1,720,956 research outputs found
Determinants of Women’s Land Tenure Security in Peri-Urban Grafton, Sierra Leone
No full textWhile a land-tenure system may consider the needs of women, securing these needs hinges on the specific land rights or ownership rights they hold. Land tenure encompasses land rights, which are the distinct entitlements that individuals and groups possess within a system. Hence, securing land rights for individuals and groups is the more direct pathway than securing land tenure itself. This study investigates the complex variables influencing land-tenure security for women in Grafton Community, a peri urban settlement in Sierra Leone. Expanding on prior research highlighting the unequal obstacles women face in obtaining and securing land rights, this study aims to examine the intricate interplay of sociocultural, economic and legal factors shaping women’s experiences with land tenure in this specific context. Employing a mixed-methods approach, this research combined qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews with community leaders, women, youth, government officials, NGO representatives and traditional authorities with quantitative data gathered through surveys. The qualitative data explored historical context, institutional responses and policies related to women’s land rights and tenure security, capturing lived experiences and perspectives on contested areas and social conflicts. Focus group discussions were conducted with women, exploring the experiences of various subgroups (young women, elderly women, women with disabilities and women landowners) regarding tenure security. The survey collected demographic information, land ownership details and opinions on contested areas and social conflicts, enabling statistical analysis. Key findings reveal that gender norms, customary land-tenure systems, poverty and rapid urbanization significantly contribute to women’s vulnerability in land ownership and control. The study recommends policy interventions promoting women’s property rights, gender equality in land rights and women’s economic empowerment to enhance their land-tenure security
Land Grabbing in Sierra Leone: Implications of Local Political Influence.
No full textForeign companies have acquired vast land for bio-fuel crop plantations and agricultural investment in Saharan African countries, often referred to as "Land grabbing." This practice violates human rights, lacks indigenous consent, and has no social or environmental considerations. Large-scale land deals impact land rights, as investors obtain leases and clear land for industrial monoculture plantations, with limited inclusion of local land-owning families. This is a key development strategy of the Sierra Leone government. Large-scale land deals in Sierra Leone affect land rights, allowing investors to clear land for industrial monoculture plantations, limiting local land-owning families' inclusion and a key development strategy. This study aims to analyze the implications of land grabbing for local communities, focusing on issues like displacement, livelihood loss, environmental degradation, and social conflict. This study utilized a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design including both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. While existing relevant literature was synthesised into the research, data was collected from secondary data resources such as journals, research articles, and government reports on large-scale land deals in Sierra Leone via content analysis. Also, to capture in-depth local-level dynamics, key informant interviewees using purposive samples were selected, informed by the need to ensure the sample represented a cross-section of the population of interest, namely, the stakeholders involved on the different sides of civil society activism, the local elites, elders, youth, women, land-owning families, land leases and the grassroots activists. Resulting from gaps in and a sheer absence of a structured legal framework for land lease arrangement, Sierra Leone’s land governance institutions were ill-equipped to handle large-scale land deals. This further revealed the incapacity and impoverishment of the government in supplementing agricultural investments, thus, threatening the country’s food security. However, prioritising governance, regulatory structures, technical know-how, and coordination among key agencies might hold the key to identifying missed opportunities and effectively engaging with development partners, investors, donors and NGOs. Therefore, it is recommended that a structured legal framework for land lease arrangements is needed, allowing government and multinational corporations to increase coordination, inclusion, participation, and cooperation with land-owning families.
Improved land reforms to the benefit of women´s access to land to foster and support social norm change, a case study of Western Area rural district and Bombali district in Sierra Leone
Full text linkIt is critical to have land policies that facilitate access to and effective control of land and other natural resources to achieve inclusive growth and eradicate poverty. It is well known that discrimination in land rights occurs globally, both in formal and customary settings. The reason for this is that land rights are either strong or weak and are held by a variety of groups of people. It is the weaker variants of the inequalities that stifle tenure security, reduce land use, and threaten the food security of those who depend on the land to survive. This study looks at improved land reforms to the benefit of women´s access to land to foster and support social norm change in Sierra Leone. A Cross-sectional research design was used for data collection. Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively; while, qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. A household survey across the settlements for semi-structured questionnaire administration. In-depth interviews of the various category of women and household heads through a purposive sampling technique. Key informant interviews (KII) consisted of local leaders, household heads, women leaders and community land owners. An unrefined search using keywords through JSTOR, Google Scholar, Research Gate and UNILAG database yielded search results of journals, book chapters and research reports on the subject. This was restricted to the utilization of accessible resources drawing on sources from different scholastic disciplines while performing an area audit. The results of the study indicated that the principle that statutory reforms automatically take precedence over other laws in cases where there is a conflict between laws seems to remain on paper here. When it comes to land, informal and customary arrangements dominate and custom is seen to be powerful, authoritative and even unshakable. Even with the current gender-equitable legal framework, proper implementation of these laws is often lacking and enforcement institutions are weak. Therefore, it is recommended that increased efforts are needed to assist women in exercising their legal rights, such as addressing norms and customs regarding how women acquire land (such as through purchase or inheritance), the quality of the land they receive, and how land is transferred upon marriage or the death of a spouse
Improved land reforms to the benefit of women´s access to land to foster and support social norm change, a case study of Western Area rural district and Bombali district in Sierra Leone
Full text linkIt is critical to have land policies that facilitate access to and effective control of land and other natural resources to achieve inclusive growth and eradicate poverty. It is well known that discrimination in land rights occurs globally, both in formal and customary settings. The reason for this is that land rights are either strong or weak and are held by a variety of groups of people. It is the weaker variants of the inequalities that stifle tenure security, reduce land use, and threaten the food security of those who depend on the land to survive. This study looks at improved land reforms to the benefit of women´s access to land to foster and support social norm change in Sierra Leone. A Cross-sectional research design was used for data collection. Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively; while, qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. A household survey across the settlements for semi-structured questionnaire administration. In-depth interviews of the various category of women and household heads through a purposive sampling technique. Key informant interviews (KII) consisted of local leaders, household heads, women leaders and community land owners. An unrefined search using keywords through JSTOR, Google Scholar, Research Gate and UNILAG database yielded search results of journals, book chapters and research reports on the subject. This was restricted to the utilization of accessible resources drawing on sources from different scholastic disciplines while performing an area audit. The results of the study indicated that the principle that statutory reforms automatically take precedence over other laws in cases where there is a conflict between laws seems to remain on paper here. When it comes to land, informal and customary arrangements dominate and custom is seen to be powerful, authoritative and even unshakable. Even with the current gender-equitable legal framework, proper implementation of these laws is often lacking and enforcement institutions are weak. Therefore, it is recommended that increased efforts are needed to assist women in exercising their legal rights, such as addressing norms and customs regarding how women acquire land (such as through purchase or inheritance), the quality of the land they receive, and how land is transferred upon marriage or the death of a spouse
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
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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe 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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