Background:
Meeting the nutritive needs of infants and young children is a challenge in Ghana. Alternative animal source foods, including insects, could enhance infant and young child dietary quality ...while also improving livelihoods.
Objective:
To investigate the perspectives of Ghanaian stakeholders on the acceptability of the palm weevil larvae (akokono) as a food source and the feasibility of micro-farming this local edible insect as a complementary food for infants and young children.
Methods:
We conducted an ethnographic study in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. First, 48 caregivers were asked questions about feeding and care practices, including attitudes toward production and consumption of akokono. Then, a selection of previously interviewed respondents joined 1 of 8 focus group discussions to provide further insight on key themes that emerged from earlier interviews. Concurrently, interviews with 25 other key local stakeholders were conducted.
Results:
Respondents generally had favorable perceptions of akokono as a nutritious food. A small minority would not consume akokono for religious reasons. Key factors positively influencing the acceptability of akokono as a complementary food were familiarity with the consumption of akokono by the primary caregiver and health worker endorsement of akokono. Stakeholders consider the larvae farmable and were open to its domestication.
Conclusions:
Anticipated barriers to scaling up akokono micro-farming include a need for greater familiarity with and acceptance of the insect as food for infants and young children and creation of a sustainable market. Engagement with stakeholders, including health workers, will facilitate use of akokono as a complementary food.
Designing effective interventions to improve infant and young child (IYC) feeding requires knowledge about determinants of current practices, including cultural factors. Current approaches to ...obtaining and using research on culture tend to assume cultural homogeneity within a population. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent of cultural consensus (homogeneity) in communities where interventions to improve IYC feeding practices are needed to address undernutrition during the period of complementary feeding. A second, related objective was to identify the nature of intracultural variation, if such variation was evident. Selected protocols from the Focused Ethnographic Study for Infant and Young Child Feeding Manual were administered to samples of key informants and caregivers in a peri‐urban and a rural area in Brong‐Ahafo, Ghana. Cultural domain analysis techniques (free listing, caregiver assessment of culturally significant dimensions, and food ratings on these dimensions), as well as open‐ended questions with exploratory probing, were used to obtain data on beliefs and related practices. Results reveal generally high cultural consensus on the 5 dimensions that were assessed (healthiness, appeal, child acceptance, convenience, and modernity) for caregiver decisions and on their ratings of individual foods. However, thematic analysis of caregiver narratives indicates that the meanings and content of the constructs connoted by the dimensions differed widely among individual mothers. These findings suggest that research on cultural factors that affect IYC practices, particularly cultural beliefs, should consider the nature and extent of cultural consensus and intracultural diversity, rather than assuming cultural homogeneity.
Background:
Designing effective nutrition interventions for infants and young children requires knowledge about the population to which the intervention is directed, including insights into the ...cognitive systems and values that inform caregiver feeding practices.
Objective:
To apply cultural domain analysis techniques in the context of implementation research for the purpose of understanding caregivers’ knowledge frameworks in Northern Senegal with respect to infant and young child (IYC) feeding. This study was intended to inform decisions for interventions to improve infant and young child nutrition.
Methods:
Modules from the Focused Ethnographic Study for Infant and Young Child Feeding Manual were employed in interviews with a sample of 126 key informants and caregivers from rural and peri-urban sites in the Saint-Louis region of northern Senegal. Descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, and qualitative thematic analysis were used to analyze the data.
Results:
Cluster analysis showed that caregivers identified 6 food clusters: heavy foods, light foods, snack foods, foraged foods, packaged foods, and foods that are good for the body. The study also revealed similarities and differences between the 2 study sites in caregivers’ knowledge frameworks.
Conclusions:
The demonstration of differences between biomedical concepts of nutrition and the knowledge frameworks of northern Senegalese women with regard to IYC feeding highlights the value of knowledge about emic perspectives of local communities to help guide decisions about interventions to improve nutrition.
Caregivers make decisions about how to feed their infants and young children based on complex interactions of knowledge, beliefs, and values, as well as assessments of situational determinants, ...including economic and social constraints and opportunities. Because of the relationship of these factors to the adoption of new feeding behaviours, the development of nutrition interventions for this age group must be grounded in knowledge about the target population. This paper presents the results of a study that used cognitive mapping techniques to gain insight into mothers' knowledge and perceptions of foods for infants and young children and examine their significance for feeding decisions in Saint‐Louis, northern Senegal. Guided by mixed‐methods protocols from the Focused Ethnographic Study for Infant and Young Child Feeding Manual, in‐depth interviews that included qualitative discussions and cognitive mapping techniques were conducted with 46 mothers in rural and peri‐urban communities. We explored mothers' perceptions about five dimensions that affect food decision‐making—healthiness, convenience, child acceptance, appeal, and modernity—and the relationship of these dimensions to 38 local food items. Data analysis entailed a combination of qualitative thematic analysis and descriptive statistics. In both communities, “healthiness” was the most valued dimension for food decision‐making by a large margin, followed by child acceptance, appeal, modernity, and convenience. We explore how different interpretations and definitions of these dimensions, and their relationship to specific local food items, may influence the design and planning of nutrition interventions. The results support the importance of mixed‐methods formative research to illuminate the emic perspectives of caregivers.
