In conflict-affected states, poor transportation infrastructure and risk-averse security protocols can significantly constrain researchers’ ability to access information. Pressure on academics to be methodologically rigorous and produce policy-relevant research means that the problematic nature of the data we use is often obscured and ignored in research outputs. Through an autoethnography of research in the DRC, this article critically discusses the messiness of triangulating information in the field amidst the competing knowledge claims of different actors on the ground. Nonetheless, it argues that information which is messy and difficult to triangulate can itself be a valuable source of conflict knowledge. This knowledge emerges from what is here termed ‘Bermuda Triangulation’—whereby the verification of one piece of information leads to the uncovering of multiple views, which may themselves tell us much about the drivers of conflict.

There is a growing consensus amongst those working in conflict-affected states thatpolitical settlements—the formal and informal negotiations, bargains, pacts and agreements madebetween elite actors—are central to peace and development. Indeed, many now subscribe to the ideathat inclusive political settlements are required for positive developmental change. This is based on anotion that political settlements‘tame’politics by creating consensus around the rules of politicalcompetition and eliminate the need for political violence. However, especially in conflict-affectedstates, a focus on political settlements often ignores the (violent) processes by which elites cometo power and the extent to which elites may have incentives to maintain violence, even if a politicalsettlement is reached. Through a case study of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this articleshows that political settlements are not alwaysalternativesto violence and that even relatively stableand inclusive political settlements may be heavily underpinned by violence. A political settlementalone is therefore not a sufficient condition to ensure peace and development in a country. If thepolitical settlement is based on an understanding of the rules of the game which incentivises violenceand coercion by elites, then the outcome will necessarily be a violent one. As the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo shows, unless a political settlement directly addresses these predatoryincentives, the settlement itself may be a driver of conflict, violence and underdevelopment.

Using the lens of environmental history, this chapter looks at the impact of the Anthropocene in the locality of eastern India by examining the links between deforestation, air and water pollution, land-use changes including mining and livelihood changes among local communities such as the Ho and the Munda from the nineteenth century. It concentrates on their forms of subsistence, their conflicts in terms of their notions of the sacred forest and their cultures of seeing and being that are coming under assault in the wake of rapid economic and social change. The chapter builds on the view by Lewis and Maslin (Lewis, S.L. and M.A. Maslin, 2015 ‘Defining the Anthropocene’, Nature 519, pp. 171–180) that ‘the power that humans wield is like any other force of nature and can be used, withdrawn or modified. The recognition that human actions are driving far-reaching changes to the life-supporting infrastructure of the Earth … has philosophical, social, political and economic implications’. But it may be already too late to do very much about it all.

The past few decades have seen the growing popularity of public-private partnerships (PPPs) across the health sector - a catch all term used to encompass diverse activities involving both public and private sector entities in areas of global and domestic health. In the article we consider the factors that have led to this proliferation of PPPs in the healthcare delivery field and consider the link to the process of 'scientization' of health care. With a focus on sexual and reproductive health the article also considers two commonly used mechanisms employed in SRH service delivery that have been used in PPPs - social franchise and health voucher schemes. We then reprise key points from the existing critical literature on gendered health systems and go on to consider their application to such service provision-oriented PPPs, using an exploratory analysis of a case study of the use of maternal health vouchers in India.

