Invisible capital: The contribution of communal rangelands to rural livelihoods in South Africa

Communal rangelands (including their woodland component) contribute significantly to rural livelihoods in that a variety of natural resources are utilised for direct use and for exchange in local and more distant markets. Natural resources are also valued for purposes which are not ‘economic’ (eg for ceremonial and aesthetic reasons) and because of their ecological functions. The fact that many of these uses are not monetised means that their true social and economic value is often underestimated and not taken adequately into account when assessing, for example, the viability of land redistribution projects. The ecological dimension is as crucial as the socio‐economic: how sustainable is this multifold use of communal rangeland resources? More positively, can the productivity of ‘natural capital’ be increased, and how can the benefits of multifold utilisation activities be more widely distributed to help address rural poverty? This article discusses conceptual models drawn from the general literature which may be of relevance; reviews some of the southern African evidence on rural livelihoods and natural resource use; and attempts to draw out the lessons for poverty assessments and land reform policy.     

Urban Land Policies in Ghana: A Case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

The paper examines evidence on the reasons for inefficient land management in Ghana. It argues that the perceived custodians of land have consistently acted in their individual interest while successfully using a discourse of ‘communal’ to secure the backing of the colonial and post colonial state. Overall, the state has substantially promoted the interest of private capital. In turn, the ‘public good’ outcomes the current land policies ostensibly seek to achieve have only been modestly achieved. Instead, land policies have had perverse implications for weaker groups such as women and impacted cities negatively.     

The choice of organizational form under intrafirm bargaining rules

This paper studies the choice of organizational form under incomplete contracts. We identify an organizational form with a rule of ex-post bargaining and compare four types of organization: horizontal organizations, inverted pyramidal hierarchies, pyramidal hierarchies and vertical hierarchies. We show that if the human capital investments of all members are perfectly complementary, the horizontal organization is chosen. If the investments of two players including the owner are essential, the inverted pyramidal hierarchy can occur. Pyramidal hierarchies minimize the agency cost if investments are non-firm-specific. The vertical hierarchy emerges when the owner can motivate a player who undertakes firm-specific investment by assigning him to the middle tier. We also examine who should be assigned to the middle tier in a vertical hierarchy.     

Nuclear power: The family in decolonial perspective and ‘pro-family’ politics in Africa

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the normative construction of ‘family’ in heteronormative ‘nuclear’ terms is infused with power relations, and therefore must not be taken for granted as an analytical category or concept. Not only a site where racialised and patriarchal western notions of sexed and gendered hierarchies have been naturalised and institutionalised, the ‘nuclear family’ model was positioned as a signifier of modernity, civilisation and progress within eurocentric knowledge construction that served colonial interests. This discussion reviews decolonial thinking on the nuclear family, as well as anti-imperialist literature on the colonial history of the nuclear family ideal. These perspectives are brought into conversation with current developments in which the nuclear family model is being reinvigorated by the conservative US-based ‘pro-family’ movement. The ‘family’, it is concluded, is entangled in multiple relations of geo-political power that should be taken into account in research and the production of knowledge around kinship in African contexts.     

Social capital and trade associations in America,c. 1860–1914: a microhistory approach1

This microhistory explores the activities of one of the many trade associations created in the nineteenth century in the US. Qualitative evidence is used to engage with the concepts of competition, cooperation, and social capital. This article explores the reasons why cooperation emerged between competing economic agents, as an intended outcome of associational activity. It is argued that trade associations are forms of voluntary association consciously established to achieve economic aims and create networks of sociability. These, in turn, generated social capital used by economic agents to avoid ruinous competition and to capture political, economic, and social resources.     

The impact of war on Russian and Soviet development 1850–1950

This article discusses the magnitude of wartime losses to Russian capital stock and population, the prospect of benefits from wartime developments and the burden imposed by the transfer of resources to the war effort. Total losses of manpower and capital, and the deprivation of civilian consumers, were greater in the Civil War (1918–1920) than in 1914–1917, but were exceeded by the impact of the Second World War (1941–1945). Potential benefits are not found to be significant. This article also examines the losses of population and capital during the ‘internal war’ of the 1930s.     

Are the communal grazing lands in need of saving?

The condition, productivity and profitability of the communal grasslands in the southern African ‘homelands’ are assessed by review of the published data. There is very little empirical data from the communal grasslands themselves. These data, supported by other circumstantial evidence, do not support the often‐held notion that the communal grasslands are severely degraded and beyond recovery. This is especially so for the moist and mesic areas of southern Africa. Results from the arid areas are variable.     

