International Journal of Social Science Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, February 2016

Editorial Team

Editors-in-Chief Dr. Michael Brooks, North Carolina A&T State University, United States Prof. Máximo Ernesto Jaramillo Molina, Colegio De México, Mexico Associate Editors Dr. Jamie E. L. Spinney, Saint Mary’ s University, Canada Dr. Kim Stansbury, Eastern Washington University, United States Dr. Patricia Wiener, C.E.H.N. La Paz-Bolivia, Bolivia Dr. Troy Lovata, Honors College, the University of New Mexico, United States Editorial Assistant James Young, Redfame Publishing, United States

Editorial Board Members

Dr. Manzoor Khan AFRIDI Dr. Jose Antonio AMOZURRUTIA Dr. Dimitra ANASTASIOU Dr. Aprinalistria APRINALISTRIA Dr. Fernando ARAGÓN-DURAND Dr. Olufemi Kunle ARAMIDE Dr. Xue BAI Dr. Michael BROOKS Dr. Luigi Andrea BERTO Dr Raymond K H CHAN Prof. Linda A. CHERNUS Prof. Mei-Se CHIEN Dr. Robert COSTELLO Dr. Jianquan CHENG Dr. Matthew S. DABROS Dr. Wendy DOSSETT Dr. Katja EMAN Dr. Yaghoob FOROUTAN Dr. Joan GARCIA GARRIGA Dr. Paula HANASZ Dr. Jasmine HARVEY Dr. Paulito Valeriano HILARIO Dr. Shahadat HOSSAIN Prof. Gassemi KARIM Dr. Ofer KATCHERGIN Dr. Remigiusz JANUSZ KIJAK Prof. Ali MASSOUD Dr. Caroline MELLGREN Dr. Anne-Marie MCALINDEN Dr. Mónica MARTÍNEZ Dr. Zitha MOKOMANE

Dr. Anna Maria MOUZA Dr. Begoña MONTERO-FLETA Dr. Ghadah AL MURSHIDI Dr. Placide MUTABAZI Dr. Mohammed ISMAIL NASARAT Prof. Jehu ONYEKWERE NNAJI Dr. Iván FUMADÓ ORTEGA Prof. Sudershan PASUPULETI Dr. Federica PALUMBO Dr. Joy D. PATTON Dr. Jorge MORALES PEDRAZA Dr. Mariano D. PERELMAN Dr. Lee PUGALIS Dr. Satya Paul Kumar PP. Dr. Reem Mahmood RAMADAN Dr. Ludmila M. L. RIBEIRO Dr. Sirpa Pietilä ROSENDAHL Dr. Imran Ali SANDANO Dr. Daniele SCHILIRO', SEAM Dr. Sandro SERPA Dr. Hanaa Youssef SHAARAWY Dr. Luigia SIMONA SICA Dr. Laura K. TAYLOR Dr. Roberto FRANZINI TIBALDEO Dr. Robertson TENGEH Dr. Kareen N Tonsing Dr. Rachael WALSH Dr. Deirdre WARREN Dr. Elke WEIK Dr. Mohd. Noor MAT YAZID

International Journal of Social Science Studies Vol. 4, No. 2; February 2016

ISSN 2324-8033 E-ISSN 2324-8041 Published by Redfame Publishing

URL: http://ijsss.redfame.com

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Contents

Pak-China Boundary Agreement: Factors and Indian Reactions

Manzoor Khan Afridi, Abdul Zahoor Khan 1-5

Touraine’s Thesis: End of Political Sociology

Jan-Erik Lane 6-16

Risk Management in an Electricity Transmission Project between Iceland and the UK

Daisuke Sasaki, Mikiyasu Nakayama 17-23

Health, Human and Sustainable Development

Carla Arena Ventura, Marcela Jussara Miwa, Márjore Serena Jorge, Isabel Costa Mendes 24-28

Mechanisms of Progress in Organic and Cultural Evolution

Börje Ekstig 29-37

The Vagaries of Therapeutic Globalization. Fame, Money and Social Relations in Tibetan Medicine

Laurent Pordié 38-52

Relationships among Life quality, Social Support and Organizational Justice of White-collar Worker

Chun-mei HU, Shu-jing CUI, Hua-min HE 53-58

Innovation: crucial factor for the internationalization of SMEs

Jorge Luis Taddei-Bringas 59-68

How to Manage Perception to Win Negotiations

Katarzyna Jagodzinska 69-77

Perceptions of Customary Land Tenure Security in Western Province of Zambia

Niraj Jain, Roy Chileshe, Francis Muwowo, Majory Lupiya 78-93

Food Vending Among Men in Kumasi: Socio-Cultural Advantages, Constraints, and Coping Strategies

John Boulard Forkuor 94-102

Reviewer Acknowledgements

James Young 103




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Pak-China Boundary Agreement: Factors and Indian Reactions Manzoor Khan Afridi1& Abdul Zahoor Khan2

1Head of Department of Politics and International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences,International Islamic University, Islamabad Pakistan. 2Assistant Professor at Department of History and Pakistan Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, International Islamic University, Islamabad Pakistan. Correspondence: Manzoor Khan Afridi, Head of Department of Politics and International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences,International Islamic University, Islamabad Pakistan. Received: October 30, 2015 Accepted: November 16, 2015 Available online: December 16, 2015 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1296 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1296

Abstract Aim of the paper is to discuss the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement and to analyze the factors responsible. In 1960, Pakistan put forward its offer to China for border demarcation. The Chinese Government did not respond to the Pakistani offer. China was working hard to persuade India for the border settlement. But when the hopes for the Sino-Indian rapprochement failed, China asserted for negotiations with Pakistan. China was also motivated by the concept that the Western powers might manipulate the situation between the two countries and could assert pressure on Pakistan’s decision making process which would bring hostilities between the two countries. If China would more delay its border negotiations with Pakistan, the US wishes might come true and a permanent stalemate in relations could persist in future. As long as Pakistan was dependent on the US for its military and economic needs, it seemed difficult to get closer with China and negotiate for a border demarcation. Despite the opposition of India and the US, both Pakistan and China demarcated their border and signed a boundary agreement.

Keywords: Pakistan, China, Boundary, Kashmir, Xinjiang, India 1. Introduction In the start of the decade (1960s), both countries signed various bilateral agreements which transformed their relationship into an entente cordiale. Pakistan struggled to maintain a balanced relationship between the United States and China, but emphasized more cordial engagement with the socialist states. Pakistan and China signed their boundary, air and trade agreements. Pakistan took back step to its previous position of pre-alliance by supporting the Communist China’s seat in the United Nations Organization and One China policy. On its part, China too supported openly Pakistan’s views on Kashmir issue, emphasized on the solution of the problem according to the United Nations resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people. To remind, since its inception, China had been taking a somewhat neutral stance on Kashmir. Also, the PRC overtly backed Pakistan during the latter’s war with India in 1965. Also during this period, China repeatedly assured Pakistan of all its possible help for the latter’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. Here along with the US and USSR, the Indian factor was dominant to shape the two countries’ policies toward each other. Their common enmity with India led them to foster their ties particularly in defense sector. The China continued support to Pakistan to contain the Indian influence in the South Asia (Bhutto, 1965) and maintained there a balance of power between Islamabad and New Delhi and also between Beijing, Moscow and Washington. The first test in this period was the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, in which, China wholly supported Pakistan. During the 1965 conflict, Pakistan faced grim situation. Despite an ally, the United States first suspended arms supplies to Pakistan by imposing embargo and later in a statement by the State Department issued a policy guideline declaring its neutrality in the conflict. Pakistan requested the US to use its influence to stop the war, but the latter rejected the request. In the time of need, China intervened in the favor of Pakistan. On 16 September 1965, China demanded India by giving an ultimatum to the Indian Embassy in Beijing for the dismantling of Indian military activities and kidnapped Chinese border inhabitants, within three days, with the Chinese Sikkim border. The PRC also warned that in the failure of its demands, India would face full responsibility of all serious consequences on its part (International Organization, 1966). Between 1964 and 1966, several high-ranking personalities of both countries visited each other. Chinese Premier Zhou

International Journal of Social Science Studies Vol. 4, No. 2; 2016

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En-lai paid an official visit to Pakistan in February 1964 which was reciprocated by Pakistani President Ayub Khan in March 1965, to “coincide with the second anniversary of the Sino-Pakistan border agreement”. He and his delegates received a most-cordial welcome in Beijing in the history of China’s reception for an Asian head of state. “China offered a $60 million interest-free loan to Pakistan to import heavy machinery and during his visit to China, Ayub publicly expressed appreciation of this gesture which involved special sacrifices on the part of China to promote self-reliance in a fellow Asian country”. The following year, President Liu Shaoqi paid a visit to Pakistan and was given him an exceptional warm reception (Bhatty, 2003). The paper also looks into the superpower policies and interactions which affected the Sino-Pakistan relations in a constructive way. The Pakistan’s estrangement from America, by ignoring its allied status, giving credits to a nonaligned India and the Soviet blessings for India gave a new structure to Sino-Pakistan relations based on common interests. The US and the Soviet antagonism with Communist China, the latter’s test of nuclear device in 1964, and Pakistan’s friendly gestures to China, created an opportunity for India to look forward the superpowers’ help against Pakistan and China. India became ‘bone of contention’ between Pakistan’s relations with the United States and the Soviet Union. India’s seeking easy-going relationships with superpowers also added a dilemma in Chinese already hostile environment with the two superpowers. India wanted to build a common Indo-US front against China, when the New Delhi requested Washington about aid in 1963, for the “advanced supersonic aircraft” to match herself with “Pakistan’s American F-104s and Chinese MIG-21s”. On the other hand, many Indians believed that “Russia, a major country in Asia, sharing a frontier extending over thousands of controversial miles with China” was “a surer deterrent to Chinese venture” (Wriggins, 1970). Consequently, the security-torn climate of the region gave rise to a kind of “balance of power”, forming two alignments, the Indo-Soviet and the Sino-Pakistan united fronts, while the United States was in-between, changing her position. Z.A. Bhutto has explained the situation as a result of the Indo-Soviet and the Sino-Pakistan relations in these words: “If India can talk to the 200 million people of the Soviet Union, we can talk to the 650 million people of the People’s Republic of China on the same basis” (Bhutto, 1964).

2. Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement The most important event in so far Sino-Pakistan relations was the demarcation of their common border which was the take off point for their later entente. In the late of 1950s, Sino-Pakistan relations were touching their nadir. It was reported that the Chinese troops had entered into Pakistani territory of Hunza and had taken away some cattle from there (Khan, 1967). As was already facing the security vulnerability from Indian and Afghanistan sides, Pakistan was disturbed over these violations of its border. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Manzur Qadir, mentioned in a news conference in Karachi on 21 October 1959 that Pakistan would defend its frontiers with possible means (Asian Recorder, 1959). President Ayub Khan declared that his government would approach China for boundary negotiations. In December 1959, in a cabinet meeting, the consensus was that the Chinese were unlikely to respond to any suggestion for the demarcation of the border but Ayub Khan insisted that there was no harm in preparing a memorandum in this regard and getting in touch with the Chinese (Khan, 1967). Ayub Khan ordered the Gilgit Scouts to move along the Sino-Pakistan border and sealed the border with Xinjiang (Khan, 1961). With the Pakistan’s somewhat new balanced and independent foreign policy, the Sino-Pakistan border remained peaceful throughout 1960 and 1961. On 27 May 1962, a high level conference was held in Pakistan under the chairmanship of President Ayub Khan, in which an indication was given for reappraisal of Pakistan’s foreign policy. There was a consensus in the conference that in the wake of Western assistance to India, Pakistan should pursue its foreign policy in such a manner that it get closer to China on one hand and also keep normal relationship with the US on another hand (Pakistan Horizon, 1965). Pakistan obviously abandoned its total dependence on the US. A clear gesture for such a policy was the appointment of Muhammad Ali Bogra as Minister of Foreign Affairs, which had good credentials in the United States and personal friendship with Zhou En-lai. Manzur Qadir disclosed on 15 January 1961 that China had agreed in to demarcate its boundary with Pakistan and talks in this regard were in process. A troublesome situation created after the Ayub Khan’s visit to US in July 1961 when the Chinese Ambassador in Pakistan, Ding Guoyu asked Ayub Khan for support of Communist China’s admission in the UN. Ayub Khan made such a support conditional to China’s willingness to Pakistan’s offer of demarcation of their border (Khan, 1967). After so many meetings between the Chinese Ambassador and Pakistan’s leaders in Karachi, the two countries made a way for the final settlement of the border. Pakistan agreed then to support PRC for membership in the UN and PRC also was willing then for negotiations on border. The Chinese Government withdrew its issued disputed maps in January 1962. The Chinese Government officially responded to Pakistan on 27 February 1962. In both Beijing and Karachi, on 3 May, 1962, a statement issued of the provisional agreement to demarcate boundary (Dawn, 1962). Sino-Pakistan negotiations officially began on 13 October, 1962. After a long process of diplomatic channel, China and


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Pakistan became able to settle their border issue. Consequently, both the countries Foreign Ministers, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Chen Yi, respectively signed their boundary agreement on 3 March, 1963 in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in the presence of the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China and Premier Zhou En-lai (The American Journal of International Law, 1963). Both the Governments released new maps concerning the agreed frontier. The boundary was the result of some give and take policy. China ceded over hundreds of miles territory to Pakistan and on the return; Pakistan recognized the Chinese sovereignty over hundreds of square kilometers of land in Northern Kashmir and Ladakh. The agreement was a win-win situation for both countries. Pakistan got a large area and China too consolidated her position in Ladakh, an area to which President Ayub had referred before the agreement that Pakistan would not recognize any arrangement between China and India, as the area was a disputed territory between India and Pakistan (Bhutto, 1976). By giving the Ladakh area under the Chinese authority, Pakistan withdrew from its previous claim and gave an upper hand to China over India. Upon the conclusion of agreement, Pakistan’s leaders were happy to say that “we were the gainers by entering into negotiations to delimit our boundary with China. We saw no reason to delay the conclusion of an agreement about it, for we ourselves had initiated the negotiations. We came to a speedy and satisfactory settlement of the boundary. Under this settlement, Pakistan gained about 750 square miles of territory, some of it rich in natural resources, particularly the salt mines of Oprang, which the people of Hunza and surrounding territory consider necessary for their needs and for their economic well being. It is a matter of the greatest importance that through this agreement we have removed any possibility of friction on our only common border with the People’s Republic of China. We have eliminated what might well have become a source of misunderstanding and of future troubles” (Bhutto, 1964). The boundary agreement eliminated the myth of Chinese threat which the US-led Western countries had projected for a long time. It proved that China was a peaceful neighbor with no intention to climb on Pakistan. The need for demarcation of boundary forced by the following factors. 1. China had an experience of war with India related to their boundary and Pakistan had tough time with India as well. By finding a common enemy, the two states could work together better and cooperate against India. According to Bhutto “An attack by India on Pakistan would no longer confine the stakes to the independence and territorial integrity of Pakistan. An attack by India on Pakistan would also involve the security and territorial integrity of the largest state in Asia” (Ibid. p, 82). Apparently he meant, the P.R. China. Thus it was advantageous for both countries to solve their border peacefully. 2. Pakistan felt that likely, the differences which were already existed with China due to the Pakistan’s pro-West position could flare up on the boundary. The agreement reiterated that the purpose of this agreement was to ensure tranquility along the border, in order to develop friendly communication between the two countries. The fast changing security scenario of the region was posing a danger that an undemarcated border could have caused conflict as was in the Sino-Indian border problem (Hailin, 2008). 3. Pakistan had been engaged with India primarily of the Kashmir question which was resulted into war and hostilities. By going closer to China for the boundary issue, Pakistan was trying to get concessions from India on Kashmir, by using the China card. It was evident from the Indian protests regarding the Sino-Pakistan boundary negotiations. Pakistan was of the hope that China could support her position on Kashmir issue, that latter proved. “The veteran Kashmir leader, Ghulam Abbas, proclaimed China the only dependable friend and ally of Pakistan, and one whose friendship could be of great value in liberating Kashmir from Indian occupation (Dobell, 1964). 4. It was also Pakistan’s effort to persuade the United States to pressure India for the solution of the Kashmir problem. It was a signal for the US that if she had failed, Pakistan had another option for the problem’s solution that was China. 5. China had already resolved her boundary issues peacefully with its neighbors, like Burma and Nepal. China was interested to present itself as a peace-loving country by resolving the same issue with Pakistan. Pakistan too was looking seriously the Chinese developments with its neighbors and was concluded that a peaceful solution of the boundary was likely to take place. 6. Over the United States’ giving assistance to India in the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, Pakistan was understandably unhappy over these overtures. Although the US had declared that the aid was primarily for the purpose to contain China, but Pakistan seemed it a more powerful India threatening its sovereignty. Bhutto expressed its anxiety that the weapons given to India by the US would be used against Pakistan as India had already solved five of its disputes by the use of force. In 1963, the Indian President once said in the US: “India will be able to settle the problem only by having strength with which to back her bargaining power” (Ibid. p. 8). 7. In November 1962, with the help of United States and United Kingdom, Pakistan and India agreed to resume their talks. “The idea was to induce Pakistan gradually to turn in the opposite direction by insisting on Indo-Pakistan co-operation instead of a rupture of Pakistan’s relations with China” (Bhutto, 1965). Realizing the situation back of the


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1959 proposal of India and Pakistan for a joint defense of the subcontinent, China worried of these talks which might bring the same dilemma for it. When the talks reached to a stalemate, Pakistan also realized that it was merely Western attempt to make a room for sympathy in Pakistan and tone down the latter’s criticism of the Western aid to India. It was beneficial for China to engage itself with Pakistan for border talks to neutralize the joint Indo-Pakistan development and minimize the outside powers’ influence in the region. 8. As Pakistan readjusted its policy of balance between the West and the Communist blocs, in 1961, Pakistan was agreed to get the Soviet assistance in the shape of agreement for exploration of its oil resources. China was worried about this Soviet’s offer. Later, the victory of China over India in its war proved for Pakistan that China was better option than the Soviet Union to approach for sustained warm relations. 9. The boundary agreement gave recognition to Pakistan’s control over Azad Kashmir from a regional power against the Indian charges. It was also mentioned in the agreement that the final boundary would be redrawing in future when the Kashmir dispute solved. It means that Pakistan was successful to denounce the Indian claim over Kashmir and projected it as a disputed territory between itself and India, as Pakistan was demanding the disputed position of Kashmir in the United Nations, illegally occupied by India. On May 31, 1962China told to the Indian Embassy in Beijing by Note that it had never recognized the Indian claim over Kashmir as her sovereign territory without reservation (Ambekar and Divekar, 1964). 10. The Xinjiang problem has always been a trouble for Beijing Regime and fostered by the Soviets since the early 1960s. The Sino-Pakistan boundary touches Xinjiang with the Northern Areas of Pakistan. It was in interest of Beijing to conclude a boundary agreement with Pakistan as early as possible for the stability of its area, as a Muslim Pakistan has had a natural religious and cultural bond with the people of Xinjiang. It should be noted that Pakistan signed a civil aviation agreement with China in August 1963. Under this agreement, Pakistani planes were allowed to land in Canton and Shanghai and Pakistan gave permission to Chinese jets for use of the Dacca airport. The United States Government was not happy over this development. The US State Department expressed that this agreement was “an unfortunate breach of the free world solidarity and postponed, subsequently, the granting of a loan of $4.3 million for further improvements of the Dacca airport” (Lerski, 1968). An interesting fact is that, the United States never challenged the Indian bilateralism with the US and USSR (Ibid.).

3. Indian Reactions India was perhaps the only country where the agreement was highly criticized. India was not willing to recognize the Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement as a legitimate decision. She had never accepted Pakistan’s sovereignty over its northern areas and Azad Kashmir. It was long before the conclusion of the agreement that India sharply agitated over it. As the agreement stated that it was between “China’s Sinkiang and the contiguous areas the defence of which is under the actual control of Pakistan” (Pakistan’s Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir), India reacted promptly. “Delhi protested at this de facto recognition of Pakistan control of Hunza and Baltistan, and China rejected the Indian protest” (Dobell, 1964). While speaking on the Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement, Indian Prime Minster Nehru remarked that China and Pakistan were going to demarcate the border “of the illegally occupied area of Kashmir with Sinkiang”. It was Indian position that was not accepting the boundary agreement on the ground that Pakistan had no legitimacy of her contiguous areas with Chinese Sinkiang. He further said that “Sardar Swaran Singh, Leader of the Indian Delegation, immediately made our (Indian) position clear to President Ayub Khan and Mr. Bhutto in Rawalpindi, and again to Mr. Bhutto, later, when the talks were resumed in Delhi, in January last”. India was protesting consistently. Again he reminded: “On January 26, we lodged a protest with the Government of Pakistan against the decision announced in the joint communiqué issued by them (China and Pakistan) on December, 28, 1962. Another protest is being lodged with the Government of Pakistan against the signing of this Sino-Pakistan border alignment agreement in Peking”. India claimed that Pakistan had surrendered a large area of India to China. “It has been stated in Karachi that the difference between the Chinese claim line and the Pakistan claim line was 3,400 squire(wrong spellings) miles. In the final agreement, Pakistan claims to have received 1,350 square miles, including 700 square miles of area which was in China’s possession. The Chinese have been given 2,050 square miles under the agreement”. Delhi accused that some part of Sinkiang territory was the area of Kashmir. “According to the Survey of Pakistan maps, even those published in 1962, about 11,000 square miles of Sinkiang territory formed part of Kashmir. If one goes by these maps, Pakistan has obviously surrendered over 13,000 square miles of territory”. Actually, India’s accusations were less convincing in a sense of geographical realities, historical evidence and the legal arguments that the areas north of the Karakoram Range had never been under the actual administrative control of India in modern times. Nehru criticized the boundary agreement that the delimitation of the border as stated was “on the basis of the traditional customary boundary line, including natural resources” was not so. He continued his speech in the parliament by labeling


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blame that China was involved in Indo-Pakistan differences by interference and was deteriorating the Indo-Pakistan relations for its own expansionism. India again lodged a protest note with China on 10 May 1962. He blamed in these words: “The other party to the agreement, namely China, in spite of its professions that it has never involved itself in the dispute over Kashmir or its absurd claim that the boundary negotiations have promoted friendship between the Chinese and Pakistani peoples and are in the interests of Asia and world peace is directly interfering in Indo-Pakistan relations. By doing this, China is seeking to exploit differences between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir question to further its own expansionist policy. The Government of India has made their position clear in a protest against this agreement which has been lodged with the Government of the People’s Republic of China” (Ambekar and Divekar, 1964). In another note the Ministry of External Affairs of India warned the Government of Pakistan of the grave consequences of their action and that any agreement with the Government of China, provisional or otherwise, was not to be acceptable to India (Ibid.). Both Governments of China and Pakistan replied to the Indian allegations regarding the Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement that the agreement was legal. China pointed out that India was not willing to demarcate its border with China and further make complications in Sino-Pakistan boundary settlement. China stated that if Nepal and Burma could delimit their borders with China, why India could not? 4. Conclusion Pakistan and China demarcated their border successfully. The Government of Pakistan also made it clear to India that aim of the border demarcation with China was only to eliminate the future complexities and frictions, and the agreement was provisional in its nature. Pakistan extended its reply by stating that the agreement was in no way prejudicial to the peaceful solution of the Kashmir conflict between Pakistan and India and Pakistan’s permanent representative in the UN, Sir Zafrullah Khan referred the Article 6 of the Agreement (Dobell, 1964) that when the Kashmir problem solved, the boundary negotiations would be re-open between the PRC and the legitimate authority of Kashmir and a final agreement would be sign then. It was just Indian anxiety over the improvement of Sino-Pakistan relations and the boundary’s protests were only excuse. More importantly, although India had accused Pakistan of illegal occupation of the Azad Kashmir, in reality, India had never seriously challenged the Pakistan’s authority of its Azad Kashmir. References Ambekar, G. V., & Divekar, V. D. (1964). Sino-Pakistan “Agreement” March 2, 1963: Some Facts, Delhi. Asian Recorder. (1959, November 21-27), 5(47), 3011-3019 Bhatty, M. A. (2003). China and South Asia. ISSI Pakistan Strategic Studies Journal, XXIII(1), 8. Bhutto, Z. A. (1964). Foreign Policy of Pakistan: A Compendium of speeches made in the National Assembly of

Pakistan, 1962-64. Karachi: Pakistan Institute of International Affairs. Bhutto, Z. A. (1965). Pakistan and Alliances. Lahore: Agha Amir Hussain Classic. Bhutto. Z. A. (1976). Bilateralism: New Directions. Islamabad: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government

of Pakistan. Dobell, W. M. (1964). Ramifications of the China-Pakistan Border Treaty. Pacific Affairs, 37(3), 283-295. Hailin, Y. (2008).Interview. Beijing: Expert on Sino-Pakistan relations at Asia-Pacific Center, Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences, Beijing Khan, H. R. (1961). Pakistan’s Relations with the People’s Republic of China. Pakistan Horizon, 14(3), 230-238. Khan, M. A. (1967). Friends Not Masters: A Political Autobiography. London: OxfordUniversity Press Lerski, G.J. (1968). The Pakistan-American Alliance: A Reevaluation of the Past Decade. Asian Survey, 8(5), 400-415. Pakistan Horizon. (1965). Karachi: Speech of Pakistan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs to the nineteenth session of the

United Nations General Assembly held on 25 January 1965, XVIII(4), 73. The American Journal of International Law (1963). People’s Republic of China-Pakistan. Agreement on the boundary

between China’s Sinkiang and the Contiguous Areas. Peking, March 2, 1963. The American Journal of International Law, 57(3), 713-716.

The India-Pakistan Question. (1966). International Organization, 20(4), 788-797. Wriggins, W. H. (1970). The Presence in Southern Asia of outside Powers. Annals of the American Academy of

Political and Social Science, A New American Posture toward Asia, 48-62.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License




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Touraine’s Thesis: End of Political Sociology? Jan-Erik Lane1

1Fellow with Public Policy Institute in Belgrade, 10 Charles Humbert, 1205 Geneva. Correspondence: Jan-Erik Lane, Fellow with Public Policy Institute in Belgrade, 10 Charles Humbert, 1205 Geneva. Received: September14, 2015 Accepted: October 3, 2015 Available online: December 16, 2015 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1297 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1297 Abstract Elections in capitalist democracies in Western have changed recently to such an extent that one is inclined to look upon election results as crucial evidence for Alain Touraine’s argument in favour of a transformation from a Durkheimian (”structure”) to a Weberian world (”actor”) in his La fin des societies (2013). The central aspect of party systems in Western Europe is not social structure today but now voter volatility, which can be measured allowing for an empirical application of Touraine’s thesis. Keywords: elections, volatility – gross and net, political sociology, rational choice, Lipset & Rokkan model, new parties, coalitions. 1. Introduction The book The End of Society presents a thesis that aims to cover the emancipation of the ego from social and moral constraints, i.e. rules and institutions that have dominated men and women. The post-modern society would, according to Touraine, be less focussed upon social groups and more concentrated upon the individual actor. He admits himself that his long-time preference for French classic Durkheim, emphasizing “collective consciousness” and its implications for social action has to be abandoned in favour of a renewed appreciation of Weber. Weber’s starting-point as atomistic, i.e. putting the individual at the basis of social action:

“Every thoughtful reflection on the ultimate elements of meaningful human action is bound primarily to the categories of 'means' and 'ends'"” (Weber, (1922), in Shils and Finch, 1949: 52) This starting-point – the Ich of the actor – is more promising that the Uns of the group, when enquiring into the post-modern society today, where persons decide what to do but institutions have declined in economics and politics as well as groups in morals – this is the Touraine thesis. And he states his problem as saving the possibility of human emancipation from greed, selfishness with guile and environmental degradation, while accepting individualism. The “faiblesse” of French social science, neglecting empirism for theoreticism recurs in the way Touraine presents his argument as discourse. No systematic data are adduced, no set of facts are penetrated and explained with the new discourse, except many contingent references to homosexuality, immigration issues, identity politics or pseudo-nationalism and economic corruption. This is of course Here, we relate the Touraine thesis to the development of politics, elections and parties in Western Europe. If Touraine is correct, then democratic politics would also have changed during the latter half of the 29th century, from groups – structure - to individuals - actors. 2. Political Sociology: The Chief Approach The analysis of elections in Western Europe has been approached with the Lipset-Rokkan frozen party system hypothesis. We ask about this standard framework of analysis:

1) Is it testable? 2) What are the theoretical assumptions that the theory is base upon? 3) What are the empirical implications of this theory? 4) If they were true in the 1970s, are they still valid today?

