto, tra Medioevo ed Età moderna
No full textThroughout history, the economy of Taranto has been based on fishing. Thus, fishing has become a source of income for its citizens and an essential aspect of the city’s identity. Besides fishing − practiced with naviculae and lentrones (small flatboats) from the 12th century onwards − intensive aquaculture practiced in the fishing farms of the Mar Piccolo has also been significant. The terms piscarìa or piscara and vivaria define portions of seawater, differing in size and delimited by a piling system anchored into the seabed. In these places, the Curia regis, the concessionaires or the lessees exercised their exclusive fishing rights.
Detailed evidence on fishing practices is available in written sources. They provide us with rather valuable data, especially if we consider that these types of farms have rarely left material traces due to their perishable building materials (poles, nets, ropes) and the difficulty in recognizing them (think, for instance, of the stone blocks used to attach the piling).
The majority of the Tarentine fishing farms were located near the Mar Piccolo entrance and along its inner coast. Thirty of them are known and were exploited by the clergy, the leading religious authorities, and private citizens.
While oyster farming is well attested for the Roman age, less information is available on mussel farming. Indeed, this type of aquaculture is not testified before the 15-16th c., when the first farms were installed. In the following century, this production increased greatly and became an important characteristic of the local economy.
Fishing and aquaculture were strictly regulated with a set of norms and rules deriving from Byzantine law. From the 15th c., they were recorded and constantly updated in the Libro Rosso di Taranto, also known as the Manoscritto Acclavio. Not only does this code provide us with information on the seawater exploitation system, but also on fishing techniques, regulations, and tools’ names.
Many of these practices remained unchanged throughout antiquity and became part of the fishing tradition of Taranto. Among the primary fishing techniques, Tarentine fishers mastered pot traps − baskets made of willow and used on rocky sea bottoms rich in vegetation − and trawls − preferred for shallow seabeds and dragged by two fishers’ teams directly from the ground
Sustainable development and mining in Sierra Leone
No full textPhDThe conflicts between pursuing mining activities to foster economic
development and protecting the environment in which such activities take place
is a recurring dilemma for mineral reliant countries like Sierra Leone. The
concept of sustainable development was designed on the international platform
to ameliorate such dilemmas. The concept functions as an arbiter to reconcile
biases between developmental goals and environmental objectives, by
advocating an integration of one in the other. This study presents sustainable
development as valuable recipe, by which mining ventures could be pursued as
an economic imperative (to meet the needs of present and future generations),
while protecting the environment and its components in the pursuit of such
developments.
The thesis begins with an introduction into mining in Sierra Leone. It illustrates
the international breeding of sustainable development in environmental
protection (as oppose to economic development), and emphasise the
importance of sustainability principles for sound legal and policy guidance at the
national level. It also establishes the applicability of the concept to mineral
resourced evelopmentsg enerally. Mineral-specificla ws and other legal controls
in Sierra Leone are then examined as a case study; their sustainability content
is ascertained and their capacity as a legal regime to direct or achieve
sustainable mining in that country is explored. Finally, aspects of
implementation of sustainable development in Sierra Leone's mining and its
domestic implications are examined.
This study shows that despite the definitional questions, sustainable
development has direct and primary relevance for environmental protection in
the economic exploitation of natural resources. It identifies a legal character in
the concept beyond legislative processes, and a flexibility in its principles that
allows for their interpretation within legal rules to enhance environmental
protection at the national level. It also illustrates the link between effective
implementation and ensuring sustainable mining
Sierra Leone: Recent developments in agricultural research
No full textAgricultural research and development (R&D) in Sierra Leone virtually ceased in the 1990s due to the ravages of civil war. Several researchers were killed by rebels, research facilities and equipment were destroyed or severely damaged, and many research stations were abandoned as staff took refuge in Freetown (Asenso-Okyere et al. 2009). When peace was finally declared in 2002, Sierra Leone embarked on what will be a long road toward reconstructing its agricultural research infrastructure and capacity. As a result, agricultural R&D spending rose rapidly. In 2009, the country invested 7.5 billion leones or 6.9 million PPP dollars on agricultural R&D (both in 2005 prices) compared with just 2.2 billion leones or 2.8 million dollars in 2001 (Figure 1; Table 1). Unless otherwise stated, all prices in this note are based on purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates, which reflect the purchasing power of currencies more effectively than do standard exchange rates because they compare the prices of a broader range of local-as opposed to internationally traded-goods and services. Total agricultural R&D capacity has also risen gradually since the cessation of hostilities. In 2009, Sierra Leone employed 72 full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers compared with just 49 in 2001 (Figure 2)
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