1,721,031 research outputs found
Interview data from 'new norms and forms of development'
No full textThis data contains findings of the study on outsourcing of external development assistance in maternal and child health (MCH) in Malawi and Nepal. It outlines the institutional modalities and norms guiding the financing and delivery of MCH projects and programmes. First, our study of external development assistance reveals a messy assemblage of actors, institutional arrangements and activities informed by the norms: ‘value for money’ and ‘measurable results’. Second, we found that for development assistance to function effectively it is not just about the flow of financial resources to a project or a programme but also about networks and key personal and institutional relationships. Third, we found that there is increasing political pressure to show that the disbursement of resources are linked to the achievement of measurable results
Survey data from 'From the margins: Exploring Low-income Migrant Workers' Access to Basic Services and Protection in the context of India's Urban Transformation
No full textThe dataset contains survey data from a total of 226 low-income migrant workers (100 in Jalandhar and 126 in Guwahati) in India. It contains data on 60 variables, focussing on socio-economic background, migratory experience, ill-treatment and access to justice and access to basic services.
Abstract of the study:
Indian cities attract a considerable number of low-income migrants from marginal rural households experiencing difficult economic, political and social conditions at home who migrate in search of livelihoods and security. These migrants come from around the country as well as across the border from Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar to work in low-income manual occupations in a range of small-scale petty trade, service sector work, transport and construction work. Low-income migrants live and work in precarious conditions and are often denied basic amenities and fundamental rights. Poorly-paid intermittent and insecure jobs make them vulnerable to abuse, extortion or bribery. Many such migrants, both internal and international, lack documentation and proof of identity, whether for basic services such as health care and schooling or electoral voting. Their marginal position entails poorer access to health care provisions and other determinants of health than general (non-migrant) populations, thereby enhancing their vulnerability to ill-health, abuse and ill treatment whilst simultaneously compromising their ability to access protection, legal support or redress, and forms of accountability. Language, appearance and cultural differences exposes many low-income migrants from interior parts of the country or across the border to harassment and political exclusion. Moreover, despite their ubiquitous presence, their precarious livelihoods, informality and invisibility keep them unnoticed in urban planning, in the work of civil society organisations and in social science research.
In this context, this collaborative project was designed to generate evidence to advance the rights and protection mechanisms that must be planned and provided for low-income urban migrants. We examined what India's urban transformation means for low-income migrants, their inclusion and social justice by exploring:
1. Low-income migrants' views on transformations in Indian cities, and the opportunities and challenges that confront them;
2. Low-income migrants perceptions of their entitlements, claim-making processes and attempts to protect their own health in a context of poor living and working conditions;
3. The prevalence of violence and extent of exclusion experienced by low-income migrants and how they protect themselves from various forms of violence;
4. The legal, developmental, humanitarian and human rights responses to low-income migrants in Indian cities.
Fieldwork based in Guwahati (Assam) and Jalandhar (Punjab), two of India's fastest growing cities, aimed to enrich our understanding of access to health care, the social determinants of health, and experiences of violence, inclusion/exclusion and accessing justice, from the vantage point of diverse low-income migrant workers, from within India as well as cross-border. The project focussed on migrants' perceptions and lived experiences and will generate evidence to advance the rights and protection mechanisms that must be planned and provided for low-income urban migrants. Low-income migrants are mobile, dispersed and invisible, so they present methodological challenges, especially for creating a sampling frame or mapping in a particular locality. A distinctive strength of the project is its innovative methods for accessing these 'hard-to-reach' groups.