The famous frozen party system hypothesis is in reality a theory comprising several middle-range hypotheses. It received almost unanimous approval by scholars in political sociology when it was launched in 1960s and 1970s, and it


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stimulated lots of research into mass political behaviour and attitudes. First, I reject the position that the Lipset-Rokkan theory is not testable, as argued by Mair, 2002 but in reality first by Lybeck, 1986. Second, I compare the politics around the 1970 with the politics around 2000-2010 to show that this theory is not tenable. There is an abundance of data to draw upon when submitting the Lipset-Rokkan theory to a re-examination. Besides macro data for a rather long time period, there is micro data available too. In a re-analysis of the data available to Lipset and Rokkan (1960-70s), one has to contrast their information with data on recent changes in Western Europe (2000-2010). 3. MAIR: Confirmation, Falsification and Testability The aim of a re-analysis of a theory and its data base is to study its truth claims. A social science theory consists of a network of hypotheses or general statements about human interaction (micro) and social systems (macro). To support its truth claim, a social science theory is in need of empirical backing by means of the examination of a set of data. Data can validate or falsify a theory, but with no access to empirical information the theory is merely an intellectual guess that needs testing. Theory construction is half of scientific work and data analysis constitutes the other half. A re-analysis of established theories by existing or new data, informs one about the coherence of the theory with data. When there is a high degree of coherence between the implications of the hypotheses of the theory with the available data, then one may conclude that what the theory states corresponds to reality with a certain probability – the case of confirmation. However, little coherence between theory and data entails the case of falsification. A theory may be”saved” by changing some of its hypotheses, or restricting its range of application. Finally, a re-analysis of the data pertinent to the evaluation may result in theoretical innovation, where a theory that is in more coherence with the data supplants the established one. Now, what about the principle of testability? This notion comes in a few versions, one more or less fortunate that target the possibility of coherence or non-coherence between theoretical statements and data or fact statement. A theory is not testable when it is phrased in such a manner that there could not be any fact that would falsify the theory, as it would be coherent with whatever fact is conceivable. One may make a distinction between actual testability and potential testability. A theory may be so abstract that it its test implications are not observable at the present moment in time, but that does not exclude that new facts arrive that make the theory testable. The notion of testability in principle is employed to make a demarcation between science and meta-physics, as in the philosophy of science of logical empiricists or Popperians. Is the Lipset-Rokkan theory of the West European party system untestable, as some have argued? I answer certainly NO. The set of non-testable theories include religious propositions, race theories, animism, dogmatic Marxism, etc. The Lipset-Rokkan theory may be confronted with data when its components are listed and its coherence with facts may be evaluated in a re-analysis. 4. LIPSET & ROKKAN: Frozen Party Systems The Lipset-Rokkan theory was the most successful attempt to model the politics of the full industrial society in Western Europe, adhering to the regime of parliamentary democracy in societies with a high degree of economic modernisation. Its core hypotheses focus upon the logic of election outcomes in a society with cleavages in the social structure, emphasizing the nature of the tie between the political parties and various social groups. Thus, it aims to account for the nature of West European democratic competition in regimes based upon the political parties as the agents of the basic principal, viz. the demos. Actually, this theory was testable in reality already when launched and it can certainly be re-tested in a re-analysis of the world of West European politics today. Interpreting the basic text by Lipset and Rokkan: Cleavage Structures. Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction (1967), one arrives at the following hypotheses:

1) Micro: Voters tend to be loyal in one election to another; 2) Micro: Voters frame their choice of party on the basis of their position on a cleavage line; 3) Macro: The cleavages in society are finite and change very slowly, if at all; 4) Macro: The central cleavages in the fully blown industrial democracy include: class, religion and region. 5) Conclusion: The fully developed party systems in West European democracies are frozen.

Let me adduce a number of quotations, supporting my interpretation of the frozen party system theory, which implies low volatility, restricted fractionalisation, stable party outcomes and only a few types of party kinds:

I) “Central questions”: i)”the genesis of the system of contrasts and cleavages within the national community” (page 1); ii)”the conditions for the developments of stable system of cleavage and oppositions in national political life” (page 1); “the behavior of the mass of rank-and-file citizens within the resultant party systems”


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(page 2). One may interpret this list of key questions that the theory will attempt to answer as a search for stability in democratic party politics on the basis of social groups and individual voting behaviour.

II) Key aim: ”...to throw light on....the 'freezing' of different types of party systems....(p.3), ”we seek to assemble materials for comparative analyses of the current alignments of voters behind the historically given 'packages' ...(p. 3).

These presuppositions and core assumptions were highly applicable for theory construction about West European politics in the societies of the 1960s and the 1970s. Clearly, they are verifiable or refutable, depending on the data availability of the world of facts. But are they suitable as a starting-point for an enquiry into the party politics of the now mature post-industrial society in Western Europe? I think not. 5. PEDERSEN: Earth-quake elections The first scholar to raise fundamental objections to the political sociology approach was Dane Mogens Pedersen, suggesting some very interesting and relevant concepts, like volatility, flash parties and volcano elections. He argued convincingly that to enquire into whether the Lipset-Rokkan theory is coherent with basic facts about West European parties and their electorates, one must gather empirical information about the following: a) volatility: net and gross; b) party fractionalisation; c) types of parties in each country; d) the occurrence of earthquake elections; e) the transformation of the cleavages in the social structure. One may employ indicators like these to compare West European politics between 1970 and 2010. The finding is that the frozen party system theory holds for 1970 but it is not true of politics in this century. 6. WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 1970-2010 The Lipset-Rokkan model of West European politics identified certain salient features in how the electorate relates to the party system as well as how the political parties manoeuvre to form a representative government on the basis of the principles of parliamentarism. Today one would speak of the principal-agent relationships in a democratic polity. According to the model, the interactions between voters, parties and governments are characterized by certain features, including:

a) a stable structure of cleavages in the electorate; b) loyal voting behaviour from one election to another; c) a stable pattern of government formation based upon coalitions in Parliament.

In order to make these hypotheses testable, one needs to develop a set of indicators to map the political realities of the 1960s and 1970s. Explicitly constructed indices may be employed for re-analysis of data that are pertinent to the existence of these features (a - c), including the aim to find out whether the model conjectures still hold for West European politics in 2000-2010. I suggest that the following indicators are central for the Lipset-Rokkan theory:

i) volatility ii) fractionalisation and types of political parties: iii) coalition structure.

The Lipset-Rokkan model amounts to a middle-range theory, focussing upon the outcomes of elections, the parties making up a party system and how these parties create viable governments. The emphasis is definitely upon stability. So let us first focus upon electoral volatility. 6.1 Volatility The enquiry into the links between voters and political parties was much enhanced through the distinction between net and gross voter volatility (Pedersen 1979). It allows one to examine at depth whether electoral behaviour is so to speak ”frozen”, meaning changing little. Table 1 states the scores for 1970 against 2000. The finding is that volatility has risen considerably, from between 5-10 per cent to 15-25 per cent. Net volatility results from gross volatility, or party switching among voters, being usually twice or trice as strong as net volatility.


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Table 1. Volatility 1970-2010: Net and Gross Country net_1970 net_2000 gro_1970 gro_2000 Austria 2,6 16,6 Belgium 6,9 15,5 27,0 Denmark 15,6 10,8 23,0 29,3 Finland 7,7 9,9 22,0 24,0 France 17,7 20,6 28,0 42,0 Germany 5,0 9,9 12,0 25,5 Greece 23,1 13,6 17,0 Iceland 12,6 12,9 30,9 Ireland 8,5 21,2 24,0 Italy 6,1 13,4 32,0 Luxembourg 12,3 7,2 Netherlands 13,2 22,7 20,0 39,8 Norway 15,2 14,2 22,8 33,3 Portugal 11,7 11,4 16,5 Spain 12,1 11,2 10,0 Sweden 6,3 13,5 17,3 33,5 Switzerland 7,7 8,9 27,7 United Kingdom 8,3 7,0 18,3 17,8

Note: Net volatility: The gains and losses of political parties participating at two elections as measured by the Pedersen index. Gross volatility: Measured as party switching by voters changing parties over two consecutive elections. Sources: Net volatility: Based on data presented in Ersson (2012) Gross volatility: See Appendix. The rise in volatility is dramatic for some countries that used to be well-known for their electoral stability: Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. One may say that volatility 1970, net and gross, goes together but deviate considerable from net and gross volatility 2000. The pattern of voter-party relations in one election to another has changed from the industrial society of the Lipset-Rokkan model to the post-industrial model true of the early 21rst century. Diagram 1- 2 provides ample evidence for the changes in voter volatility. The more the empirical cases fall outside of the 45 degree line, to the right or to the left, the more change is indicated by the data.

Diagram 1. Net Volatility 1970 and 2000

Source: See Table 1


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For most countries hold that net volatility is much higher around 2000 than 1970, although I find a few notable exceptions. In any case, the 2000 pattern is entirely different from the 1970 pattern. This is even clearer about gross volatility (Diagram 2).

Diagram 2. Gross Volatility 1970 and 2000 Source: See Table 1 The empirical cases fall off the 45 degree line to the right mostly. providing evidence of a sharp rise in gross volatility. To sum up The concept of volatility, gross and net volatility, is a most powerful indicator on party system change. One may compare the pattern of volatility for 1970 (Diagram 3) with that of 2000 (Diagram 4).

Diagram 3. Source: See Table 1 Neither gross nor net volatility is especially high around the 1970s, according to the Diagram 3. For the situation about

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2000, Diagram 4 presents an entirely different picture.

Diagram 4.

Source: See Table 1 Both kinds of volatility are sharply higher in Diagram 4 than in Diagram3. 6.2 Fractionalisation and New Parties (Betz) Hans-Georg Betz (1997) was one of the first scholars who recognized that a new kind of party was created in post-modern society. Some of the new populist or nationalist parties have been receiving enough support to survive several elections and even entering government coalitions. Some have operated like Pedersen’s flash parties, receiving much support at one election only to be phased out at later ones. As spectacular as the flash parties is the slow death of a mass party like the Communists as well as the sudden disappearance of the Italian Christian Democrats. However, strong Left-Wing parties have become influential in both Greece and Spain. To what extent can one speak of the same parties when comparing elections around 1970 with elections about 2005? According to the Lipset-Rokkan theory, the main parties would be mass parties responding to the basic cleavages in the social structure, i.e. class, religion and region. These alignments would be frozen, meaning low volatility in election outcomes. Generally speaking, the post-modern condition is not one of huge mass parties. Party membership has declined significantly all over Western Europe, the parties finding financial support with the state somehow instead. One mass party has disappeared entirely, the Communists who were a force to reckon with in e.g. France, Italy and Finland. The religious parties have survived but only as a Christian party. By regional parties, Lipset and Rokkan had in mind small parties fighting for autonomy or independence like the Scottish Nationalists etc. They did not envisage the rise of populist anti-system parties like the National Front in France or the Austrian Freedom Party. The Populist Party is now to be found in many West European countries as an anti-immigration and anti-EU party, like in France, the Netherlands and Denmark as well as Norway and Sweden and Finland, where they are sizeable. Of course, there is also party continuity as with the Social Democrats, the Conservatives, Liberals and Agrarians. How to portray parties’ change with quantitative numbers? A few attempts have been made to map the existence and strength of various political parties that may be used for a re-analysis of the Lipset-Rokkan theory. One such classification targets the size of Left and Religious parties – the mass or cleavage parties: socialist – left-socialist-communist-agrarian and religious parties. Diagram 5 shows the combined size of the Lipset-Rokkan cleavage parties 1970 and 2000.

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Diagram 5. Mass parties: Left + Religious + Agrarian

Note: LR-ALT measures the support for socialist + left-socialist + communist + agrarian + ethnic parties Source: Based on data available from Armingeon et al. (2013) One observes the decline of the cleavage parties in Diagram3, providing evidence of party system change. Most of these mass parties are below the 45 degree line. Another indicator that may be employed to map party system transformation is to try to measure the size of new parties. In Diagram 6, the category ”Others” designate political parties that are NOT socialist, conservative, agrarian, communist or liberals. Again, one may note that these parties are mostly above the 45 degree line in Diagram 6.

Diagram 6. New Parities

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Note: Following Sundberg (1999) OTH measures the support for new parties as 100 –(socialist + agrarian + conservatives + communists + liberals) Source: Based on data available from Armingeon et al. (2013) 7. GOVERNMENT COALITIONS: Riker versus Lijphart According to political sociology, electoral formulas do not establish governments, as with Duverger (1954), but are themselves endogenous to the cleavage structure. Thus, Western Europe will have predominantly PR election systems that promote multi-party politics because of the fractionalisation of the party system. One would expect to find the following governments in a system of multi-party politics with fixed alignments and strong cleavages:

a) several minority governments; b) fewer minimum winning coalition governments; c) oversized governments.

Diagram 5 shows that minority governments were more frequent around 1970 than 2000. This finding deviates from Riker’s stylised coalition theory, predicting the virtual dominance of the minimum winning coalitions, or even minimum sized coalitions. In a frozen party system, it may be easier to manoeuvre with minority governments, making deals in Parliament and its committees.

Diagram 8. Minority governments

Note: MIN measures the per cent of time a minority government has been in power. Source: Based on data in Andersson et al. (2014) In a post-modern society, political parties are no longer constrained by cleavage legacies, thus being more willing to form majority coalitions like for instance the MWC, or minimum winning coalition that barely supersedes the 50 per cent power threshold (Diagram 9).


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Diagram 9. Minimum Winning Coalitions

Note: MWC measures the per cent of time a minimum winning coalition has been in power. Source: Based on data in Andersson et al. (2014) When historical patterns of voter alignments do not count as much, coalition making possesses more degrees of freedom. Majority governments are after all easier to run than minority governments, all other things equal. In Western Europe, PR methods have in a few countries been used as the basis for so-called consociationalism (Lijphart, 1968), meaning an effort to bring all players, or most of them, on board for consensus policy-making. The creation of grand coalitions would in a cleavage dominated society constitute a tool for the political elite to minimize conflict and avoid any tendency to civil war between the so-called camps (zuilen, pillars). But in a post-modern society with border-less strata and communities, a grand coalition may simply be an alternative to a weak minority government (Diagram 10).

Diagram 10. Oversized Coalitions


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Note: SURPLUS measures the per cent of time an oversized coalition has been in power. Source: Based on data in Andersson et al. (2014) In a post-modern society, oversized or grand coalitions make little sense. When a party system is dominated by two large parties that cannot form a simple majority government or a minimum winning coalition, then they may resort to the oversized format: Austria. Only Switzerland employs the collegiado as a matter of principle since 1959, although it works as a mechanism to empower government and Parliament against the referendum democracy of this country (Neidhart). Political parties that can create a minimum winning coalition by means of a coalition with itself are not frequent in Western European parliamentary democracy. 8. Conclusion The social carpet or Durkheim’s social structure or Rokkan’s cleavages underneath the political parties is all but stable, with new issues coming up for which the established parties are not prepared – e.g. the massive flow of refugees from Arab countries. The voter chooses as he or she wishes – individual means-end choice with Weber - without group pressures or old legacies – social structure, making the life if parties difficult and hazardous. The recent transformation of societies in Western Europe (Touraine, 2013) has promoted the emergence of an entirely different kind of party politics and democratic contestation. Stunningly, the gross volatility can now reach 50%, every second voter shifting. The huge cleavage parties – Communism, Christian Democracy and Social Democracy – have shrunk considerably or been washed away. The number of parties has increased – fractionalisation - as well as the probability of flash parties. In the literature on party systems (Sartori, 1975; Keman and Budge, 1988), the classical focus is upon the number of parties – fractionalisation or effective number of parties - and the effects of the electoral institutions – Duverger’s two-partism against multi-partism. However, once one move to a dynamic analysis of rapid change in party systems, the focal interest will be upon volatility. What restrains too much of volatility is the workings of transaction cost minimising mechanism. It is costly to change parties entirely from one election to another, both for the politicians involved and the voters. Table 2 documents the long-run trend towards more and more of volatility. Table 2. Net volatility in Western European elections

Summary of volatility Decade Mean Std. Dev. Freq. 1970-79 10.591514 6.5865799 55 1980-89 10.231104 6.9730458 58 1990-99 11.483612 5.9708036 53 2000-09 11.738517 5.9025244 55 2010-15 18.529448 10.333016 24

Total 11.734261 7.1916167 245 As Table 2 shows, net volatility keeps increasing in West European elections. References Andersson, S., Bergman, T., & Ersson, S. (2014). “The European Representative Democracy Data Archive, Release 3”.

Main sponsor: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (In2007-0149:1-E). [www.erdda.se] Armingeon, K., Knöpfel, L. Weisstanner, D. Engler, S. Potolidis, P., & Gerber, M. (2013). Comparative Political Data

Set I 1960-2011. Bern: Institute of Political Science, University of Bern. Betz, H-G. (1994). Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe. New York: St Martin’s Press. Duverger, M. (1954). Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, London: Methuen. Ersson, S. (2012). Electoral volatility in Europe: Assessments and potential explanations for estimate differences. Paper

presented to the 2012 Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (EPOP) Conference, Oxford University. Data on gross volatility measured as party switching: See enclosed excel file in Ersson.

Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of Scientific Explanation, New York: Free Press. Keman, H. (1994). “The Search for the Centre: Pivot parties in West European party systems”, in West European

Politics, 17(4), 124-148. Keman, H., & Budge, I. (1988) Parties and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford U.P. Kriesi, H., & Pappas, T. S. (Eds) (2015). European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession. Colchester: ECPR


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Press. Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lakatos, I., & Musgrave, A. (eds.) (1970). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. Levy, M. (1952). The Structure of Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lijphart, A. (1968). The Politics of Accomodation Lipset, S. M., & Rokkan, S. (1967). Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction, in

Lipset, Seymour M. and Stein Rokkan (eds) Party Systems and Vopter Alignments: Cross-National Prespectives, New York: The Free Press, 1-64.

Lybeck, J. A. (1986). Is the Lipset-Rokkan Hypothesis Testable, Scandinavian Political Studies, 8, 105-113. Mair, P. (2001). The Freezing Hypothesis: An Evaluation, in Lauri Karvonen and Stein Kuhnle (eds.) Party Systems and

Voter Alignments Revisited, London: Routledge, 27-44. Neidhart, L. (2002). Die politische Schweiz. Fundamente und Institutionen. Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Pedersen, M. (1979). The Dynamics of European Party Systems: Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility, European

Journal of Political Research, 7, 1-26. Popper, K. (1965). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London: Routledge, Kegan Paul. Riker, W. H. (1984). The Theory of Political Coalitions. Westport, C: Greenwood Press. Rokkan, S. (2009). Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Processes of Development,

with Rokkan (Author), H. Valen (Collaborator), A. Campbell (Collaborator), Per T. (Collaborator). Colchester: ECPR Press.

Sartori, G. (1975). Parties and Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. Sundberg, J. (1999). The Enduring Scandinavian Party System, Scandinavian Political Studies, 22, 221-241. Touraine, A. (2013). La fin de la societe. Paris: Seuil.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.




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Risk Management in an Electricity Transmission Project between Iceland and the UK

Daisuke Sasaki 1, Mikiyasu Nakayama 1 1Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan Correspondence: Daisuke Sasaki, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa-shi, Chiba 277-8563, Japan. Received: November 23, 2015 Accepted: December 10, 2015 Available online: December 28, 2015 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1209 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1209 Abstract In recent years, energy is transmitted in the form of electricity in some parts of the world. Furthermore, all member states of the European Union (EU) have a legal obligation to ensure that 20% of their community energy consumption comes from renewable sources by 2020. Therefore, there is a great demand for electricity derived from renewable sources while at the same time there are non-negligible risks in electricity transmission between nations. Addressing these risks is thus of great importance. Under such circumstances, the national power company in Iceland is investigating the possibility of installing a series of 800–1,200 MW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine power cables of over a span of 1,000 km in an effort to deliver more than 5 TWh of renewable electricity to the UK each year. In order to accelerate this project, the company must employ measures of risk prevention and/or mitigation. This study aims at revealing the potential risks of this project (called IceLink) using qualitative analysis. Thus far, there seems to be very few similar studies concerning the project, yet the results are significant from the viewpoint of risk management. Based on the results of interviews and a survey of the literature, we identify three major potential risks of the project: regulatory risk, political risk, and financial risk. In this regard, we classify risk in the same manner as a previous research. Subsequently, we suggest ways to manage these risks and as a result, we find that many of these measures can be introduced even under the present circumstances. Keywords: risk management, renewable energy, electricity transmission, feed-in tariff, financing instrument, IceLink 1. Introduction 1.1 Background Coal, petroleum, and natural gas have been traded as energy sources between nations since ancient times. In recent years, energy is transmitted in the form of electricity in some parts of the world. However, electricity transmission between nations does not necessarily occur even if there is a match between supply and demand. The reason for this is because of the risks inherent in electricity transmission projects, and these risks sometimes interrupt the projects. Additionally, previous research, e.g. Schmidt (2014), suggests that there are non-negligible risks present with low-carbon investments, and therefore reducing risk is of great importance. According to Statistics Iceland (2015), Iceland is a country of 103,000 km2 and a population of 329,100 as of January 1, 2015. The proportion of hydro energy to total generation of electricity is 71%, and that of geothermal energy is 29% as of 2013. Thus, it can be said that almost all electricity in Iceland is derived from renewable sources. Moreover, the existing capacity of hydro energy and geothermal energy is only 26% of the total potential power, while the capacity still to be developed is an additional 20% (The IEA Geothermal Implementing Agreement, 2013). At this moment, about 70% of electricity is consumed by aluminum smelters, the largest consumer in Iceland. However, domestic electricity prices in Iceland remain very low while electricity prices in nearby European nations are very high. More specifically, the average domestic wholesale electricity price in Iceland was just above 20 USD/MWh in 2014, while the wholesale electricity price to the UK was 80–140 USD/MWh at the same time (Askja Energy, 2015). Within this context, the plan to transmit electricity from Iceland to other European countries such as the UK at a higher price has been investigated for some time (Hammons, Lee, Chew, & Chua, 1998). Furthermore, according to the European Union [EU] (2009), all member states of the EU now have a legal obligation to ensure that 20% of their community energy consumption comes from renewable sources by 2020. Thus, there is a great demand for electricity derived from


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renewable sources. Under the circumstances, Landsvirkjun, the national power company in Iceland, is investigating the possibility of installing 800–1,200 MW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine cables of over 1,000 km that will deliver more than 5 TWh of renewable electricity to the UK each year (Landsvirkjun, 2015a). The envisaged transmission route of IceLink is shown in Figure 1 (Nakayama, Sasaki, & Ito, 2015).

Figure 1. Planned trade of electricity from Iceland to UK in the IceLink project.

Source: Nakayama et al. (2015) 1.2 Previous Research DESERTEC, the electricity transmission project between the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region and Europe, has already been investigated in other research. The schematic map of DESERTEC is shown in Figure 2. Incidentally, surplus desert power can supply 17% of the EU consumption (The DESERTEC Foundation, 2015).

Figure 2. The schematic map of DESERTEC. Source: The DESERTEC Foundation (2015)


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Backhaus, Gausling, and Hildebrand (2015) investigated the risks that stakeholders of DESERTEC are exposed to. As a result, they have determined that previous studies did not account for uncertainty in a comprehensive fashion, and they were likely to omit important risks. The real risks for this project are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Risks reported for DESERTEC. Each number represents the occurrence of the risk in 222 online articles about DESERTEC that were published between 2007 and 2013.

Organizational International politics

Country- specific Abandon Revenue Technical External

143 67 35 24 16 11 9

Source: Backhaus et al. (2015) Thereby, it can be said that organizational risks (47% of the total records) and risk due to international politics (22%) are perceived to be more important than revenue risks (5%) and technical risks (4%). Backhaus et al. (2015) also pointed out that a project can be feasible when using the proper amount of risk mitigation, and these researchers introduced four possible courses of action (SERA) to deal with the risks of project: substitute risks by costs, eliminate risks, redistribute risk, and abandon the project (or shrink the project’s size). Komendantova, Patt, Barras, Battaglini (2012) examined risk as a barrier to investment in the case of concentrated solar power in North Africa, and these researchers divided the risks into nine types: regulatory, political, revenue, technical, force majeure, financial, construction, operating and environmental. Moreover, regulatory risks and political risks are much more significant than other risks in the projects that were examined. Incidentally, in this classification, complexity, and corruption of bureaucratic procedures as well as the instability of national regulations are included as a part of regulatory risks. Similarly, a low level of political stability in a country and the lack of support from local governments are included in political risks. In addition, Khalfallah (2015) analyzed renewable energy trade via electricity corridors linking two regions of the Mediterranean basin and suggested that project participants would face a price-differential risk and volume risk. Therefore, a long-term contractual agreement could be the optimal framework for designing corridor projects that will bilaterally coordinate the necessary investments. Similarly, Francés, Quemada , and González (2013) addressed the relationship between energy security/energy risk and renewable energy sources, applying their results to the EU Mediterranean Solar Plan. These researchers advocated that regulatory and institutional conditions must be on the same level in both the EU and North African countries in order to promote investment in renewable energy sources. Incidentally, Van de Graaf and Sovacool (2014) examined four energy megaprojects, including DESERTEC, and this provides us with a good baseline reference. These researchers pointed out that all four projects suffered from a similar set of problems: too many stakeholders and stakeholder fragmentation, cost overruns and the risk of accidents and terrorist attacks, massive externalization of costs to third-party stakeholders, concentration of wealth and corruption, and inflated expectations and biased projections. 1.3 Objectives and Research Questions This study aims to reveal the potential risks of a possible electricity transmission project between Iceland and the UK (i.e., IceLink) using a qualitative analysis. Thus far, there seems to be very few similar studies concerning this project, and it will be useful to obtain knowledge from the viewpoint of risk management. Incidentally, our research questions are as follows:

What are the major potential risks of the electricity transmission project between Iceland and the UK that must be considered from the viewpoint of risk management?

How can we avoid or mitigate these risks in order to expedite the project? 2. Method This study adopts a method of interviews with relevant experts as well as a literature survey. Specifically, we held interviews in Reykjavik, Iceland from March 20–21, 2013, from March 12–14, 2014, and August 31, 2015 with the understanding that the Chatham House Rule applied. The names of the informants remain confidential. Based on the results of these interviews and the literature survey, we have identified several major potential risks to the project. In this regard, we classify these risks in the same manner as Komendantova et al. (2012), by dividing the risks into nine types: regulatory, political, revenue, technical, force majeure, financial, construction, operating and environmental. Finally, we make a suggestion to address the identified risks.


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3. Results and Discussion 3.1 Identifying Major Potential Risks Through interviews and literature surveys, we have identified three major potential risks of an electricity transmission project between Iceland and the UK (i.e., IceLink) in the categories of regulatory risk, political risk, and financial risk. The following will include a detailed examination of each of these three risks. 3.1.1 Regulatory risk. Regulatory risk is related to the renewable energy support system in the UK, namely feed-in tariffs with contracts for differences (FiTs-CfDs), and we assume that these will be used in the project. The benefits of this system are that a fixed revenue can be guaranteed, and thus the project can be freed from revenue risk. In regards to this, Woodman and Mitchell (2011) also advocate that revenue risk such as volume risk or market risk can be removable using a system of FiTs. Thus, it can be said that the cash inflow of the project heavily depends on the system operated in the UK. At the present time there are some documents discussing the role of FiTs-CfDs in non-UK renewable electricity projects, such as a document from the Department of Energy & Climate Change (2014). However, there are several uncertainties regarding the regulatory framework, and in this regard we identify regulatory risk as a critical risk in the project. 3.1.2 Political risk. Political risk means a risk of political intervention in Iceland, and there are two main contributors of this. The first contributor is the anxiety of large power consumers (i.e., aluminum smelters) fearing that the domestic wholesale power price in Iceland will rise in the future. According to Landsvirkjun (2015b), about 80% of electricity sales by Landsvirkjun in 2014 were made on long-term contracts to power intensive customers, mainly the aluminum smelters: Alcoa, Rio Tinto Alcan, Century Aluminum, Elkem, and Becromal, along with ferrosilicon plants and data centers. The large power consumers in Iceland are therefore immune in the short-term to price changes due to increases in wholesale electricity prices. However, it can be speculated that their long-term financial interests could lead to their opposition to the project as it would represent added competition for energy and potentially higher prices although their influence on the outcome is unknown. The other source of this risk is a sense of insecurity of Icelandic citizens, fearing that the price of power will raise simultaneously with the launch of IceLink. In other words, Icelandic citizens seem to be afraid that exporting electricity will result in soaring retail power prices as was the case in Sweden. In addition, many citizens are suspicious of their government due to the recent economic disaster. For these reasons, the political risk in Iceland is so important that particular caution will be required. 3.1.3 Financial risk. We can also identify the risk of a difficulty in raising sufficient funds. During the financial crisis of 2008, depositors of Landsbanki, one of the major Icelandic banks, at branches in the UK and the Netherlands lost access to their deposits. This case was eventually brought to the EFTA court by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) (Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Iceland, 2015). Therefore, the lingering impact of this incident, namely a certain credit crunch, seems to be making it difficult to raise long-term and stable funds for this project from overseas financiers. Meanwhile, there is a certain investment fund that has demonstrated its interest in the project (Atlantic Superconnection Corporation, 2015), however it is still uncertain whether it can come to terms with the expected rate of return of the project. Therefore, we conclude that financial risk is a real concern for the project. 3.2 Addressing the Identified Risks Subsequent to identifying the risks inherent in this project, we suggest measures to address each of these risks. 3.2.1 Regulatory risk. According to Bürer and Wüstenhagen (2009), some investors are deeply skeptical about government involvement in this project in any form. A solution to this situation is that policy makers should make greater efforts to convince investors. Another view is that this project could be left to the markets. Apart from this, Backhaus et al. (2015) indicates that insurances offered by Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) are available for certain kinds of risks inherent in renewable energy projects. That is to say, it is the regulatory risk identified here can be substituted by costs in the form of insurances. In addition, there are private insurance companies that underwrite a certain degree of risk in Europe. Therefore, it is possible for these regulatory risks to be addressed to a certain extent even under the present circumstances of the project. 3.2.2 Political risk. Above all, it is essential that Landsvirkjun and the Government of Iceland provide thorough communication with the stakeholders. More specifically, they should convince large power consumers (i.e., aluminum smelters) that the diversification of their marketing channels resulting from new electricity transmission to the UK does not necessarily mean rise in the domestic wholesale price of power in the future. At the same time, both Landsvirkjun and the Government of Iceland should put Icelandic citizens at ease by committing to maintain the current retail power price. This is because they have broad discretion in the domestic power prices. Also, it may be effective to declare that there will be a subsidy for households using electric heating. Furthermore, they can explain that profit from the electricity transmission project will fund such a subsidy for domestic stakeholders. Moreover, secrecy about policies


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and effects on the public can possibly cause anxiety of citizens. Thus, project organizers should improve public disclosure and achieve accountability for all stakeholders. 3.2.3 Financial risk. Needless to say, it is the best to raise funds from Icelandic institutional investors in order to address the concerns of financial risk. In this regard, the Pension Fund for State Employees (LSR) is a good candidate, because pension funds are able to be invested in relatively long-term investments. At the end of 2014, the total assets of the LSR included about four billion USD at a rate of 130 Iceland Krona (ISK) per USD. Meanwhile, the amount of other investments, consisting of private equity and real estate, were 0.2 billion USD at the same exchange rate, equivalent to only about 5% of the total assets (LSR, 2014). Incidentally, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), one of the largest pension funds in the USA, allocated about 10% of their portfolio to private equity as of June 30, 2014 (CalPERS, 2014). Thus, there seem to be some potential investors in Iceland who can raise funds for the electricity transmission project that is now under consideration. Furthermore, new financing instruments are being recently advocated, and one of them is hybrid bond presented by Lee and Zhong (2015), whose comprehensive framework is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. A comprehensive framework of the hybrid bond. Source: Lee and Zhong (2015)

In addition, the hybrid bond is also effective for risk management, contributing to the optimization of risks.