Background and objectives: Caregivers of infants and young children make decisions about feeding their children based on complex interactions of knowledge, beliefs, and values, as well as situational ...determinants, such as economic and social constraints and opportunities. Because of the relationships and influences of these factors on adopting new infant and young child feeding behaviors, the design and development of nutrition interventions must be grounded in knowledge about the target population. This study used cognitive mapping techniques to gain insight into caregivers' knowledge and perceptions of local foods for infants and young children and examined their potential significance for feeding decisions in northern Senegal. Methods: Guided by mixed methods protocols from the Focused Ethnographic Study for Infant and Young Child Feeding Manual, in-depth interviews that included qualitative discussions and cognitive mapping techniques were conducted with 46 caregivers in rural and peri-urban communities of Saint-Louis, Senegal. We explored caregivers' perceptions about five dimensions that were hypothesized to affect food decision-making (healthiness, convenience, child acceptance, appeal, and modernity), examining perceptions of 38 food items in relationship to these dimensions. Data analysis entailed a combination of qualitative thematic analysis and descriptive statistics. Results: In both communities, "healthiness" was the most valued dimension for food decision-making by a large margin (total mean ratingSD of 4.70.8), followed by child acceptance (3.61.1), appeal (2.71.2), modernity (2.61.0), and convenience (2.51.5). We explore how different interpretations of these dimensions, and their relationships to local foods, may influence the design and planning of nutrition interventions. For example, respondents almost unanimously associated healthiness, the most highly valued dimension, with cleanliness. With respect to specific foods, eggs, watermelon, Cerelac, and the generic category of vegetables were all rated highly (mean rating >4.5) as healthy foods by both rural and peri-ruban communities. Conclusions: Caregivers weigh many competing factors when making decisions about foods for infants and young children, particularly in low- and middle-income settings where choices are limited and resources are scarce. This study describes caregiver perceptions in two Senegalese communities using a mixed methods, ethnographic approach that illustrates simple and efficient techniques to illuminate the emic perspectives of caregivers, which can be used in designing nutrition interventions.
Background and objectives: Infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices are a product of culture and context. Effective IYCF interventions should be grounded in formative implementation research ...that provides an understanding of caregivers' knowledge systems and values that inform their complementary feeding practices. The objective of this study was to examine cognitive frameworks of Senegalese caregivers with respect to IYCF using cultural domain analysis techniques. Methods: Selected modules of the Focused Ethnographic Study for Infant and Young Child Feeding Manual were administered to a sample of 46 caregivers from rural (N=22) and peri-urban (N=24) communities in Saint-Louis, Senegal. Respondents first rated 38 food items on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high) according to five dimensions that were hypothesized to influence IYCF: appeal, child acceptance, convenience, healthiness, and modernity. Then, respondents were asked to group the 38 foods into piles based on their own sorting criteria. Data analysis was conducted using R-Cmap, a concept-mapping technique included in the R analytic package. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses produced graphical outputs of aggregate food clusters, separately for each location. Cluster rating maps were produced by combining the mean food rating values with the clusters generated by MDS, and comparison of statistical significance between clusters was conducted using the Tukey method. Rural and peri-urban samples were analyzed separately. Results: The analysis showed that peri-urban respondents identified five clusters ("foods that are good for the body," "snack foods," "light foods," "heavy foods," and "packaged foods"), and rural respondents identified four clusters ("heavy foods," "snack foods," "light foods," and "foraged foods"). In the rural community, "snack foods" received the highest mean rating across all value dimensions, whereas "foraged foods" received the lowest mean rating on all dimensions except convenience. In contrast, the peri-urban community rated "packaged foods" highest across all dimensions except appeal. Conclusions: This study reveals both similarities and differences between the knowledge frameworks of caregivers in the rural and peri-urban study sites, as well as broader differences in both from biomedical concepts of nutrition. These findings provide instructive information to inform the design of complementary feeding interventions in northern Senegal.
