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Local Realities (local + reality)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences50%

Selected Abstracts

Global Standards, Local Realities: Private Agrifood Governance and the Restructuring of the Kenyan Horticulture Industry

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2010
Stefan Ouma
abstract Over the past decade, private food safety and quality standards have become focal points in the supply chain management of large retailers, reshaping governance patterns in global agrifood chains. In this article, I analyze the relationship between private collective standards and the governance of agrifood markets, using the EUREPGAP/GLOBALGAP standard as a vantage point. I discuss the impact of this standard on the organization of supply chains of fresh vegetables in the Kenyan horticulture industry, focusing on the supply chain relationships and practices among exporters and smallholder farmers. In so doing, I seek to highlight the often-contested nature of the implementation of standards in social fields that are marked by different and distributed principles of evaluating quality, production processes, and legitimate actions in the marketplace. I also reconstruct the challenges and opportunities that exporters and farmers are facing with regard to the implementation of and compliance with standards. Finally, I elaborate on the scope for action that producers and policymakers have under these structures to retain sectoral competitiveness in a global economy of qualities. [source]

Fighting for Other Folks' Wages: The Logic and Illogic of Living Wage Campaigns

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2005
RICHARD FREEMAN
Living wage campaigns have enacted ordinances/policies to raise low wages in over 100 localities. The campaigns galvanize citizens more than national economic issues and allow for pay increases fine-tuned to local realities, but cover relatively few workers. To help the low-paid broadly, the coalitions in living wage campaigns have to scale up to the state or national level while unions and national groups work to devolve labor issues from the gridlock at the federal level to states and localities. [source]

Confronting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa: policy versus practice

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 186 2005
Anita Hardon
The paper shows how policies aimed at confronting HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have shifted over the past 10 years. Initially, the focus was on prevention. Anti-retroviral treatments (ARVs), which could prolong the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS, were considered too expensive for the African poor. In 2000, following global campaigns to lower the prices of ARVs, and concern about the political instability caused by AIDS in Africa, policies started focusing on access to treatment. Cost-effectiveness arguments played a key role in the formulation and implementation of the prevention policies, while human rights and equity considerations drive the current treatment programmes. Though different in policy content, the prevention and treatment policies have in common that they pay little attention to the socio-cultural realities in sub-Saharan Africa that ultimately determine their success. Based on illustrative case material from Uganda, the paper calls for more research on and understanding of the successes and failures of prevention and treatment programmes. Such understanding can help adapt global policies to local realities. [source]

Individual Differences in Public Opinion about Youth Crime and Justice in Swansea

THE HOWARD JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Issue 4 2007
KEVIN HAINES
Gender and age differences in estimations of youth crime were compared to official and self-reported youth offending statistics nationally and locally. Attitudes to sentencing and preventative measures were evaluated with reference to Swansea's positive, inclusionary approach to young people. Findings indicate that the Swansea public overestimates the extent of youth crime locally, yet it remains ambivalent about appropriate sentencing responses, favouring both punitive and preventative measures. This suggests that local public opinion is shaped by national media and political rhetoric, rather than the local realities of youth offending. [source]