Selected Essays and Dialogues is a collection of translations of Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati’s theoretical and musing work from the late 1960s to the present. Topics range from ...environmental perception and archaeological conceptions of historical knowledge, to street theatre, writing, photography, cinema and translation. The book provides a framework of key literary, theoretical and artistic movements of the last 50 years, as well as a guide for English-language readers to place Celati’s work in historical, cultural and biographical context, serving to illuminate his books available in English, namely Towards the River’s Mouth, Adventures in Africa, Voices from the Plains and Appearances. There are various paths to take, tempting readers to wander and become lost in webs of daring thought, drawn ever on by Celati’s fondness for the unexpected ordinary and his bonhomie with others. Indeed, a genial adventurousness can be found within all of Celati’s writings collected here, driven by an affectionate and light-hearted engagement with the surrounding world. Herein is a taste of a seemingly endless series of adventures of the mind and body, always tapped into a lithe sensitivity for an encompassing collective imagination not restricted to the so-called high arts or letters, but very much also engaged with the everyday lives, places and tales we all constantly share. Praise for Selected Essays and Dialogues by Gianni Celati ‘Barron’s volume is a very welcome addition to the field. As the first collection of Gianni Celati’s essays in English translation, the book makes accessible a wide selection of his critical work to an Anglophone audience.’ Marina Spunta, University of Leicester
This paper tests whether the behavior of corrupt officials is consistent with standard industrial organization theory. We designed a study in which surveyors accompanied Indonesian truck drivers on ...304 trips, during which they observed over 6,000 illegal payments to police, soldiers, and weigh station attendants. Using plausibly exogenous changes in the number of checkpoints, we show that market structure affects the level of illegal payments. We further show that corrupt officials use complex pricing schemes, including third-degree price discrimination and a menu of two-part tariffs. Our findings illustrate the importance of considering the market structure for bribes when designing anticorruption policy.
Why are some places successful in moving from war to consolidated peace while others continue to be troubled by violence? And why does postconflict violence take different forms and have different ...intensities? By developing a new theory of postconflict violence Patrick Barron's When Violence Works makes a significant contribution to our understanding.
Barron picks out three postconflict regions in Indonesia in which to analyze what happens once the "official" fighting ends: North Maluku has seen peace consolidated; Maluku still witnesses large episodes of violence; and Aceh experiences continuing occurrences of violence but on a smaller scale than in Maluku. He argues that violence after war has ended revenge killings, sexual violence, gang battles, and violent crime, in addition to overtly political conflict) is not the result of failed elite bargains or weak states, but occurs because the actors involved see it as beneficial and lowcost. His findings pertain directly to Indonesia, but the theory will have relevance far beyond as those studying countries such as Colombia, the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria seek a framework in which to assess what happens after war ends. Barron's theory also provides practical guidance for policymakers and development practitioners. Ultimately, When Violence Works pushes forward our understanding of why postconflict violence occurs and takes the forms it does.
Contesting Development Barron, Patrick; Woolcock, Michael; Diprose, Rachael
02/2011
eBook
This pathbreaking book analyzes a highly successful participatory development program in Indonesia, exploring its distinctive origins and design principles and its impacts on local conflict dynamics ...and social institutions.
A financial analysis of two methods commonly used by public land management agencies to collect payment for stumpage sold was carried out using data from the St. Louis County Minerals and Land ...Department (SLCMLD) in northern Minnesota. The two payment methods evaluated were scale (also called pay-as-cut and consumer scale) where the buyer only pays for timber harvested and lump sum (also called sold-on-appraised-volume or SOAV) where a buyer pays for the entire tract’s estimated volume, regardless of the amount of timber actually harvested. The analysis found no significant difference in gross timber sale revenue collected by the SLCMLD under the two payment methods Scaled timber sales incurred an additional $323 in administrative costs per timber sale compared to lump sum timber sales. This increase in administrative costs represents less than 1% of the timber value contained in the average SLCMLD timber sale. Differences in the standards agencies use to estimate merchantable stand volume of a timber sale and the administrative time spent processing timber sales can impact the financial costs associated with each timber payment method.
The last decade has witnessed an extraordinary spate of scholarship on the ethno-communal violence that swept through Indonesia following the collapse of the Suharto regime. Yet we know very little ...about how these large-scale violent conflicts subsided and the patterns of post-conflict violence that have emerged since. We introduce evidence from an original dataset to show that the high violence period lasted till 2003, after which violence declined in intensity and scale. Despite this aggregate decline, we find that old conflict sites still exhibit relatively high levels of small-scale violence. We conclude that Indonesia has moved to a new, post-conflict phase where large-scale violence is infrequent, yet small-scale violence remains unabated, often taking on new forms. Finally, we propose that effective internal security interventions by the state are a key reason, although not the only reason, why large-scale violence has not emerged again despite the continued prevalence of low-level violence.
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