AuthorizedRenewable

Energy ProjectsBondholders

CDS / Insurance Seller

Secondary Market

Management Service Provider

Hybrid Bond

Senior Tranche

Subordinate Tranche

Interest Only TranchePaym

ent f

or p

rote

ctio

n

ProtectionTr

ansf

er o

f ow

ners

hip

Investment

Capital Investment

Revenue Principal + Interest


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3.3 Summary The summary of our discussions thus far is shown in Table 2. Table 2. Summary of discussions

Significant Potential Risks Features Measures

Regulatory Risk

There are several uncertainties regarding the regulatory framework, namely that the cash inflow of the project heavily depends on the system operated in the UK.

Using insurances, this regulatory risk can be substituted for increased costs. There are private insurance companies that underwrite a certain degree of risk in Europe.

Political Risk One of the two main factors is an anxiety of large power consumers, i.e. aluminium smelters; the other is a sense of insecurity of Icelandic citizens.

It is essential that Landsvirkjun and the Government of Iceland make thorough explanation of the stakeholders. It is also important to explain that profit from this project will be passed on to domestic stakeholders in the form of subsidy.

Financial Risk With the after-effects of the 2008 financial crisis, it seems very difficult to raise long-term and stable funds from overseas financiers.

There seems to be some potential investors in Iceland, such as the Pension Fund for State Employees (LSR). Furthermore, new financing instruments such as hybrid bonds are worth considering.

4. Conclusions This study has identified three major potential risks associated with the IceLink project: regulatory risk, political risk, and financial risk. These results are similar to Komendantova et al. (2012) who advocate that regulatory risk and political risk are much more important than other risks, although its analytical targets are concentrated solar power projects in the North African region. Incidentally, it can be said that financial risk in Iceland is much more significant due to the after-effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Next, we have provided suggestions that address each major potential risk. Consequently, we find that many of the measures discussed above can be introduced even under the present circumstances. In order to accelerate the project, it is desirable to employ these measures from the viewpoint of risk management. The future challenges of this study are two-fold: a) developing a new financial scheme based on the results of the risk analysis; b) implementing quantitative analyses such as a calculation of financial data. In regards to the former, we should keep in mind the basic principle of risk management—those who can control the risk most appropriately that should take that risk. In other words, the risk associated with the best financial scheme becomes optimal in most cases. Also, with respect to the latter, it is of great importance to consider future uncertainty from the viewpoint of risk management, because the life of the project is too long to foresee what will occur throughout the entire period. Specifically, some methods that deal with the uncertainty of the future may become applicable, including the real options theory. In any case, the financial scheme and the results of quantitative analyses should be self-consistent. Acknowledgements This study was supported by KAKENHI (25570003 and 15H02864), the 21st Century Culture and Academic Foundation, the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. References Askja Energy. (2015, September 28). Positive interest in IceLink. Retrieved October 11, 2015, from

http://askjaenergy.org/2015/09/28/positiveinterestinicelink Atlantic Superconnection Corporation. (2015). Atlantic superconnection corporation. Retrieved October 25, 2015, from

http://www.atlanticsuperconnection.com Backhaus, K., Gausling, P., & Hildebrand, L. (2015). Comparing the incomparable: Lessons to be learned from models

evaluating the feasibility of Desertec. Energy, 82, 905–913. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.01.100 Bürer, M. J., & Wüstenhagen, R. (2009). Which renewable energy policy is a venture capitalist's best friend? Empirical


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evidence from a survey of international cleantech investors. Energy Policy, 37(12), 4997–5006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2009.06.071

California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). (2014). Comprehensive annual financial report: Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2014. Sacramento, CA: California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS).

Department of Energy & Climate Change. (2014). Contract for difference for non-UK renewable electricity projects. London, United Kingdom: Department of Energy & Climate Change.

DESERTEC Foundation. (2015). DESERTEC Flyer. Hamburg, Germany: DESERTEC Foundation. European Union. (2009). Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the

promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources and amending and subsequently repealing Directives 2001/77/EC and 2003/30/EC. Retrieved from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32009L0028

Francés, G. E., Quemada, J. M. M., & González, E. S. M. (2013). RES and risk: Renewable energy's contribution to energy security. A portfolio-based approach. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 26, 549–559. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2013.06.015

Hammons, T. J., Lee, K. O., Chew, K. H., & Chua, T. C. (1998). Competitiveness of renewable energy from Iceland via the proposed Iceland /UK HVDC submarine cable link. Electric Machines & Power Systems, 26(9), 917–933. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07313569808955867

IEA Geothermal Implementing Agreement. (2013). Iceland Country Report 2013. Reykjavik, Iceland: Orkustofnun. Khalfallah, H. (2015). Connecting Mediterranean countries through electricity corridors: New institutional economic

and regulatory analysis. Utilities Policy, 32, 45–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2015.01.001 Komendantova, N., Patt, A., Barras, L., & Battaglini, A. (2012). Perception of risks in renewable energy projects: The

case of concentrated solar power in North Africa. Energy Policy, 40, 103–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2009.12.008

Landsvirkjun. (2015a). Submarine Cable to Europe. Retrieved October 11, 2015, from http://www.landsvirkjun.com/researchdevelopment/research/submarinecabletoeurope

Landsvirkjun. (2015b). Annual report 2014: Landsvirkjun’s ongoing market drive. Retrieved October 25, 2015, from http://annualreport2014.landsvirkjun.com/increased-demand-and-new-opportunities/international-marketing-and-business

Lee, C. W., & Zhong, J. (2015). Financing and risk management of renewable energy projects with a hybrid bond. Renewable Energy, 75, 779–787. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2014.10.052

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Nakayama, M., Sasaki, D., & Ito, S. (2015). Domestic and diplomatic difficulties in planning for transboundary trading of electricity. Journal of Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources, 28, 72–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.3178/jjshwr.28.72 (Japanese)

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and European energy megaprojects. Energy Policy, 74, 16–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2014.06.027 Woodman, B., & Mitchell, C. (2011). Learning from experience? The development of the Renewables Obligation in

England and Wales 2002–2010. Energy Policy, 39(7), 3914–3921. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2011.03.074





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Health, Human and Sustainable Development Carla Aparecida Arena Ventura1, Marcela Jussara Miwa1, Márjore Serena Jorge1 & Isabel Amélia Costa Mendes1

1University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing/WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing Research Development, Brazil Correspondence: Isabel Amélia Costa Mendes, Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing/WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing Research Development, Avenida Bandeirantes, 3900 – Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil CEP 14040-902 Email: [email protected] Received: December 7, 2015 Accepted: December 21, 2015 Available online: December 28, 2015 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1235 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1235 Abstract The human right to development and human right to health are closely linked, and it is impossible to conceive the development process without the consolidation of the right to health. This article aims at discussing the potential connections between health, human and sustainable development in the context of increasing globalization. Keywords: Right to health; Development; Human Right. Conflict of interest: There is no conflict of interest

1. Introduction 1.1 Health as a Human Right Since 1946 health is recognized as “one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition” (WHO, 2006). The essence of the right to health is oriented by the characteristics of a human right: universality, to all citizens without distinction; adequate progress, as once certain successes have been reached, they should be considered irreversible, implying in the adoption, by countries of measures for their protection; equality, which implies a distribution of human, technical and financial resources, based on both individual and collective needs, through positive measures to ensure that general health policies effectively reach all sectors of society (CANÇADO TRINDADE, 1991). However, the human rights, and therefore the right to health, are in a constant process of being rebuilt through social struggles (PIOVESAN, 2006). In 1978, the right to health was reaffirmed during the Alma-Ata Conference. The Declaration of Alma-Ata emphasized an expanded health concept and pointed out the influence of social inequalities on health, highlighting the responsibility of governments for the health of their people (WHO, 1978). Accordingly, the governments should adopt a positive attitude to promote health and well-being of the population. When factors such as education, recreation, work, housing conditions and sanitation, among others, are developed with equity they directly affect the quality of life. The same document pointed to the importance of economic and social development to health as they reduce the differences regarding health status between developing and developed countries. However, the achievement of social and economic development is one of the international community greatest challenges, especially in finding ways to deal with globalization and its influence on health and development This article aims at discussing the potential connections between health, human and sustainable development in the context of increasing globalization. 2. Discussion 2.1 Development and Globalization Development is a complex process and has been historically sought by the nations of the world. With the end of World War II and the creation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and the meeting in its midst of countries with different levels of development, the term “development” became an integral part of the work agendas of international organizations (SOARES, 1994; MARCOVITCH, 1994), based on a set of actions with the aim of reducing the gap between center and periphery, based on a demand for globalization that was more ethical and solidary. With this view, important meetings to discuss development strategies were organized during the 1960s and 1970s, including the Bandung Conference (1955), in Indonesia; the Cairo Conference (1962); the First United Nations


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Conference on Trade and Development (1964); Algiers Conference (1973); The Lusaka Conference (1973); and the General Assemblies of the United Nations of 1974 and 1975 (FERNANDES, 2008). In this sense, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights of 1981 expressly recognized the right to development as a right of the human being in article 22, paragraphs 1 and 2, according to which:

All peoples shall have the right to their economic, social and cultural development with due regard to their freedom and identity and in the equal enjoyment of the common heritage of mankind. States shall have the duty, individually or collectively, to ensure the exercise of the right to development (OAU, 1981).

On December 4, 1986, the Declaration on the Right to Development defines in its first article the right to development as:

An inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized (UN, 1986).

Despite the pioneering perspective of the African Charter on human and peoples’ rights (1981) and the UN Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986, the recognition of the right to development as an unquestionable human right was consecrated definitively in the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Right (UN, 1993). The right to development should comprise three priority dimensions: a) the participation of the people, with the aid of democracy to guide the formulation of public policies, providing them with greater transparency and accountability; b) protection for basic needs of social justice set out in the Declaration on the Right to Development by the UN; and c) a need to adopt national policies and programs through international cooperation (SEN, 1999; PIOVESAN, 2006). Accordingly, with regards to health, the degree of development and the socio-economic distribution patterns, the legal framework, the financial and geographical coverage of health public and private services at different levels, strategies adopted for the development and the adequacy of health care determine the specificities of the health sector in each country. Health systems are also influenced by other political and social macro-environmental factors, by the historical development of the sector and by the way each country organizes its services. Nevertheless, when developing countries follow the logic of globalization, health can be negatively affected (BUSS, 2002). Globalization can bring some health benefits such as: to spread information and medical research, to facilitate trade of equipments and medicines (HELMAN, 2009:271); to facilitate the transfer of investment and technology (CORNIA, 2001); and to accelerate the economic development of poor countries (DOLLAR, 2001). However, despite these benefits, there are several negative impacts of globalization on health. Likewise, financial speculation, economic protectionism and trade barriers can harm the economies of poor countries, increasing foreign debts and social inequalities, reducing the social commitment of governments and undermining health programs and policies. Furthermore, due to the increment in migration flows, globalization can also increase the transmission of diseases, sex tourism, drug trafficking and conflicts as a result of economic and territorial disputes (BUSS, 2007). According to Ibrahim (2013), globalization in African countries reinforced their economic marginalization, problems to consolidate democracy, leading them to lose their cultural identity. In countries of South America, such as Bolivia and Argentina, globalization is hurting the culture of indigenous people. Although the governments recognize the value of traditional medicines from local communities, their development policies are destroying the environment: water pollution, logging and mineral extraction, deforestation, monoculture agriculture and overuse of pesticides. These factors reduced the areas for hunting and fishing as well as the areas of medicinal plants, affecting the quality of life of indigenous peoples, and making them more dependent on the biomedical system (HITA, 2014). Akerman et al (2006) found that health organizations, which are uniquely based on scientific-technological knowledge defended by biomedicine, generate forms of production and consumption of health services with high costs, low impact on the population’s health, strengthening barriers to health access as they place health needs on the sphere of private consumption. In this scenario, development models and their intersection with health systems were put into question mainly due to the difficulty they faced to improve people’s quality of life. In addition, doubts emerged about changes needed in the health fields, considering new ways of human development and aiming to improve people’s lives (AKERMAN et al., 2006). Thereby, it is important to note that quality of life is paramount in local development. A developed city should not mean a large and populous city, but rather be a synonym of being a good city to inhabit, in which the population enjoys prosperity, education, security, health and personal growth prospects (MARTINELLI, JOYAL, 2004).


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2.2 Health, Human Development and the constant search for Sustainable Development To understand health and development connections, both as human rights, we must consider the concept of human development, which involves not only the economic dimension to evaluate the advancement of the population, but also social, cultural and political characteristics that influence life expectancy and are, therefore, directly linked to health. Thus, the main goal of human development is to extend the possibilities of peoples’ choices, through the expansion of their capabilities and the scope of their activities, allowing them to enjoy a long, healthy, creative life with a lower illness rate (UNDP, 1990). In 1990, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP, 1990) claimed that any development strategy should combine “accelerating economic growth, reducing absolute poverty and reducing absolute deterioration in the physical environment” (p. 61). However, in 2014, the same organization announced:

Despite recent progress in poverty reduction, more than 2.2 billion people are either near or living in multidimensional poverty. That means more than 15 percent of the world’s people remain vulnerable to multidimensional poverty. At the same time, nearly 80 percent of the global population lack comprehensive social protection. About 12 percent (842 million) suffer from chronic hunger, and nearly half of all workers – more than 1.5 billion – are in informal or precarious employment. (UNDP, 2014: 2)

Furthermore, “more than 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by conflict” (UNDP, 2014:4) and there are many victims of other violent crimes. The World Health Organization, in its document on social determinants of health (WHO, 2011:30), called for a global action on these determinants and drew attention to the importance of the rich countries to be committed regarding the development of poorer countries, aiming at the achievement of a really sustainable development. Sustainable development is more than preserving natural resources as it means to recognize that people are in the core of any development process (UN, 2012). According to the United Nations (2012), sustainable development is possible when it promotes inclusive and equitable economic growth, reduces inequalities, creates opportunities for all, and promotes sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems that supports “economic, social and human development while facilitating ecosystem conservation” (p.1). In this sense, to achieve this harmonious relationship between human beings, the environment and economic growth, the actions towards sustainable development become more consistent when conducted at local level, respecting the pace and wishes of local communities. For such a development to be successful, local policies should be decentralized, intersectoral and flexible, working not only with the needs but also with the potential of the place and people. Furthermore, it should encourage creativity, innovation, individual and collective entrepreneurship, favoring the use of local resources to address local issues (AKERMAN, 2005). In the case of health, these aspects should contribute to greater use of simple, effective, cheap and affordable technologies. For these reasons, local development has been pointed out by many authors and international organizations (UNDP, 2002) as a privileged field of action to drive resources, encourage citizenship, improve living conditions with healthier spaces and minimize health risks (CALAME, 2004). The expansion of possibilities and social and economic resources from localities represents one of the axes for the overcoming of inequalities and poverty (AKERMAN et al, 2006). Thus, we consider that a better distribution of social and economic resources coupled with greater social participation in the design, implementation and evaluation of public health policies besides improve the quality of life, strengthens citizenship and stimulate human development. More than simply maintaining labor-productive work, the connections between health and development encompass other aspects. According to Gadelha and Costa (2012), health influences the development in two main aspects: first, it is a right of citizenship; second, investment in health contributes to the economic sector, since health services generate jobs, income and investments in technological innovation. In turn, development stimulates human development, “involving the decrease in all sources of privation, by means of valuing people, which entails the need to review the State's role in the elaboration of social policies, such as health policies” (VENTURA, 2008).

3. Conclusions The right to health is a fundamental human right (VENTURA et al, 2012), however, increasing social inequalities as a result of the globalization process as well as inefficient internal public policies hinder access to this right. Therefore, if we consider within the development framework, human and sustainable development as possibilities for people to have their freedom (SEN, 1999) to choose development regarding their own lives, any proposal for local or global development should be based on people’s participation in the construction and implementation of public policies,


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including health policies. In this perspective, an intelligent government in the social area is not a state of specific assistance based actions, but one with “state policies” of health, education, nutrition and culture able to achieve harmony between economic, social and environmental needs (KLIKSBERG, 1998). In sum, the search for human and sustainable development is only possible if based on people’s needs, enabling them to exercise their human rights. In this paper, we emphasized the importance of the right to health and its assurance by governments as a condition to achieve any level of human and sustainable development.

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World Health Organization. (2006). Constitution of World Health Organization – basics documents, Forty-fifth edition, Supplement. Available at:http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf. Accessed on 01 June 2015

World Health Organization. (2011). Closing the gap: policy into practice on social determinants of health – discussion paper. Rio de Janeiro.

Note This article was developed during the course “Global Health Diplomacy” offered by Isabel Amélia Costa Mendes and Carla Aparecida Arena Ventura, from the Graduate Program on Fundamental Nursing and the Graduate Program on Psychiatric Nursing.





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Mechanisms of Progress in Organic and Cultural Evolution Börje Ekstig1

1Uppsala University, Department of Education, 750 02 Uppsala, Sweden. Correspondence: Börje Ekstig, Uppsala University, Department of Education, 750 02 Uppsala, Sweden. Received: December 7, 2015 Accepted: December 22, 2015 Available online: January 13, 2016 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1301 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1301 Abstract Due to the randomly changing environmental conditions in which natural selection is acting, it is hard to see how this process could give evolution the steady direction of a large-scale incessant progress. In the present article I propose a solution to this dilemma by the application of the concept of complexity as a measure of evolutionary progress, a notion that I have developed in a descriptive way in previous works. By means of the concept of complexity one can conceive of the evolutionary process as having a stable direction towards ever-increasing complexity. The explanatory mechanism behind this trend is in the present work suggested to be found in the combined actions of natural selection, competition, feedback, arms race, and sexual selection. These mechanisms are discussed at length, being applicable not only in organic evolution but in human cultural and social evolution as well. Keywords: Evolution, Culture, Complexity, Competition, Feedback, Language acquisition, Sexual selection, Arms race. 1. Introduction As is well known, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution implies that organisms evolve by a continuous adaptation to their environment by means of natural selection. There are few biologists today – and I’m certainly not one – who would venture to attack this solid structure. However, during the long time of the evolution of life, the environment has certainly changed dramatically in a highly random way and under such chaotic conditions it is hard to see how natural selection could have driven life to evolve the way it actually has, characterized as it is by a large-scale incessant progress. It is my intention with this article to tackle this problem. In this enterprise I will try to find a solution that might be applicable to the human cultural and social evolution as well. As soon as there are several species (or cultures) living and thriv1ing simultaneously in contact with one other, there is competition. This mechanism lies at the heart of the very process of life and can be seen as a form of natural selection if one includes the actions of other individuals of the same species or those of other species as parts of the external environment. Indeed, it can be characterized by the popular expression “the struggle of life”. This struggle in many cases compels creatures to change, if possible, towards increased complexity. Therefore competition is intimately connected to the process of evolution. Another fundamental characteristic of the processes of biological as well as of cultural evolution is that it proceeds in an iterative process. Every new generation starts so to say from scratch, just retaining and reusing the genetic and cultural information transmitted from the preceding generation. This process gives the individual developmental growth an especially central role in the evolutionary process. The importance of the developmental process is furthermore strengthened by the fact that natural selection primarily acts on the developmental process, not on the evolutionary process directly. This is so because evolution proceeds by means of changes in genes, which have direct impact on the developmental process only. Thus, evolution advances as a result of insensibly small continuous modifications in the development programs of living organisms; modifications giving rise to the vast diversity of life. A corresponding rationale can be made about cultural evolution and I maintain that much of our understanding of cultural and social evolution has to be based on an understanding of children’s mental, verbal and social development. The transmission of genetic and cultural information from each generation to the beginning of the next can be considered as a feedback process. I have in a previous publication (Ekstig, 2016) made a first analysis of the concept of feedback, an analysis that I expand in the present work, especially to the field of human cultural and social evolution.


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Life and human culture involve processes of extremely high complexity. Charles Lineweaver and coauthors have collected contributions to the analysis of complexity from several researchers in the field. These authors point out a central problem with the concept of complexity inasmuch as there is no definition generally agreed on. But, as the editors ask, even without a definition or a way to measure it, isn’t it qualitatively obvious that biological complexity has increased? Do we really need to wait for a precise definition to think about complexity and its limits? (Lineweaver et al., 2013 p. 5). I have in preceding publications (Ekstig, 2010 A, 2015) suggested the concept of complexity to be useful in the analysis of the evolutionary process, both regarding its organic and cultural manifestations. In particular, I have demonstrated complexity to increase continuously from the realm of organismal evolution into the human cultural evolution thus fusing these two processes, so different if superficially regarded, into a large-scale unified process. I have found that the concept of complexity allows us to conceive of the evolutionary process as having a well-defined direction towards ever-increasing complexity. In addition, I have shown that an environment-independent form of natural selection is to be included in the explication of the trend of increasing complexity (Ekstig, 2016). In the present work, I discuss additional explications to be found in the combined actions of ordinary natural selection, competition, feedback and sexual selection. 2. Natural selection and cultural evolution A challenging question is to what extent the Darwinian theory of biological evolution could serve as a unifying principle, thus also including the human cultural progression. Edward O. Wilson, in developing the theory of sociobiology, claims that gene-culture coevolution is a special extension of the more general process of evolution by natural selection (Wilson, 1998 p. 128). Wilson emphasizes that culture and hence the unique qualities of the human species will make complete sense only when linked in causal explanation to the natural sciences, biology in particular (ibid., p. 267). Wilson’s ideas have turned out to be highly controversial but got their follow-up by Richard Dawkins (1976) with his introduction of the concept of memes, forming a corresponding kind of hereditary unit in the human cultural evolution as that of genes in biological evolution. Dawkins ideas have been expanded by Daniel Dennett (1995), suggesting that the Darwinian process, involving variation, selection and retention, may be seen as a substrate-neutral evolutionary algorithm that could be applied to many fields of knowledge outside that of biology. He notes in particular the importance of memetics in social science. Likewise, Susan Blackmore (1999) discusses the applicability of the notion of memes to the evolution of human culture in which she accentuates the importance of imitation. She notes that human brains began expanding in size at about the same time that we started using stone tools and suggests that once individuals began to imitate each other, selection pressure favoured those who could make the most intelligent choices on what to imitate. Imitation led to the emergence of language, in the progression of which sexual selection plays a crucial role (ibid., pp. 69 – 77). 3. Competition In considering the fact that external contingencies certainly have been highly chaotic during the long existence of living creatures on earth, its steady direction of increasing of complexity cannot be explained merely by Natural selection as working by means of adaptations to these unstable environmental conditions. I suggest that competition might in part explain the steady increase of complexity. Competition is a general source of evolutionary change and is by no means a new concept. Living creatures, in order to survive, continuously have to compete about food, leading to ordinary Darwinian natural selection, about mates, leading to sexual selection, and about ecological room in the external environmental landscape. Furthermore, there is competition of ideas that can survive and be dispersed in human brains and social life. What is new in my analysis and application of competition is that it can be seen as a process in the complexity space thus implying a powerful principle in the study of the large-scale characteristics of evolution. It is commonly observed that most species don’t change much over long periods of their evolutionary history. They apply what is called stabilizing selection. I suggest this feature to be explained as a consequence of the fact that the complexity space is tightly occupied by other species above as well as below the specific level of each species, in this way acting as competitors. Daniel Dennett expresses this view, in stating that the odds are heavily against any mutation being more viable than the theme on which it is a variation (Dennett, 1995 p. 89). It is only the species that at each point of time in the evolutionary history dwells on the highest level of complexity that may evolve to a still higher level because for those, there are no competing species at higher levels. These species may then apply what is called disruptive selection. This process explains much of the emergence of new species and gives the evolutionary process a recognizable direction in a steady though stepwise increasing complexity. It should be remembered, though, that this


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conclusion is depending on an acceptance of the concept of complexity as a quantitative concept. The reasoning fulfils my intention as expressed in the introduction to find an explanation to the large-scale incessant progress of evolution going on in spite of the randomly changing environment. A main characteristic of this process is that it is cumulative. Actually, it seems that a species, despite hard conditions, will never regress to a former stage, except maybe parasites. In hard conditions they will rather choose extinction. This is clearly expressed by Harold Blum although without the application of the concept of complexity: “The whole picture of evolution is one in which derivation of new patterns comes from modification of those existing – never by the return to a former starting place for a new ‘try’ ” (Blum, 1968 p.175). An especially interesting though controversial consequence of this rationale is that the human species, as being the latest emerging of big animals, is situated at the highest level of complexity. And in addition we may make a still more interesting observation, namely that there is an empty gap between our presently existing nearest relatives and us, because all intermediate pre-human species are extinct. This gap makes it easier to consider the human species as unique. I have discussed this issue at length in Ekstig (2016). These features of evolution are illustrated by means of a diagram showing complexity versus time. I have in previous publications displayed and analysed this diagram being reproduced in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A diagram of evolution as formed by processes suggested in the present analysis. The diagram was first published in (Ekstig 2010 B) and repeatedly reprinted and discussed in (Ekstig, 2015, 2016).

The diagram of Figure 1 displays in a highly simplified form complexity versus time and can be interpreted to comprise organic as well as cultural evolution. The diagram can be seen as a Tree of Life. The horizontal lines represent stagnant species and the stepwise curve represents the emergence of novel species, a process that mainly occurs amongst those species that dwells at the highest level of complexity. This stepwise curve at the same time represents the common descent of all species and, maybe one could say, of all cultures as well. As a consequence of this view, one may understand why evolution proceeds cumulatively in a decisive direction in the complexity space towards ever-increasing complexity. The curves in the diagram are explained as result of the action of competition as I have discussed at length in a previous work (Ekstig, 2015). The concept of competition is found to be applicable in cultural evolution as well. Thus Richard Alexander (1989) proposes that social competition between and within human groups has implied a feedback of intelligence constantly producing successively enhanced human intelligence. Dawkins expresses a similar notion: “If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain, it must do so at the expense of ’rival’ memes” (Dawkins, 1976 p. 211). Daniel Dennett articulates an analogous view: “Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is a considerable competition among memes for entry into as many minds as possible. The competition is a major selective force in the infosphere and, just as in the biosphere, the challenge has been met with great ingenuity.” (Dennett, 1995 p. 349). It is easy to observe that, for instance, there is an incessant competition between different religions and sects, which may be seen as a competition of space in people’s brains.


