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Present Debate (present + debate)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Investments in agricultural water management for poverty reduction in Africa: Case studies of Limpopo, Nile, and Volta river basins

NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 3 2008
Munir A. Hanjra
Abstract Much of Sub-Saharan Africa is burdened with water scarcity and poverty. Continentally, less than four percent of Africa's renewable water resources are withdrawn for agriculture and other uses. Investments in agricultural water management can contribute in several ways to achieving the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and ensuring environmental sustainability. Increased yield and cropping area and shifts to higher valued crops could help boost the income of rural households, generate more employment, and lower consumer food prices. These investments can also stabilize output, income and employment, and have favourable impacts on education, nutrition and health, and social equity. Investments in agricultural water management can cut poverty by uplifting the entitlements and transforming the opportunity structure for the poor. The overall role of investments in agricultural water management in eradicating hunger and poverty is analyzed. This paper contributes to the present debate and efforts to identify strategies and interventions that can effectively contribute to poverty reduction in Africa. It provides an overview of population growth, malnutrition, income distribution and poverty for countries in three case study river basins , Limpopo, Nile, and Volta. With discussions on the contribution of agriculture to national income and employment generation, the paper explores the linkages among water resources investments, agricultural growth, employment, and poverty alleviation. It examines the potential for expansion in irrigation for vertical and horizontal growth in agricultural productivity, via gains in yield and cropping area to boost the agricultural output. Factors constraining such potential, in terms of scarcity and degradation of land and water resources, and poor governance and weak institutions, are also outlined. The paper argues that increased investments in land and water resources and related rural infrastructure are a key pathway to enhance agricultural productivity and to catalyze agricultural and economic growth for effective poverty alleviation. [source]

The Global System of Finance

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2006
Niklas Luhmann for Theoretical Keystones, Scanning Talcott Parsons
In the last decades, revolutionary changes in financial markets, instruments, and institutions have stimulated empirical and theoretical investigations into the interaction of the financial and the "real" side of economic systems. While a considerable body of empirical investigations seems to provide evidence of positive correlations between stock market development and economic growth, there is no consensus in other social sciences as to whether there are two-way linkages, and if so, how to conceive a possible mechanism of interaction. Particularly, the hypergrowth and ubiquity of financial markets has triggered controversial debates on how to understand today's economic landscape. With the objective of clarifying the relationship between finance and economy, this article restructures the present debate through the lenses of Talcott Parsons's and Niklas Luhmann's theories of social systems. Basic system-theoretical ideas on social aspects of finance and economy as well as on uncertainty and risk hint at new insights into the global system of finance that might go far beyond explanatory models of causality. [source]

The Emergence of the Pentateuch as ,Torah'

RELIGION COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2010
Christophe Laurent Nihan
The following article surveys the present debate on the redaction of the Pentateuch as a collection of various traditions on the origins of "Israel" and its establishment as "Torah," namely, the most authoritative body of revealed literature in second temple Judaism. In particular, the article addresses the following issues: the significance of the redaction of the Pentateuch in the current debate (§ 1); external and internal factors behind the redaction and publication of the Pentateuch (§ 2); the groups involved in this process (§ 3); the purpose and the function of the Pentateuch at the time of its redaction (§ 4); and the audience addressed (§ 5). [source]

A Hard Time to Be a Father?: Reassessing the Relationship Between Law, Policy, and Family (Practices)

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2001
Richard Collier
This article seeks to unpack the way in which a constellation of ideas around what it means to speak of ,good fatherhood' has come to inform a series of debates, after the election of the New Labour government in 1997, around the content and contours of paternal responsibility. Via a focus on family law and recent developments around the idea of ,work-life' balance, it discusses the concepts underpinning present debates. In questioning the still-powerful (if frequently unspoken) influence of social constructionist ideas of sex/gender, it explores and question how men's ,family practices' have been understood. [source]