The influence of policy on the roles of agriculture in South Africa

This article provides a framework for the analysis of the relationship between different macroeconomic, sector and commodity policies and the multiplier effects of agriculture. It starts with a listing of the macroeconomic, sector and commodity policies that have been included in the analysis. These should be considered in conjunction with the likely roles of agriculture along each of the dimensions of the social, poverty and cultural roles of agriculture. These policies and roles should be conceptualised as the vertical and horizontal axes respectively of a ‘policy role’ matrix. The ‘cells’ of this matrix – the policy role interactions – are discussed with respect to the immediate macroeconomic, agricultural, economic, institutional and social impact of the policy change on the agricultural sector at farm, regional, national and multinational levels, and thereafter on the role of agriculture in terms of each of the dimensions identified above.     

Contrived dualism and government policy

If the government's goal is to maximiza current employment (as the International Labour Office has advised for Columbia), family farms become the desirable land tenure system. This article suggests policies by which family farms, and non-mechanized agricultural techniques, can be encouraged. The context is Columbian agriculture which faces distortions in factor prices, and the article suggests policies by which these distortions can be corrected to favour family farms. Both the prices of labour and of capital can be adjusted by the government, a process called ‘contrived dualism’.     

‘Growing’ social protection in developing countries: Lessons from Brazil and South Africa

The rapid expansion of social protection in the South provides a rich diversity of experiences and lessons on how best to reduce poverty and ultimately eradicate it. Knowledge on how best to ‘grow’ social assistance, understood as long-term institutions responsible for reducing and preventing poverty, is at a premium. This article examines the expansion of social assistance in Brazil and South Africa, two of the middle income countries widely perceived to have advanced furthest in ‘growing’ social protection. It examines three aspects: the primacy of politics in explaining the expansion of social protection and assistance, the tensions between path-dependence and innovation in terms of institutions and practices, and the poverty and inequality outcomes of social assistance expansion. The article concludes by drawing the main lessons for other developing countries.     

Development dichotomies

The author examines a group of dichotomies in the thinking of a large group of development economists about development. These dichotomies range from the meaning of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries, to different approaches and methods of economists and ‘policy-makers’, to policy issues, such as concentration on heavy capital goods versus ‘small is beautiful’ approaches. He finds that in many of those arguments a synthesis of the two views can resolve the apparent contradictions. But even more important for him is the question to what extent each side in the dichotomy can provide useful insights for developing ‘Imaginative but carefully worked out visions of alternative social possibilities’, which he regards as one of the main tasks of the economist, whether working in a developing or developed economy.     

Major overhaul of housing stock in economic and social terms

The article considers the state of Russia’s housing stock and peculiarities of existing schemes of accumulating finances for a major overhaul of apartment houses. The questions of the efficiency of the use of funds attracted from various sources of financing, and the social consequences of increase in population’s expenses for housing and communal services due to the introduction of mandatory payments for major overhaul have been discussed. An alternative way to finance the major overhaul has been proposed.     

‘The rules of the game’: London finance,Australia, and Canada,c.1900–14

It is often asserted that, between 1865 and 1914, economic dependence on British capital subjected settler societies to an unofficial imperialism wielded by the City of London. This article argues that both advocates and critics of such models, particularly in the recent controversy over ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, pay insufficient attention to the City itself. Using the Edwardian City's connections with Australia and Canada, it illustrates the range of financial intermediaries involved and explores their perceptions of political economy in these countries. It concludes that the City's influence (or ‘structural power’) was limited by its internal divisions and hazy conceptions of political economy.     

海外子公司社会资本的构成、来源与生成机制研究——中国企业国际化失败引发的思考

社会资本的缺乏是中国企业国际化失败的核心原因。文章以一般意义的海外子公司为研究对象,提出了海外子公司社会资本的认知资本、关系资本、位置资本和结构资本四个维度构成理论,分析了海外子公司社会资本的三种来源：社会网络生成、个人社会资本转化和母公司社会资本的转移,并研究了社会资本与社会网络、战略网络的互动生成过程,最后提出了中国企业海外子公司在国际市场上培育和管理社会资本的建议。     

Resistance to coal inequalities and the possibilities of a just transition in South Africa*

ABSTRACT

Coal mining and burning are among the most destructive activities on the planet, and a major driver of environmental inequality in South Africa. This article suggests that, despite heavy constraints, initiatives involving resistance to coal are building a ‘counter-power’ which challenges inequality, generates solidarity, and is potentially infused by imaginative visions of another world beyond coal. Following the ‘social power’ approach this vision could, with deeper connections between three sites of resistance to coal – organised labour, mining affected communities and environmental justice organisations – cohere into a vision of a ‘just transition’. This could embed the anti-coal struggle in a social movement for an alternative development path to challenge deepening poverty and inequality.     