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A much more detailed presentation of vast diversity of animal evolution is to be found in Dawkins’ comprehensive survey (Dawkins, 2004), the principle difference of which in comparison with the present view is that it doesn’t comprise the concept of complexity. The steps in the uppermost curve in Figure 1 indicate especially rapid raises of complexity in connection with the emergence of novel species. Such changes are accomplished by natural selection, which, as I suggest, is supported and enhanced by other evolutionary mechanisms such as feedback, sexual selection, and arms race. These mechanisms are now discussed. 4. Feedback The developmental growth of a living creature is governed by their inherited genetic set up. These genes are sieved by natural selection before fed back to the start of the development of the individuals of the next generation. Thus, as I previously have discussed (Ekstig, 2016), the transmission of genetic information from the adults to their offspring may be regarded as a feedback mechanism that is successively repeated in an iterative process all along the evolutionary course. Cultural knowledge, manners and values are in an analogous way transmitted to children during their upbringing, thus forming a similar process of feedback. The principle of feedback is applied in electronic amplification devices, a mechanism that can give a much stronger (or weaker) amplification than that given by the amplifier itself. It works by means of a coupling of the output signal back to the input side thus forming a closed loop for the signal that in this way is repeatedly amplified. This mechanism is here suggested to have its analogy in the evolutionary process as well, inasmuch as genetic information, after being sieved by natural selection, is coupled back to the beginning of each new generation, thus forming a self-reinforcing lope of genetic information. This principle is relevant to cultural and social evolution as well. Thus, cultural characteristics in every society are fed back to the growing children in this way accomplishing continuing cultural qualities in human societies. Bernard Crespi (2004) discusses the application of feedback to evolution. He points out that positive feedback can be instrumental in driving many of the most important and spectacular processes in evolutionary ecology. He emphasizes that the self-reinforcing dynamics of positive feedback generates the conditions for changes that might otherwise be difficult or impossible for selection or other mechanisms to achieve and that it can generate large-scale changes in genetic systems. Amongst examples of feedback, Crespi mentions the peacock’s tail and the human brain. I suggest the principle of feedback to be regarded as an inherent and inescapable principle of evolutionary change because, as a most fundamental feature of evolution, living creatures go through their individual developmental course with an onset at every new generation by just retaining and reusing the genetic and cultural information transmitted from the preceding generation. In this way an iterative loop of information is formed that may be successively changed during the developmental course – changes being statistically expressed in processes on the population level, the features of which may be successively displaced due to the influence of natural selection. Take as an example the thickness of fur being a response to cold climate. In a climate of decreasing temperature, the fur grows until its function satisfactorily balances the benefit in relation to its cost. This is normal natural selection. In this process, the selection causes a change during the developmental course that might be compared to the amplification in the electronic device. After this sieving process, the changed genetic information is fed back from the adult to its offspring in a process causing evolutionary change over time. In the example of the fur, there will in this way be a cumulative growth of the fur. Needless to say, the fur exerts no impact on the climate and this is the common meaning of the mechanism of feedback. In this way feedback gives a complementary mechanism to natural selection. Most of evolutionary changes in all species can be explained as a result of these dual processes, leading to the continuous increase of complexity over the evolutionary course. A manifestation of feedback can be seen in cultural evolution as well. Social habits and values, vernacular language, religious propensities, as well as general knowledge of how to live and survive are transmitted to the children. When grown-ups, they repeat this process thus forming a feedback process that in the course of human history has given rise to cultural and social stability but also to successive changes. An illustrative example is seen in religious activity. Dawkins (2006 p. 176 - 177) points out that natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them, because such a trusting obedience is valuable for survival. But a child has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. When the child grows up and has children of her own, she will pass the whole lot on to her own children. Dawkins furthermore points out that religious leaders are well aware of the vulnerability of the child brain and the importance of getting the indoctrination in early. As I see it, one may regard this process as an example of ordinary feedback because children have no chance to argue against or have influence on their parents or priests. In most cases, this case of feedback is characterized by an intentional resistance towards change, a


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process leading to a quite conservative society. In discussing possible analogies between cultural and organic evolution one could compare the intentional resistance towards change with stabilizing selection. 5. Strong feedback However, I think that feedback may have an additional, much more efficient form inasmuch as the result of the selection process may have an influence on the very environment by which the selection procedure is accomplished. I suggest this form of feedback to be called strong feedback. In returning to the analogy with electronic amplification devices, I think that one can regard strong feedback as a process in which the output of the amplification is influencing the core amplification of the amplifier, thus making the amplification still stronger. In the context of evolution the selection process accomplished by the environment is considered as corresponding to the core amplification. Strong feedback is an active recursive process that can be considered as a complementary mechanism to the passive adaptation to the environment characterizing natural selection. I give some examples of this mechanism. 5.1 Sexual Selection A commonly discussed example of sexual selection is the conspicuous plumage of the peacock’s tail. This feature in the males is reinforced by sexual preference for such traits in the females. The preferences in the females are inherited in forthcoming generations of females and the genes of females having the strongest expression of their preferences will be promoted by their mixing with the males with the most extravagant tails. Therefore, the preference in the females is also reinforced in the course of evolution. This mutual evolutionary process is discussed at length by Dawkins, pointing out that the genes for male qualities, and the genes for making females prefer those qualities are evolving together:

Every time a male is chosen because of his long tail, not only are genes for long tails being chosen. At the same time, because of the ‘togetherness’ coupling, genes for preferring long tails are also being chosen. What this means is that genes that make females choose males tails of a particular length are, in effect, choosing copies of themselves. This is the essential ingredient of a self-reinforcing process: it has its own self-sustaining momentum. Evolution having started in a particular direction, this can, in itself, tend to make it persist in the same direction (Dawkins, 1988 p. 206).

In the context of the present discussion of feedback, this mechanism is strong feedback, because the selection process is affecting the very environment by which it is accomplished, in this way promoting the participants’ own reproduction – a mechanism leading to the runaway evolutionary change since long being observed as a result of sexual selection. Of course, natural selection due to the external environment may be in action as well, being simultaneously and independently superimposed to the achievements of sexual selection. It seems that sexual selection primarily gives the most conspicuous changes such as great plumage, ornamental colours and antlers. The application of sexual selection in the field of cultural evolution is discussed in sections 5.3 and 5.4. 5.2 Arms Race The normal action of natural selection implies that the environment is unaffected by its impact on the creatures in the process. Arms race, in contrast, means a sharp deviation from this principle in that the selection process accomplishes an impact on the environment in which it is exerted. Therefore, according to my definition, this process is to be regarded as strong feedback. As Dawkins (2004 p. 496) points out, arms races are deeply and inescapably progressive in a way that, for example, evolutionary accommodation to weather is not. A typical example is the impact predators and prey exerts on one other. Let as look at such an example. It is obvious that there is a strong selection pressure on gazelles to develop an ability to run fast in order to escape cheetahs, in this context considered as their environment. In this way the gazelles are compelled to run faster which implies a selection pressure on the cheetahs to run faster in their turn. This reasoning can be carried out in the other way too. I think that such an increasing ability implies a growth of complexity in the anatomy of both the involved species that may go on in the same direction until physical or physiological limitations set in. Thus I conclude that arms race can contribute to the steps of increasing complexity illustrated in Figure 1. Arms race is in action in the human cultural and social evolution as well. Blackmore discusses arms race in the field of social evolution, in referring to the ‘Machiavellian Intelligence’ hypothesis. She thus states:

The similarity with Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 – 1527), the devious adviser of sixteenth-century Italian princes, is that much of social life is a question of outwitting others, plotting and scheming, entering into alliances and breaking them again. All this requires a lot of brain power to remember who is who, and who has done what to whom, as well as to think up ever more crafty wiles, and to double bluff the crafty wiles of your rivals – leading to a spiralling arms race (Blackmore, 1999 p.74).

This process of arms race in the social evolution of mankind has no doubt contributed to the rapid growth of our


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enormous brains and our intelligence. But maybe it isn’t altogether beneficial because in the field of social evolution, the process of arms race has its most literal meaning. It is a regrettable characteristic of human history that there has been such a great activity of warfare. Individuals, tribes, counties and nations have been engaged in numerous conflicts, thus having incessantly initiated inventions of successively more effective weapons and strategic knowledge. Like its application in the biological field, social arms race forms a self-reinforcing strong feedback because each side will compel the other to take part in the race for better weapons. As we as rational beings know all too well, this process may end in a human apocalypse. My hope is that science, in fostering democratic thinking, may show a possible way to break this terrible spell. 5.3 The evolution of verbal language The emergence of verbal language reasonably implied a great survival advantage for the early tribes of the human species, thus being rapidly evolved as a result of natural selection. However, there are another mechanisms acting in this process that have an additional influence, maybe even greater, on the evolution of language. Those mechanisms are imitation and sexual selection. Blackmore suggests that imitation and sexual selection have important influences on the development of verbal language in human children. She maintains that people preferentially mate with and imitate people with the best language (Blackmore, 1999 p. 104). This means that children of parents with exceptionally good verbal faculties are brought up in a social environment having a stimulating effect on their language acquisition. When these individuals become parents to the next generation of children, the process is repeated. In this way, the social environment of a child is formed by the developmental process of the children in the preceding generation. Thus she concludes that sexual selection forms a crucial mechanism in the evolution of verbal ability in the human species. However, one may raise the objection that parents with low verbal ability will have a slowing impact on their children, thus accomplishing the opposite effect on the evolution of language in the form of negative feedback process. This may be true, but I think that children in the small tribes of our ancestors certainly took part in common activities as for instance by sitting around the campfire and listening to the storytelling adults. In these situations, the most verbally talented adult person certainly dominated the talk and in this way the children were not solely dependent on their parents. In our own time there is a similar effect accomplished by schools in which children meet trained teachers that supposedly have a positive effect on their verbal development in addition to that of their parents. In this way, children will enhance their verbal acquisition that, when they grow up, has a positive effect on the social environment for the next generation of children. This process thus means a self-reinforcing strong feedback mechanism. I think this process, acting in addition to normal natural selection, is independent of the external physical environment because good language ability is certainly equally advantageous whether the physical environment is beneficent or deleterious. Verbal ability makes the brain visible in the process of sexual selection because, as Blackmore (ibid. p. 105) points out, being highly articulate makes you sexually attractive. There is actually even a more direct coupling between the growing child and its social environment. Children have an inherent propensity of imitating other persons, especially their parents, and this is certainly of great significance for the acquisition of language. Indeed, it is observed that parents are stimulated to enhance the babies’ inherited tendencies of imitation. Thus, as Patricia Kuhl (1915) describes, mothers are stimulated by their babies to use “baby talk”, also denoted motherese, in their interaction with the babies, a form of language characterized by a high pitch, slow tempo and exaggerated intonation. She refers to research showing that motherese exerts a positive effect upon infant language learning. Alison Gopnik and coauthors (Gopnik et al., 1999) point out that people across all cultures use motherese when they talk to their infants, even though they usually aren’t aware of doing it at all. (ibid. p. 129) The authors speculate that it is the appearance of the babies’ faces that initiate this behaviour and that this biological preference for baby faces seems to be instilled by nature. The authors thus maintain that there is coordination between what babies look like and what grown-ups think is cute. In this way grown-ups provide an environment in which babies can flourish (ibid., p. 166). Thus it seems that in this way babies exert an influence upon adults. The babies, by means of their cute faces, initiate a reaction on the side of adults to use the motherese way of talking. This process, I think, has been evolved in the prehistoric evolution of our species in a mutually self-reinforcing process already from the very onset of language capability. In this sense, there is not only an impact from the adult to the child but from the child to the adult as well. The growing child thus accomplishes a change in its own environment that is of crucial importance for its early language acquisition. I thus conclude that language evolution is enhanced by a self-reinforcing strong feedback process. I suggest that we may regard language evolution in the early human species as a transition period that goes from normal natural selection promoting improved survival to the form of self-sustaining evolution of memes that evolve, as Richard


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Dawkins points out, because they are advantageous to themselves (Dawkins, 1976 p. 214). The evolution of language thus seems to be enhanced by several cooperating processes: by means of ordinary natural selection due to its survival value, by a general feedback mechanism driven by imitation, by strong feedback driven by mutual imitation, and by sexual selection driven by the sexual attractiveness of language ability. Because of the fact that the acquisition of language is by far the most demanding intellectual activity, this process has instigated the remarkable rapid growth of the human brain, a process that has advanced in spite of its great nutritional cost. I conclude that the growth of our intelligence, of course coupled to our big brain, is to be attributed to the activity of several cooperating mechanisms of which strong feedback provides an important factor. 5.4 Memetic Selection The concept of memes was created by Dawkins (1976) as a parallel to genes, though applied to cultural evolution. As I suggest in the previous section, memes provide a mechanism for strong feedback in language evolution inasmuch as they exert influence on the environment in which they are selected. In a frequently cited formulation, Daniel Dennett points out that “the haven of all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artefact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes. …. The memes enhance each other’s opportunities: the meme for education, for instance, is a meme that reinforces the very process of meme implantation.” (Dennett, 1995, p. 365). As we can see, Dennett here articulates a rationale being exactly what I here have called strong feedback. Due to this strong feedback process, memes cause more rapid evolutionary changes as compared to the week feedback in ordinary natural selection, in which there is no influence on the environment. This, I think, explains the common observation according to which culture is evolving much faster that organic evolution. I have in previous works (Ekstig, 2010 A, 2015) suggested a method by means of which the rate of evolution is measured by the application of the concept of complexity. The result of this assessment implies that cultural evolution, occurring during the last million years, has contributed to complexity equally mush as organic evolution during the preceding billion of years. In the context of feedback, this result concurs with the present contention that strong feedback in its manifestations in cultural evolution can accomplish a much faster evolutionary change than what is typical for organic evolution. 5.5 The evolution of science Science is a vital cultural activity in industrialized as well as developing societies. One may speculate in what way its evolution can be explained by similar processes as those of biological evolution. The 1905 Swedish Nobel laureate in chemistry, Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) expressed in a book from 1907 the notion of an analogy of scientific evolution to Darwinian evolution, thus at the time when the discussion of Darwin’s ideas was intense:

It is with ideas as with organisms. A lot of seeds are sown, but only a few will grow, and amongst the living things being evolved from them, most are weeded out due to the struggle for existence, and only a few will remain living. In a similar way, ideas that are most successfully corresponding to nature are gradually selected. (Arrhenius, 1907. p. 175 –176, my translation from Swedish).

As we can see, Arrhenius associates the selection of ideas to the Darwinian concept of struggle for existence, in other words, to natural selection. I have in my previous works as well as in the present emphasized the importance of the developmental process for the progress of organic evolution and for the human cultural and social progress. The connection between children’s mental growth and the evolution of science was first observed by Jean Piaget by means of the concept of genetic epistemology. By means of this concept, Piaget suggested that there is a parallelism between the progress made in the logical and rational organization of knowledge found in the history of science and the corresponding formative psychological processes developed in children (Piaget, 1970 p.13). I think, though, that there is more to this than a mere parallelism. It is generally contended that children’s acquisition of knowledge during childhood and schooling has great significance for the progress of science. The results of scientific research are then transmitted back to school and university curricula, thus forming a self-reinforcing feedback process. However, there is a feedback coupling between the education of school children and the work of teachers as well, because the result of the training of teachers is dependent on the previous school education. This coupling means strong feedback. Although this process can be highly beneficial for the growth of welfare in a society it may unfortunately give rise to a vicious circle as well. As an example, I refer to the present situation in Sweden, where there is a great shortage of students aspiring for


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training to a profession as teachers of mathematics and the natural sciences. This means a shortage of good teachers in these school subjects that might lead to a situation in which many pupils develop distaste for these subjects resulting in a still greater shortage of teacher students in these subjects in the future. In this case, then, we may talk about a negative feedback coupling and it seems important that school authorities are aware of such tendencies. In their historical overview of the evolution of science, Holton and Brush (1973 p. 196) have convincingly pointed out the crucial importance of science for the promotion of progressive societies. They found it to be a source of constant wonder that once science got its first impetus in the early seventeenth century, it swept over Europe like a long pent-up storm. And when the Copernican and Newtonian – and the Darwinian, I would like to add – worldview triumphed in the West, the recognition that uniform laws hold sway over all matter – and life, I would like to add – everywhere helped overcome hierarchical thinking and prepare the minds for self-reliant democracy. 6. Conclusion It is generally acknowledged that organic life has been and is subject of continuous change being generally seen as a result of adaptation to the prevailing environment. However, in considering the chaotic nature of the environment in which the selection is carried out, this process cannot in itself bring about a decisive direction to evolution. In order to identify such a direction one needs a measure of evolution and I have in previous publications suggested complexity to provide such a measure. This measure indicates that the evolutionary process is characterized by a more or less continuous increase of complexity. The question of whether natural selection can provide an explanation for the human cultural evolution has long been subject to intensive discussion. In the present work I suggest some additional mechanisms for this process, actually being common to the organic evolutionary process as well. These mechanisms are competition and feedback. The mechanism of competition in organic evolution can be associated to the popular expression “the struggle of life”. In many instances, though, the competition from adjacent species is such that a species may find it best to stay at its level in the complexity space thus applying stabilizing selection. It is only species at the highest level of complexity that may evolve to a higher level because at these levels there are no competing species. This process is disruptive selection. On the basis of this reasoning I have constructed a new form of a Tree of Life in the form of a diagram of complexity versus time. In the cultural form of evolution competition has likewise a high explanatory power. There is a limited room in the human brain bringing about competition of ideas, cultural expressions and norms. The mechanism of feedback is explained by the fact that evolution proceeds in an iterative way, transmitting information from the adults to their offspring, thus under the ubiquitous pressure of competition giving selection the opportunity to repeatedly work on the developmental process and in this way steadily increase the amount of complexity. This reasoning is valid for cultural evolution as well. I have in the present thesis suggested a new version of feedback called strong feedback. Strong feedback is suggested to be an active recursive selection process, characterized by an impact on the environment in which the selection is operating. This selection then implies a bearing on genes and memes encouraging their own reproduction thus causing an especially rapid evolutionary change in a specific, seemingly arbitrary direction. In this way strong feedback may explain features of evolution that Darwinian passive adaptation to the environment is incapable of doing. An example is found in sexual selection in which there is a mutual coupling between the selection and its result. Sexual selection explains many anatomical traits and is in action in the evolution of verbal language as well inasmuch as there is a mutual coupling between the child and the adult. Another example of strong feedback is found in arms race. Gazelles and cheetahs form each other’s environment that gives rise to typical arms race. In the human society there may be individuals that attempt to deceit and wile one another, and to double bluff the crafty wiles of rivals, leading to spiralling arms race. Other applications of strong feedback are found in the evolution of verbal language, in the process of memetic selection, and in the evolution of science. The mechanisms of competition and feedback are suggested to be responsible to a large extent for the large-scale increasing measure of complexity in the evolutionary process. These mechanisms can explain the progressive nature of the evolutionary process, indeed as I venture to say, they explain the evolutionary trend towards ever higher heights. In addition, these mechanisms are not only active in the organic but in cultural evolution as well. I conclude that these mechanisms can be seen as complementary to the process of Darwinian natural selection inasmuch as they can explain features of the evolutionary processes that natural selection in its common interpretation is unable to do.


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References

Alexander, R. D. (1989). Evolution of the human psyche. In P. Millar & C. Stringer (Eds.). The human revolution: Behavioral and biological perspectives on the origins of modern humans, 455-513. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Arrhenius, S. (1907). Människan inför världsgåtan. Hugo Gebers. Stockholm. Blackmore, S. (1999). The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Blum, H. F. (1968). Time’s Arrow and Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Crespi, B. (2004). Vicious circles: positive feedback in major evolutionary and ecological transitions. Trends in Ecology

and Evolution, 19(12). Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Dawkins. R. (1988). The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Books, London. Dawkins, R. (2004). The Ancestor’s Tale. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. Bantam Press. London. Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon & Schuster. Ekstig, B. (2010 A). Complexity and evolution: A study of the growth of complexity in organic and cultural evolution.

Foundations of Science, 15, 263–278. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10699-010-9179-6 Ekstig, B. (2010 B). Biological and Cultural Evolution in a Common Universal Trend of Increasing Complexity. World

Futures 66, 435-448. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2010.489490 Ekstig, B. (2015). Complexity, Natural Selection and the Evolution of Life and Humans. Foundations of Science, 20,

175-187. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10699-014-9358-y Ekstig, B. (2016). Processes in Organic and Cultural Evolution. In Richardson, J. 2016. Natural Selection and Genetic

Drift. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York. Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (1999). The Scientist in the Crib. William Morrow and Company, INC. New

York. Holton, G., & Brush, S. (1973). Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science. Princeton University Press.

Princeton. Kuhl, P. K. (2015). Baby Talk. Scientific American. November 2015, 313, 64-69. Lineweaver, C. H., Davies, P., & Ruse, M. (2013). (Eds.) Complexity and the Arrow of Time. Cambridge: Cambridge

Univ. Press. Piaget, J. (1970). Understanding Causality. W. W. Norton & Co. New York. Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.





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The Vagaries of Therapeutic Globalization. Fame, Money and Social Relations in Tibetan Medicine

Laurent Pordié1 1National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-CERMES3), Paris, France. Correspondence: Laurent Pordié, Cermes3, Campus CNRS, 7 rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France. Received: December 11, 2015 Accepted: December 29, 2015 Available online: January 14, 2016 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1303 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1303 Abstract Studies of the international diffusion of Asian medicine tend to overlook the social mechanisms involved in the transnational circulation of therapists. This article, built around the biography of a female practitioner of Tibetan medicine, demonstrates that upward social mobility gained through individual involvement in the NGO sector allows for the mobilization of transnational networks which sometimes offer travel opportunities in return. In the Himalayan region of Ladakh, the main reason that practitioners travel the world is through projects aiming to improve the local conditions of Tibetan medicine. Contrary to common assumptions, these journeys abroad do not primarily consolidate social status, economic capital and medical legitimacy for Asian medical practitioners; they also bring in their wake ambivalence in individual status.This is because, in the cultural context of Ladakh, gaining fame and money too rapidly or too visibly is seen as deeply problematic. This article examines these tensions and opens up research paths on the social logics and local implications of both regional development and therapeutic globalization. Keywords: Transnational mobility; Local development, Fame; Money; Social frictions; Tibetan medicine 1. Introduction Originally found in the vast regions comprising populations linked by the Tibetan language, culture and religion,1 the learned medicine of Tibet is today a global phenomenon. The logics of the neo-liberal economy, policies favouring export and the renewed aspirations of the practitioners have contributed to a redefinition of the modes of production of Tibetan medicine, and have helped to establish it internationally. Sowa Rigpa, the “science of healing” (gso-ba rig-pa2), has been part of the global market for alternative therapies ever since, with a significant share in China itself (Craig and Adams 2008, Saxer 2013), benefiting as well from the positive image of Tibet prevalent in the West and from the international craze for non-biomedical treatments. The entry of Tibetan medicine into the world market has provided opportunities for the practitioners themselves to circulate globally, including those belonging to regions less directly affected by these developments. However, little is known on the social mechanisms involved in such individual mobility. The work by Mei Zhan (2009) on transnational Chinese medicine is a notable exception. This author used biographical accounts as a way of examining the specificity of translocality. She discusses the biographies of women practitioners from Chinese medical lineages and, by recounting the stories of their lives and careers, examines the transnational gender politics of traditional Chinese medicine (ibid.: 145-174). This work also provides details on the biographies of practitioners who have migrated from China to the San Francisco Bay Area to illustrate how, by producing “clinical miracles”, they not only achieve personal success and fame, but also fight for a foothold for traditional Chinese medicine in mainstream American medicine (ibid.: 92, 109-110). The only work relating to the international diffusion, if not globalization, of Tibetan medicine based on detailed individual itineraries is an MA thesis on a renowned family of Tibetan practitioners originating from Buryatia (Saxer 2004) – some aspects of which have been later revised and published (Saxer 2010).3 The author traced the

Note 1 This medical practice is found along the Himalayan range, in Pakistan (Baltistan), India (Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh), in Nepal (Mustang, Dolpo, the region around Mount Everest), the People’s Republic of China (the Tibet Autonomous Region, Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia) and in Bhutan as well as in Mongolia and Buryatia. Ladakhi practitioners believe that Tibetan medicine arrived in their territory in around the 10th or 11th centuries. Note 2 In this article, Tibetan and Ladakhi terms are transliterated according to the scheme proposed by Wylie (1959). Note 3 The data presented in this work was collected by the author in parallel with the shooting of a brilliant documentary film on the subject, which was released the following year (Saxer 2005). The combination of these two works constitutes an excellent example of visual anthropology.


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international peregrinations of the Badmayev family over 150 years and four generations, through Russia, Poland, Switzerland, and the United States. We learn that one of the family members established the first Tibetan medical practice in Europe sometime in the early 1860s (Saxer 2004: 15-17) and that a Badmayev descendant inspired the establishment of the Swiss (Tibetan medicine) pharmaceutical company, Padma AG, in the late 1960s (ibid.: 65). There are other works that narrate the personal histories of some reputed Tibetan doctors who were forced to leave their country in the wake of the Chinese occupation. However, while these texts do serve to illustrate their remarkable and often difficult journeys, as well as the dramatic situation in Tibet (Avedon 1997 [1984], Josayma and Dhondup 1990, Tsering 2005), they do not link such journeys to the international diffusion of Tibetan medicine, and even less to the logics of therapeutic globalization. In spite of the increase in academic work on global Tibetan medicine (Janes 2002, Meyer 1986, Millard 2008, Vargas 2008) and the effects of globalization and the market on the medical practice (Craig and Adams 2008, Janes 2001, Pordié 2011, Samuel 2001, Saxer 2013), there is a relative dearth of writing on the role of social mobility within the circulation of transnational Asian medicine. This paper presents a corrective by addressing the relations between, on the one hand, the social status gained by practitioners involved in projects arising out of international initiatives concerned with “medical culture” or “traditional health” in the Tibetan world and, on the other hand, the global mobility of Tibetan medicine practitioners. The articulation of these two domains of enquiry is a grey area in the literature which may be partly explained by the fact that a research subject of this kind seems at first sight to present a paradox: welfare projects focussing on Tibetan medicine have an explicitly local dimension, a fact which does not encourage a view of them as important players in the international diffusion of Tibetan medicine. These projects bring in their wake socially constituted networks of organizations and donors based in the West or in economically advanced Asian countries, networks which can be mobilized by the therapists to enable foreign travel. It is projects such as these that are the dominant factor in the international circulation of the Tibetan medical practitioners from Ladakh,4 a remote Himalayan region located in north-western India on the borders of both Pakistan and China. It was in Ladakh that I met the woman I will call Dolma Tsering in the late 1990s. At that time, nothing suggested that she would one day travel the world, since she had neither the adequate social status nor the essential social network. Her life’s journey, however, was later to lead her to distinguish herself amongst her peers and to acquire a high and coveted status. She belongs today to a category of practitioners who play a significant role in the social redefinition of institutional Tibetan medicine. Their activities are differentiated and diversified and include, for example, management of non-governmental organizations, environmental protection and the defence of intellectual property rights as well as research in the clinical, pharmacological, botanical, and philological domains. These practitioners make up a group that has emerged over the last twenty years in a new socio-political and economic environment, in an urban milieu or close to the social and political life of towns (Pordié 2008a). In this article, I refer to them as the ‘elite’. Their aspirations go far beyond the medical field. New possibilities are open to them within and outside their medical universe, their regions and their societies. Travelling the world is one such possibility. Back in her country, Dolma Tsering found herself in an ambivalent situation. While her travels had enhanced her social status, this was concomitantly challenged by her often envious counterparts who accused her of greed and opportunism. Individual mobility along and within global circuits and networks thus involves consequences that some authors have chosen to qualify as “frictions”, to underscore relations of disjuncture (Appadurai 1990), conflicting social interaction that nevertheless produces movement and further effect (Tsing 2004), or again, uncertain processes in global interaction (Froystad 2009). In this paper, the kind of discomfort engendered by global processes is examined in the light of the difficult relationship found in the region between status, the making of money and social relations, as well as gender and ethnicity politics. The biographical itinerary of Dolma Tsering thus illustrates the way transnational flows are often marked by frictions; it also provides the materials to situate the analysis in the more general framework of the globalization of Tibetan medicine. Studying the social mechanisms at work in the circulation of individuals involves delving into various sectors of social life and various levels of analysis. Local and global worlds and priorities intersect through the life of practitioners such as Dolma Tsering who truly straddle these domains, synchronically and/or diachronically, over the course of their careers. Examining the conditions of possibility and the social implications of the transnational circulation of Dolma Tsering therefore requires a double methodological exigency: special attention to the observation of small local units, and equal attention to the worlds that traverse them, worlds that in the process constitute and reconstitute them (Augé 1994). This will prove useful in our exploration of the role of ‘local development’ in the global diffusion of Tibetan medicine, as well as in our examination of questions of social and medical legitimacy and power relations within the Note 4 Ladakhi practitioners of Tibetan medicine travel to foreign countries for at least two supplementary, but much less significant, reasons. Some of them have family ties with people settled in the West or in economically advanced Asian countries, and occasionally visit them there. International conferences provide another way to go abroad, but, to my knowledge at the time of writing, this has only been to Nepal and, very recently, to the UK.


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group studied. As a contribution to this agenda, I have chosen to follow the personal history of Dolma Tsering through a series of biographical and analytical vignettes. 2. Making Money in Tibetan Medicine The exodus of thousands of Tibetans during the 1950s was a determining factor in the international spread of Tibetan medicine. The exiles were very dynamic, and quickly reconstructed their celebrated colleges of medicine in India. One of these, the Men-Tsee-Khang,5 is today the biggest institution of the Tibetan diaspora (Kloos 2008). Institutional Tibetan medicine has become a relatively lucrative business. In China, the period of reform that followed the Cultural Revolution also brought about profound transformations in Tibetan medicine. The Chinese government, wanting to integrate this medicine with scientific modernity, supported its development and provided opportunities for fresh directions. In particular, they encouraged the privatization of its practice and the export of medicines (Janes 1995 and 2001, Saxer 2013). Tibetan medicine has thus become a commodity in a burgeoning worldwide and very competitive healthcare market. The situation is much the same in Bhutan, where the pharmaceutical unit of the Institute of Traditional Medicine Services in Thimphu explicitly focusses on exporting medicines. These developments have brought about profound changes in medical supplies at the national level. The post-socialist versions of a liberalized economy in Mongolia and in the Tibet Autonomous Region have caused the poorest in the population to be cut off from Tibetan medicine (Janes 1999 and 2001, Janes and Hilliard 2008). Elsewhere, the preparation of medicines and their components have been modified in order to penetrate Western markets. For instance, the clinics of the Tara Institute in Great Britain only produce plant-based medicines in accordance with a list of plants imposed by the British Government (Millard 2008), and mercury, proscribed in the West because of its toxicity, is excluded from medicinal preparations in some contexts in Asia (Aschoff and Tashigang 1997, Craig 2012: 151). Tibetan medicine is thus produced as a global commodity and consumed everywhere for its indigenous virtues (Janes 2002). While this form of Tibetan medicine is today permeated throughout by capitalist logics, it does however embody moral (Buddhist) values and a particular vision of the world that exerts a particularly seductive power in Western societies. However, the very logics that render this medicine accessible in the West embody a kind of ideological and economic domination which is generally (most often, discursively) opposed by its Western supporters. These objections are made in Asia too. In India, the Men-Tsee-Khang stopped selling medicines to private clinics in the 1980s to discourage attempts at personal gain (Kloos 2013). More recently, the officials of the Tibetan Government in exile deplored the contemporary trends in Tibetan medicine. In 2003, during a talk given on the occasion of the forty-second anniversary of the Tibetan Medical and Astro Institute (Men-Tsee-Khang) in Dharamsala, the Prime Minister, Samdhong Rinpoche, and the Minister for Health and Finance, Lobsang Nyendak Sayul, expressed their profound disagreement with the business orientation of Tibetan medicine. The Prime Minister repeated his reservations in 2006 at the International Conference of the Central Council of Tibetan Medicine in Dharamsala, exhorting practitioners not to become too involved in commercial affairs. He added a moral stance to his remarks by encouraging physicians to be compassionate, and “not to become commercialised medical professionals” (Chauhan 2006). These men addressed their forebodings concerning the future of institutional Tibetan medicine in general and the development by practitioners of private clinics in particular, seeing therein a threat to the survival of Tibetan culture. Their remarks underlined not only the links between Tibetan medicine and ‘cultural survival’ in exile (Kloos 2010), but also, and most significantly for this article, a problematical sentiment amongst Tibetans about the rapid or too visible acquisition of status or wealth. For Martin Saxer’s interlocutors in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China (2013), Tibetan medicine is an antithesis of the world of Chinese business.6 One of them thus said: There was a businessman, a Chinese. He asked me if I wanted to work with him to build this school and I agreed. Then, he asked me, ‘How are we going to divide the income?’ And my answer was that there would be no income. So he asked how I could think of building a school that would not generate any income. And what is more, he asked what good it was if there was no income. My answer was that it was good for my Tibetan culture (cited in Saxer 2013: 2). This feeling becomes all the more acute when it concerns the practitioners of Tibetan medicine, or amchi. In general in the Indian Himalayas, rural amchi are not wealthy. They do not see Tibetan medical practice as a strong source of income and nor do the villagers. And indeed, solely from an economic standpoint their practice is hardly viable, if at all

Note 5 The Men-Tsee-Khang (sman rtsis khang) was originally founded in Tibet in 1916 by the 13th Dalai Lama, and was re-established in India by Tibetan exiles in 1961. It is located in upper Dharamsala at McLeod Ganj, the township that is home to the government of the present Dalai Lama. See Kloos (2008) for details. Note 6 Writing about a Chinese minority nationality traditional practitioner and seller of natural pharmaceuticals in China, Judith Farquhar and Lili Lai (2014: 21) remark that “in the free-wheeling market environment of China today, any sort of expertise can be a commodity, and its vendor has a near-inviolable right to make money from it”.


