Entanglements between the state and agricultural production played a central role in determining the implementation of Fair Trade in the coffee and banana industries in Costa Rica. This paper contrasts a national imaginary of smallholder coffee production with a banana enclave dominated by US corporations. While the former complements Fair Trade practices, the latter precludes its entry into the sector except under exceptional circumstances. However, in neither case are structural inequalities eliminated; they are rather reproduced. The article shows that divergent historical circumstances frame how these industries operate and thereby directly impact Fair Trade as a private sector development initiative.

Health security is a relatively new concept in terms of how it is practised in disaster-prone locales. We observed 10 rural households in Bangladesh for four months using informal interviews, field diaries, and observation. The findings suggest that the everyday practises of health security involve the capabilities of “caring for themselves” in resource-constrained contexts. Understanding how households care for themselves prior to and during disasters presents an opportunity to examine how improved health might reduce the effects of disasters, ill health, and poverty. Some interventions are proposed to improve health security for poorer households in general and women in particular.

The notion of a social compact between government, business, and civil society as a basis for long-term economic development and growth underpins economic models in many industrialised countries. The search for a new social order is pressing in developing countries where high levels of economic growth exposes the growing gaps between those who participate economically and those who are left behind. This creates new interest groups and alliances and sees old social orders collapse. Finding ways to bring about more inclusive development in developing countries through a social compact is the focus of this paper.

This paper is a comparative study of institutional change and efforts to create networks and linkages in the science and technology (SandT) systems of Poland and Tanzania at a time of market-led economic reform. It argues that, in both countries, SandT has been hampered by linear approaches to technology transfer and that future efforts should focus on non-linear approaches involving multiple actors. Discussion focuses on a consideration of organisational goals and agendas, the resource base of different organisations, and fostering organisational capacities to learn, adapt, and change.

This article reviews the extent to which the educational system has acknowledged the importance to women of the informal sector of the economy, and the extent to which it has sought to prepare them for employment or self-employment within it. It assesses the record of both formal and non-formal education in providing women with the necessary skills to compete with men for employment, and concludes that both have generally failed to assist women to obtain skilled, well paid, and secure jobs, leaving them in overwhelming numbers in subsistence-level activities in the informal sector. Within the non-formal approach to education, the article examines training in income-generating projects, which are a major conduit for assistance to poor women in developing countries. Some recommendations for improved strategies of education and training provision are presented. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.

This paper investigates how, why, and when community-based strategies are effective in promoting corporate accountability (CA) to the poor. It argues that mainstream approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) underestimate the importance of power in the relationship between corporations and the communities in which they invest, which limits their applicability to many developing-country contexts in particular. In addressing this neglect, the article draws on literature on power, accountability, and citizen participation in order to analyse cases where communities have attempted to hold corporations to account for their social and environmental responsibilities. The paper argues that more attention should be paid to a number of state-, corporation-, and community-related factors, which are found to be key to the effectiveness of strategies aimed at enhancing CA to the poor.

Proyecto Tequisquiapan (PT) provides protective microfinance services in a small region of rural Mexico, including, importantly, open access to deposit facilities. The authors report on new research which examined PT's record in enabling people with different degrees of vulnerability to build assets and protect themselves from both sudden shocks and more predictable demands for lump sums of cash. Proyecto Tequisquiapan was found to be relatively more useful for the most vulnerable households. Its successes rely on its small scale and on the commitment of its staff, whose salaries are subsidised, to innovation and experimentation in order to remain relevant to members' changing and differentiated financial lifeworlds. This stands in contrast to the current trend towards large‐scale commercialised microfinance. The World Bank, the authors argue, should take note.

There are many challenges in evaluating international networks. The use of conventional tools can be difficult and often provides less than useful information. Social Network Analysis offers benefits for network evaluators by allowing for documentation and analysis of inter-relationships between individuals and organisations. This paper describes the use of this approach in the evaluation of a major international project entitled the Global Dialogues on Sexual Health and Well-being. It highlights the value of maps in enabling clear visual representations of networks, the identification of areas needing greater focus and the basis on which networks are constructed.

This article engages with the ways in which corruption has taken centre stage in much development policy making and rhetoric. It argues that there is a need to destabilise 'taken for granted' assumptions about what corruption is and how it operates. This means generating an understanding of how meanings of corruption vary, and how this variation is determined by the social characteristics of those engaged in corruption talk. It also means examination of how discourses of corruption and anti-corruption are translated from international to national and local stages - from the anti-corruption 'establishment' to the realities of bureaucratic encounters in diverse contexts.