1,720,960 research outputs found
Agricultural Technology Development in Nepal: Critical Assessment from Knowledge System Perspective
No full textAgriculture has been the foundation of Nepalese economy and has been part of the culture, knowledge system and way of life of Nepali society for centuries. Today approximately 80 per cent of the population depends on agriculture for subsistence. Realising the importance of agriculture as a means of livelihood, for majority of the people, the government began planned interventions in the agriculture sector in the 1950s. Technological inputs particularly the introduction of improved varieties of crops and their trials were the initial outside interventions in agriculture. The focus on the production of crops under the influence of dominant discourse of science and technology has created an inherent conflict between the scientific and indigenous knowledge systems. The government of Nepal developed the Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP) in 1995. The objectives of APP were to reduce the proportion of population living below the poverty line and to specifically include rural poor women in that process through agricultural interventions. It was an action plan, which identified four key priority areas of input and output. Priority inputs included irrigation, fertiliser, technology, roads and power, whereas priority outputs included livestock, high value crops, agribusiness and forestry (APP 1995; JMA and APROSC 1998). In line with the APP, the sole objective of the Tenth Plan (2002– 2007) of Nepal was set ‘to bring about a remarkable and sustainable reduction in the poverty level’. The Tenth Plan focused on two major areas for the agriculture sector: A. to increase agricultural production, productivity, and income for food security and poverty reduction. b. develop local and export market opportunities (NPC 2002).</p
From Grassroots to Policy Deliberation: The Case of Community Forest Users' Federation in Nepal
No full textThis chapter discusses the emergence of the Federation of Community Forestry Users, Nepal (FECOFUN) and its contribution to the process of participatory and deliberative governance in the forestry sector of Nepal. In particular, this chapter discusses how the forest dependent civil society groups were able to enhance their deliberative interface with various groups of actors engaged in the field of forestry, mainly: technobureaucrats, formal political agents (mainly political parties) and development agencies. The purpose is to explicate conditions and processes that enable or constrain the ability of local forest-dependent citizens to participate in the policy and practice of forest governance. Despite repeated pleas for the participatory and deliberative governance of environmental resources (Fischer 1999; Dryzek 2000; Fischer 2000; Smith 2003; Ojha 2006; Parkins and Mitchell 2005), there is still a predominance of technocratic values and institutions in environmental decision-making (Backstrand 2004; Pokharel and Ojha 2005). This is especially true in the context of forest management in the Global South where centralised and technically-oriented colonial approaches of the past continue to dominate the day to day practices of forest management, policies and their implementation (Peluso 1992; Shivaramakrishnan 2000; Sundar 2000, 2001; Roth 2004; Sarin 2005). The rhetoric of decentralisation and devolution of forest management have often been couched in an agenda of extending bureaucratic control rather than advancing the genuine empowerment of the local people (Shrestha 1999; Sarin et al. 2003; Shrestha 2001).</p
Deliberative Knowledge Interface: Lessons and Policy Implications
No full textA question that guided the research project as well as the process of editing the book has been: how different systems of knowledge operate around natural resource governance, and how different categories of social agents associated with different systems of knowledge engage in the process of deliberation. Our aim was to bring together empirical evidence and theoretical insights to explore and substantiate key issues and innovations, as well as to draw policy lessons in relation to enhancing deliberative interface among diverse knowledge systems that exist in the context of natural resource governance. We drew upon critical, theoretical insights of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (mainly practice, habitus and field) and German political theorist Jürgen Habermas (mainly communicative reason and deliberation) for the empirical analysis of six case studies of natural resource management in Nepal. The case studies are representative of the various sub-sectors of natural resource governance such as forest, water and agriculture in Nepal at local, sub-national and national levels. These cases together present diverse situations of interface among various systems of knowledge. The six case studies confirm our proposition (see Chapter one) that effective natural resource governance in Nepal is heavily influenced and shaped by the processes through which different categories of social agents and their respective systems of knowledge interact and deliberate with one another. The empirical materials presented in the chapters amply demonstrate that all situations of natural resource governance, to varying degrees, reflect a deliberative interface among four categories of social agents, namely: civil society, techno-bureaucrats, formal politicians and development agencies.</p
Knowledge systems and natural resources : management, policy and institutions in Nepal
Get PDFJointly published with Cambridge University Press IndiaThis book provides detailed documentation and interpretation regarding how different groups engage in knowledge systems, and how the processes of deliberation take place. It draws on diverse systems of knowledge, focusing on community forestry and community-based natural resource management in Nepal
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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