BackgroundDemand-side financing (DSF) interventions, including cash transfers and vouchers, have been introduced to promote maternal and newborn health in a range of low- and middle-income countries. These interventions vary in design but have typically been used to increase health service utilisation by offsetting some financial costs for users, or increasing household income and incentivising 'healthy behaviours'. This article documents experiences and implementation factors associated with use of DSF in maternal and newborn health.MethodsA secondary analysis (using an adapted Supporting the Use of Research Evidence framework - SURE) was performed on studies that had previously been identified in a systematic review of evidence on DSF interventions in maternal and newborn health.ResultsThe article draws on findings from 49 quantitative and 49 qualitative studies. The studies give insights on difficulties with exclusion of migrants, young and multiparous women, with demands for informal fees at facilities, and with challenges maintaining quality of care under increasing demand. Schemes experienced difficulties if communities faced long distances to reach participating facilities and poor access to transport, and where there was inadequate health infrastructure and human resources, shortages of medicines and problems with corruption. Studies that documented improved care-seeking indicated the importance of adequate programme scope (in terms of programme eligibility, size and timing of payments and voucher entitlements) to address the issue of concern, concurrent investments in supply-side capacity to sustain and/or improve quality of care, and awareness generation using community-based workers, leaders and women's groups. ConclusionsEvaluations spanning more than 15 years of implementation of DSF programmes reveal a complex picture of experiences that reflect the importance of financial and other social, geographical and health systems factors as barriers to accessing care. Careful design of DSF programmes as part of broader maternal and newborn health initiatives would need to take into account these barriers, the behaviours of staff and the quality of care in health facilities. Research is still needed on the policy context for DSF schemes in order to understand how they become sustainable and where they fit, or do not fit, with plans to achieve equitable universal health coverage.

Background Cash transfers and vouchers are forms of 'demand-side financing' that have been widely used to promote maternal and newborn health in low- and middle-income countries during the last 15 years. Methods This systematic review consolidates evidence from seven published systematic reviews on the effects of different types of cash transfers and vouchers on the use and quality of maternity care services, and updates the systematic searches to June 2015 using the Joanna Briggs Institute approach for systematic reviewing. The review protocol for this update was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42015020637). Results Data from 51 studies (15 more than previous reviews) and 22 cash transfer and voucher programmes suggest that approaches tied to service use (either via payment conditionalities or vouchers for selected services) can increase use of antenatal care, use of a skilled attendant at birth and in the case of vouchers, postnatal care too. The strongest evidence of positive effect was for conditional cash transfers and uptake of antenatal care, and for vouchers for maternity care services and birth with a skilled birth attendant. However, effects appear to be shaped by a complex set of social and healthcare system barriers and facilitators. Studies have typically focused on an initial programme period, usually two or three years after initiation, and many lack a counterfactual comparison with supply-side investment. There are few studies to indicate that programmes have led to improvements in quality of maternity care or maternal and newborn health outcomes. Conclusion Future research should use multiple intervention arms to compare cost-effectiveness with similar investment in public services, and should look beyond short- to medium-term service utilisation by examining programme costs, longer-term effects on service utilisation and health outcomes, and the equity of those effects.

After more than two decades of ongoing violent conflict, armed groups—however fleeting their existence—have become an integral feature of the eastern Congo’s social-political order. They are not a temporary aberration in what is otherwise a normal society. They are at the heart of the way power is exercised and experienced. Moreover, armed groups do not stand apart from either society or the state apparatus. They are deeply embedded in social networks that regroup state and non-state actors and that stretch from the very local to the national and sometimes the sub-regional (Great Lakes area) and international levels. This report analyses the stability, inclusivity and levels of violence of both the political settlement of the Congo as a whole and of political settlements in the conflict-ridden east. It shows that in each of these political arenas, armed groups and violence play a different role, and examines how these arenas mutually influence each other. The relative importance of armed groups as either resources or threats to the power of the presidential patronage network shapes its policies towards the east, such as initiatives for military operations or negotiations. These policies influence the role that armed groups play locally. This role, in turn, shapes to what extent and how national politicians engage with armed groups; for instance, whether they support their mobilization or demobilization.

This chapter analyzes how the electoral and wider political inclusion of ex-belligerents in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has contributed to the militarization of its political order in the east. By exploring the post-settlement trajectory of one particular politico-military entrepreneur, Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi, it shows how this inclusion has contributed to ongoing violence. Furthermore, it argues that in comparison to the pre-war order, politico-military entrepreneurs have become more numerous, more independent of the political center, and more active also at lower levels of the power pyramid. As such, the post-settlement order seems to be characterized by a type of “democratization” of the strategy of the pompier-pyromane. This democratization unleashes a dynamic that often acquires a momentum of its own, due to the multiplicity of the involved factions and their complex and ever-changing alliances. As a result, not everyone who divides is still able to rule, and not everyone who ignites is still able to extinguish.

