This book is about inventing successes and good practices of governments that are "closer to the people". Numerous examples throughout Latin America indicate-often despite macroeconomic instability, high inflation, and strong top-down regulation-that subnational actors have repeatedly achieved what their central counterparts preached: sound policymaking, better administration, better services, more participation, and sustained economic development. But what makes some governments change course and move toward innovation? What triggers experimentation and, eventually, turns ordinary practice into good practice? The book answers some of these questions. It goes beyond a mere documentation of good and best practice, which is increasingly provided through international networks and Internet sites. Instead, it seeks a better understanding of the origins and fates of such successes at the micro level. The case studies and analytical chapters seek to explain: How good practice is born at the local level; Where innovative ideas come from; How such ideas are introduced in a new context, successfully implemented, and propagated locally and beyond; What donors can do to effectively assist processes of self-induced and bottom-up change.

My dissertation, Making Imperial Futures: Concepts of Empire in the Anglo-Spanish Sphere, 1763-71, engages the grand narrative of exploration at the point at which that very concept was reaching the point of exhaustion and argues that the rough completion of European cartographical knowledge of the world had a profound impact on the evolution of the imperial experience. I examine the evolving concept of empire within a context of cross-imperial knowledge and rivalry, Enlightenment ideals and the changing ways in which Europeans related to the concept of a progressive future. Furthermore, I challenge the historiographically dominant notion that the British and Spanish experiences of empire are best categorized and isolated as distinct historical subjects. The first section shows that British successes in the Seven Years’ War energised the British imperial imagination, generating a broad-based debate on how best to exploit the situation and opening up the opportunity to put more than one approach into action when Britain and Spain went to war in 1762. But the Peace of Paris brought discord, and a perceived need for the government to discipline the imperial imagination and to establish an approved pathway for the future of empire in the Atlantic world. The second part looks at how the Spanish government applied state power in direct pursuit of the pan-Atlantic imperial project. In particular, it re-examines the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish empire in 1767 and makes the argument that the expulsion was a response to the perceived Jesuit threat to pan-Atlantic imperial norms. My third section suggests that the experimental burst of modern, state-centric imperialism that began in the wake of the Seven Years’ War suffered a reversal during the Falklands Crisis of 1770-1, during the general historical moment in which Europeans finished constructing their shared cartographical conception of the world. Although the growth of state power and impetus was temporarily reversed to some extent in the 1770s, this period helps prefigure the more extensive shift from empires primarily based on exploration and tenuous consolidation to empires that depended on dense, active exploitation to lend validity to their ontological claims.

My dissertation, Making Imperial Futures: Concepts of Empire in the Anglo-Spanish Sphere, 1763-71, engages the grand narrative of exploration at the point at which that very concept was reaching the point of exhaustion and argues that the rough completion of European cartographical knowledge of the world had a profound impact on the evolution of the imperial experience. I examine the evolving concept of empire within a context of cross-imperial knowledge and rivalry, Enlightenment ideals and the changing ways in which Europeans related to the concept of a progressive future. Furthermore, I challenge the historiographically dominant notion that the British and Spanish experiences of empire are best categorized and isolated as distinct historical subjects. The first section shows that British successes in the Seven Years’ War energised the British imperial imagination, generating a broad-based debate on how best to exploit the situation and opening up the opportunity to put more than one approach into action when Britain and Spain went to war in 1762. But the Peace of Paris brought discord, and a perceived need for the government to discipline the imperial imagination and to establish an approved pathway for the future of empire in the Atlantic world. The second part looks at how the Spanish government applied state power in direct pursuit of the pan-Atlantic imperial project. In particular, it re-examines the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish empire in 1767 and makes the argument that the expulsion was a response to the perceived Jesuit threat to pan-Atlantic imperial norms. My third section suggests that the experimental burst of modern, state-centric imperialism that began in the wake of the Seven Years’ War suffered a reversal during the Falklands Crisis of 1770-1, during the general historical moment in which Europeans finished constructing their shared cartographical conception of the world. Although the growth of state power and impetus was temporarily reversed to some extent in the 1770s, this period helps prefigure the more extensive shift from empires primarily based on exploration and tenuous consolidation to empires that depended on dense, active exploitation to lend validity to their ontological claims.

