SSEE 2007 Working Papers in Development
Working Paper 4
'MICROFINANCE AND DEVELOPMENT'
Adam Mooney
Abstract
This paper examines the factors that determine microenterprise performance and the implications of these factors for microfinance institutions (MFIs) when designing services and targeting clients. It argues that simultaneous pursuit of both poverty alleviation and financial viability can challenge the priorities of MFIs. Furthermore, MFIs need to be clear where they sit on the 'welfarist/institutionalist spectrum' in order to be effective. It is critical that MFIs understand, acknowledge and prepare for financial and non-financial factors that influence microenterprise performance. Sharing this information with potential clients and entrepreneurs from the first interaction and openly outlining the specific targeting and design response that the MFI has chosen will lead to positive outcomes.
Working Paper 3
'THINKING AND RETHINKING THE STATE IN POST-DEVELOPMENT ANTHROPOLOGY'
Anthony Marcus
Abstract
For most of the twentieth century the state was not a major part of the anthropological toolkit. Despite significant archaeologically driven work on socio-cultural evolution and state formation, most socio-cultural anthropologists have viewed the state with empiricist scepticism, populist hostility, or ethnographi indifference ... This essay seeks to provide context and clarification on state-theory as a step towards discussion of anthropology's contemporary engagement with the state and broader questions of political action and social change.
Working Paper 2
'MONEY, MEANING AND MATERIALISM: A PAPUA NEW GUINEAN CASE HISTORY' - Monica Minnegal and Peter D. Dwyer
Abstract
Through the 1980s and 1990s Kubo people of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea progressively accommodated money to prevailing social forms. Simultaneously, however, the advent of money changed both people's understandings of the world and social relations that were based in those understandings. We argue that the logic which underlies money may ultimately have contributed more to social change than did money per se. Drawing from this case study we discuss the dual nature of processes entailed in social change.
Working Paper 1
'GLOBAL WARMING, HUMAN SOCIETY AND CRITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A RESEARCH AGENDA' - Hans Baer
Abstract
While anthropologists have for long examined the impact of environmental factors on human societies, only a few have even discussed, albeit briefly, the impact of global warming or climate change upon human societies. The vast majority of climate scientists, such as those affiliated with the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, argue that global warming is not only a reality but one that has been largely induced by various human activities, particularly the emission of greenhouse gases associated with burning of fossil fuels, since the Industrial Revolution. This essay (1) reviews anthropological examinations of global warming or climate change to date; (2) discusses the gravity of global warming, including its contribution to rising sea levels, glacial retreat, and erratic weather patterns; (3) posits the roots of global warming in the treadmill of production and consumption associated with the capitalist world system; and (4) examines the impact of global warming on human subsistence, settlement patterns; and health. In that anthropologists have long recognized that social systems, whether local, national, or global do not last forever, I argue that ultimately the only way to mitigate global warming will entail the transcendence of global capitalism with a new global political economy organised around a commitment to social parity, democratic processes, and environmental sustainability.