Women and empowerment through the ‘economy of affection’ in KwaZulu‐Natal: Its significance for sustainable development

This article is an attempt to demonstrate how, in the absence of infrastructural requirements for development in the rural areas, the interpersonal relationships of women articulated through their households, kinship networks and community structures serve as indispensable mechanisms for their survival. These mechanisms are seen as part of an indigenous socio‐economic framework that is referred to here as the ‘economy of affection’. This framework is presented, through ethnographic data, as a means of facilitating moral, social and economic support among the indigent rural people in KwaZulu‐Natal. Taking cognisance of local organisational forms and resources is the best possible way to reconstruct South Africa's vast hinterland against the background of a history of development patterns, where rhetoric has played a more important role than actual substantive contributions to development of the rural poor, and where capital investments, technology and expertise of a post‐industrial nature are unlikely to spread.     

企业家社会资本的测量及其对企业绩效的影响——基于新兴第三产业上市公司的实证研究

本文从纵向关系网络、横向关系网络和社会关系网络三个维度界定了企业家社会资本。基于100家新兴第三产业上市公司的实证研究发现,企业家社会资本对企业绩效存在显著影响,横向关系网络和社会关系网络能显著提升企业绩效;特别的发现是企业家的纵向关系网络（政府关系）的提升会降低企业绩效。研究结果还表明,非国有企业仍然处于劣势地位,地域差异显著影响着企业绩效,企业家年龄和学历越高对企业的贡献越大。本研究还创新性地发现,企业上市年限过长不利于企业绩效的增长。     

(In)equality and the South African Constitution

ABSTRACT

Does the South African Constitution constrain or empower government, courts and citizens in addressing systemic social and economic inequalities? This article argues that the Constitution is explicitly ‘transformative’, but is an enabling document, providing ‘scaffolding’ for political and legal activities. It is government, strong institutions and civil society that are ultimately responsible for securing its equality aspirations. Here the Constitution admits of different understandings of equality and different economic and social policy choices. This article identifies these contested meanings of equality and suggests that a liberal egalitarian/social democratic version is dominant in policy choices and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. It illustrates this with reference to the Court’s jurisprudence on equality, and suggests that more radical and transformative interpretations remain possible. However, it concludes that we cannot escape politics, the need for good policy choices and effective implementation and enforcement.     

Fund Mobilization and Investment Behavior in Thai Manufacturing Firms in the Early 1990s*

This paper investigates capital structure and investment behavior in Thailand in the early 1990s. Various features of financial markets are considered, and the possibility of applying the ‘pecking order hypothesis’ to developing countries is discussed. By estimating the determinants of the capital structure and the investment functions, three major results are obtained. First, the lower debt ratio of listed firms is realized by an increase in the capital surplus gained by initial public offering. Second, firms’ participation in the securities market accommodates agency costs both in the equity and bank‐loan markets. Third, ‘financial conglomerate’ firms are inactive investors and are dependent upon informal financial transactions, whereas foreign firms borrow less and invest more.     

Of markets,might and mullahs: a case for equity,pluralism and tolerance in development

This paper tries to confront the ‘puzzlement’ of the development profession regarding the ‘best’ alternative strategies aimed at increasing employment, reducing poverty and promoting equity at the same time as fostering economic growth — and the ‘advocacy’ role that should or should not be played by that profession. The author argues that the issue lies in achieving a workable ‘meaning’ of development and then moving on to the moral ‘questions’ of value judgments and to the specific ‘problems’ that can be dealt with by science and social science. He suggests that a possible meaning of development is ‘to create more options for more people’ — ‘to achieve that the greatest number of people have the greatest number of options.’ He discusses the need for improving ‘life chances’ and considers the development policies which may or may not assist in this process. He tries to tie together conceptually the ideas of power and social change, consensus and conflict. Also in this context, the roles of participation, organization and mobilization are explored, especially their impact on different political systems. The analysis concludes with a plea for social, cultural and political pluralism — and thus, a commitment to tolerance. The author argues that these goals should be addressed by the development community without the hesitation sometimes attached to ‘protection of expertise’.