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of the gender-differentiated outcomes of three different types of development models implemented in Latin America: industrialization by import substitution, structural adjustment programs, and the agroexport model. In undertaking this thesis, I attempted to answer three related questions: first, were women affected differentially than men were by the implementation of these three models. Second, if women were differentially affected, was their experience also conditioned by other factors, like the sector in which they found employment, their location in rural or urban environments, and their level of education. Finally, given that both of the answer to the former two questions was yes, I attempted to answer the question of why this was happening. In answering this final question, I used the analytical framework provided by feminist economics. Ultimately, I posited that while women’s differential experience was determined in part by certain domestic and individual level factors, like cultural norms and laws preventing women from working in the formal economy, much of their experience has to do with the male bias that inheres in much of classical and neoclassical economic theory.

This thesis assesses the potential of Venezuela’s technical water committees (mesas técnicas de agua, MTAs) to address governance and logistical challenges for improving sanitation in the barrios (low income settlements) of Caracas. The MTAs are a radical experiment in urban planning whereby beneficiary communities map their own water and sanitation needs and help to plan infrastructure development, which is financed by the state. In addition to improving services, the MTAs aim to promote “popular” or “citizen power” as part of a broader political transformation, the Bolivarian Process (1999-present). Based on Hickey and Mohan’s (2005) four criteria for “transformative participation,” the paper argues that the MTAs have opened spaces for citizen empowerment and improved services in the barrios; however, participation at the local scale cannot resolve many of the challenges for improving sanitation such as institutional overlap and the financing gap, especially given that sanitation is the least profitable form of service provision in terms of economic and political payoffs.

Almost daily emotional worship pours from a warehouse-sized evangelical church in the small rural community of Santa Cruz, Costa Rica. Within twenty years an evangelical presence has gone from virtually non-existent to standing alongside the Catholic Church in the area’s religious landscape. Scenarios like this are going on throughout Latin America as evangelical faith has become firmly rooted in the region. In this thesis I provide another ethnographic research context to the growing body of literature focused on Pentecostalism/evangelicalism in Latin America. Like others addressing this dynamic, I explore the factors and motivations that lead people to become evangelical. I approach these questions with particular emphasis on the characteristics of evangelical faith as it is constructed and practiced during church services. Through participant observation during church services and interviews with practicing evangelicals in and around Santa Cruz, I highlight the relationship between the characteristics of an evangelical faith and the factors and motivations that lead people to seek it. To be religiously active in the manner of my informants requires deep commitment and is not a faith adopted and practiced lightly. Those who become evangelical and sustain the demanding practice are likely to seek it for spiritual solutions to difficult life situations.

In the past decade, mobile communication services such as cell phones and other types of hand-held devices have become relatively cheap, affordable and accessible, especially in developing countries, including Peru. The applications of mobile devices in health, or mHealth, are surfacing and have the potential to improve the delivery and quality of health by eliminating the distance barriers; permitting the availability and retrieval of data in a timely manner; educating the public on prevention; supporting the management of diseases, and promoting patient empowerment to the population, including those that are socially stigmatized. Equally important, in conjunction with technology, training is another important factor to build a critical mass of professionals to develop and evaluate mHealth strategies. In order to take advantage of the technology at hand, health professionals must be able to know how to use these tools that are available to them. The purpose of the study is to explore the research and training, and mHealth strategies being developed in Peru. The study has the following aims: • To examine the process, progress and lessons learned of a) the mobile health initiatives of Peru through the lens of the Cell-POS project, and b) the training initiatives on mHealth in Peru through the lens of the QUIPU project; • To discover how people with HIV can achieve patient empowerment and involvement in managing their own health through the use of cell phones. For the mobile health project (Cell-POS) both quantitative and qualitative data collection was gathered, which resulted in an in-depth research analysis evaluating the efforts and initiatives of mHealth solutions in Peru, with a focus on how the use of mobile technology can help people with HIV feel empowered. In addition, it was explored how mobile health is being positioned in the area of training through the lens of the QUIPU project. A two-day expert meeting which took place on March 26 and March 27, 2010 in Lima, Peru resulted in insightful discussions of the problems and necessities regarding training in Biomedical and Health Informatics; specific issues about the curricula and the level of multidisciplinary were also discussed. Through the QUIPU project it was found that the challenges and needs are very similar across Latin America; however, through collaboration and partnerships, global health initiatives are on a rise. The Cell-POS project examined the feasibility, acceptability, perceived ease of use, and usefulness towards mHealth in relation with patient empowerment. The primary finding was that participants were satisfied and accepted the Cell-POS platform quickly and without difficulty. After six months of use, the results demonstrated that the participants perceived that the messages were clear, effective, and understandable and it was easy to incorporate the Cell-POS system to their daily activities. Most participants perceived that Cell-POS enhanced their knowledge related to HIV treatment and improved their ability to take their medications correctly and on time. Through proper planning, research initiatives and collaborative work, a successful project can be achieved. Peru has great potential, which is already starting to show through the research and work that is currently taken place. This study examines selected mHealth initiatives in the context of research and training of mHealth in Peru. / Graduate

