Dealing with Power Games in a Companion Modelling Process: Lessons from Community Water Management in Thailand Highlands

Abstract

Although stakeholder participation is expected to promote equitable and sustainable natural resource management, lessons from the past tell us that more careful attention needs to be paid to achieving equitable impacts. Now the question is how to address social inequities and power asymmetries. Some authors emphasize the need for more dialogue, while others prefer a critical perspective, arguing that dialogue might not be sufficient to avert the risk of a process deepening existing social inequities. This article aims to enrich this debate and question the practical implications of the critical perspective through an in-depth analysis of power games in a participatory process.

A Companion Modelling (ComMod) process was conducted in an Akha community of Northern Thailand with a critical perspective, i.e. with a concern for the less influent stakeholders. Simulation tools such as role-playing games were used to mediate a cross-cultural learning process among researchers, farmers and administrators about a local irrigation water management problem. The detailed analysis of power games in this learning and negotiation process reveals that in spite of initial power asymmetries, the poorest farmers of the community started to voice and assert their interests. This was very much due to the role of a Western researcher who put the equity issue on the public agenda and to the strategic support of a charismatic Christian leader.

We identify a set of practical facilitation methods that helped to manage power asymmetries and to level the playing field, but we also discuss the main limits of our cultural-embedded methodological choices. Acknowledging that ‘the facilitators’ neutrality' is an illusion, this study allows us to raise the question of their social legitimacy. We suggest that they should systematically make explicit and reflect on their cultural-ideological background and methodological hypothesis and choices and their effects on the socio-political context. This article is an original attempt to accept this challenge.     

New books

A List of Plays for High School and College Production. Prepared by the Committee on Plays for Secondary Schools and Colleges of the Drama League‐of America, and the Committee on Plays for Schools and Colleges of the National Council of Teachers of English. Chicago: The ‘ Drama League of America, 1916. Pp. 41. Paper, $0.25.

Teaching Literature in the Grammar Grades and High School. By Emma Miller Bolenitjs, A.M. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1915. Pp. 337. $1.25.

Practical Stage Directing for Amateurs. By Emerson Taylor. New York: Walton & Co., 1915. Pp. 193. $1.00.

The Natural Method of Voice Production in Speech and Song. By Floyd S. Muckey, M.D.C.M., New York: Scribner, 1915. Cloth, pp. 149. $1.00.

Public Speaking. By James Albert Winans. Ithaca, N.Y.: Sewell Publishing Co., 1915. Cloth, pp. xlii+476. $1.50.

Practical Argumentation. By George A. Pattee. New York: Century Co., 1915.

Oral English. By John M. Brewer. New York: Ginn & Co., 1916. Cloth, pp. 3960 $1.00.     

Flaying Freire? The Workers’ Party and education policy in Brazil, 1980–2007

This article analyses the progression of education policy by the Workers?? Party (PT) in Brazil from its experience of municipal administration to national government. The first section presents this development, noting its progression from a participatory, social(ist) project to a more reformist, elite-directed model. The second section accounts for the domestic influences that led to a more reformist PT education policy by the 2000s. These include: (1) increasing electoral success, (2) changing membership composition, (3) policy innovations supported by its members and (4) a growing asymmetry in resources (and influence) towards the party leadership and its members. The third section presents the global changes in education thinking that coincided with the PT??s entry into national government. It distinguishes between a neo-liberal and neo-conservative ??first generation?? and a state-oriented ??second generation?? Washington Consensus, associated with the New Right and the centre-left that emerged across the region after 2000 respectively.     

Transpacific precarities: responding to Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Found and Rita Wong’s forage in East Asia

ABSTRACT

This essay investigates the stakes involved in responding to transpacific texts in East Asia, specifically in universities in Macau and Taiwan. It focuses on responses to two texts that represent in distinct ways precariatized lives in a transpacific frame: Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Found, a text that uncovers a path from Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand to Canada, a path made legible through a scrapbook kept by Thammavongsa’s father; and Rita Wong’s forage, a text that cuts across and between South China and North America to track the movements of peoples and goods and waste, including the movement of electronic waste (or “e-waste”). By discussing selected responses to these texts, this essay investigates how such responses can be considered as part of a long-term pedagogical process of cultivating imaginations and striving to develop forms of responsibility to what this essay calls transpacific precarities. It suggests that carefully attending to such responses, always partial and in progress, can help us to better understand Asian American studies in East Asia as it continues to evolve through acts of teaching and learning in different sites.     

South African Deaf education and the Deaf community

In a special section of the american Annals of the Deaf, Deaf education and the Deaf community in South Africa are discussed. The special section is organized into 7 segments: a historical overview to establish context, the educational context, educators and learners, postgraduate education and employment, perspectives of Deaf children and their parents, sport and the arts, and spiritual lives and mental health. Throughout the entire section, however, the central focus is on the overall foundation (or lack thereof) of education for Deaf learners in South Africa.     

Israel–Malaysia Relations and the Place of Football

Abstract

While seeking to establish their respective international positions following their foundation, Israel and Malaysia also interacted with each other. However, in light of the Israeli–Arab conflict, and mainly due to Malaysia’s domestic considerations and geo-political interests, the interactions remained limited and official relations were not established. This study relies on the notion that sport is potentially an important tool for engagement between states. It examines contemporaneous Israeli and Singapore press and brings together the various episodes and voices pertinent to the way Israel–Malaysia relations unfolded through football until the 1970s. The paper offers an historical perspective on the relations by focusing on a game that was highly popular in both countries. I argue that, while considering the various limitations that were involved, the Prime Minister of Malaysia and President of the Asian Football Confederation, Tunku Abdul Rahman, cautiously maintained the football channel with Israel open. Accordingly, in light of the significantly low-level of other means of contact, football functioned as a carefully managed yet meaningful line of communication by involving a prime minister, senior sports administrators, athletes, football fans, journalists, and sports readers. The essay thus contributes a case study to the emerging body of literature on football relations between states.     

Visiting Fortaleza: motivation,satisfaction and revisit intentions of spectators at the Brazil 2014 FIFA World Cup

The FIFA World Cup provides opportunities to attract visitors to host cities and for local residents to enjoy event-related celebrations. This paper directs attention to Fortaleza, in the north-east of Brazil, where a survey was conducted of 285 spectators to identify the relative importance of enjoyment and competitive outcomes as motives to attend games at the 2014 World Cup. The study also examined the relationship between motivation, event setting and event satisfaction and whether any differences in these relationships existed between local and visiting spectators. In the case of visitors to Fortaleza, factors that influence intentions to revisit the city were also examined. Although satisfaction did not have an impact on visitation intentions, visitors were strongly influenced by competitive motives associated with the team they support. In comparison, local residents were more motivated by event excitement. The need to recognize the propensities of different types of spectators and the complexity of the relationship between spectators and the event setting are discussed.     

An embedding approach to the stability of some nonlinear discrete systems

An embedding approach is proposed to investigate the stability of some nonlinear sampled data systems. It is shown that the stability criterion so obtained may conclude for stability when other criteria do not apply. The approach could be extended in a more general way.