Marcus Taylor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies and School of Environmental Studies at Queen's University, Canada. He has written widely on various topics in the political economy of development. His current project focuses on the political ecology of climate change adaptation. Address: Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Cet article fait un examen critique du paradigme de la flexibilization du travail, dans ses aspec... more Cet article fait un examen critique du paradigme de la flexibilization du travail, dans ses aspects théoriques justifiant certaines positions normatives, ainsi que par rapport à l’expérience chilienne. Nous débutons par une analyse des théories néoclassiques du marché du travail, dans lesquelles la flexibilization fait figure de vertu. Nous proposons entre autres que l’utilisation du terme ‘flexibilité du travail’ est trompeuse. L’idée que cette expression cherche à exprimer est plutôt la flexibilité du capital: flexibilité d’absorber, utiliser, et rejeter au besoin les travailleurs du processus de production. En ce sens, le projet politique adjoint à la ‘flexibilisation du travail’ cherche à éliminer les formes institutionnelles qui ont été développé au cours de luttes historiques pour atténuer la tendance du capital à traiter les travailleurs comme une simple marchandise. Bien que la théorie néoclassique prétende qu’une subordination plus complète du travail aux lois du marché ne ...
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at clima... more This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce , redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how 'adaptation success' is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of 'local' vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of ...
ABSTRACT Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the ... more ABSTRACT Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank’s Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilience must respectively be strengthened, empowered and enabled in order for African countries to withstand climate change impacts. In this paper we subject this new climate-resilient development discourse to critical scrutiny. Using the theoretical lens of post-politics, we caution how the ill-defined category of resilience is deployed to reinforce a profoundly depoliticising agenda in which climate change is posited as an external threat to an otherwise seamless narrative of African advancement. In so doing, we illustrate how the Bank obscures the contested histories of African development and uses the discourse of climate-resilient development to perpetuate its neoliberal agenda within the continent.
ABSTRACT Indian policy makers and agronomists often argue that hybrid rice varieties can help rai... more ABSTRACT Indian policy makers and agronomists often argue that hybrid rice varieties can help raise aggregate yields to address food security and improve rural incomes. Indian farmers, however, have proved hesitant to embrace this technology. To explain the disjuncture, this paper analyses the case of a publicly developed and promoted hybrid variety in southern Karnataka. It highlights how, within the context of growing social polarisation and an increasingly water-scarce agrarian environment, many smallholders found the hybrid unsuited to cultivation strategies that increasingly sought to minimise risk. The paper therein further illustrates the limits of technological solutions to contemporary agrarian distress.
Abstract Model farmers are a common feature of many developing world agricultural extension netwo... more Abstract Model farmers are a common feature of many developing world agricultural extension networks within which they demonstrate new cultivation techniques and technologies to local communities. The diverse political-economic and socio-cultural roles that such farmers assume, however, are rarely afforded critical scrutiny. To do so, we emphasise the ways in which model farmers facilitate not only the production and transfer of knowledge but also of materials and legitimacy. These transfers occur both horizontally to community members and vertically through linkages with extension agents, research institutions and private sector interests. We establish how these transfers have important impacts upon both efficiency and equity. To illustrate, we use examples of model farmers drawn from research on hybrid rice dissemination in Mandya district, Karnataka. Despite having the same official functions within the extension network, the model farmers we surveyed assumed strongly different roles with notable implications for the effectiveness of knowledge transfer alongside equity considerations.
Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to ‘climate-smart agricultu... more Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) is an obligatory task to ensure food supply for an anticipated nine billion people by 2050. Despite the rubric’s newfound importance, the conceptual underpinnings of CSA are often left unclear. Focusing on the World Bank’s framework, this paper critically interrogates the principles and concepts that underpin CSA. It argues that while CSA provides greater policy space for more holistic approaches to agriculture, it nonetheless operates within an apolitical framework that is narrowly focused on technical fixes at the level of production. This depoliticised approach to the global food system tends to validate existing policy agendas and minimise questions concerning power, inequality and access. By highlighting four strong tensions that permeate the CSA framework, the paper extols the need to greatly widen the scope of debate. To this end, it proposes an alternative ‘climate-wise’ framework to foreground the inherently political dimensions of food and agriculture in an era of climatic change.
Opening the World Bank• 155 6 Cammack 2003, p. 41. 7 Cammack 2003, p. 43. 8 Even within the confi... more Opening the World Bank• 155 6 Cammack 2003, p. 41. 7 Cammack 2003, p. 43. 8 Even within the confines of structural-functionalist analysis, this is an odd formulation. It appears to confuse competitiveness (the struggle between individual capitals) with profitability (based on the extraction of surplus-value from labour-ingeneral by capital-in-general). 9 Cammack 2003, p. 42.
Abstract: This paper examines the recent process of transformation within the World Bank as a ser... more Abstract: This paper examines the recent process of transformation within the World Bank as a series of reactive mediations to the crisis-laden course of capitalist development on a global scale over the last two decades. Two aspects of the Bank's attempt to construct a ...