This thesis elucidates processes of identity construction that have taken place amongst Bhil Christians in Udaipur district, Rajasthan, in the context of the endemic anti- Christian violence that has ...been carried out by Hindu nationalist organisations and adherents in this area since the late 1990s. My work explores how Bhil Christians engage with this, and seeks to make both an empirical and analytical contribution to existing analyses of anti-Christian violence by shifting the focus away from the construction of majoritarian Hindu identities in India's tribal belt, and placing it instead on the minority Christian community. Utilising a tripartite typology of violence (direct, structural and cultural) as its starting point, this thesis addresses questions of how Bhil Christians construct and perform their identity in this context, and how they understand and negotiate their relationships with both non-Christian communities and the state in their localities. This aims to situate Christians as agents in the construction of their own identities, rather than simply having 'otherness' imposed on them as a result of Hindu nationalist mobilization and rhetoric. This study shows that Bhil Christians are involved in a dualistic process of strategically emphasizing both difference and similarity between Christians and Hindus, while making recourse to an overarching adivasi identity that, in various ways, serves to challenge and often undermine the damaging constructions of Christianity that are propagated by the Sangh Parivar. At the same time, they foreground a Christian identity that is decisively shaped by notions of agency, moral uplift, and assertion; these are ideas that are informed by longer histories of adivasi self- and community making, but have acquired important new meaning and relevance in the context of anti-Christian violence.
This thesis elucidates processes of identity construction that have taken place amongst Bhil Christians in Udaipur district, Rajasthan, in the context of the endemic anti- Christian violence that has ...been carried out by Hindu nationalist organisations and adherents in this area since the late 1990s. My work explores how Bhil Christians engage with this, and seeks to make both an empirical and analytical contribution to existing analyses of anti-Christian violence by shifting the focus away from the construction of majoritarian Hindu identities in India's tribal belt, and placing it instead on the minority Christian community. Utilising a tripartite typology of violence (direct, structural and cultural) as its starting point, this thesis addresses questions of how Bhil Christians construct and perform their identity in this context, and how they understand and negotiate their relationships with both non-Christian communities and the state in their localities. This aims to situate Christians as agents in the construction of their own identities, rather than simply having 'otherness' imposed on them as a result of Hindu nationalist mobilization and rhetoric. This study shows that Bhil Christians are involved in a dualistic process of strategically emphasizing both difference and similarity between Christians and Hindus, while making recourse to an overarching adivasi identity that, in various ways, serves to challenge and often undermine the damaging constructions of Christianity that are propagated by the Sangh Parivar. At the same time, they foreground a Christian identity that is decisively shaped by notions of agency, moral uplift, and assertion; these are ideas that are informed by longer histories of adivasi self- and community making, but have acquired important new meaning and relevance in the context of anti-Christian violence.
One distinguishing feature of mainstream social science is its growing regard for model building and formal hypothesis testing. In South Asian studies this is most evident in accounts of ethnic riots ...or communal violence. This paper examines a model of votes and violence proposed by
Steven Wilkinson. We first examine how well the model performs against a data set that we have assembled on the twenty worst incidents of communal violence in India since 1950. The Wilkinson model is consistent with some important key facts in our data set, most notably in terms of levels
of urbanization and "percentage Muslims" in riot-affected towns and cities. However, proximity to national or state elections is not found to be a strong driver of prolonged ethnic rioting. Nor is it the case that India's worst instances of communal violence occurred mainly where
there was direct electoral competition between less than 3.5 effective political parties, the other main predictive variable in the Wilkinson model. We then discuss the limitations more broadly of attempts to explain and even predict ethnic violence within the framework of a quantitative model.
We pay attention to time inconsistencies, principal-agent problems, religiosity and the homogenization of riot events, and omitted variables (notably, memory work and ideological fervour). We conclude with some general remarks on the search for order in social science.
One distinguishing feature of mainstream social science is its growing regard for model building and formal hypothesis testing. In South Asian studies this is most evident in accounts of ethnic riots ...or communal violence. This paper examines a model of votes and violence proposed by Steven Wilkinson. We first examine how well the model performs against a data set that we have assembled on the twenty worst incidents of communal violence in India since 1950. The Wilkinson model is consistent with some important key facts in our data set, most notably in terms of levels of urbanization and "percentage Muslims" in riotaffected towns and cities. However, proximity to national or state elections is not found to be a strong driver of prolonged ethnic rioting. Nor is it the case that India's worst instances of communal violence occurred mainly where there was direct electoral competition between less than 3.5 effective political parties, the other main predictive variable in the Wilkinson model. We then discuss the limitations more broadly of attempts to explain and even predict ethnic violence within the framework of a quantitative model. We pay attention to time inconsistencies, principal-agent problems, religiosity and the homogenization of riot events, and omitted variables (notably, memory work and ideological fervour). We conclude with some general remarks on the search for order in social science. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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