Queer International Relations (IR) is not a new field. For more than 20 years, Queer IR scholarship has focused on how normativities and/or non-normativities associated with categories of sex, gender, and sexuality sustain and contest international formations of power in relation to institutions like heteronormativity, homonormativity, and cisnormativity as well as through queer logics of statecraft. Recently, Queer IR has gained unprecedented traction in IR, as IR scholars have come to recognize how Queer IR theory, methods, and research further IR’s core agenda of analyzing and informing the policies and politics around state and nation formation, war and peace, and international political economy. Specific Queer IR research contributions include work on sovereignty, intervention, security and securitization, torture, terrorism and counter-insurgency, militaries and militarism, human rights and LGBT activism, immigration, regional and international integration, global health, transphobia, homophobia, development and International Financial Institutions, financial crises, homocolonialism, settler colonialism and anti-Blackness, homocapitalism, political/cultural formations, norms diffusion, political protest, and time and temporalities

The dominant approach to peace in Colombia represents the consolidation of an economic model imposed through ongoing corporate and state-backed violence.

In this thesis I describe Dalits as ‘subalterns’ from Gramscian perspective and explain how Dalit politics fits into the idea of subaltern politics. I discuss the concept of ‘subaltern social groups’ and show it as a relevant lens to understand Dalit subjectivity. In the thesis, by discussing Dalits' awareness of their own subordination at multiple levels, struggles to end their position as subalterns and constant challenges from the dominant caste in systematically breaking their political collectivization, I argue that Dalits are the “prototype” of Gramsci’s concept of a ‘subaltern social groups’.
Through ethnographic methodology I show how Mahar's- ex-untouchable caste -who are considered to be most political aware and organised in India- continuous everyday 'tactics' are performed to improve their social status. Through the examples of changing agrarian practices and competitive electoral politics at the village level I show that Mahars contribute and strengthen the informal labour unions and local level democracy.
I then argue that these "developments" are insufficient to cease Mahar's historic caste subalternity. Events that carry the image of change and empowerment for Mahars are neither stable nor sustainable. I argue that Mahars along with their political organisation and awareness remain fragmented and their resistance episodic. They although organise themselves politically that might lead to some sudden transformation in their marginalised position. They, however, are continuously broken up and divided through the initiatives of the dominant caste. As a result rendering them to the socio-economic margins of the society.

The recent rapid proliferation of Private Protected Areas (PPAs) around the world has been attributed to the continuing process of neoliberalization and the commodification of nature. Although the numbers of PPAs have been growing in recent years, little research has been conducted on their everyday functions and particularly their interactions with local populations. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis focuses on a specific PPA, the Redonda Private Reserve in the Atlantic Forest region of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and three local, surrounding communities, Jabá, Esperança and Bamba. Through this focus, the thesis examines a number of issues, including the incentives and motives which lead landowners to establish and administer private reserves and how these influence the pattern of relationship formation between the reserve and the local communities. The research also considers the main implications of such private reserves for local people and their livelihoods. Finally, the thesis considers whether and how local people’s perception of the environment and the way they use their surrounding natural resources have changed since the establishment of the private reserve.
A central contention of the thesis is that although often interpreted as ‘new’ or ‘modern’ and labelled as ‘contemporary’ solutions to common environmental problems, PPAs, particularly when considered in the context of their interaction with the affected local rural populations, cannot be analyzed in isolation from the wider socio-economic processes and local context where they are found. Thus, areas where PPAs emerge cannot be simply divorced from the past processes of territorialisation and land appropriation; rather, they must be understood as their continuation often reproducing pre-existing social and economic inequalities. For example, the proclaimed ‘modern’ way of relating to local men and women, such as through employment, can help to disguise the continuation of traditional social hierarchies, perpetuating unequal power and wealth distribution. The thesis also shows how local people are purposefully constructed by PPAs and their representatives to gain the sympathy of outside donors and thus secure the essential funding they depend on for their existence, facilitate control over the protected natural resources and eliminate or reduce local resentment. The implications of such social interactions are profound for both the involved rural communities and the natural environment that PPAs have been set up to protect.