En el marco del proyecto "Pluralidad de discursos" hemos incluido esta investigación donde elaboramos una serie de conceptos generales para el teatro que nos permite, además, analizar e interpretar el teatro latinoamericano en un contexto transcultural y transdisciplinario, para así superar tanto barreras ideológicas, esencialistas o hegemónicas y demostrar que fenómenos culturales no conocen fronteras, sino sólo diversas concretizaciones.

Das Ziel meines Beitrags im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung ist ein doppeltes: zunächst die Beschreibung und Interpretation von Repräsentationsformen der Andersheit im Kontext von Hybriditätsprozessen und im Kontext der Formen und der Auswirkungen der Globalisierung in Lateinamerika; und zweitens die Herausarbeitung von Hybridisierungsstrategien, von semiotisch-anthropologischen Entwürfen eines altaritären und differenten Kulturmodells, das für eine kulturelle Region im Zeitalter der Globalisierung Bedeutung hat. Es geht also um translatologisch-kommunikative Strategien, wobei Translation nach Gómez Peña rekodifizieren beziehungsweise "borderizing" bedeutet – und nicht übersetzen. Denn die großen permanenten und unaufhaltsamen Migrationen gepaart mit der Globalisierung ergeben eine zunehmende Verflechtung zwischen dem sogenannten "Eigenen" und dem sogenannten "Fremden", werfen Fragen über die Legitimität und Adäquatheit, ja zeitliche Angemessenheit dieser Konzepte auf und erzwingen eine Revision und neue Bestimmung von weiteren Konzepten wie Differenz, Identität, Nation und Kultur. Das Oppositionspaar, das "Eigene" und das "Fremde", kann und soll nicht mehr so stehen bleiben, denn es ist epistemologisch, historisch und kulturell Kind eines kolonialen und imperialen Zeitalters, welches schon unwiderruflich vergangen zu sein schien.

This thesis is a work of theory; it is also historical. It attempts to provide a critique of the categories through which the phenomena of agricultural development and land reform are habitually grasped. It is divided into three parts. In the first part three main theoretical orientations to the study of capitalist agrarian development are discussed, both abstractly and with reference to their accounts of Latin American rural society in the 1960's. It is argued that all three are unable to explain adequately the process of social and agrarian change. This inability is traced to the fact that all three reduce social totalities to two or more distinct sub-entities or sub-totalities. The author calls this general position the social problematic of dualism. Its inability. to account for social change is, he argues, traceable to the fact that the existence of the sub-entities into which social totalities are divided, is posited as theoretically prior to the relations which connect them. These points are pursued in the second and third parts of the thesis. In the second part an alternative to dualism' with particular reference to its variants of the separation of a realm of industry from a realm of agriculture, and of the separation of a realm of the economic from a realm of the social, is provided through a detailed theorisation of capitalist social relations. It is argued that the existence of distinct realms of agriculture, industry, economy and society is a real effect of the essential relations of capitalist society, and that these divisions must be transcended through an elucidation of the character of such relations. This is done by distinguishing three forms of capitalist development which are produced by these essential relations. Further examples of a dualist analysis in contemporary theorisations of petty commodity production, the world economy and the articulation of modes of production are discussed. In the third part the author returns to an examination of the Latin American context through a discussion of the case of Chile. The theoretical insights developed in the earlier parts are systematically applied to various aspects of Chilean history from the conquest of Latin America to the 1960's, and to the processes of land reform which covered the decade 1962-1973. It is suggested that the agrarian social transformations which this country experienced are only explicable in terms of a position which systematically transcends all dualist assumptions.