Cet article fait un examen critique du paradigme de la flexibilization du travail, dans ses aspec... more Cet article fait un examen critique du paradigme de la flexibilization du travail, dans ses aspects théoriques justifiant certaines positions normatives, ainsi que par rapport à l’expérience chilienne. Nous débutons par une analyse des théories néoclassiques du marché du travail, dans lesquelles la flexibilization fait figure de vertu. Nous proposons entre autres que l’utilisation du terme ‘flexibilité du travail’ est trompeuse. L’idée que cette expression cherche à exprimer est plutôt la flexibilité du capital: flexibilité d’absorber, utiliser, et rejeter au besoin les travailleurs du processus de production. En ce sens, le projet politique adjoint à la ‘flexibilisation du travail’ cherche à éliminer les formes institutionnelles qui ont été développé au cours de luttes historiques pour atténuer la tendance du capital à traiter les travailleurs comme une simple marchandise. Bien que la théorie néoclassique prétende qu’une subordination plus complète du travail aux lois du marché ne ...
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at clima... more This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce , redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how 'adaptation success' is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of 'local' vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of ...
ABSTRACT Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the ... more ABSTRACT Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank’s Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilience must respectively be strengthened, empowered and enabled in order for African countries to withstand climate change impacts. In this paper we subject this new climate-resilient development discourse to critical scrutiny. Using the theoretical lens of post-politics, we caution how the ill-defined category of resilience is deployed to reinforce a profoundly depoliticising agenda in which climate change is posited as an external threat to an otherwise seamless narrative of African advancement. In so doing, we illustrate how the Bank obscures the contested histories of African development and uses the discourse of climate-resilient development to perpetuate its neoliberal agenda within the continent.
ABSTRACT Indian policy makers and agronomists often argue that hybrid rice varieties can help rai... more ABSTRACT Indian policy makers and agronomists often argue that hybrid rice varieties can help raise aggregate yields to address food security and improve rural incomes. Indian farmers, however, have proved hesitant to embrace this technology. To explain the disjuncture, this paper analyses the case of a publicly developed and promoted hybrid variety in southern Karnataka. It highlights how, within the context of growing social polarisation and an increasingly water-scarce agrarian environment, many smallholders found the hybrid unsuited to cultivation strategies that increasingly sought to minimise risk. The paper therein further illustrates the limits of technological solutions to contemporary agrarian distress.
Abstract Model farmers are a common feature of many developing world agricultural extension netwo... more Abstract Model farmers are a common feature of many developing world agricultural extension networks within which they demonstrate new cultivation techniques and technologies to local communities. The diverse political-economic and socio-cultural roles that such farmers assume, however, are rarely afforded critical scrutiny. To do so, we emphasise the ways in which model farmers facilitate not only the production and transfer of knowledge but also of materials and legitimacy. These transfers occur both horizontally to community members and vertically through linkages with extension agents, research institutions and private sector interests. We establish how these transfers have important impacts upon both efficiency and equity. To illustrate, we use examples of model farmers drawn from research on hybrid rice dissemination in Mandya district, Karnataka. Despite having the same official functions within the extension network, the model farmers we surveyed assumed strongly different roles with notable implications for the effectiveness of knowledge transfer alongside equity considerations.
Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to ‘climate-smart agricultu... more Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) is an obligatory task to ensure food supply for an anticipated nine billion people by 2050. Despite the rubric’s newfound importance, the conceptual underpinnings of CSA are often left unclear. Focusing on the World Bank’s framework, this paper critically interrogates the principles and concepts that underpin CSA. It argues that while CSA provides greater policy space for more holistic approaches to agriculture, it nonetheless operates within an apolitical framework that is narrowly focused on technical fixes at the level of production. This depoliticised approach to the global food system tends to validate existing policy agendas and minimise questions concerning power, inequality and access. By highlighting four strong tensions that permeate the CSA framework, the paper extols the need to greatly widen the scope of debate. To this end, it proposes an alternative ‘climate-wise’ framework to foreground the inherently political dimensions of food and agriculture in an era of climatic change.
Opening the World Bank• 155 6 Cammack 2003, p. 41. 7 Cammack 2003, p. 43. 8 Even within the confi... more Opening the World Bank• 155 6 Cammack 2003, p. 41. 7 Cammack 2003, p. 43. 8 Even within the confines of structural-functionalist analysis, this is an odd formulation. It appears to confuse competitiveness (the struggle between individual capitals) with profitability (based on the extraction of surplus-value from labour-ingeneral by capital-in-general). 9 Cammack 2003, p. 42.
Abstract: This paper examines the recent process of transformation within the World Bank as a ser... more Abstract: This paper examines the recent process of transformation within the World Bank as a series of reactive mediations to the crisis-laden course of capitalist development on a global scale over the last two decades. Two aspects of the Bank's attempt to construct a ...
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