I had my last grad school exam today. It was for Chris Blattman's "Political Economy of Development: Africa and the World" class. We were allowed a single study sheet for the exam. Mine featured some highlights of the authors we read throughout the class - I thought it would be fun to share it with you all, with a few slight adjustments (inspired by this and this).
Nicolas van de Walle
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Jeffrey Sachs
William Easterly
Esther Duflo
Abhijit Banerjee
Jeffrey Herbst
Dambisa Moyo
Dani Rodrik
Chris Blattman
Feel free to add your own in the comments, or create some more!
While working on my Micro-enterprise Development final, I reread a document that has one of the funniest introductions I can recall. The document, A Handbook for Value Chain Research by Kaplinsky and Morris, begins with the following warning:
In case you have trouble seeing the image, or want an abridged version, here are some of the best lines:
Lest anyone feel overwhelmed by the depth of detail in this Handbook, especially with respect to the sections on methodology, we would like to emphasise at the outset: this Handbook is not meant to be used or read as a comprehensive step by step process that has to be followed in order to undertake a value chain analysis. We know of no value chain analysis that has comprehensively covered all the aspects dealt with in the following pages, and certainly not in the methodologically sequential Handbook set out below. Indeed to try and do so in this form would be methodologically overwhelming, and would certainly bore any reader of such an analysis to tears.
It is not an attempt to restrict researchers within a methodological strait-jacket, but rather to free them to use whatever tools are deemed suitable from the variety presented below.
...as an array of possible technical tools, some of which may be usefully adopted and methodologically applied either partially or fully depending on circumstances; or whole parts can be skipped and not read at all.
...it is not even our intention that everyone should read the Handbook in the way one would go through a (good) novel – sequentially, and from cover to cover. We therefore urge readers to use their common sense and treat it as one does an edited book, or researchers to read it in the same way one reads a mechanics manual for finding out about one’s car. Treat the contents page as an à la carte menu, read the bits that are interesting, take what is relevant for whatever research task is at hand, and skim what is not relevant.
While the rest of the text loses the sense of humor, it is a pretty useful document. Get the pdf here.
Graduation season is upon us, which means it is time to revisit David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon commencement speech. You can read it here, it's pretty awesome. But there is also a new video featuring an excerpt of the audio:
Basically, it is a reminder to be aware. I think this is a particularly good concept for those of us graduating from programs focused on international development: be aware, recognize the complexity of every situation, and do your best to avoid just going-through-the-motions. And remind yourself: this is water...
(Granted, that is just a small part of the meaning in This is Water, so listen or read and then draw your own conclusions).
When I was a child, my mother would regularly read me The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. Amazon describes the book as follows: "A little bunny keeps running away from his mother in an imaginative and imaginary game of verbal hide-and-seek; children will be profoundly comforted by this lovingly steadfast mother who finds her child every time." (Maybe this is where my sometimes-outrageous imagination hails from?) As the little bunny imagines new and exciting ways to escape the boring life at home, the mother bunny stays a step ahead of him, telling her child, "...for you are my little bunny."
My mother has reminded me of this story throughout my life. When I went to Spain in high school, she left me a birthday card that included the reminder "For you are my little bunny." Similarly, care packages arrived in Madagascar enscribed with the same line. But aside from this specific mother-son bond, I have not given the book much thought in years - very few of my friends even remember it (unlike Margaret Wise Brown's more popular Goodnight Moon).
So, imagine my surprise when The Runaway Bunny came up during a lecture in my Political Economy of Development class. Professor Blattman used the story in a state-building lecture (details here). Here is his connection between the children's book and the lecture material:
States for most of history have been unrelenting, coercive, and all-consuming. If you think of states as merely benign or civilizing, you will fail to understand the shape of society. You can try to run away, but you will come home. Here’s a carrot for your trouble.
Was The Runaway Bunny statist propaganda, meant to discourage the anrachist element in young children? It is an interesting point (though I doubt that anarchist-purging worked for me...). Others have argued it is an allegory about God/Christianity. That might be, but to me it will always just be the story of an adventure-seeking child who knows he can, contrary to Thomas Wolfe, go home again.
I guess that just goes to show, I am my mom's little bunny. I think it is time for a carrot!
Oh, how the time slips away from you in Grad School. I wanted to post about my week-long trip to Kenya weeks ago, since it happened in March, but a little thing called "school work" kept getting in the way. Also, it took a while to get the video at the end together...
I was visiting the projects of One Acre Fund, a very cool agricultural development NGO working mostly in East Africa. If you are interested in ag development (and been living under a rock for the past few years), you should check them out! I will not spend much time on the organization nor their model here; rather, I just wanted to offer a few random observations from an excellent trip to Nairobi and southwestern Kenya. So, here we go:
I was in-country during the time between the announcement of a Presidential victor (Kenyatta) and the confirmation of his victory by the Supreme Court. I heard many different opinions on the legitimacy of the elections, but I also heard a general agreement that violence would not be repeated and the entire country would accept the Supreme Court's decision. Judging from international media after I left (and after Kenyatta's confirmation), they were right. It is nice to see that political discourse did not lead to violence as the international community had feared/predicted. In other words, great work Kenya in proving so many "experts" wrong!
There are a lot of newspapers - everyone in the towns and cities were reading multiple papers to stay up-to-date on the political results. I have no idea how independent or distinct they are, but it was an interesting aspect to note. Somewhat related: this African newspaper search engine looks pretty cool.
I went at the start of the rainy season, which lives up to its name. But it meant lush greens and dark red soils.
The rains in Kisii, Kenya
Tourism was down while I was there, but everyone I met was warm and quite friendly. And as I said above, no political violence despite international concerns. As a few people in Nairobi kept saying: "Kenya is open for business!" So get back there, tourists!
The food there is good - ugali (cornmeal) by itself is a bit bland, but it is very filling and you can dip it in anything you like!
Mmm... ugali and fish!
The answer to my favorite evening meal in Madagascar (THB and brouchettes) in Kenya is Tusker and grilled goat meat. So good.
Ugali and nyama choma
The nature reserves in Nairobi are pretty cool, and you can see the tops of the skyscrapers from inside the park! In particular, the Giraffe Center is pretty great.
2 tall guys, just getting to know each other
And a really cool operation is elephant orphanage at Nairobi's David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which takes in baby elephants orphaned by ivory poachers.
Football, the world's sport
And here is a video I took at the Trust, with some of those elephants jamming to a band I thoroughly enjoy: Kenya's Just a Band. (the song has its own, awesome video). This video also made me think: if Budweiser can make a commercial with Clydesdales playing American football, surely Tusker can make one with elephants playing real football? Anyways, enjoy!