This research encompasses the fields of social protection and migration through an empirical study of the Mexican conditional cash-transfer (CCT) programme, Oportunidades, in two indigenous locations. The thesis looks at the way(s) in which Oportunidades and migration, both international and domestic, influence each other.
It focuses on the decision to migrate of individuals – in particular of former and current beneficiaries of the programme – and offers a methodological approach that is different to previous studies on this topic. The thesis employs both qualitative and ethnographic data on the mutual effects of CCTs and migration through multi-sited research covering the high region of the Mixes in Oaxaca, Oaxaca City and Mexico City, and in California, USA.
The results show that:
- the outcome of the influence of Oportunidades on the decision to migrate is very dependent on contextual variables, mainly the migration situation in each village, the social and cultural norms around the purpose and meaning of migration, and the circumstances of beneficiaries’ households. The outcome of Oportunidades was mediated by what the individual household and community considered as the means to achieve social mobility, which differed across the two main localities of study;
- the allocation of remittances, both international and internal, had an influence not only on the households but also on the norms and values of the society more broadly, through the annual cargos or local-council elections and the aspirations of beneficiaries; and finally that
- the transition from more years of education to skilled jobs, as expected by Oportunidades, is not straightforward. This thesis explores how these transitions take place in reality and the different meanings and paths to social mobility they have for beneficiaries.

Much has been learned about calculation, commodification and marketization from the social studies of markets and finance. But what of capitalization? What is distinctive about this mode of valuation, and the reality it impels? What does it mean to live under the ‘asset condition’? In Capitalization: A Cultural Guide, Fabian Muniesa and his colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation take us on a tour across multiple continents and several centuries, and introduce us to capitalization as a ‘cultural syndrome’. Their pragmatist enquiry involves tracing capitalization via the scenarios in which value is created, and the gaze that stimulates that value creation. The result is a field guide to the terrain of capitalization that integrates anthropological work on the dramaturgy of finance with sociological attention to the technicalities of valuation. The stage is set for further investigation into the uneven distribution of the capacity to capitalize and its consequences.

This study contributes to the debates on the assistance and protection of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) living in Kampala Metropolitan area by exploring the challenges the refugees and IDPs face in accessing livelihood resources through formal institutions and organizations and the informal livelihood strategies they have adopted. It is a case study of the Congolese and Somali refugees and the internally displaced Acholi from northern Uganda. Interviews, observations and archival materials were used to collect data for the study. The findings indicate that refugees and IDPs find difficulties in accessing resources through formal channels in spite of the existence of legal instruments and programmes meant to assist them. Situating the debate within the policy context, it is argued that these difficulties owe to the bureaucratic processes characterized by uncoordinated, restrictive, non-context specific approaches and delays.

Within these prevailing challenges of formal assistance, various creative informal economic strategies emerge in which refugees and IDPs use the available livelihood resources to them to eke a living. Based on their historical links with particular resources such as an established presence of ethnic members in a place or an activity and cultural practices of particular skills, knowledge or labour, different ethnic groups have created a niche within a particular informal economic activity. Gender differences have also played a role in determining different kinds of work in which each of the gender groups participate in the selected informal economic activities. The informal economic strategies have contributed not only to taking care of basic needs but also served as transformative and enabling processes through which the refugees/IDPs contribute to urban economy and contest bureaucratic processes.