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(Besch 2007, Blaikie 2009, Pordié 2002). What is more, in the Ladakh region these practitioners are generally perceived by their fellow citizens according to idealistic models, with emphasis on qualities such as honesty, sincerity, and compassion (Besch 2006: 102-110, Kuhn 1994, Pordié 2007) - standards which must disqualify some of them. The amchi themselves cite certain behavioural and moral codes that they must follow in order to improve their medical practice.7 The “qualities” most often cited are compassion (snying rje), respect for living beings, honesty and generosity. They also believe that helpfulness, respect for others, an open smile, candid words and a “good heart” (sems bzang)8 are very important. The development of altruistic qualities occupies a central place, and conditions, perhaps more than the other qualities, the healing power of the therapist.9 While moral organization and social behaviour are largely secular among laymen (Pirie 2006), in the case of the amchi, the moral and ethical dimensions of medical practice are clearly influenced by Buddhism. The accumulation of capital by Tibetan medical practitioners and the subsequent rise in status this brings about are commonly seen to be incompatible with the ideas just enumerated since they may imply greed and boastfulness. Most importantly, Ladakhi society at large is characterized by a relative equality among the majority of its people (Pirie, 2007), and differences – in wealth or opinions, for example – are generally concealed from the public. Conspicuous disparities among individuals are considered potentially damaging to social equilibrium. 3. A Marginalised Female amchi in Ladakh Dolma Tsering belongs to a family of pastoral nomads who fled Tibet for India at the end of the 1950s due to the troubles caused by the Chinese invasion. She was born in 1970 in Kharnak, on the high plateaus of the Ladakhi Changthang. As is shown on her identity card (Identity Certificate, Govt. of India), the place and date of her birth made Dolma Tsering an Indian citizen of Tibetan origin.10 For many years, her household (drong-pa) raised yaks and goats, moving in groups of several tents (rebo) in a regular rhythm towards new pastures. The difficult conditions of existence of these populations, and the hope of gaining a better life, have significantly contributed to the massive rural exodus over the last forty years (Goodall 2004, Dollfus 2004). Numerous Ladakhi and Tibetan families were established in Choglamsar, a town situated on the immediate periphery of Leh, the capital of Ladakh, and it was here, in the Tibetan settlement 100, that Dolma Tsering lived during her adolescence. She was a good student and easily passed the grade 10+2. This examination, which certifies twelve years of schooling, allowed her to envisage higher education. Dolma Tsering decided to study Tibetan medicine, moved by the deplorable sanitary conditions of the nomad community into which she was born, she explains. Neither of her parents were Tibetan medical practitioners. She joined the specialized department of the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies (CIBS) in Choglamsar in 1988. The curriculum and the examinations of this institution, which is answerable to the Central Government of India, are supervised by the Tibetan authorities of the prestigious College of Medicine and Astrology at Dharamsala (Men-Tsee-Khang). Dolma Tsering was part of the first graduate class of the school. She studied for five years followed by twelve supplementary months of practical training. Her internship took her to the Housing Colony in Leh, in the clinic of her former professor at CIBS.11 Dolma Tsering was awarded the Kachupa diploma (dka’ bcu pa) in 1994, known officially in India as Bachelor of Tibetan Medicine and Surgery (BTMS), the highest degree of institutional training in Tibetan medicine which very few practitioners in Ladakh hold.12 Dolma Tsering then consulted for a year in a Tibetan Medical Camp near to her home, followed by two supplementary years in the second clinic of her former teacher in Leh. She founded her own clinic at the centre of Choglamsar, near the bus station, which gave her a certain degree of visibility. The inhabitants appreciated her services: Dolma Tsering, it began to be said, was an “amchi rgyala” (a good amchi). She married a Tibetan soldier from the Indo-Tibetan Border Force in the second half of the 1990s. They had a son together then divorced a few years later. Dolma Tsering married for a second time in 2005 and had two more children, Note 7 They very often recite to the letter the passages found in a 17th century canonical text, the Gyud-zhi (Rgyud-bzhi), which lays down the ideal mental and behavioural qualities of the therapist according to a Buddhist ethical framework – especially Chapter 31 of the Explanatory Treatise (Bshad-pa’i rgyud) which describes the ideal therapist. For details, see Pordié (2007). Note 8 “Good mind” is sometimes found as the literal translation of sems bzang, but the term “good heart” seems closer to the idea of sems bzang. Some authors also propose “heart-mind” as a translation of sems. Note 9 Altruism is fundamental to Mahāyāna. It serves the double function of creating social links and universal solidarity leading to the good of all sentient beings. Altruism is an idea that involves both oneself and the other (bdag gzhan). Note 10 Section 3 of the Synopsis of the Citizenship Act, 1955, the latest amendment of which was applied in June 2005 and concerned Indian citizenship, stipulates: “A person born in India on or after January 1950 but before 1st July 1987 is a citizen of India by birth irrespective of the nationality of his parents” (Internet site of the Ministry of Home Affairs: http://www.mha.nic.in/). Note 11 For details on the CIBS and on the plurality and interaction of learning modes in Ladakh, including that of a temporary school presented later in this text, see Pordié and Blaikie (2014). Note 12 Only fifteen people hold the Kachupa diploma out of a total of about 150-160 amchi in the region.


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in 2006 and 2008. This woman remained in Choglamsar for a long time, isolated from the urban amchi community. All the practitioners who held important positions in Leh, either in the Government or in associations, and all of them Ladakhis, knew Dolma Tsering. However, although she possessed the required local reputation and level of medical education necessary to become a member of the elite, these did not prove sufficient. Callously ignored and marginalized for many years, Dolma Tsering was never, for example, recruited as a teacher, or even as a participant at the training seminars regularly organized in Leh by the Health Department or the main Ladakhi association of amchi between 1988 and 1999. In a male-dominated milieu, being a woman of Tibetan origin bringing up a child without a husband did not help her to integrate. 4. On the Relations between Ladakhis and Tibetans The Ladakhi amchi maintain polite but distant relationships with Tibetan exiles in India whom they consider to be very proud and haughty. “The Tibetans think themselves superior. (…) I feel more gratitude for my eight generations of [Ladakhi] amchi ancestors than for my Tibetan teachers at the Men-Tsee-Khang,” remarked the professor of Tibetan medicine at the CIBS. According to another amchi, a government official, “the Tibetans are superior to Indians [he naturally includes Ladakhis in that group]. They are everywhere in India and do what they like. No one can control them.” The Ladakhi amchi also think that the Tibetans are more interested in accumulating capital than in Buddhist precepts. They thus make a moral judgement concerning the Tibetans. A feeling of inferiority however characterizes many practitioners of Ladakh. The fact that Tibet is the historical centre of Tibetan medicine, as well as the remarkable structural developments and the international success of Tibetan medicine in exile certainly induce this feeling. The amchi of Ladakh, obviously very impressed by the Tibetans, nevertheless differentiate themselves from them. In their idiom they never qualify their medicine as “Tibetan”. As elsewhere in the cultural area of Tibetan influence, the vernacular term used to designate this medicine is Sowa Rigpa (gso-ba rig-pa). When conversing with foreigners or communicating through websites or informative brochures, most non-Tibetan practitioners, westerners aside, claim their medicine to be distinct for reasons of local identity. The denomination “Tibetan medicine” is sometimes used to render the practices more understandable to westerners, but the regional specificities are usually quickly formulated, and in a sense reflect the anthropological variability of Tibetan medicine (Pordié 2008a: 4-5). The Ladakhis claim to have conserved a tradition that the exiles have lost. A tradition characterized by the existence of medical lineages, gyudpa (brgyud-pa, syn. rgyud-pa) and by non-institutional educational modalities. They thus put forward their distinct identity, which is however perceived by some Tibetans as belonging to history: for them, the existence of gyudpa amchi is a thing of the past. This is true of the Tibetan exiles in India, where the overwhelming majority of doctors trained by the Men-Tsee-Khang do not belong to lineages, but it is completely untrue in the case of Ladakh. When a Tibetan thus brought up the history of Tibetan medicine during a seminar organized in Leh in 2003, his allocution generated a very vibrant reaction from an audience made up mainly of Ladakhis. The Tibetans exiles also regard the Ladakhi amchi as lazy. They point out their lack of formal organization13 and consider them for the most part to be practitioners of a lesser calibre. We hear, for example, amongst the Tibetan exiles in Dharamsala that the Ladakhi village amchi are not strictly speaking amchi, that is to say, not properly trained therapists who could adequately represent Tibetan medicine. A Tibetan amchi of Men-Tsee-Khang, ironically employing a terminology sometimes used in English by Ladakhi practitioners to designate their medicine (“amchi medicine”), remarked: “the Ladakhis don’t practise Tibetan medicine, they practise amchi medicine… You understand?” (24th June 2000). The exiles generally consider themselves to be explicitly superior. 5. Upward Social Mobility and the NGO Sector Dolma Tsering’s status only began to be recognised by the Ladakhi amchi in 1999, though not without difficulty. A European association, which had started working in Ladakh the preceding year, raised sizeable funds in order to establish new programmes, amongst them a school of Tibetan medicine. I was amongst those involved with that organization, and, together with my colleagues, set out to look for an amchi with a reputation for competence, who would be employed full time as a professor in Tibetan medicine at the school. Perhaps predictably, members of the Tibetan medical elite showed no interest in the offer, as they either had private practices or held secure positions in the Government. One of the few institutionally-trained amchi available, however, pointed the group to Dolma Tsering, and the members paid her a visit.

“I did not know you but you knew me,” recalled Dolma Tsering in 2002. “Dorje was also present. (…) He Note 13 However, it is worth mentioning that the 2010 official recognition of Sowa Rigpa in India is a struggle that the institutional amchi of Ladakh began in the early 1990s, and achieved nearly two decades later, by forming an alliance with other regional groups (but no Tibetan exiles), under the leadership of a prominent Ladakhi amchi.


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asked me if I was interested in a job teaching Tibetan medicine for six months over the winter. At first I refused. My son was very young at that time, just four or five. I had to take care of him and could not agree to take charge of the teachings (…) I said too that I was not capable of teaching and that it would be better to look for another amchi, someone more experienced than me. This is what I said. I did not have enough time to spare because I had to be busy with my clinic at Choglamsar. You left and I said again that there were better amchi than me. (…) Two weeks later you were back.14 I thought about your proposition. I talked to my parents. At that time my father was still alive. He said that I should take a chance and that I would have the opportunity to develop my knowledge in this way. He added that if I felt unable to teach, that would mean a waste of time and a waste of money for the NGO (…) So I said that I would have to think it over.”

Two weeks later, Dolma Tsering accepted the job offer, and in the autumn of 1999 she was given the title of Medical Coordinator at the association’s office in Ladakh. There was strong opposition from some influential amchi against the recruitment of a Tibetan. One of these, her former classmate at the CIBS, complained in June 2000 that the post should have been given de facto to a Ladakhi person. Counsellors and experts of the amchi association of Ladakh had reservations regarding the foreign organisation’s choice, and continued to voice them for months.15 Unlike the other members of her new association, Dolma Tsering was not, for example, invited to the general assembly of the amchi of Ladakh in November 1999, an important event that was supposed to gather most of the regional practitioners. The Tibetan amchi took up her duties in the following winter. She lived at the school with her son. She worked extremely hard, preparing her courses before the students got up in the morning, looking over their work in the evenings, and spending time with her son during the short breaks. Being thus invested in her responsibilities, Dolma Tsering was able, gradually, to bolster her self-confidence. From 2000 onward, Dolma Tsering took on full responsibility for the winter activities of a newly-founded local association, which I will call XYZ for reasons of anonymity, established as the local branch of the European organization.16 She often complained of the frequent absences and the general laxness of her Ladakhi colleagues, the director and executive secretary, to whom she gave a subordinate position.

“I have more responsibilities than Dorje or Tashi, far more… During the winter months I was with the students day and night. Dorje and Tashi just kept office hours. And Tashi did nothing at all in the winter; he is lazy. If I compare myself with them I was doing twice the work (…) I had no time for my own clinic at Choglamsar, just an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, and then only in the summer. I asked them to come and help me in winter. Tashi never came at all, not for a single evening. (…) I was always on my own with the students, six months of the year with them! Tashi said he had to take care of his family. He said that he had a lot of work in the house. Me too, and my mother is old. (…) If I hadn’t been there, XYZ would not have functioned. It is as simple as that. It is definitely during the winter that it is hard. In summer I have no problem. (…) I take more responsibility for XYZ than for my own family. My mother says that I am doing very little in the house. There is plenty of work at my place. I have to find replacements for myself for the cows and the cleaning. (…) I fulfil my functions rigorously and with determination. It is for the students and for Tibetan medicine. (…) I told Dorje and Tashi several times that they must work as much as I do otherwise I would leave” (Extract of a discussion between the author and Dolma Tsering in 200217).

Dolma Tsering was not only in charge of the medical studies in winter for twenty- one students over four years from 1999 to 2002, and of an annual week of summer camps focusing on plant identification, she also had an equally crucial role in the planning and implementation of a number of other projects for the benefit of the rural populations of Ladakh. Although she was less present in her own clinic, she became an indispensable member of the association. The functions of this amchi were greatly increased. She was involved in training projects, in establishing village clinics, and in

Note 14 Dawa Tashi, a Tibetan woman and a graduate of the CIBS, meanwhile refused the offer, asserting that Dolma Tsering was much more competent than she was. Note 15 This association was formed in 1978 under the auspices of a high-ranking religious figure with great political power. Its activities have been relatively limited in the medical field stricto sensu, despite the more or less regular organisation of training workshops and the establishment of a modest clinic and a section for the manufacture of drugs. At the time of research, the most fundamental role of this association consisted of utilising its network of influence to ensure the promotion of amchi medicine amongst local authorities. Note 16 The European association began its activities in Ladakh in 1998. Two years later, the Ladakhi team set up XYZ, an association which was officially registered under Indian law in March 2002 in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. While XYZ was responsible for the functioning of the programmes, the sponsoring organization took charge of certain aspects of its activities and of finance and direction. Note 17 According to her colleague, Dorje, “Dolma Tsering is the core of the organization because she is the only person able to conduct the teaching of Tibetan medicine. Her abilities are ideal for that.” He is also aware of Tashi’s sometimes lax behaviour but emphasises that this fault is counterbalanced by his technical knowledge, his vivacity and his efficiency. As for Dorje himself, he says he is at ease organizing seminars, making contacts with people and teaching Tibetan grammar to student amchi. However, he would like to receive training of various kinds in order to acquire more knowledge. He feels inferior to his two colleagues because of that lacuna and refuses for that reason to take over the directorship of the organisation.


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medicinal plant conservation programmes. Her influence extended over new domains.18 The situation brought Dolma Tsering progressively to the forefront of the Tibetan medical scene in Ladakh. Her activities increased and diversified as her reputation became established. As the only amchi active within the organization and its teaching centre, responsible for medical programmes, generally held in esteem by her peers, and recognized through different awards,19 Dolma Tsering enjoyed very great visibility. Clearly, she did not owe her very swift progress within the regional Tibetan medical elite solely to the international status of her employer, nor to her title, nor, indeed, to her duties. As Marc Abélès wrote, to advance means proving oneself and not only occupying the territory (1995: 68). Dolma Tsering was teaching alongside reputed experts in the field. Her ability was there for every one to judge, and the board of directors of the principal association of Ladakhi amchi recognised her theoretical knowledge and pedagogical qualities. The situation had turned right around. Now, Dolma Tsering has gained in status. She tends to be quiet in front of men, who completely rule this milieu, especially the renowned amchi who hold government positions or high status for reasons of age or lineage. She nevertheless continues to be regarded by her peers as an excellent practitioner. One of them told this writer in 2002: “The association of amchi has changed its opinions regarding Dolma Tsering. I am happy that she is at the school. (…) Comparing her to any Ladakhi amchi is unthinkable”. Amchi today also emphasize her level of education even though this was not previously mentioned. Dolma Tsering regularly participates in large meetings and is now undeniably one of the noted amchi of the region. Dolma Tsering’s entry into the NGO sector was a determining factor in her upward social mobility. While under scrutiny by the amchi, she responded brilliantly to the testing of her qualities as a teacher and a doctor. The constitution of associations of therapists is a recent phenomenon in the trans-Himalayan world; in the course of the last three decades it has greatly contributed to the social transformation of Tibetan medicine. In Ladakh, the creation of the first association, Ladakh Amchi Sabha, dates from the late 1970s. In 1984, a local organization, the Leh Nutrition Project (LNP), supported by the Save the Children Fund, UK, established a programme on Tibetan medicine for a period of twelve years. This project was the first large, professional intervention in this field at the regional level, and has contributed enormously to shaping the perception of urban amchi of the future of their medicine. The amchi then responsible for this programme has gradually won, in the course of his mandate, and for reasons very similar to those of Dolma Tsering, a great deal of appreciation from elite amchi. It was not, however, until the middle of the 1990s, perhaps due to the influence of the LNP programme, that the elite Ladakhi amchi were collectively involved in what the practitioners themselves call the “development” of their medicine. Significantly, in current oral language, they use the English “development” but also the learned Tibetan term yar rgyas, which literally means “expansion/growth (rgyas) upwards (yar)”. Chosen in the literate milieu to describe “development”, yar gyas occurs very often in the discourse of elite amchi. “Development” qualifies different situations, relative to Ladakh’s general economic development or to projects aiming at improving the conditions of practice of the therapists. The amchi find the necessary tools in the associative sector to position themselves individually and collectively in contemporary Ladakh. Jean Michaud wrote more than twenty years ago that those responsible for NGOs in Ladakh, especially in the educational and environmental domains, made up an integral part of the “petite bourgeoisie” (1990). This remark somewhat reflects the situation today. The Ladakhi elites, noted Fernanda Pirie (2007: 41), belong to three categories: government officials and local politicians, persons of aristocratic status, and members of development organisations. The integration of amchi into local associations dedicated to the “development of Tibetan medicine” facilitates access to urban elites, grants a form of social recognition and a high status, which extend beyond the boundaries of the field of Tibetan medicine. Conscious of her status, Dolma Tsering considered taking a government job by joining the Research Unit on Amchi Medicine as a Research Assistant in 2002 to replace one of its members who was about to retire. Her selection would have allowed her to integrate into one of the only structures of Tibetan medicine in Ladakh (with the CIBS which granted her diploma) answerable to the Central Government of India. Created in 1976 under the aegis of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in Delhi, the Research Unit was at the time of research placed under the Central Council for Research on Ayurveda and Siddha. This unit was involved very early on in clinical research (since 1979), in textual Note 18 Since 2000, Dolma Tsering has been the editorial director of a trans-Himalayan journal of Tibetan medical education. During this period she organized several regional seminars. She supervised a health centre, and from 2003 participated in the installation of fifteen village clinics. Since 2001, she has been responsible for a clinic frequented by a large number of tourists, where she gives weekly lectures in English during the summer period. She has been involved since 2004 in a regional program for the preservation of medicinal plants, covering twenty villages. Dolma Tsering is also a favourite interlocutor for numerous visiting students from European and American universities. Note 19 Between 1998 and 2002, the European organization and its members won nine prizes and distinctions in France and elsewhere in recognition of the activities carried out in Ladakh. The urban amchi of the region were kept regularly informed, since a prize meant the arrival of funds.


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studies and botanical identification and the cultivation of medicinal plants. It embodies the renewal of Tibetan medicine in Ladakh. Dolma Tsering wanted to extend her field of activity still further and to consecrate a part of her time to research. Her application was however rejected. The official explanation for this action was based on her Tibetan origin and on the fact that, unlike the Ladakhis, she did not benefit from the status of Scheduled Tribes.20 The groups thus designated enjoy special concessions in such fields as higher education and employment. According to Dolma Tsering, however, that reason made no sense: she believed that she was denied the post simply because the person in charge of the unit “wanted as an assistant an amchi less competent than he was himself”. From 2002 onwards, she remained actively involved with her NGO. Over the years, Dolma Tsering has revised her aspirations and the idea she has of herself – we should bear in mind that in 1999 she had felt herself incapable of teaching Tibetan medicine. Buoyed by her subsequent performance, she considered in November 2009, for example, submitting an application for the Smanrampa (sman rams pa) diploma. Dolma Tsering explains that a candidate for this diploma, issued by the Men-Tsee-Khang of Dharamsala, must have at least ten years’ experience and a certain number of publications in the Tibetan medical field.21 Currently, no amchi in Ladakh has a diploma higher than Kachupa, and Dolma Tsering could well be the first. Dolma has been invited to Nepal twice where she gave several talks at international conferences on clinical practice, the development of Tibetan medicine, and environmental conservation. In 2002, she was invited by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Unesco along with two reputed Ladakhi amchi. In 2004 she went back to Nepal by herself, where she was invited to give two talks on a theme explicitly focused on Tibetan medicine development in her region. Dolma Tsering presented her teaching methods in Tibetan medicine, followed by a more general reflection on the school project in which she had participated. In 2005, this amchi was co-winner of an international prize awarded by a prestigious European foundation in recognition of her work in the preservation of medicinal plants in Ladakh. The amchi who was vehemently opposed to her recruitment by her European employers six years earlier was also in charge of the Research Unit that had rejected her candidature. In 2005, however, this man revised his judgement and tried to persuade the woman amchi to leave the organization she was attached to, and to take in hand a dormant association that he had himself started at the end of the 1990s.22 She refused. In the space of just a few years Dolma Tsering gained renown, a fundamental social criterion in the regions of Tibetan culture.23 She had undeniably become a figure to reckon with in the Tibetan medical elite of Ladakh. 6. Transnational Networks, Donors and Travels Dolma Tsering’s local status alone did not provide her with the opportunity to travel abroad. In Ladakh, membership of a professional association, coupled with high social status, is a necessary (but by no means sufficient) condition for a medical practitioner to consider himself or herself qualified for foreign travel. The international mobility of therapists also demands, as a prerequisite, that they should be inserted into wider transnational social networks. And it is the participation of the amchi in their professional NGO network within Ladakh that provides the best means to access the network of foreign “sponsors” – who they meet through “tourists’ clinics”24 and other activities promoting Tibetan medicine. The term “sponsor”, chindak (sbyin bdag), is traditionally applied to individuals or groups, such as households, who provide donations (patronage) in particular contexts, such as religious festivals, the construction of bridges over rivers, or the repair of access roads to villages. In the Ladakhi context the term also, and perhaps most importantly, refers to the households (khangpa, khang pa) that are formally linked to a specific monastery. In today’s world, it may sometimes also indicate the owner (patron) of a guesthouse or a restaurant. According to Kenneth Bauer, the term chindak also designates the clients of the amchi in the Dolpo region of Nepal, since those practitioners set no fixed price for

Note 20 Ladakhis were recognised in India as “Scheduled Tribes” in 1989. This is a socio-political category dating from the British colonial period. Read Xaxa (2003) for a general analysis and van Beek (1997) for a study of the process and social implications of the obtaining of this status in Ladakh. Note 21 After twenty years of practice, an amchi may sit for the Smanrampa Chewa (sman rams pa che ba) examination according to the same principles (knowledge, practice and publications). Note 22 For years, this amchi intended to establish his own structure in order to “dynamise amchi medicine in Ladakh”, noticing especially in 2001 the lack of enthusiasm and the absence of activity of the main amchi association in Ladakh. It would seem that this project is now void since the man also became president of the main association of amchi in the region in autumn 2006, and director of the National Research Institute for Sowa Rigpa in 2011, a year after Tibetan medicine was granted official recognition in India. Today, he holds various prestigious positions within the amchi community. Note 23 On renown in another Himalayan context, see the article by Sagant (1990). Note 24 On the interaction between amchi in Ladakh, including Dolma Tsering, and their foreign patients, see Pordié (2011).


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consultation and treatment. They refer to their patients as chindak since they are free to procure financial or material contributions for the amchi (Bauer 2004: 34). In the Tibetan world, the act of giving, chinba (sbyin-pa) leads to the accumulation of merit, gewa (dge-ba), for one’s personal salvation. Giving is socially valued. This act reflects the Tibetan altruistic approach that benefits both the author of the action and the recipient (bdag gzhan). The practice of donating (Skt. dāna) constitutes, from a doctrinal point of view, one of the six “perfections” (phar phyin, Skt. pāramitā) to be cultivated by one who follows the way of the Bodhisattva.25 It is also a social mechanism that makes it possible, among other things, to maintain one’s membership of a given community.26 The donor’s act is thus intimately connected with the identity of the group (Klieger 1992), so much so that Eberhard Berg (2003) interprets it, in a study carried out among the Sherpas, as fundamental in the construction of their identity. In Ladakh, household status related to chindak is essential for house identity and community membership. Today, the term is also applied to organizations or individuals involved in some way with charity or development projects. Generally speaking, any foreigner, especially from the West, is considered as a potential donor.27 Foreigners are of three types: those belonging to professional organizations, members of informal associations or groups, and independent donors. The fascination the West has for the Tibetan world (Lopez 1998, Brauen 2004, Korom 2001), and the interest of our societies in alternative medicine in the last two or three decades are not unconnected with the establishment of such projects. Sponsored activities are numerous and heterogeneous, and are usually conducted following the advice of selected interlocutors, who are generally urban amchi participating in the NGO sector and benefiting, as does Dolma Tsering, from a high status within their community of practitioners. A study of these projects brings to light a two-fold proximity between donors and the amchi of Ladakh. This consists, in the first place, of proximity of intervention: the projects are usually very localized, with donors visiting the places when they can. But proximity is expressed too in the social relationship that the donors enjoy with their “beneficiaries.” Christiaan Klieger noted that the act of giving provides foreigners with the feeling of being in close touch with Tibetan society (1992: 136). And this closeness is all the more intense when the gift is repeated as in the case of individual sponsorships. The gift tends to strengthen the link between giver and recipient. In other words, the gift creates social links: the act of giving belongs to a social mechanism that links donor and receiver, a situation that leads to the establishment of a relationship of reciprocity. Amchi generally show their gratitude to donors by careful attentions and by reverential attitudes in both informal and official situations. Donors, actual or prospective, could expect to be offered a good place in the row (gral) during assemblies.28 Correspondence is exchanged between donors and recipients, and the relationship strengthens over time. When the donors possess the material means, individual or institutional, the amchi are sometimes invited to visit their benefactors’ countries. There starts a long and painful process for Himalayan people to be administratively cleared to travel to the West, Australia or to an economically advanced Asian country, which involves obtaining a passport for some and all the visa requirements, the modalities of which vary from country to country. When this step is over, donors are usually flattered to welcome a representative of the Tibetan world to their countries. The visit confirms the vitality of their project and their personal integration into their guest’s country. For some, the act of receiving a traditional amchi demonstrates their enthusiasm for Tibetan medicine, and in some cases for Buddhism too. It is in this way, to paraphrase Jean-Loup Amselle (2001), that local peculiarities can be “plugged” into transnational networks. The invited amchi tour and give consultations and lectures which usually generate funds, both for themselves and for the projects or organizations that have invited them. In this manner the interests of all concerned converge. 7. Fame, Money and their Social Impact The social ascent and the functions of Dolma Tsering have made her known to foreign donors. She went to London at the beginning of 2005 and practised medicine there for several months. She had developed a close relationship with an English donor who covered her travel and living expenses. She informed her NGO colleagues that she would stop her activities for this period; she closed her clinic and sent her patients to a nearby practitioner, and she flew to London. There, her benefactor organized a series of daily consultations. Dolma Tsering earned the equivalent of $130 per patient – compared to the 30 to 120 rupees that she used to charge in Ladakh (the equivalent of 50 cents to $2). As a consequence, she returned to her country quite prosperous. In her circles, and not excluding some of her close colleagues, her new affluence provoked a good many caustic comments, often in the guise of mean jokes.

Note 25 The Bodhisattva (being promised to Enlightenment) renounces nirvāṇa (or extinction, which marks the end of cyclic existence in saṃsāra) until all other beings have entered nirvāṇa before him. On this subject, see the translation by Batchelor of Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara (1979). Note 26 See, for example, the works by Jest (1975: 346) on Dolpo, and by Tucci and Heissig (1973: 371) on Tibet. Note 27 This is similar to Prost’s findings in Dharamsala (2005). However, this author noted that, among the Tibetan refugees, a particular type of relationship with the foreign donors has been established, the rogs ram. This is a new development of older forms of patronage and sponsorship, such as chindak, and specific to the exiles in India (see also Prost 2008: 62-66). Note 28 On the placement in the row in Buddhist Ladakh, see Aggarwal (2004: 154-155), Kaplanian (1981: 171-190) and Pirie (2007: 48-50).