The proposed research adopted a mixed methods approach. In order to unravel the nuances and complexities of low-income migrants' experiences and situate these within the broader processes of urban transformation in Jalandhar and Guwahati, we combined ethnographic fieldwork with in-depth interviews, a brief survey, and participatory methods such as photovoice
Household survey data from Low-Income Settlements in Nairobi and Kathmandu, examining exposure to violence and justice seeking behaviour
No full textThis dataset contains information from household surveys conducted in Low-Income Settlements in Nairobi and Kathmandu. The surveys took the form of experimental methodologies aimed at working in partnership with local human rights NGOs and to capture the exent of forms of public violence not normally documented by human rights organisations. The surveys examined exposure to violence and justice seeking behaviour.Kelly, Tobias; Sijapati, Bandita; Kiama, Peter; Jensen, Steffen; Christiansen, Catrine; Sharma, Jeevan. (2017). Household survey data from Low-Income Settlements in Nairobi and Kathmandu, examining exposure to violence and justice seeking behaviour, 2014-2016 [dataset]. University of Edinburgh. School of Social and Political Science. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/2095
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Taking a ‘leap of faith’ to migrate: exploring UK approaches to anti-human trafficking
Full text linkHuman trafficking is an international phenomenon that has been given more attention by governments, law enforcement, and NGOs as the world has continued to globalise. As a result, numerous combative human trafficking programmes have been developed to address the issue. Documenting trafficking is particularly challenging. The actual process of human trafficking and exploitation remains hidden, despite there being public awareness of the phenomenon. This has presented challenges for anti-human trafficking practitioners, especially regarding victim identification processes. International charities and NGOs perceive the UK government as a global leader in responding to human trafficking, mainly because of the passing of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which was seen as ‘ground- breaking’ legislation.
Likewise, the UK government views itself as a global leader and regularly announces its commitment to preventing modern slavery and human trafficking in Parliament and international forums. At the same time, the UK introduced what has come to be known as the ‘hostile environment’ in 2012, a set of policies that demonstrated a commitment to reducing migration, to make life in the UK as difficult as possible for migrants. As a result, potential victims of trafficking and victims of trafficking have been criminalised and denied fundamental human rights.
A primary goal of this thesis is to explore the relationship between the UK’s commitments to restrictive migration and the reduction of human trafficking and exploitation. Despite the UK’s commitments to anti-human trafficking and exploitation, the immigration system is not only flawed but has been purposefully designed to make migrants and potential victims of trafficking vulnerable to harm. The UK’s environment for migrants and how this has impacted anti-human trafficking approaches has demonstrated that there is not only a ‘right kind’ of migrant but also a ‘right kind’ of victim. The thesis focuses particularly on the role of migrant decision-making in informing understandings of human trafficking as they relate to anti-human trafficking approaches. In doing so, the thesis draws upon structural violence theory through the lens of risk to examine four anti-human trafficking approaches used in the UK: the organised crime approach, the ‘illegal’ migration approach, the moral side of the human rights approach, and the labour side of the human rights approach.
Based on semi-structured interviews with practitioners and hopeful migrants, as well as non-participant observation, the overall argument is that the organised crime, ‘illegal’ migration, and the moral side of the human rights approaches to anti-human trafficking enable the criminalisation of victims and potential victims of trafficking. Thus, this thesis deems these approaches to be ineffective as anti-human trafficking approaches. The thesis argues that the labour side of the human rights approach is the most suitable approach for engaging with the lived experience of potential victims and victims of trafficking, as well as the structural factors that contribute to exploitation. The thesis further argues that all anti- human trafficking approaches would benefit from the knowledge of the role of a ‘leap of faith’ in migrant decision-making when considering victim identification processes.
This research has revealed new findings regarding how risk is understood and acted upon by hopeful migrants in their decision-making processes and has contributed unique insight into how the narrative of the ‘ideal victim’ interacts with the UK’s hostile environment. In particular, the thesis’ engagement with the notion of a ‘leap of faith’ contributes to how ‘grey zone’ decision-making plays out in reality, which are decisions that people are forced into due to their experiences of structural violence. This thesis fills a gap within the existing body of literature on anti-human trafficking regarding how definitional discrepancies are practically applied through anti-human trafficking approaches, such as the impact of the coercion/consent debate in practice
Markets, morals and medicalised maternity: navigating a shifting health service terrain in Bangladesh
Full text linkThis thesis lies at the nexus of recent transitions towards medicalised childbirth,
marketisation of maternal health services and moralities of care, examining how
women, their families and health actors navigate maternal terrains in transition in
Bangladesh. Until recently, women in Bangladesh were characterised by academics,
policymakers and global health practitioners as reticent to uptake biomedical
pregnancy and birth care. Today, the use of advanced biomedical maternal
technologies, made available through minimally regulated health markets even in the
most remote areas and placed within the grasp of women of all social classes, is
ubiquitous. While anthropological scholarship has primarily approached health
markets as an outgrowth of global neoliberal hegemony and as de facto ‘immoral’, this
thesis destabilises these assumptions, attending to the situatedness of maternal
health markets in Bangladesh and seeking to understand the ways that moralities of
care emerge and are renegotiated on their own terms. Based on 18 months of
ethnographic fieldwork within national health policymaking and programming circles in
Dhaka and among health service managers, providers and women in Kushtia district,
it argues that the rise of maternal health markets in Bangladesh is embedded in and
reflects a distinctly Bangladeshi political, social and economic context, rather than a
global homogenising agenda. It argues that maternal health markets in Kushtia have
mushroomed not in response to a perceived retreat of the state but in response to a
public health system perceived as fundamentally fragmented, failing to deliver ‘care’,
and existing solely to respond to ‘the poor’ (gorib manush). This thesis contends that
while maternal health ‘care’ in public settings often appears ‘uncaring’, this apparent
‘uncaring-ness’ is structured by government providers’ moral imperatives to provide
‘service’ (sheba), though not necessarily personalised, hands-on ‘care’ (jotno),
challenging the often taken-for-granted coupling of clinical care and affective care.