In the Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania, an expansion in informal hosepipe irrigation by small-scale farmers has enabled the development of horticulture and resulted in improvements in farmers’ livelihoods. This has taken place largely independently of external support and can be seen as an example of the ‘private’ irrigation that is increasingly viewed as important for sub-Saharan Africa. However, these activities are seen by both representatives of government and some donors, as the cause of both environmental degradation and water shortages downstream, especially in the nearby city of Morogoro. As a result, there have been attempts to evict the farmers from the mountain. Negative narratives persist and the farmers on the mountainside are portrayed as a problem to be ‘solved’. This article explores these tensions, contributing to debates about the formalisation of water management arrangements and the place of the state in regulating and adjudicating rights to access water. We argue that a focus on legality and formalisation serves to obscure the political nature of competing claims on resources that the case illustrates.

We introduce a hybrid simulation model (‘SimPachamama’) designed to explore the complex socio-environmen- tal trade-offs of alternative policy bundles and policy sequencing options for stemming deforestation and reduc- ing poverty in tropical countries. Designed and calibrated to the initial conditions of a small forest village in rural Bolivia, the model consists of: (a) an optimising agricultural household module of heterogeneous agents that make individually optimal land-use decisions based on factor endowments and market conditions; (b) an encompassing general equilibrium ‘shell’ module that endogenously determines wages and links the agricultural labour market and rural-urban migration rates; and (c) a novel user-controlled policy-maker module that allows the user to make ‘real time’ choices over a variety of public and environmental policies that in turn impact land use, welfare, and migration. Over a 20-year simulation period the results highlight trade-offs between reductions in deforestation and improvements in household welfare that can only be overcome either when international REDD payments are offered or when decentralized deforestation taxes are implemented. The sequencing of pol- icies plays a critical role in the determination of these results.

This paper explores tensions over scale and viability in irrigated agricultural development in Tanzania. A revival of ambition to transform African agriculture has reawakened debate over what type of agriculture can best deliver increased production and poverty reduction for rural populations. This paper examines these debates through the lens of an ethnographic study of an irrigated rice farm in Tanzania. With a chequered history of state and donor intervention management, Dakawa, Rice Farm in Mvomero District is now collectively farmed by a cooperative society of ‘small farmers’. It is widely hailed as a success, both of irrigation production, and of ‘small farmers’ in delivering this. However, such narratives of smallness and success obscure a more complex reality in which smallness of scale may be more of a discursive tool than a reflection of empirical reality. Although notions of ‘viability’ and ‘success’ in such development interventions are themselves also contested and depend on perspective, there is evidence that there are fundamental problems of both short- and long-term viability.

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change is an international, multidisciplinary research collaboration between academic institutions and practitioners across the world. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission, which concluded that the response to climate change could be “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century”. The Lancet Countdown aims to track the health impacts of climate hazards; health resilience and adaptation; health co-benefits of climate change mitigation; economics and finance; and political and broader engagement. These focus areas form the five thematic working groups of the Lancet Countdown and represent different aspects of the complex association between health and climate change. These thematic groups will provide indicators for a global overview of health and climate change; national case studies highlighting countries leading the way or going against the trend; and engagement with a range of stakeholders. The Lancet Countdown ultimately aims to report annually on a series of indicators across these five working groups. This paper outlines the potential indicators and indicator domains to be tracked by the collaboration, with suggestions on the methodologies and datasets available to achieve this end. The proposed indicator domains require further refinement, and mark the beginning of an ongoing consultation process—from November, 2016 to early 2017—to develop these domains, identify key areas not currently covered, and change indicators where necessary. This collaboration will actively seek to engage with existing monitoring processes, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and WHO's climate and health country profiles. The indicators will also evolve over time through ongoing collaboration with experts and a range of stakeholders, and be dependent on the emergence of new evidence and knowledge. During the course of its work, the Lancet Countdown will adopt a collaborative and iterative process, which aims to complement existing initiatives, welcome engagement with new partners, and be open to developing new research projects on health and climate change.