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She endured a similar experience the following year, after a few months in Goa, on India’s west coast. Her next journey took her to France with two colleagues. During the month they spent in there, in the autumn of 2007, at the invitation of her European employer, she carried out a lecture tour of several major French towns. The group stayed on in Europe a few weeks longer as guests of some individual donors who had been contacted in advance. None of the three had become any richer after their trip, but the bare fact that they had been abroad was enough to stir up ill feeling among their fraternity in Ladakh. The international mobility of the amchi complicates relations with others. This demonstrates how fraught the situation can be when a conspicuously successful individual is to be found in the context of a culture which frowns on too quick or too obvious an acquisition of wealth or status. This type of situation exists among the Tibetans in exile in Dharamsala too. The case of Lobsang Dolma Khangkar (1935-1989) provides a telling example. This amchi, who belongs to a renowned Tibetan lineage, had settled in India in 1961. She had joined the Men-Tsee-Khang in Dharamsala in 1972 at the invitation of the Tibetan authorities there and worked for six years in this institution. The standing and net worth of this amchi rose dramatically after she had established her private practice in McLeod Ganj, upper Dharamsala. Her international network of sympathizers supported her frequent stays in the West. The management of the Men-Tsee-Khang considered, however, that the woman was too interested in her personal enrichment and her career and decided to dismiss her: “With a selfish attitude that gave personal gain greater priority in her daily work, she disregarded the general rules and regulations of the employees of the medical centre (…) the members of the medical centre, after prolonged tolerance and understanding, unanimously resolved to suspend her from her present duty” (Tibetan Review 1978, cited by Tsering 2005: 183). In another context, Evelyne Micollier showed that the international diffusion of qi gong was supported in the same way by the establishment of social networks (2004). She described this process as a phenomenon of “de-territorialisation” and “re-territorialisation”. The worldwide spread of qi gong bestowed social capital upon the practice, not only internationally but also at the national level. This is similar to what we observe in those countries where Tibetan medicine is endemic or very ancient. Its international popularity gives it a new order of legitimacy on the national level. In Ladakh, individual participation in the NGO sector confers an enhanced social status upon the amchi, both in their therapeutic community and beyond, and travel further reinforces this status.29 As much as the local social ascent of Dolma Tsering has made her known to donors, her association with foreign donors has contributed to strengthening her social status. The process is circular. However, bringing the analysis to a close at this point would leave us with barely more than a partial view of the Ladakhi situation. More than simply consolidating status, international travel and the making of money also bring in their wake ambivalence for the individuals concerned. It must be made clear that not all amchi travel. In only involving members of the amchi elite, foreign travel plays a significant role in the mechanisms of reproduction and consolidation of social status. The picture becomes more complicated when we go on to look at the local repercussions of the global circulation of amchi. Those therapists who spend time abroad undergo the same type of experience as Dolma Tsering. Accusations of opportunism, greed or boastfulness inevitably arise in a cultural milieu where these qualities are normally proscribed. Amongst the Ladakhi amchi elite, the interpersonal tensions that emerge in circumstances such as those described above, are all the more salient given that their group is limited to a small number of members who, moreover, maintain relatively difficult relationships (Pordié 2008b). Disagreements are commonplace, and antagonisms are sometimes very vehement.30 Conflicts are rendered almost invisible by local codes of decorum (Pirie 2007), but they exist in some number and persist. Therefore, by joining the amchi elite, Dolma Tsering has been confronted with a competitive arena animated by vibrant rivalries. Her travels have occasioned various difficult remarks, often containing moral judgements, on the part of other amchi. The gradual integration of Dolma Tsering into the medical elite of Ladakh has thus bound her to the rules of that group. Dolma Tsering clarifies today that the money earned during her travels has been partly used to buy two machines for the production of medicines. From her point of view, she thus contributes to the preservation of traditional pharmaceutical knowledge, which not all amchi can be said to retain (Blaikie 2013). This position allows her to distinguish herself from other therapists whose practice is limited to diagnosis and treatment. She underscores the fact that her knowledge also concerns the domain of pharmacy, and that she is able to make her own medicines. If some amchi shy away from revealing their travel plans, particularly when a foreign trip is involved, they only do so in

Note 29 Amongst the amchi of Ladakh the types of social legitimacy are numerous and overlapping. The most important modes of legitimization are belonging to practitioners’ lineages, having obtained all or part of one’s medical education in Tibet, individual moral qualities, the perceived efficacy of the medicine, institutional education, government functions and the management of associations (Pordié, 2001). Foreign travel holds a special place in this classification, for those who benefit from it often combine several of these modes of legitimization. Note 30 This type of situation is noted elsewhere, amongst Tibetan exiles in India and in the United States (Tokar 2008: 243-244).


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order to avoid possibly painful consequences, such as those Dolma Tsering and others have experienced. A Government amchi in Ladakh and member of the elite thus kept quiet for weeks on end regarding one of his journeys abroad in November 2002. Several rumours about him were going round: he was in Delhi, Calcutta, Dharamsala, Kathmandu, in the West… no one really knew for certain where. Everyone however mobilised his own network – kin in Delhi, foreign donors or associations – to explain the sudden “disappearance” of the subject. The amchi had, in fact, gone to France and had concealed his journey so as to avoid, as he told me, the jealousy and disparaging remarks his confreres were bound to hurl at him.31 Do the amchi always travel to the West? Certainly not. One of them was, for example, invited by a Japanese donor to go to Lhasa in July 2000 to participate in a conference on Tibetan medicine. This amchi envisaged visiting the famous Potala — the dream of every Buddhist Ladakhi. His joy at the prospect was very apparent. I followed him on his journey that took us first to Kathmandu from where, together with a group of Nepalese amchi, we were to proceed to Lhasa. Unfortunately, he was refused a visa. According to the Nepalese, the presence of a Tibetan name on an Indian passport had led the Chinese authorities to reject his application. But this rule is not always verified and there probably were other circumstances that led the authorities to deny entry to the Ladakhi. Insensitive to the man’s distress, one of the Nepalese amchi came at once to visit him, opening before his eyes the pages of his own passport crammed with visas. He was a well reputed amchi of a remote region of Nepal who held job functions rather like those of the Ladakhi amchi in his own country. The Ladakhi amchi felt powerless seeing that this man had already been to Tibet, and had a five-year visa for the United States. The Nepalese amchi proudly explained that he travelled the world and gave teachings on medicine and religion in universities in the West. He added that his reputation “reached even as far as Lhasa”. His many journeys attested to his status, while the Ladakhi amchi’s inability to travel alongside the Nepalese showed him in up a poor light. By boasting of his own renown, the Nepalese amchi, however, had questioned his fellow amchi’s reputation. Interestingly, the Nepalese amchi had had difficulties of his own within his community of practitioners.32 One of the most severe conflicts that had led to a confrontation with the other amchi of Nepal had taken place in 2001-2002, when he returned quite prosperous from the United States. The members of the practitioner elite hoped that he would contribute part of his earnings towards the development of their medical system in the country. They could not have been more mistaken. Their confrontation culminated in 2002 with him being stripped of his chairman title from the national amchi association of which he had been the chairman since its inception in 1998. The international mobility of therapists clearly has multiple ramifications. It does not only enhance the status of individuals and the practice itself, it also tends to harm relationships within the practitioner community in the country. 8. Conclusion It was by examining the various dimensions of the social and economic conditions governing access to the Ladakhi amchi elite that we discovered how Dolma Tsering, the young nomad girl from the high Himalayan plateaus, has become one of the most visible doctors in the region. Her gradual entry into the Tibetan medical NGO sector in Ladakh has allowed her to achieve a high status, an indispensable prerequisite for international travel. This article has thus revealed one important “pattern of mobility” (Hsu 2012) in the study of global Asian medical practitioners. Their new encounters, and the journeys that result from them, have clear social repercussions. These repercussions shape individual itineraries whilst opening a transnational space that reinforces their social status, and occasionally guarantee supplementary resources, and, for precisely these reasons, complicate their relationships with their confreres. While the phenomenon affects a relatively small group of Ladakhi practitioners, it is no less pertinent to the study of the social mechanisms involved in the global diffusion of Tibetan medicine. Because international travel is perceived to be linked to the acquisition of fame and money, this mobility is experienced and managed through series of ruptures, differences and contestations. Travel, wrote James Clifford (1997), is an opening into a complex modernity. These frictions are amplified by the rapid changes brought about by development in the region which, together with the renewed aspirations of the amchi, tend to transform social relations. Furthermore, Fernanda Pirie (2007: 40) noted that “patterns of power, authority and influence in contemporary Ladakh are [complicated by] the introduction of new forms of wealth.” The case of Dolma Tsering is a testimony to this: local

Note 31 Ladakhis also believe that they could become victims of the jealousy of others. They then find themselves under the influence of mikha (mi kha). These beings personify the “envious words of others” (mi means people, persons, and kha, mouth and word/s) aimed at whatever is beautiful, rich and new. They can cause ill fortune, including illness (Kaplanian 1981: 221). These “words” are not, however, explicitly aimed at doing harm. The mikha consists of the fact of talking a great deal about someone in terms of his qualities or of facts about him that support envy. It refers in this context to a form of “gossip” (Pirie, 2006: 188), and not necessarily to “malicious gossip” (Kapstein 1997: 527). Note 32 This amchi had served as a case study in a work discussing altruism in the Tibetan world (Silhé 1995), even though it is precisely for the absence of this quality that many Nepalese therapists reproach him today. It is not improbable that the remarkable itinerary of this man had modified his behaviour. Some aspects of this man’s life can also be found in an excellent book by Craig (2012).


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development, her rising authority and international journeys brought an effective or virtual wealth for which she was reproached, sometimes loudly. In this way, mobility not only brings a territorial but also a social disconnection. These disconnections are not necessarily absolute: travel never lasts forever and the conflicts that result in Ladakh are private and relatively minor. But, conflicts are judged harmful for social equilibrium (Pirie 2007). The amchi feel shame, trelba (khrel ba) when their differences are known to outer circles. In all cases the conflicts are kept within a delineated perimeter. There are other significant factors related to individual identity in the way this story unfolded. The first concerns gender politics, understood as the place of gender in broader configurations of meaning, interaction, and power. In a male-dominated environment, the achievements of Dolma Tsering, a distinct cultural actor, are remarkable. She is the most established and a truly recognised female practitioner in the region and her efforts came up against many hurdles that both her competencies and determination helped to cross. Feminist studies would see here a dynamic of resistance (Collier and Yanagisako 1989), informed by the way Dolma Tsering behaved and subsequently gained credit in the real world (Conkey and Gero 1997). Her actions provided the ground from which her critics have formulated their grievance, underscoring in this case the nature of right and wrong and therefore involving morality. Indeed, for populations of Tibetan culture, the moral sphere is directly concerned with the way in which people act. The focus on identity and difference also encourages examination of the meaning of other categories of social life and how they interact. Ethnicity appears to be a relevant analytical category as shown by the difficult relations between Tibetans and Ladakhis. The fact that Dolma Tsering is Tibetan was an impediment which certainly delayed her social ascent. Her origin was used in many occasions to prevent her accessing coveted positions within her fraternity. Her will and mastery of Tibetan medicine finally convinced all those against her to accept her presence among them, recalling Marx’s suggestion that all social activity comes down to praxis. In this case the idea of practice is twofold: we should consider the medical practice per se of a woman doctor of Tibetan medicine, as well as her social practices. In the latter case, acknowledging variations caused by a supplementary category such as age constitutes a rich terrain from which to observe generational differences in terms of life choices and social practices. Dolma Tsering belongs to the younger generation of amchi, she is an open and emancipated woman who is not afraid to walk off the beaten path. She belongs to a new, entrepreneurial generation of institutional amchi who bring Tibetan medicine to the world and are partly responsible for its future. Amidst all jealousies and ill feelings, these practitioners embody a prized form of social success. They renew the image of Tibetan medicine and bring to it a general dynamism that many practitioners consider favourable. As everywhere else in the Tibetan world, the urban form of Tibetan medicine represented by therapists such as Dolma Tsering is asserting its model as the best way to go forwards, as the ineluctable future. This paper has also shown that not only is social status an important component of analysis but that we should also consider the importance of power, since the construction and enactment of identity occurs through discourses and actions that are structured by contexts of hierarchies and power (Geller and Stockett 2006, Pordié 2008b). In the male-centric, hierarchical world of the amchi, the accusations and problematic sentiments that arose among Dolma Tsering’s peers as she quickly gained fame and money reflect these issues. They also demonstrate the continual dialogue between mobility and power (Langwick et al. 2012). From being refused prominent positions close to central power structures (as with the Research Unit), the situation was turned upside down as her status increased since she was then requested to take up various responsibilities. She refused, and therefore exerted a form of power through social relations. By entering transnational networks, this woman allowed us to see how individual agency and social structure in Ladakh unfold in the context of contemporary globalization. Her global mobility generates social frictions (Appadurai 1990, Tsing 2004), inherent to global connectedness and manifested on the ground as relational disjuncture. References Abélès, M. (1995). Pour une anthropologie des institutions, L’Homme, 135, XXXV, 65-85. Adams, V. (2002). Randomized controlled crime: postcolonial sciences in alternative medicine research, Social Studies

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Relationships among Life quality, Social Support and Organizational Justice of White-collar Worker

Chun-mei HU1, Shu-jing CUI1, & Hua-min HE1 1College Education, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences Chongqing Yongchuan 402160, China. Correspondence: Hua-min He, College Education, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences Chongqing Yongchuan 402160, China. Received: December 29, 2015 Accepted: January 12, 2016 Available online: January 20, 2016 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1314 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1314 Abstract Objective: To explore the relationship of white-collar workers’ life quality, social support and organizational justice. Methods: We used convenient sampling and questionnaire survey in the study. Totally 476 white-collar workers were from Chongqing Yongchuan by convenient sampling, they completed the whoqol-bref scale, perceived social support scale and organizational justice scale. Results: (1) The average score of white-collar workers’ life quality was (87.92±10.87), almost 90% white-collar workers’ felling of life quality and health was in the general level and above; marriage status children status and monthly income could influence their life quality. (2)There is a significant correlation among white-collar workers’ life quality, social support and organizational justice. (3) Organizational justice has partial mediating effects on the relation of social support and life quality. Conclusion: White-collar workers’ life quality is in medium level, we should improve their life quality through increasing social support and organizational justice. Keywords: white-collar worker, life quality, social support, organizational justice 1. Introduction White-collar workers, one of the important human resources for China’s national economic development, refers to the following people. They are civil servants of and below division level in party and government organs, administrators of and below vice-division level in state-owned enterprises directors of and below division level in institutions, business owners of company employing 8-100 people's , managers of middle class and lower class in foreign-funded, private and three-capital enterprises, professional and technical personnel, office clerks and company employees with administrative grades (Su, 2014). However, alarmingly, with the fast social economic development, the white-collar workers suffers from increasing pressures from work and family both physically and psychologically, as it is reported in news frequently that related occupational diseases and mental illnesses has undermined their life quality. Life quality refers to individuals’ experience related to the life condition, such as their goals, expectations, criteria and concerns, under different cultural circumstances and value systems. It includes individual physiological health, psychological state, independent abilities, social networks, personal beliefs and relationship with the surrounding environment (Hao & Fang, 2000). Research on this topic mainly focused on studying people with illness, of specific occupation and old aged ( Dong et al., 2014; Yao et al., 2010; Hu et al., 2014), few study was concerning with white-collar workers. This article attempts to survey how the social support and organizational justice influence the quality of the white-collar workers’ life quality, expecting to give some advice for maintaining the life quality of white-collar workers. Social support is the system of individual person-oriented social communicating activity, it is the important reflecting of one’s status in the environment(Hong, 2007). The study on social support has found the oldman’s support could influence their life quality, the better social support condition could improve their life quality(Li, 2007). Social support of uremic patients, especially the friend support, could improve their life quality(Fu et al., 2006) we speculated white-collar workers’ social support may influence their life quality. Organizational Justice is the organizational members’ subjective cognition and feelings of justice in organization, which can predict one’s organizational behavior effectively(Wang & Liao, 2007). Recent study had shown bad relationship between colleagues of white-collar workers could influence their’ organizational Justice, then further influenced their subjective well-being (Wu & Tan, 2009). Leader support of nurse had negative correlation with job burnout, and


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influenced their organizational Justice(Chen et al., 2010). The study on surgical oncology doctor indicated that their job burnout could reduce their life quality. So, we speculated social support may influence one’s organizational Justice, and further influence life quality. From the above, we hypothesised the white-collar workers’ organizational Justice was mediator between life quailty and social support. In the article, we’ll verify the hypothesis, then construct structural equation model among life quality, social support and organizational Justice. 2. Participants and methods 2.1 Participants Through convenient sampling, 520 white-collar workers, from institutions and private enterprises in Yongchuan District of Chongqing in China, were chosen to be investigated by questionnaires. 476 valid questionnaires were left after elimination of invalid questionnaires and the effective rate was 91.5%. Participants were classified according to gender, marriage status, with children or not, and monthly income. Among those being investigated, there were 241 male and 235 female, 247 married and 229 unmarried (including divorced), 159 with children and 317 childless, 412 with Monthly income below 5000 yuan and 64 with Monthly income of 5000 yuan and above. 2.2 Measurement methods 2.2.1 World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire-Brief Version, WHOQOL-BREF WHOQOL-BREF (Hao & Fang, 2000) was composed of 26 items, covering four dimensions, which include physical, psychological, environmental and social relations field, as well as two independent items evaluating individual feelings about health and life quality. 1-5 points scale was used in the questionnaire, in which three questions need to score reversely .The higher total score indicated the better life quality. Cronbach’s � of scale in this study was 0.869. 2.2.2 Perceived Social Support Scale, PSSS PSSS (Wang et al., 1999) included 12 items and three dimensions, which were family support, friend support, and other support(colleagues, leadership, etc.). 7 points score was adopted and the higher total score indicated the higher level of social support. Cronbach’s � of scale in this study was 0.912. 2.2.3 Organizational Justice Survey, OJS OJS (Ya & Li, 2003) included 22 items divided into four dimensions, which were procedural fair, distribution fair, leadership fair and information fair. 5 points score was adopted. The higher total score indicated the higher organizational justice experience. In this study, Cronbach’s � of scale was 0.94. 2.3 Data processing SPSS11.5 was used to input and process data. Various methods, including independent sample t-test, product-moment correlation, intermediary test and path analysis, were adopted to analyze data. 3. Results 3.1 The status quo of white-collar workers’ life quality, social support and organizational justice The total score of white-collar workers’ life quality was 87.92±10.87. The scores of physiological, psychological, social and environmental dimensions were respectively 3.41±0.42, 3.42±0.43, 3.59±0.64 and 3.25±0.55. In the survey 52.5% white-collar workers described their life quality as "neither good nor bad", 36.6% of them described as "good" or "very good" and 10.9% of them descried as "bad" or "poor". White-collar workers describing their health as "neither good nor bad” accounted for 26.9%, those describing as "good" or "very good" accounted for 61.5%, and those describing as "bad" or "poor" accounted for 11.6%. The total score of white-collar workers’ social support was 60.56 ±10.47. The scores of family, friend and other support dimensions were respectively 5.01±1.05, 5.05±0.94 and 5.07±0.96. The score of organizational justice was 74.52±13.67, and the scores of process, distribution, leadership and information fairs were respectively 3.30± 0.78, 3.33±0.69, 3.59±0.66 and 3.28±0.81. 3.2 Differences in different demographic traits of white-collar workers’ life quality An independent sample t-test was conducted on life quality of white-collar worker in different demographic traits (Table 1).


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Table1. Differences between different gender, marriage status, with children or not and monthly income (M±SD) NOTE: *REFERS TO P<0.05 ** REFERS TO P<0.01 *** REFERS TO P<0.001 The results showed that: there was no significant difference between different genders; significant differences between the total score and the scores of physiological and environmental dimensions on the marriage status and with children or not, the married group scored higher than the unmarried, the group having children scored higher than that not having children. Significant differences existed in scores of each dimension and total score between groups with different monthly income, the group of monthly income ‘of 5000 yuan and above’ scored higher than that below ‘5000 yuan’. 3.3 The correlation between life quality and social support, organizational justice Pearson product-moment correlation analysis was conducted on life quality of white-collar worker in different demographic traits(Table 2). Table 2. Relationships between life quality, social support and organizational justice (r)

Property Physical

dimension Psychological

dimension

Social relations

dimension

Environmental dimension

Total Score of life quality

Family support 0.378** 0.324** 0.494** 0.403** 0.485**

Friend support 0.314** 0.337** 0.576** 0.444** 0.498**

Other support 0.361** 0.350** 0.553** 0.467** 0.530**

Total Score of support 0.399** 0.381** 0.610** 0.495** 0.570**

Procedural fair 0.499** 0.426** 0.461** 0.534** 0.603**

Distribution fair 0.370** 0.305** 0.335** 0.450** 0.474**

Leadership fair 0.493** 0.469** 0.447** 0.539** 0.611**

Information fair 0.463** 0.381** 0.430** 0.503** 0.558**

Total Score of justice 0.540** 0.468** 0.495** 0.599** 0.664**

NOTE: *REFERS TO P<0.05 ** REFERS TO P<0.01 *** REFERS TO P<0.001 The results indicated the following: the total score of life quality and scores of each dimension were all correlated positively and significantly with social support total score and scores of each dimension. Also, the total score of life quality and scores of each dimension were all correlated positively and significantly with organizational justice experience total score and scores of each dimension. Therefore, the prerequisite of the intermediary test was satisfied.


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3.4 The intermediary test for organizational justice between life quality and social support The intermediary test was conducted to verify whether organizational Justice was mediator between life quailty and social support. The test was based on the definition of mediate variables and inspection procedures of intermediary test proposed by Zhonglin Wen (Wen et al., 2004). All variables were centralized before intermediary test (Table 3). Table 3. Intermediary test for organizational justice to life quality NOTE: SE REFERS TO Standard Error Firstly, regression analysis was conducted to inspect the direct impact of social support on life quality, with life quality as dependent variable (y) and social support as independent variable (x). Secondly, regression analysis was conducted to inspect the direct impact of social support on organizational justice, with organizational justice as dependent variable (y) and social support as independent variable (x). Thirdly, regression analysis was conducted to inspect whether the organizational justice had an intermediary effect on the relation between social support and life quality, with life quality as dependent variable (y) and social support, organizational justice as independent variables (x). After considering the intermediary effect of organizational justice, the prediction coefficient of social support on life quality, though still significant statistically (P<0.001), however, dramatically reduced from 0.570 to 0.313. The proportion of the mediation effect to total effect was 45%. The result indicated that organizational justice had partial intermediary effect on the relation between social support and life quality. This proved the hypothesis. 3.5 The structural equation modeling among life quality, social support and organizational justice According to the result of the intermediary test, we constructed the model on the relationship among life quality, social support and organizational justice (Figure 1). We used Amos5.0 to verify the models’ applicableness. Table 4. Goodness-of-fit index of the model

�²/df RMSEA GFI CFI AGFI TLI RFI IFI NFI

2.99 0.076 0.945 0.961 0.912 0.948 0.930 0.961 0.948

Figure1. The structural equation modeling among life quality, social support and organizational justice

The results showed that the goodness-of-fit index of the model were all fitting standards: 2��²/df �3, RMSEA�0.08, GFI, CFI, AGFI, TLI, RFI, IFI, NFI were all �0.9(Table 4), indicating that the model was fitting good (Wu & Tu, 2012).


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The significance levels of the path, which the social support impacted life quality, social support impacted organizational justice and organizational justice impacted life quality, were respectively 0.35 *, 0.58 *, 0.56 * (P�0.01). The structural equation model proved that social support of white-collar workers not only affected the life quality directly, but also affected the life quality indirectly through the intermediary effect of organizational justice experience. 4. Discussion The research found that white-collar workers’ life quality scored averagely above 80 and nearly 90% of white-collar workers described their life quality as "neither good nor bad, good or very good", showing that their life quality were in medium level. Besides, it was also found that the married group scored better than the unmarried, the group with children scored better than the childless group, the higher monthly income group scored better than the lower monthly income group. That was consistent with the results of previous research(Hu et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2014). Marriage can improve social relations of individuals and satisfaction of social support, so married white-collar workers felt happier. White-collar workers having children could experience a feeling of life continuation and fulfillment through the interaction with children and creation of harmonious family relations while raising and educating children, so they were more satisfied with their life quality. High income mighty easily endow people a sense of control and satisfy their material and spiritual desires, so white-collar workers with a higher income experienced better life quality. The research results indicated that higher organizational justice score of white-collar workers was associated with better life quality and higher social support with better life quality. That was consistent with the results of previous research (Yao et al., 2010; Xie et al., 2008). The intermediary test found that social support would not only directly affect life quality, but also affect life quality through organizational justice indirectly. It indicated that white-collar workers with more social support had better life quality, meanwhile, they experienced a better feeling of organizational justice, which further improved their life quality. Social support affected ones’ subjective well-being (Yan & Zheng, 2008) and psychological health (Wang & Shi, 2008), further directly affected white-collar workers’ life quality (Wu & Tan, 2009). At the same time, support from colleagues and leaders at work affected white-collar workers’ organizational justice. Apart from that, family support might improve their job involvement and work efficiency as well as satisfaction to the organization, reduced their job burnout, thus improved their life quality. To sum up, we suggest that life quality of white-collar workers should be improved through improving their social support and organizational justice. On one hand, the directors of workplaces should pay attention to coordinate the relationships and enhance communications among employees so as to build harmonious working atmosphere, so the colleagues can support each other. Managers in enterprises should also give leadership support and show more concerns for the staff. On the other hand, enterprises should develop fair systems of salary and making policies by considering fairness among employees in order to improve the white-collar workers’ organizational justice and satisfaction with enterprise, then promote their psychological well-being, and further improve their life quality. 5. Limitation and future research As convenient sampling was used to select the participants in this research, the range of samples was limited and failed to cover the whole white-collar workers’ group. That made the research results not representative enough to a certain extent. In the follow-up studies, we will improve the research methods, enlarge the sample size and scope so as to acquire results more representative. References Chen, C. R., Chen, Y. C., Yang, Y. Q., & Duan, G. X. (2010). Path analysis of the influencing factors of nurses'

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Innovation: Crucial Factor for the Internationalization of SMEs Maria Navarrete-Hinojosa1, Jaime Olea-Miranda1, Ricardo Rodriguez-Carvajal1, Lucas-Ruiz Duarte1, Jorge

Taddei-Bringas1 1Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Sonora, Mexico. Correspondence: Jorge Taddei-Bringas, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Sonora. Rosales Boulevard corner Luis Encinas Boulevard, Hermosillo, Mexico. Received: January 4, 2015 Accepted: January 19, 2015 Available online: January 20, 2016 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1275 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1275 Abstract Market globalization has brought profound changes in the way in which relations between people, companies and countries are established. Particularly for companies, these changes have manifested in an increase in international operations, which on one hand press local micro, small and medium firms (SMEs) to improve their products and processes, so that they do not be displaced by foreign companies, but on the other, this new environment offers them opportunities to access foreign markets. There are several approaches to understand the elements that influence the internationalization of firms; some of them are based on the input directly to the foreign market. In the case of SMEs, additionally, it has been proposed as a mechanism of internationalization, their direct participation in global value chains (GVC). One of the ways for consolidate the participation of SMEs in GVCs is through innovation. The purpose of this article is to present a model based on innovation, which summarizes the ideas of several authors as a factor explaining the internationalization of SMEs, particularly in the sectors of metalworking and information technology, located in the state of Sonora, Mexico. Considered factors are entrepreneurial orientation, organisational competitions, institutions and capital. To validate the hypothesis and use of the proposed model, a survey was applied to 116 SMEs from Sonora; using a logistic regression technique, a probability function was calculated. Results can help to understand some of the elements that are present in this complex process of integration of SMEs in global value chains. Keywords: internationalization, innovation, SMEs, global value chains 1. Background From the early 1970s, great changes have been brought about by globalization of the economy, including the signing of international trade agreements, economic liberalization and the emergence of low cost technologies that “join people and places” (Oyson, 2011, p.101). This process of industrial restructuring and deregulation of markets may be summarized as “the integration of world trade and disintegration of production” (Feenstra, 1998, p.1). These conditions have led to the international expansion of firms seeking to take advantage of new opportunities arising in foreign markets. In the other hand, SMEs in developing countries play an important role in the economies of countries by the number of establishments and jobs created (Korsakiene, 2014); but by the globalization effect, they have been faced with international competition, forcing them to understand the constraints that affect the achievement of their successful participation in these markets, which are new to them (Korsakiene and Tvaronaviciene, 2012).. There are a number of strategies that a company can implement to internationalize: export; foreign direct investment (FDI); licensing; outsourcing; franchising; joint ventures; and. the establishment of subsidiaries (Lopez and Ruiz, 1996). However, more and more, organizations are becoming internationalized through integration into global value chains and global production networks (Alonso, 2007). Global value chains (GVC) represent a new form of industrial organization that has gained acceptance in many industries in different countries (Guiliani, Pietrobelli and Rabelloti, 2005; Morrison, Pietrobelli and Rabelloti, 2008). In the case of small suppliers in underdeveloped countries, it presents one of the most common options for accessing international markets, diversifying exports, creating new jobs, updating knowledge, and acquiring new technological and innovation capacities, thereby strengthening the their countries’ competitiveness (Kosakoffi and López, 2008;