While commodified services come at a cost, both financially and in terms of clinical
quality, markets provide imagined spaces where women might access ‘care’ (jotno)
beyond ‘service’ (sheba). In addition to opportunities for women, maternal health
markets expand possibilities to pursue formal and informal livelihoods for people of all
social classes. Nevertheless, while opening economic opportunities where livelihood-making is more generally precarious, this thesis argues that morality is also central to
the project of health market-making in Kushtia. Both formal and informal actors
navigate and negotiate this morally ambiguous space as they seek to secure
livelihoods and conform to moral imperatives. This thesis traces women’s and their
families’ navigation to fulfil aspirations for maternal health services in this nebulous
space-in-the-making. It argues that social navigation principally demands nurturing
and leveraging social connectedness to access biomedical resources, destabilising
logics underpinning conceptualisations of health services either as ‘entitlements’,
delivered by a state based on citizenship or as pure ‘market commodities’, delivered
through a health market according to the principles of classical economics. Indeed,
rather than a manifestation of hegemonic neoliberal ideologies, the maternal health
terrain in Kushtia reflects the nimble and situated navigation of actors pursuing health,
economic and moral ambitions, both responding to and constituting states of flux and
transition long inherent to the Bangladeshi experience
In the shadows of death: an existential approach to mortality in the Sinja Valley of Western Nepal
Full text linkBased upon 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis explores how
people in the Sinja Valley of Jumla District (western Nepal) endeavour to make
sense of existence through their engagement with mortality. My
epistemological approach and the argument I put forward is framed as a
phenomenology of life in the shadows of death. This implies the exploration of
how the phenomenon of death ‘appears’ to the consciousness of Sinjali
people, contributing to the formation and sometimes dissolution of their
lifeworlds—or, perhaps, I should say deathworlds. Along these lines, this
thesis contributes to a more nuanced anthropology of death by moving our
understanding of mortality beyond its traditional focus on mortuary rites,
reframing it in terms of my informants’ experiences. After all, as a Sinjali
proverb suggests, ‘like the fingers of one’s hand, people are not all the same’.
Moreover, the distinction that Sinjali people make between timely and untimely
deaths problematises a conception of mortality as a monolithic object of
thought, underscoring the fact that the modality of a particular demise is
indissolubly linked to how this is going to be experienced.
Taking such experiences into consideration, then, demands we move
away from all-encompassing generalisations about the nature of death, in
order to foreground, instead, its existential aspects. Thus, resisting any
attempt to essentialise people, my argument pivots around the lives and
deaths of a number of characters, presenting what is at stake, each time, for
those very people. In this fashion, each chapter of this thesis illustrates, from
a different angle, how Sinjali people negotiate the precarious equilibrium
between order and chaos within a dynamic intersubjective cosmos always in
the making, and, thus, always at risk of falling apart and disappearing.
Consequently, drawing attention on the intersubjective aspects of death
through the lens of a distinct ethnophilosophical sensibility, this thesis attempts
to foster a critical hermeneutics of existence that will eventually lead to
decomposing nothing less than ‘death’ itself
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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