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Pietrobelli and Rabelloti, 2009). The success of internationalization depends on several factors, most notably those affecting the economy as a whole, such as the availability of production resources and the existence of infrastructure services. It further depends on the existence of policies and institutions that support industrial growth, in addition to factors related to technology, production and innovation capabilities, all of which allow the harnessing of opportunities in the international market (Alonso, 2007). In recent years, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2004) has shown that innovation has become a factor that not only improves productivity and, therefore, competitiveness but also drives economic development and integrates SMEs into global production chains thereby ensuring their exposure to international markets. This articleto aims to show the relationship between innovation and internationalization of a SME. The article consists of five sections and a conclusion: the first section presents the background; this is followed by a synthesis of theories and models on internationalization and innovation; the third section focuses on SMEs in the sectors of information technology and metalworking in Sonora; the following section sets forth the methodology and the fifth section discusses the results of the study. Finally, the conclusions are presented 2. Method 2.1 Theories and models of internationalization of firms Internationalization has been defined in several ways: for Korsakiene and Tvaronoviciene (2012, p.296), it is “the expansion of the company's operations in foreign markets”. Oviatt and McDougall (2005, p.540), referring to international entrepreneurship, conceptualised the concept as the “discovery, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities beyond national boundaries to create future products and services”. Meanwhile, Ruzzier, Antoncic, Hisrich and Konecnik (2007, p.16), inspired by a vision based on resources, defined the concept as “the process to mobilize, build and develop a set of resources to carry out international activities”. The process of SMEs’ internationalization is explained by different authors and theoretical approaches. It has been attributed to the internationalization theory (Buckley and Casson, 1985), to the Uppsala model proposed by Vahlne and Johanson (1977), to international entrepreneurship (Oviatt and McDougall 2005) and to the theory of networks formulated by Vahlne and Johanson (2009). For more depth on the issue, Fernández-Ortiz, San Emeterio and Menorca (2012) have provided a summary of the different types of approaches to, and of the authors who have developed models of firms’ internationalization. As the processes that companies follow to achieve internationalization are complex, and as existing models provide only a partial explanation for the mechanisms of export development (Leonidou and Katsikeas, 1997), in addition to theoretical approaches, various holistic models have emerged which integrate various variables of the theoretical perspectives. Likewise, Etemad and Wright (1999, p.9) concluded that “no simple model adequately explains the success of some companies to internationalize”. With reference to the particular case of SMEs, Jamali, Jawad Shaikh, Shaikh and Afridi (2011), developed a model of internationalization of the firm, which included relevant factors touching on the following variables: company demographics (age, size, location and source); firm resources (financial, physical, human, technological, and organizational reputation); and, senior management features (dominating languages, previous experience, education and administrative background). 2.2 Theories and models of firm innovation According to the Oslo Manual (OECD, 2005, p.56) innovation must be understood by “the introduction of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), process, a new marketing method or a new organizational method in the internal practices of the company, workplace organization or external relations”. It is widely recognized that innovations have significant effects on productivity, competitiveness and employment (Kuster and Vila, 2011; Valenti, 2008). The opportunity to internationalize in new markets requires products and services tailored to local needs (Buse, Tiwari and Herstatt, 2010), which necessarily implies the ability to innovate. In addition, if firms seek a sustainable advantage, it is necessary to continually develop innovations as competitors can quickly imitate the products on the market. Despite the advantages that can be achieved by internationalization, the barriers that SMEs face in serving foreign markets (Leonidou, 2004; London, 2010) are both internal and external. Internal hurdles include lack of information and equity, difficulties in innovating, hurdles to building international market positions, problems in maintaining international business relations, and, obstacles to developing language skills. External obstacles include standardization,


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quality requirements, conformity assessment, and differences in packaging, labelling, and ecological requirements. Several models have been developed to conceptualize innovation. Sheng Wang, Xu, Li and Liu (2009) presented a model that identified three factors (resources, capabilities and environment) that supported “the innovation system of the company”. Resources may be tangible – talented entrepreneurs with initiative, R & D, and infrastructure for innovation ̶ or intangible ̶ such as knowledge, information, capital, and intellectual property-. The capabilities are developed to integrate resources to provide better solutions to the problems of innovation. Finally, the uncertainty of the environment refers not only to the degree of competitive rivalry, but also to the stability of market demand, and to government policies and the situation of the industry in general. In order to understand the elements that impact innovation, Zawislak, Borges, Wegner, Castro-Santos and Lucas (2008) presented the concept “innovation function”. For these authors, innovation is a function of entrepreneurship (will, desire, spirit, courage and vision to carry out new ideas), institutions (social-economic and cultural context in which entrepreneurs explore opportunities), capabilities (resources, skills, abilities and skills to turn ideas into products and services), and, capital (financial resources needed to sustain the entire process). 3. Proposed model and validation methodology 3.1 The model The model proposed in this article, gleaning ideas from the models of “the innovation system of the company” (Shen et al., 2009) and the “innovation function” (Zawislak et al., 2008), highlights the impact of innovation in the internationalization of firms. The model is summarized in the following concepts and dimensions shown in Figure 1 and are explained later.

Innovation Capabilities

Entrepreneurial orientation

Organisationalcompetitions

Institutions Capital

Internationalizationof the firm

Figure 1. Internationalization of firms in terms of innovation capabilities. Prepared with reference to Shen et al. (2009) and Zawislak et al. (2008)

The entrepreneurial orientation. In the innovation process, an entrepreneur with culture, knowledge, insight and a willingness to take risks is required; therefore, the previous experience and educational level of the decision maker are significant considerations. Institutions have the function of reducing uncertainty by defining “rules”, such as standards or codes of conduct. It is recognized that, if institutions do not offer opportunities to firms to improve their innovation processes, their internal capabilities will not be sufficient to advance and compete internationally. Among the institutions with a role to play in this regard are the government, universities and research centres. Porter and Stern (2001) applied the term “external environment for innovation” to these inputs, whereas Valenti (2008) referred to such influences as the characteristics of the context and the coordinative capacity of the agents involved. Organizational competitions are investments in research and development to generate new knowledge. We can distinguish between domestic investment, which is designed to improve the staff and assets of the company, and external investments, which are made by the conclusion of agreements with other firms, universities or research centers. The capacity of companies to generate new processes and products by harnessing both the knowledge of their personnel and the capabilities of their technologies has been referred to by Porter and Stern (2001) as “internal factors”. In a similar vein, Valenti (2008) describes such innovation as “the factor that gives the main comparative advantage”. Hence, in the proposed model, the level of knowledge, education and training of staff are considered as related to the individual´s knowledge; related with technology, the age of the equipment and the qualification that the owner makes on the technology of his company in relation to the technology used worldwide. Finally, it is included as a capacity of


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the company if it has a certification, because this may allow international operations. The Capital refers to the financial resources necessary to cover expenses that arise in the process of innovation. To evaluate this aspect, the model uses two key input parameters: average investment in projects and funding sources. These elements potentiate product innovations, process, organizational efficiency and marketing effectiveness, which are regarded as the cornerstones of competitiveness and productivity. The dynamic generated by these elements paves the way to the internationalization of firms. In order to validate the proposed model, a survey was carried out on 116 SMEs in the information technology and metalworking sectors in Sonora. The state of Sonora is in the northwest of the country and is the second largest state in Mexico, representing 9.2% of the total land area; it shares borders with the United States including the states of Arizona and New Mexico. Figure 2.

Figure 2. Boundary of the state of Sonora, Mexico with the United States SMEs have a huge potential to contribute to economic growth and development. In the EU, 99% of all companies contribute more than two thirds of its GDP and provide 75 million jobs in the private sector (Cordis, 2009). In Mexico, the economic pattern is similar. According to data provided by the Ministry of Economy in September 2014, SMEs generated 51% of GDP and contributed to 72% of formal employment. In particular, in the state of Sonora, SMEs represented 98% of all industrial enterprises (SIEM http: /www.siem.gob.mx). The economy of Sonora has undergone a restructuring process in the past 25 years, mainly due to the automotive industry and assembly plants, which have generated a polarized industrial structure, exemplified by a significant increase in advanced manufacturing activity; this has created a dynamic in which most local small businesses have struggled to participate in the new opportunities. However, a small number of local companies, taking advantage of the open spaces by the leading companies for an interactive learning, from demand of supplies and services, have overcome the barriers, becoming producers of capital goods and specialized services, enabling them strengthen their capabilities as reliable suppliers (Contreras and Olea, 2005). 3.2 Methodology The empirical study is based on a survey which was designed as part of the research project “Global Production Networks and local learning: spills of transnational technological and absorptive capacity in technology-based SMEs in Northwestern Mexico”, COLEF-COLSON, Conacyt No. 133596. A fieldwork instrument for data collection was developed. It consisted on a survey integrated by 95 questions divided in ten sections, as follows: I. General data, II. Absorption capacity, III. Learning and technological innovation, IV. Relations with other companies, V. Relations with educational institutions, VI. Relations with government, VII. Relations with Business Chambers, VIII. Product identification, IX. Strategic direction and management, and X. Investment. Directories of companies that are established in the state of Sonora were used to develop the sampling frame, obtaining 32,343 records. Some of the directories consulted include: economic activity records of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS, for its acronym in Spanish); the Mexican Business Information System (SIEM, for its acronym in Spanish); the directory of the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry; the Yellow Pages Phone Book, among others. A filter for main activity, size and municipality criteria was applied on the database records; the own existence, main economic activity and geographic location were verified for each company. A thorough depuration of the list of MM and IT businesses resulted on 672 economic units that could be considered (322 of IT and 350 of MM). Blacksmith workshops, radio broadcasters and cyber cafe were excluded. Sample size was determined using the formula for sample proportion with a 10 percent accuracy level and a confidence


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level of 95 percent, as follows:

Where: n = sample size N = Population size Z2 (1-α / 2) = Confidence level p = positive Variability q = negative Variability ε = Accuracy or error f = error and nonresponse correction factor As was mentioned in the previous section, in our case, a survey of 116 micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the information technology (55) and metal mechanics (61) sectors was carried out in six Sonora municipalities where there was a concentration of economic activity. The objective was to measure the impact of innovation in the insertion of an SME in the CGV; it was decided to include in the model the type of activity and the size of the enterprise, as these variables can influence to accept a local SME as a provider of a foreign enterprise, as shown by previous studies (Contreras and Olea, 2005). In addition, companies that have relation with transnational supply were classified. The central hypothesis of this study is that the activities, size and innovation capabilities of SMEs are factors that strengthen their chances of becoming internationalized. Company activity (activity). The sample companies were grouped into two types of activities: 1) Information Technology (IT) which included: computer consulting services and software development, (but excluded radio broadcasters and internet cafe); and 2) Metalworking (MM) groups which encompassed: fabrication of metal products; metal parts machining; manufacturing of screws, metal structures, bodies and trailers, industrial machinery and equipment; repair, installation and maintenance of machinery and industrial equipment; and, industrial precision (blacksmith workshops were excluded). Company size (Size). The INEGI classification criteria of “Small and Medium Enterprises” (Table 1) were followed. Table 1. Classification of company size Source: INEGI, (2011). Economic Census 2009 An innovation capabilities indicator (CAPINNO) was calculated from the applicable variables that comprised: entrepreneurial orientation, institutions, organizational skills, capital, and type of innovation. The entrepreneurial orientation indicator was constructed with reference to items related to the level of education and work experience of the owner, the innovation strategy, the objectives of the enterprise, the methodology to prioritise and target resources, and the implementation of activities for dismantling the barriers to competing abroad. Institutions’ dimension was built with reference to items related to the types of support received from goverrment, higher education institutions, and associations or chambers for product development, in addition to information sources and agents that influence learning of company members. The Organizational Skills dimension was generated using items related to the education and training level of workers, the training plan of the company, the technology used, age of equipment, possession of certifications, and strategies implemented in the previous five years. The Capital dimension was constructed using items related to investment projects, the sources of funds for investment, and the types of projects that had been supported. Innovation indicators were developed with reference to items related to the implementation of new or improved products as well as to significant changes in organizational and marketing activities. CAPINNO was defined as a scale variable which includes the above four dimensions, according to the recommended

Classification Number of employees Industry Services

Micro from 1 to 30 from 1 to 20 Small from 31 to 100 from 21 to 50 Medium from 101 to 250 from 51 to 100

Equation 1


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Schuschny and Soto (2009) procedure. It consists on building indexes from weighted averages, or through the sum of the responses of the items for each factor or variable (the factors considered in this case are Entrepreneurial Orientation, Organizational Competitions, Institutions and Capital). Since the proposed factor indicators were measured at different scales, it was necessary to standardize them before being added (Hernández, Fernández and Baptista, 2009; Schuschny and Soto, 2009). For analysis, a logistic regression model –Probit- (LR) was selected, which was of the multivariate model type, which is used where it is sought to establish the influence that a number of independent and control variables have on a dichotomous dependent variable (0/1; No, Yes). The aim was to express the probability of an event as a function of the variables that were relevant or influential or presumed to have occurred. Choosing the LR model also allowed the following advantages: 1) the entry of a mixture of categorical and quantitative variables as response predictors, 2) from the regression coefficients (β) of the independent variables, the Odds Ratio (OR) could be directly obtained, corresponding to the probability of having an evaluated effect for a given value (x) from the value decreased by a unit (x-1) (Aguayo, 2007). To implement the LR model, it was necessary to determine both the relevant variables and the manner in which they would join to the model: Dependent variable: internationalization. It was this variable we sought to model in order to elicit dichotomous responses (No, Yes). Predictor variables (independent): company size (micro, small and medium) and innovation capacities (low, medium, high). These were the variables we sought to model and also to assess their relationship or association with the dependent variable. Confounding variable: Company activity. Predictor of response or effect, outside the primary relationship analyzed (X

Y); they are not an intermediate step between exposure and response, but simultaneously are related to the independent variables. In this case, literature puts IT companies and MM as the industry types most likely to join global value chains (Contreras y Olea, 2005). In addition, the geographical context (by virtue of the proximity of the USA) potentiates the links with foreign markets and sales. The exposed variables were introduced in the model and the statistic package SPSS V.20 was used for their calculation It is necessary to consider the following findings for better understanding and interpretation of the results:

� The empirical study comprised 116 cases, 55 IT companies and 61 MM. � The encoding used for the dependent variable took the value 1 which identified the evaluated result (in our

case “internationalization”). This allowed a better understanding of the ßi coefficients of the independent and control variables: a positive regression coefficient indicated that the probability of achieving internationalization increased when moving from one category to another: micro, small and medium in size, or, basic, intermediate and advanced capabilities for innovation.

� The control variable (business activity) coded as 0 = MM and 1 = IT, was the reference in obtaining the probability of achieving the internationalization of IT companies against companies MM.

The main results and interpretations are listed below: 4. Analysis of results As a first step, it fell to be considered whether the value of the constant in the equation was necessary. Table 2 shows the estimated value of the parameter (β = -.642), its standard error (SE), and its statistical significance with the Wald test, which followed a chi-square distribution with 1 degree of freedom (df) - and estimating OR (exp (β)). The value of the Wald statistic (10,797) and its significance (0.001) indicated that this coefficient was equal to 0; therefore, the constant had to be incorporated into the model. Table 2. Variables on the equation

B E.T. Wald gl Sig. Exp(B)

Step 0 Constant -,642 ,195 10,797 1 ,001 ,526 Following integration of the independent variables, a diagnostic test was carried out, which permitted evaluation of the fit of the regression model based on a comparison of the predicted values with those observed. The results are presented in Table 3. The results showed a specificity of 85.5% and a sensitivity of 67.5% (Alderete, 2006). Thus, we can say that the model was considered a good fit because the overall percentage of explanation was set at 79.3%. Table 3. Diagnostic Test

Observed

Predicted Internationalization Correct

percentage No Yes

Internacionalization

No

65

11

85,5 Yes 13 27 67,5

Global percentage 79,3


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Finally, Table 4 presents variables to be considered in the equation: regression coefficients (ßi) with their corresponding standard errors (ET); Wald statistic to evaluate the null hypothesis (ßi = 0); and, associated statistical significance and value of the OR (exp (β)) with confidence intervals (Table 4). One of the features that enhances the value of the LR model, is the relationship the coefficients have with the parameter for quantifying risk, known as the odds ratio (OR) and the mathematical properties of these (Aguayo, 2007). The notion being measured with the odds associated with an event is the ratio between the probabilities of occurrence against the probability of non-occurrence. In the present case, the innovation capacities were designed as a measure that quantified the change in risk (internationalization), in travelling from one value to another (low, medium or high), where other variables remained constant. Thus we can say that SMEs were 4.361 times more likely to be internationalized when their innovation capabilities went from basic to intermediate, or from intermediate to advanced. It should be clarified that, for ease of analysis and considering that the CAPINNO variable is normalized (values between 0 and 1), the cutoff points for the ranges were defined as between 0 to 0.33 for low innovation capabilities , from 0.34 to 0.66 and 0.67-1.00 for intermediate to high. Table 4. Variables in the equation

B E.T. Wald gl Sig. Exp(B)

C.I. 95% to EXP(B) Lower Top

Step 1st Capinno 1,473 ,408 13,030 1 ,000 4,361 1,960 9,701 Activity(1) -1,751 ,526 11,068 1 ,001 ,174 ,062 ,487 Size 1,105 ,558 3,917 1 ,048 3,019 1,011 9,015 Constant -2,193 ,680 10,405 1 ,001 ,112

With the data in the table we can construct the logistic regression equation (1):

(1)

Where: P (Y = 1) = Internationalization probability of SMEs α = Constant model ßi = Regression coefficient Xi = Predictor variable value of the predictor This equation predicted the likelihood of the outcome (internationalization) of a company given its activity, size and innovation capacity. Table 6 shows SMEs’ evaluations using different combinations of the most representative characteristics of the predictor variables included in the study. For example, if we were to evaluate equation in a small IT innovation company with media innovation capabilities, the prediction equation (2) would be:

(2)

Thus, a chance of internationalization P (Y = 1) = 0.20 was obtained. With this predicted probability being less than 0.5, and applying defined literature criteria (Aguayo, 2007), the company was necessarily classified as a company that was not internationalized. By contrast, in the case of a small MM company with the same characteristics as the evaluated IT, the internationalization probability was P (Y = 1) = 0.60. As the probability was greater than 0.5, it was classified as a company that was internationalized. The results of the statistical analysis (Table 5) confirmed that the greater the innovation capabilities of SMEs, the greater were their chances of becoming internationalized; these data proved the hypothesis. Another important finding was that MM SMEs were more likely to become internationalized than IT SMEs, a phenomenon that may have been due to the specific activities carried out by these enterprises to meet their own market needs. In addition, the geographical location of the Mexican MMs ̶ in close proximity to the market in the United States ̶ gave these companies a strategic advantage as many US companies, in pursuit of cost reduction strategies, look to such companies for their supply or products. IT companies presented a different scenario, as the requirements with respect to information systems, implementation and maintenance, as well as costs and delivery times, made it difficult for such companies to rival foreign competitors.


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Table 5. Evaluation of SMEs as combinations of predictor variables.

Size Innovation Capabilities

Activity IT MM

Micro Low 0.02 0.10 Small Low 0.06 0.25

Medium Low 0.15 0.50 Micro Average 0.08 0.33 Small Average 0.20 0.60

Medium Average 0.44 0.82 Micro High 0.27 0.68 Small High 0.53 0.86

Medium High 0.77 0.95 Source: Based on data of the project: global production networks and local learning: spills of transnational technological and absorptive capacity in technology-based SMEs in northwest Mexico. COLEF-COLSON, CONACYT Project No. 133596. 4. Conclusions Recognizing the difficulties faced by SMEs in directly participating in international markets, the solution proposed in this study is the insertion of such SMEs into global value chains established in the region. This option provides an opportunity to the companies to overcome some of the limitations which inhibit their ability to operate directly in foreign markets. In particular, the deficiencies are manifest in the following areas: production technologies; access to market information; and, the ability to design, produce, sell, distribute and provide after-sales service to meet the requirements of price, quality, time and flexibility of global market demands. However, even if the rhythms are different, for an SME to be accepted as a global network provider it must, nonetheless, enhance productivity and improve its innovation processes, thereby enabling it to maintain competitiveness. The state of Sonora, Mexico, located on the border with the United States, has taken advantage of international trade agreements in order to attract direct foreign investment and, arising from its geographical location, has been favored by large transnational installation companies primarily in the automotive, aerospace and electronics sectors; these companies shape global value chains, and, in selecting foreign suppliers, evince a preference for companies with a minimum proven industry participation. The innovative capacities of SMEs in Sonora are emerging and focus mostly on process development and (to a lesser extent) product enhancement; little emphasis is placed on organisational efficiency and marketing strategy. The companies, however, have not been able to position themselves in the global market or to become fully integrated as suppliers to large companies. Furthermore, few have been able to implement and develop their capacity for innovation, the necessary prerequisites for internationalization. The study results showed that metalworking SMEs are more likely to be accepted as multinational providers than information technology SMEs. This is largely attributable to the fact that the IT product is intangible. On the other hand, it is observed that, in order for an SME to be accepted as a provider to a multinational company, it must not only make internal efforts to boost aspects such as training staff level and the training of the leader himself, upgrading technology and enhancing production practices, but it must also secure the support of various actors that make up the Regional Innovation System such as higher education institutions, government, financial institutions, and business chambers. With such support, it is possible that the capacity of SMEs to absorb knowledge and learning and to show innovation may be strengthened, paving the way for their full integration into global value chains. References Alderete, A. M. (2006). Fundamentos del Análisis de Regresión Logística en la Investigación Psicológica. Evaluar, 6,

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How to Manage Perception to Win Negotiations Katarzyna Jagodzinska1

1Enterprise Institute, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland Correspondence: Katarzyna Jagodzinska, Enterprise Institute, University of Neuchâtel, Rue A.-L. Breguet 2, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Received: January 4, 2016 Accepted: January 19, 2016 Available online: January 21, 2016 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1320 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1320 Abstract Perception management is undeniably one of the critical skills of a master negotiator. While the idea that negotiators should control how their counterparts perceive them has already been examined in literature, there does not exist a strategic model for applying perception management into modern negotiation practice. This article indicates how negotiators can manage how they see themselves and how they feel in ways that can influence others' perceptions of them, in order to increase their inner bargaining power and consequently win negotiations. In view of the above, I introduce the 3-Dimensional Model of Perceptual Management in Negotiation. The model provides a straightforward and user-friendly framework that can be used to prepare for a negotiation or at any time during a negotiation to boost the chances of a successful outcome. Furthermore, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the perceptual process, explains the impact of perceptual selection on negotiation and presents the most common attribution errors. Since perception depends to a large extent on individual inclinations, the article is garnished with visualizations of the theoretical aspects designed for all those to whom images speak louder than words. Keywords: negotiation, impression management, bargaining power, perception, perceptual selection, attribution errors, verbal and non-verbal communication. 1. Introduction One of the essential skills of a master negotiator is the ability to read people in order to recognize their needs and anticipate their next move based on what they crave to achieve. The way a person behaves, both consciously and unconsciously, is very revealing. Decoding the real message behind their verbal and non-verbal communication is a valuable source of information, which can then be used as powerful tool of influence. Sooner or later we will all have to face a negotiation that may be life changing for us, whether in a professional or personal setting. Its outcome will depend on how well we have trained ourselves in the art of perception management. Practice makes perfect. It is thus helpful to develop the necessary skills on a continuous basis and not just ad hoc when we need to prepare for an upcoming negotiation. Fortunately, people watching and uncovering individual preferences has never been easier than it is now. The most inspiring professor I ever had at University once said that life is a theatre. Sitting at one of the airports during my frequent travel, I came to the conclusion that only the setting changes, the actors are busy doing pretty much the same thing wherever one happens to go. Everyone seems preoccupied with checking emails, chatting online or whatever else activity they can think of with the use of mobile devices and the Internet. A vast majority is fully devoted to taking pictures of themselves – the so called “selfies”. These selfies are then posted on Instagram, Facebook or any other social network, and shared with the rest of the world. It would seem that people have an urge for showing off their perceived individualism and importance. As I pondered about my observations, the term “selfie generation” came to my mind. It depicts a generation of self-centered individuals governed by the need to exhibit their lifestyle, social status, achievements, activities, and ultimately to feed their egos. My next thought was how this translates into modern business practice, specifically what are the implications for negotiation. According to Cohen, negotiation is a field of knowledge and endeavor that focuses on gaining the favor of people from whom we want things (Cohen, 1980). As observed by Fisher, Ury and Patton, negotiation is about much more than merely obtaining support or preferential treatment from the other party: Negotiation is a basic means of getting what you want from others. It is a back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed (Fisher, Ury & Patton, 2012). In a negotiation thus what is important is to understand individual particularities in order to reach a mutually acceptable agreement on how to satisfy the needs and interests of both negotiation partners. Needs and interests are rarely explicitly voiced and more information is transferred through non-verbal rather than verbal communication.


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Consequently, the importance of managing the impressions one makes takes on a new dimension. Perception management operates on two levels. Firstly, we want to understand with whom we are dealing, what are this persons’ hot buttons as well as the motivational factors that drive this person and, in consequence, what is important for him or her. This knowledge will enable us to find creative options for mutual gain in the face of a negotiation. Secondly, we want to be in full control of what we ourselves reveal to the other party both through our verbal and non-verbal behavior. Going back to the observation on the selfie generation, perhaps people have always been as self-oriented as they are now, but modern technology makes it so much easier to investigate their needs and interests, which in turn helps predict the negotiation positions they may assume. In order to fully grasp the implications of managing perceptions on the negotiation process, it is vital to increase awareness about the major elements forming the perceptual process, raise understanding about what perception management is, as well as uncover how the attribution process works. All the above elements will now be addressed in more detail and seasoned with real life examples from my own negotiation practice. 2. The Perceptual Process: Managing Emotions and Framing Perception is a six-step process during which the individual observes, selects, organizes, interprets and responds1 to a perceptual trigger: the source of information (situation, object, person), as illustrated in Figure 1 (Slocum & Hellriegel, 2011).

Figure 1.

It is the perception of reality and not reality itself that influences individuals’ behavior. People’s reactions are based on their subjective perception of reality, consisting of a situation, object and/or the other person. The person who is “being perceived” is in turn also acting based on his or her perception of the context (situation, object and/or person). I will explain this process on the example of an experience I recently had. During a particularly busy work schedule I was lecturing in three countries over a period of one week: Poland, France and Switzerland as the final destination. In Switzerland I pulled into a gas station to refill the tank and wash my car. Next to the station was a used car dealership. Waiting for the cycle to finish I wandered over there to take a look at the vehicles on offer. I spotted the sales person through the window of his office; he briefly looked up but did not pay much attention to me. As I was walking around the lot where the cars were parked one of them particularly caught my eye. The model, color, production year, extras and mileage all seemed very attractive. To my surprise the price was extremely reasonable in relation to the value of the car. Suddenly, very animated, I started inspecting it from all angles. Because I liked the machine so much, in my mind’s eye, I started to consider exchanging it for my own car. I excitedly took out my cell phone to consult this rather

1Adopted from: John W. Slocum, Don Hellriegel, Principles of Organizational Behavior, 13th edition, South-Western Cengage Learning, 2011, p. 105.

Perceptual Trigger

Observation

Perceptual Selection

Perceptual Organization

Interpretation

Response


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spontaneous idea with my friend. Just as I was about to dial I saw the sales person approaching me. Suddenly his demeanor was much different than when he first saw me through his office window. With a big smile on his face, he was pacing my way with his hand extended to greet me. We exchanged the typical pleasantries. He started his sales talk advertising the car and all it had to offer. Still very much excited, I listened with bright eyes occasionally nodding my head. I then made my call. He discretely turned away and stood at a distance to allow me some privacy while I talked. I described the situation to my friend, presented the car features and went on to stating the great price. My friend’s question was like an accepted ice bucket challenge: “Which currency?” These two words completely changed my perception of what I up to then perceived to be the reality: a very attractive price for a fancy car. In the fervor of the moment and too tired to realize I have been travelling to countries with different currencies it slipped my mind that the price for the car was indeed in Swiss francs. No longer so attractive if compared to the Polish currency I had encoded in my head!2 When I hung up, the salesman turned back to me with budding hope for securing his commission. The change in dynamics was unmistakable though. Feeling a bit overwhelmed I thanked him and quickly made my way back to my own car. Let us now analyze each of the 6 elements of the perceptual process on the basis of the above adventure. The perceptual trigger in this case was an object. While walking around the car dealership arena I entered the phase of observation during which I performed a preliminary perceptual selection of one car that caught my eye. Having made a visual assessment of all the other vehicles on display (mark, model, size, color, mileage, extra features, etc.) I then proceeded with the perceptual organization: I compared their prices and contrasted them with the knowledge I had about market prices for similar used cars. Based on this analysis I made the following interpretation: the vehicle that I liked most was both desirable and affordable for me. My response was to consider exchanging my own car for it, and to call and consult my friend about this bold move. I would like to uncover the dynamics behind the perceptual process and specifically to point out the impact of perception(s) on bargaining power in negotiation. When I first entered the car dealership my demeanor was completely neutral. I was bored and decided to distract myself by looking at cars while my own one was being washed. The sales person who spotted me through his office window reacted to me accordingly to his own perception. He saw me as a random visitor and therefore not someone who would merit his attention, energy and time. If this were a negotiation my bargaining power would have been on level zero. Due to a perceptual mistake on my part (confusion about currency and exchange rates), I led myself to believe that I spotted a very lucrative deal. In consequence my whole attitude changed. Enlivened I walked around and inspected the chosen car with great confidence in my stride. I went from neutral to level one, as would have my bargaining power had this been a negotiation. The shift certainly attracted the attention of the sales person. He started to perceive me as a potential client and decided to make the effort and leave his desk and approach me with distant hope of closing a sale. When I completed my scrutiny of the car I began considering the exchange of cars in my mind. The sales person perceived this as his “now or never” moment and started giving me his best sales talk to convince me about the deal. My bargaining power would have been at its peak at that stage. The consulting call to my friend caused it to hit rock bottom though. How does this translate into negotiation? Due to my response to a perceptual trigger I caused the change in the perceptual process of the sales person and in turn altered his attitude towards me. In a negotiation I would have managed to achieve a high on bargaining power despite an erroneous analysis on my part. Each person can learn how to exercise command over their own perceptual process: the observation, selection, organization, interpretation and response to a perceptual trigger. This realization can seriously boost the chances of winning a negotiation. By programing the mind into believing something we can start by improving our mental BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), which in turn leads to the increase of bargaining power and favorably influences how others perceive and act towards us. The simplified process is illustrated in Figure 23.

2CHF/PLN= approximately 4,064 (as of January 2016) 3Author’s own concept and illustration.


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Figure 2.

In the above diagram there appears one crucial element that merits attention: emotions. Emotions are the flame of negotiation and as such a considerate amount of research has been dedicated to the topic. As Fisher and Shapiro rightly observed, “Emotions can be obstacles to negotiation (…). They can divert attention from substantive matters; they can damage a relationship; they can be used to exploit you.” (Fisher & Shapiro, 2006). Regardless of their destructive potential, emotions cannot and should not be switched off though. They are the indicators of what we find acceptable and what not, they are our inner GPS system. In the prequel to Getting to Yes, Ury argues that learning and understanding our own emotions is the key to influencing ourselves first; only then can we attempt to impact others (Ury, 2015). The book advertises itself as “The First Step in Any Negotiation, Conflict or Difficult Conversation”. Without a doubt this is a catchy marketing phrase, but content wise only partially true. As shown above, emotions do not just randomly happen, they are triggered by perceptions, which only then transform them into feelings of threat, anger, injustice and a whole array of other sentiments. “Getting to yes with yourself” thus starts not only by learning how to control one’s own emotions in order to persuade others, but more importantly, by taking over the perceptual process, which causes the flow of these emotions. A critical aspect in perception management and negotiation is framing. A frame is the subjective lens through which people see the world, which affects how they organize information, evaluate situations and what actions they consequently take4. Because of a spectrum of individual differences, backgrounds, life experiences, expectations, wants and fears, each person frames reality in a unique way. The authors of “Difficult Conversations” refer to this phenomenon as simply having “different stories”. These stories come from several sources: available information, our observations, our interpretations and our conclusions (Stone, Patton & Heen, 1999). Both parties notice different things based on the information they selectively pay attention to. Interpretations made on the basis of selective screening are impacted by past experiences, as well as by the application of different implicit moral rules and standards. Very often, people develop self-serving biased perceptions: they focus on what they want to believe and reject all information that does not fulfill this purpose. Not surprisingly, the conclusions then reached are often one sided and mirror one parties’ self-interest only. The traditional approach to perception in negotiation implies that there are at least two parties whose perceptions differ. These divergences then shape the negotiation dynamics. At first glance the used car anecdote I described above does not seem to fit this framework since it relates only to my omission in taking into account one of the elements of the perceptual trigger: the currency. But the mistake I made is precisely my own, personal story: my observation of the situation, my interpretation of the information and my conclusions. The simplified example proves that even an erroneous assumption can set the wheels of the perceptual process into motion and alter not only one’s own story, but also impact the story (and behavior) of the person with whom we are dealing with. More importantly, at the outset

4For more information see: R. J. Lewicki, D. M. Saunders, B. Barry, Essentials of Negotiation, 5th ed., McGraw Hill, 2011, p. 115-122.

Person A Behavior/Reaction

Person B Perceptio

n

Person B Emotion

Person B Reaction

Person A Perceptio

n

Person A Emotion


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perception in negotiation does not require the involvement of two parties. Initial one-sided perception frames reality and evokes certain emotions, which are then reflected in behavior. The other party perceives the situation and reacts accordingly to this framing. Managing one’s own perception can thus be used as powerful tool of social influence. 3. The Impact of Perception Management on Negotiation We live in an era of technology overload. Information is bombarding us from all angles. As we get ready for work news headlines compete for our attention, the radio broadcasts more commercials than music, emails, texts and instant messages keep flooding our computer and portable devices; while our family tries to communicate with us. We become immune to most of this noise and focus on the task directly at hand. To remain sane, the brain has to manage the intelligence. It does so by selective screening – filtering of information in order to deal only with the most important matters. Selective screening is governed by external and internal factors. The former are characteristics of the person being perceived and the latter are characteristics of the perceiver. Person perception is a three-dimensional process by which the individual attributes characteristics or traits to other people. It is shaped by the external and internal factors, as well as the situation or context within which perception takes place. External features of the perceived are, among others, age, posture, gender, voice quality, facial expressions, attributes of social status and role, etc. These are the elements we immediately notice about the other person. Based on our observations we make preliminary judgments, categorize the person and make plans about how to deal with him or her. By means of a simplified example, we may view a smartly dressed male in his mid-40’s, with a straight posture and a hard look in his eyes, speaking in a confident and strong voice as someone who might be a seasoned and no-nonsense negotiator. Morgan Wright, an 18-year veteran of law enforcement who has trained CIA, FBI and NSA agents in behavior analysis, interviewing and interrogation techniques, calls this “command presence” – the look of authority5 . According to Wright, “As an officer you can invite trouble if you slouch, avoid eye contact, use vague, imprecise language, and are generally sloppy in your attire.”6 Clearly there is a difference between dealing with criminals and entering the negotiation zone. But the point is clear: people make judgments based on their perceptions, which are to a large extent based on how you look and behave. Characteristics of the perceiver fall into the following three categories: personality, learning and motivation7. These internal features predetermine how one interprets reality based on his or her present state of being, as well as past similar experiences which have a bearing on the way the individual will behave in similar future circumstances (the so called perceptual set). I call this phenomenon the system of pertinence of an individual. With reference to the selfie generation, it can best be described as a snapshot of a person’s life at a given moment. Such a photograph would depict all the preoccupations, motivations, dreams, fears, joys, hopes, etc. linked to the past that shape how the person sees himself, others and the world at a given moment. In relation to negotiation it is vital to “know why the fish swim” (Thompson, 2008), to understand individual differences (the internal factors) and their affect on how the person with whom we are dealing with views the environment (translation into external factors). The last element forming the perceptual puzzle is the situation or context within which perception takes place. Imagine for example that you have prior exposure working in foreign countries, negotiating across-cultures or dealing with multinational parties. The element of diversity will not sway your bargaining power in the face of a multicultural negotiation. Furthermore, your international experience will also allow you to better comprehend the characteristics of the perceived in order to better manage the relationship and communication process. Selective screening plays a big part in the negotiation process. We pay attention to certain aspects (our needs, interests and positions) while blocking out the background noise. As already shown, a person’s selection process involves both external and internal factors. The individual then organizes these stimuli into meaningful patterns. People perceive the same things in different ways, and their behaviors depend, to a large extent, on their individual perceptions. When raising the topic of perception in negotiation the typical attribution people make is that of two parties having a different perception of an object, as shown in Figure 38.

5For more information see: Carmine Gallo, Talk Like Ted. The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, Macmillan, 2014, p. 90. 6Cited in: Carmine Gallo, Talk Like Ted. The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, Macmillan, 2014, p. 90 7There exist extensive studies on motivation, learning and personality, and as such these notions will not be covered in detail in this article. 8Author’s own concept and illustration.


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Figure 3.

The object may be any matter that is at the heart of the negotiation: the division of available resources, agreeing on a price, reaching a mutually satisfactory outcome to an agreement, finding a resolution to a difficult situation, etc. The object may be “the reality” but both person A and B have different perceptions of what that reality, consisting of a situation, object and/or the other person, in fact means. 4. The 3-Dimensional Model of Perceptual Management in Negotiation The standard approach to perception in negotiation presented in Figure 3 fails to take account of two aspects: the situational context and the impact of individual perceptions on one’s own conduct, which in turn triggers a reaction of the other party. I therefore find it vital to introduce the 3-Dimensional Model of Perceptual Management in Negotiation (the 3-D Negotiation Model), illustrated in Figure 49.

Figure 4. The point that negotiators can manage how they see themselves and how they feel in ways that can influence others' perceptions of them has already been raised in literature. However, studies do not provide a specific tool that negotiators could use to master the art of perceptual management in negotiation, a niche that the introduction of the 3-D Negotiation Model aims to fill. The model comprises the trio of individual, relational and situational perception. At the core of the 3-D Negotiation Model lies the unique perception each person makes, which starts the six-step process

9Author’s own concept and illustration.

Object of negotiation

Person A

Person B

Situational

Relational

Individual


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during which he or she observes, selects, organizes, interprets and responds to a perceptual trigger. As discussed earlier, this mechanism is governed by internal and external characteristics. Individual perception influences how others see and react to us. Consequently it has a bearing on the relational element: the nature and rules governing the relationship with the party we are dealing with. Individual and relational dynamics then define the approach of parties A and B to the negotiation object. The situational context is the continuum of all these elements reflected in the negotiation strategy, style, tactics employed, etc. Over the past few years I have developed and applied the 3-D Negotiation Model in my private negotiation endeavors and have taught it to my students and business clients. Many have admitted that the model opened their eyes to certain dynamics, either caused by their own behavior or the conduct of the other party, which have, usually adversely, affected their bargaining power. The model made them realize what was the elusive element that was often causing their negotiations to go astray. Post factum analysis of the model has made them understand and take command over the perceptual process, and adjust their negotiation strategy accordingly. Furthermore, it has helped them raise awareness about the individual, relational and situational perception elements that might come into play in any future negotiation10. The most important realization drawn from the 3-D Model is that the starting point of perceptual selection, which determines the outcome of any negotiation lies within. Each person can learn how to exercise command over their selective screening, for example by focusing on boosting one’s confidence and mental BATNA while blocking out the background noise, such as anxiety, nervousness, self questioning and doubting in one’s bargaining power. A self-conscious attitude, inner stability and air of control will certainly not go unnoticed by the other party who will adjust their behavior accordingly. According to Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist at the Harvard Business School who conducts research into body language, posture and nonverbal behavior shape who we are. She says that “how we use our bodies – our nonverbal cues – can change people’s perceptions of us. (…) simply changing your body position affects how you feel about yourself and, by default, how others see you” (Gallo, 2014).11 Many authors share the view that preparation is the condition sine qua non of a successful negotiation12. Solid preparation notably implies the management of the perceptual process of oneself and in this way influencing the perception of the other party. This is the pre-step of convincing the other party to our logic, which reflects our needs and interests. Adopting such an approach will help to navigate through any negotiation, be it with a “difficult” person or with a, presumably, much stronger opponent. By means of introduction of the 3-D Model I thus arrive at the refined definition of negotiation: it is a process of perceptual self-management during which two parties with common and opposing needs and interests, try to reach a mutually acceptable agreement, which harnesses the needs and interests of both sides. 5. Common Attribution Errors The attribution process is the way that people make sense of the causes of their own and other’s behavior. It consists of three elements: antecedents, attributions and consequences, as visually presented in Figure 5 (Slocum & Hellriegel, 2011)13. Antecedents are the factors internal to the perceiver, such as the amount of information he or she has about the other party and the overall situation, as well as the perceivers’ beliefs and motivation. Based on these factors, the perceiver makes attributions about the presumed cause of behavior of the person being perceived. The assigning of cause leads to consequences, which are reflected in certain behaviors, feelings and related expectations.

10According to the testimony of the participants of my trainings conducted in the following companies: Dassault Systemes (Paris, France), Celgene (Boudry, Switzerland) and Unilever (Katowice, Poland). 11To watch Amy Cuddy’s TED talk Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc (as of 29.04.2015) 12For example: Leigh Thompson, The Truth about Negotiations, Pearson Education Ltd, 2008, p.8-9; G. Richard Shell, Bargaining for Advantage. Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People, Penguin Group, 2006, p. 120. 13Adopted from: John W. Slocum, Don Hellriegel, Principles of Organizational Behavior, 13th edition, South-Western Cengage Learning, 2011, p. 121.


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Figure 5.

The attribution process is highly subjective because it is primarily governed by the factors internal to the perceiver; the margin of error in correctly comprehending the causes of behavior is therefore quite substantive. I will briefly present the most common perceptual mistakes and highlight the impact that they might have on the negotiation process. Achieving perceptual accuracy is a challenge in itself. Similarity, contrast or first impression errors may adversely affect the cause (attribution) and effect (consequences) relationship. Earlier we discussed the selective screening process. While it is inevitable (and often recommended) to filter the flow of information, excessive selective screening leads to perceptual defense, defined as hearing only what we want to hear. Studies have shown that the human brain processes positive events and data much more accurately than negative ones (the so called Pollyanna Principle). The danger related to perceptual defense is that one might fail to grasp the broad picture when negotiating, especially when dealing with a party who can sweet talk into a deal. As a safeguard it is essential to carefully balance the good aspects with the less favorable ones. Another common perceptual error is stereotyping, that is assuming that all members of a particular group share the same features, traits or behaviors. In the era of internationalization of business conduct, not only is this offensive, but also limits the ability to fully comprehend and craft creative solutions based on individual differences and resulting preferences. On the other hand, projection – an error consisting in assigning one’s own traits to the other person may equally cloud our judgment of the person with whom we are dealing with, which in turn may cause us to let our guard down, and in consequence negatively impact the negotiation process. Quite an interesting perceptual mistake is the phenomenon referred to as the halo effect, which I like to call the “devil or angel impression”. It occurs when one positive or negative characteristic dominates the way a person is perceived. As shown on the example of the negotiation simulation, the way we perceive someone radiates through us and ultimately impacts our behavior toward that individual. If the dominant taste that we have is rather bitter, then we run the risk that our concern with the negativity may adversely affect the relational dynamics with the other party and ultimately ruin the whole situational framework. A positive halo effect is equally risky because it may make us more prone to giving in to unreasonable demands or making concessions based on pure sympathy rather than logic and fair standards. In order to avoid falling into one of these attribution traps it is first and foremost recommended entering a negotiation with the awareness of existence of perceptual biases, while equipping oneself with knowledge about how the perceptual process works for both parties. 6. Conclusion The perceptual process consists of six steps during which the individual observes, selects, organizes, interprets and responds to a perceptual trigger. By introducing the 3-Dimensional Model of Perceptual Management in Negotiation this article re-examines the established concept of achieving success in negotiations. The practical application of the 3-D Negotiation Model demonstrates that negotiation is about much more than merely obtaining support or favorable treatment from the other party. It is no longer purely about needs and their fulfillment or arriving at a mutually acceptable agreement with the other party. Taming emotions and achieving excellence in conveying them do not suffice either. One of the vital steps in the modern approach to negotiation consists of impression management: firstly taking command over the perception a person has of oneself, and then using this control to influence how other’s perceive and act towards us. This realization is fundamental in breaking away from the mental constraints that all too often cause us to fail in negotiations or impede our full potential. By programing the mind into believing in our inner strength and not allowing others to sway this conviction by their verbal or non-verbal communication, we can considerably increase our actual bargaining power. Raising awareness about the most common attribution errors and how they can cloud the perceptual process helps shield

Antecedents factors internal to the

perceiver

Attributions made by the perceiver

Consequences for the perceiver


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against the typical perceptual biases. In addition to that, employing critical thinking and exercising sound judgment based on the analysis of the trio of individual, relational and situational dynamics presented by the 3-D Negotiation Model can greatly enhance the chances of reaching a fair, efficient and mutually beneficial negotiation outcome. Last but not least, knowing and taking control of self- perception is a prerequisite to substantive preparation. Perceptual self-management and exercising command presence take practice and time, and as such cannot be performed on a just-in-time basis when we need to prepare for a negotiation that may be life changing for us. Luckily, people watching and identifying individual preferences has never been easier than it is today. The selfie generation is ultimately concerned with perception management. So the next time you negotiate take and post the best mental shot of yourself to the other party! References Cohen, B. (1980). You can negotiate anything. Bantam Books. Fisher, R., & Shapiro, D. (2006). Beyond reason. Using emotions as you negotiate. Penguin Books. Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. ed. (2012). Getting to yes. Negotiating agreement without giving in. Random House

Business Books. Gallo, C. (2014). Talk like Ted. The 9 public speaking secrets of the world’s top minds. Macmillan. Lewicki, R. J., Saunders, D. M., & Barry, B. (2011). Essentials of negotiation. McGraw Hill. Shell, G., R. (2006). Bargaining for advantage. Negotiation strategies for reasonable people. Penguin Group. Slocum, J. W., & Hellriegel, D. (2011). Principles of organizational behavior. South-Western Cengage Learning. Stone, D., Patton, B., & Heen, S. (1999). Difficult conversations. How to discuss what matters most. Penguin Books. Thompson, L. (2008). The truth about negotiations. Pearson Education Ltd. Ury, W. (2015). Getting to yes with yourself (and other worthy opponents). HarperCollins.





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Perceptions of Customary Land Tenure Security in Western Province of Zambia

Niraj Jain1, Roy Chileshe1, Francis Muwowo1, Majory Lupiya1 1School of the Built Environment, the Copperbelt University, Kitwe, Zambia Correspondence: Niraj Jain, School of the Built Environment, the Copperbelt University, P. O. Box 21692-Kitwe, Zambia. Received: December 24, 2015 Accepted: January 19, 2016 Available online: January 21, 2016 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1264 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1264 Abstract This paper presents the empirical findings of a research study undertaken in the Western Province of Zambia. The principal objective was to explore if the issuance of land ownership certificates (LOCs) improves the customary landholders’ perceptions of security of tenure. Thus, we test a null hypothesis that: ‘There are no significant differences in the perceived security of tenure between customary landholders with land ownership certificates and customary landholders without land ownership certificates’. A survey was undertaken of customary landholders and land administration officials using structured in-depth interviews and group discussions. The research used a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches where the views of customary landholders with certificates were compared with those with none based on a security of tenure assessment framework. It was revealed that the land ownership certificates (LOCs) provide the customary landholders with a perceived protection from losing land rights. However, the LOC does not improve other perceptions of customary landholders towards tenure security. In fact most of the perceptions of customary landholders with land ownership certificates are statistically not any different from the others. All customary landholders perceive their tenure as secured under the customary land administration in Western Province. The paper concludes by stating that the absence of a legal recognition renders the LOC insignificant in enhancing the perceived security of tenure. Legal recognition of the customary land administration system in Western Province of Zambia is therefore recommended. Keywords: Perceived Security of Tenure, De jure Security of Tenure, De facto Security of Tenure, Customary landholder, Land Ownership Certificates (LOC) 1. Introduction Numerous works have been commissioned to explore tenure security around the world but little has been done in Zambia particularly in the rural environment. Literature shows that there is hardly any disagreement on the strength of formal property rights in bestowing security of tenure. In fact, statutory tenure raises little concerns as it grants de jure security of tenure. Customary tenure on the other hand, tends to be a subject of discussion in many research works. Customary land rights are based on local customs and not formal or state title deeds as is the case with statutory tenure (Van Asperen & Mulolwa, 2008). Consequently, there has been a growing concern from the international community to reform customary land by converting it to statutory tenure (Lamba, 2005). Such reforms, however, are said to be the very cause of tenure insecurity on customary land, for example, people fear that their customary land can be expropriated by government and allocated to private investors at any time (Chileshe, 2005). It therefore becomes essential to explore how the customary land tenure system can be strengthened in itself. In this context, the customary land tenure system in Western Province provides several unique lessons. Quite unlike other chiefdoms in the Country, Western Province has a land administration system where Land Ownership Certificates (LOCs) are issued as a proof of customary land ownership (Roth et al, 1995). And this seems to be a growing trend in many other countries in the sub-Sahara Africa where countries like Tanzania, Botswana and Uganda issue customary title deeds to landholders (Sundet, 2005; Willy, 2003; and Kalabamu, 2000). A priori knowledge suggests that such traditional titles of ownership should provide a security of tenure since a title deed is perceived by many as the definite proof of ownership (Deininger, 2003). This raises many fundamental questions as to whether such traditional titles of ownership in effect enhance the perceptions about security of tenure at the grassroots level. Empirical findings can be significant in that they can be used by policy makers to either roll out the issuance of customary titles of ownership to other Chiefdoms in the country; or develop empirical- based strategies on how such titles of ownership can be integrated into the formal statutory


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system. Hence, using a survey approach, this research paper investigates if the perceptions of customary landholders in Western Province of Zambia with some proof of landownership are any different from those with none. The paper commences by presenting background literature on security of tenure, customary land tenure and the land administration system in Western Province of Zambia. In subsequent sections, the methodology, results and discussions and conclusions are elaborated. 2. Background 2.1 Perceived Security of Tenure Security of tenure has been defined in many ways by scholars, viz.: Mitchell (2011) describes security of tenure as the degree at which there is certainty of people, the state or other entities recognizing the land rights that belong to others and that there is a level of protection in the event that a landholder’s rights are threatened. It is conjectured that security of tenure provides: lower transaction costs (Feder, 1987; Hollingsworth, 2014; and Deininger et.al., 2006); social stability through lesser conflicts and disputes (DFID, 2007; and Deininger et.al., 2006); higher agricultural productivity (Feder, 1987; Adams, 2004 and Smith, 2004); sustainable development (Holden, 2006; Quan et al., 2004); and fiscal planning and revenue generation (UN-Habitat, 2008). Deininger and Feder (2009) claim that the positive effect of security of tenure on investment has been evidenced in China, Thailand, Latin America, some parts of Africa and Eastern Europe. Paradoxically, some studies reveal that investments in land may not be as a direct result of security of tenure. Payne and Quan (2008) and Deininger (et al, 2006) assert that de jure security of tenure provides a collateral for accessing credit for developing land. But there are arguments that even though people have title deeds they are unable to access credit because they are either reluctant or just not willing. Critics have failed to find empirical evidence to show how title can possibly provide an avenue for accessing credit easily and at a cheaper cost (Brasselle et al, 2002). Besides, Hollingsworth (2014) identifies many other requirements as pre-conditions for credit worthiness such that security of tenure ought to be understood differently. According to the UN-Habitat (2008), security of tenure is “a feeling of safety in holding a piece of land.” Broegaard (2013) reinforces this understanding by stating that security of tenure is about being safe in the expectation of reaping the rewards of one’s investments. This definition contends that security of tenure ought to be about the perceptions landholders hold with respect to their land. Traditionally, the highest form of security of tenure is believed to arise from de jure rights granted by the State (see for example Lanjouw & Levy, 2002; Deininger, 2003). However, Usamah et al (2012) contend that de jure security of tenure might be legally legitimate but may not necessarily be socially legitimate. On the other hand, de facto security of tenure is said to be socially legitimate but may often exist without legal recognition of land rights (Payne, 2001). It has to do with a mutual understanding between the landholders and the community and/ or social relations. Scholars in fact add that the mere recognition by the community and social relations confer more security to landholders as opposed to recognition by statutory bodies. This implies that de facto security of tenure may actually be more important than de jure security of tenure. This assertion is supported by Hollingsworth (2014) and Lanjouw & Levy (2002). Hollingsworth (2014) and Van Gelder (2010) in fact suggest that security of tenure is more of a psychological variable that consists of both the states of thinking and feeling. Doebele (1978: 111), states that even though tenure is considered as legal it is just a matter of the ‘state of mind’ of the landholders. Therefore, security of tenure is what the landholders perceive it to be. Payne (2001: 421) provides that, “it is undeniable that perceived security of tenure is widely accepted as a precondition for households to invest in house construction or improvements. This is not the same thing, however, as saying that full titles are the only means of achieving acceptable levels of security.” Payne and Durrand- Lasserve (2012) also add that perceived security of tenure is more important than its legal recognition. Usamah et al (2012) add that landholders are capable of investing their capital in construction and expansion of houses as a result of confidence arising from the perceived security of tenure that they have. 2.2 Customary Land and Security of Tenure Customary tenure refers to the holding of land based on customs/traditions (Van Asperen & Mulolwa, 2008). Land ownership of this category relates to the communal possession of land rights. In most cases a single person in the group administers this on behalf of the entire group (Payne & Durand-Lasserve, 2012). And the role of Chiefs on customary land is to act as a regulator of acquisition and use of land (Van Loenen, 1999). This type of tenure is found in most African countries and land held under such conditions is regarded as sacred. As such, the role of landholders is to protect the land for the interests of the past, present and future generations. Land rights that can be held as: individual rights, communal rights and concurrent interests (Chileshe, 2005). Although


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permanent, theses rights may end by transfer, abandonment, death or expulsion from the community. The customary land tenure system is therefore regarded as being insecure. The tenure insecurity results from the lack of legal title deeds (Deininger, 2003). The absence of de jure security attributes to the lack of protection of land rights by the state. Thus, when other people make claims on their land, land holders fear that their land rights will be expropriated (Lamba, 2005). In fact, Chiefs tend to abuse their positions to accumulate wealth by depriving the indigenous people of their land rights and extracting monetary benefits from strangers (Akrofi and Whittal, 2011). This also contributes to the tenure insecurity that customary landholders face. Besides, poor governance practices (Akrofi and Whittal, 2011) and corruption (UN-Habitat, 2014) are all equally said to be an impediment in the security of tenure. Nevertheless, most customary landholders are said to enjoy de facto security of tenure or perceived security of tenure (Hollingsworth, 2014) and are content by the mere plantation of trees on their lands to indicate that the plot is already occupied (Van Asperen and Mulolwa, 2008). Customary land tenure in some neighbouring countries like Botswana and Tanzania draws its strength from dedicated legislative instruments that provide for the establishment of customary tenure- its allocation process and; more importantly the issuance of certificates of title. Take for instance, the Tribal Lands Act of Botswana provides for the establishment of land boards and gives them all the land related powers that once belonged to Chiefs (Bornegrim & Collin, 2010). The Act lays out procedures to be followed when granting certificates of customary land (Republic of Botswana, 2010). White (2009: 1) states that the Tribal Lands Act vests, “all the rights and title to land in each tribal area … in the land board … in trust for the benefit and advantage of the tribesmen of that area and for the purpose of promoting the economic and social development of all the peoples of Botswana.” According to Kalabamu (2000) the land administration system in Botswana has prevented Chiefs from abusing their authority and allocating big portions of land to themselves or selling land on their own. The Village Lands Act of Tanzania is not very dissimilar. It decentralizes the administration of village land to the village (Sundet, 2005). This means that the Act empowers the villages to manage and administer their own lands. The Village Lands Act statutorily recognizes customary land rights. Not so distant, the Ugandan customary land tenure equally draws its efficacy from the Lands Act of 1998. It decentralizes the management and administration of customary land in Uganda (Willy, 2003). One of the functions of the land boards created under this Act is to oversee the land rights held by landholders in Uganda (Rugadya, 1999). Additionally, customary tenure is fully recognized as equal in legality with the other three formal land tenures in Uganda (Willy, 2003). Certificates of customary ownership are issued by district land boards (Willy, 2003). This certificate is the definite proof/evidence of ownership. Evidently, these nations provide a de jure security of tenure quite unlike the practices in Zambia. Land in most customary areas of Zambia is still managed and administered by Chiefs who do not grant any form of evidence to show landownership. Rampant cases of evictions and displacements within the customary lands are a clear testimony (Van Asperen & Mulolwa, 2008) e.g., in Mpongwe (Copperbelt Province), farmers were evicted from 46, 876 hectares of customary land by a South African based agribusiness (Mulenga, 2014). Furthermore, external factors also contribute to the insecurity of tenure. These external factors, according to Chileshe (2005) include: availability of an alternative tenure, introduction of the money economy and increase in population pressures. It is reported that when outsiders were allocated customary land, they applied for statutory title deeds (through conversion) (Chileshe, 2005). The absence of proof of ownership therefore makes people insecure. 2.3 Customary Land Administration in Western Province of Zambia Prior to the commencement of the British colonial rule in 1880s, all land in Zambia was administered and managed by indigenous institutions through the use of customary laws (Adams, 2003). Around the 1890s, agents of the British South African (BSA) Company went to Lewanika (the Lozi King) in Barotseland (now Western Province) with the intention of securing concessions over land (Roth et al, 1995). Resulting from this was the authority of the BSA Company to have control over land in Zambia. Nevertheless, the BSA Company was not allowed to control land in the whole of Western Province (Metcalfe & Kepe, 2008). This meant that the Litunga still maintained power over land. Hence, when the Northern Rhodesia (Crown Lands and Native Reserves) Order in Council of 1928 was passed, the Barotseland was not affected by the then newly created Crown Land and Reserves (M'membe, 2005; Sichone, 2008). The unique and separate existence of Barotseland continued to exist as such through the orders made between Lewanika and the BSA Company. On 18th May 1964, the Barotseland Agreement was passed. This Agreement was made by the Government of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and the Litunga of Barotseland (GRZ, 1967). The Agreement enabled the Litunga to continue enjoying the greatest measure of responsibility for land administration in Barotseland (Adams, 2003). Post-independence, reforms were made to the land tenure system. Land in Zambia could only be held (and is still only held) either under customary tenure or statutory tenure (Sichone, 2008). However, the Litunga’s control over land in Western Province persisted until the enactment of the Western Province (Land and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 1970 (M’membe, 2005).


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Although, Chiefs are the institutional bodies of land administration as recognized by the Constitution of Zambia (Van Asperen and Mulolwa, 2008), the Lands Act (No 5 of 1995 of the Laws of Zambia) does not recognize Chiefs as owners of land. All 73 tribes in Zambia administer land based on their unique customs and traditions (Mulolwa, 2006). Differences in traditions are seldom insignificant (Chileshe, 2005) because many exhibit similarities in their land administration systems. In most cases, Chiefs are dependent on village headmen for assistance in the land administration system. Customary land is generally not directly allocated by Chiefs. Instead, Chiefs allocate land to sub Chiefs who in turn allocate land to village headmen who are responsible for the allocation of land to villagers (Nsemiwe, 2007). 3. Methodology This paper presents the findings of an empirical research study designed to investigate whether the land ownership certificates issued in the Western Province of Zambia enhance customary landholder’s perception about security of tenure. In doing so, the researchers also sought to document the land administration process in the Province. An assessment framework was designed based on the works of UN- Habitat (2011), Hollingsworth (2014) and Kiddle (2011). Hollingsworth (2014) identifies a number of key proxies for measuring security of tenure from academic literature and monitoring initiatives of UN agencies and several other organisations. Perception of security is however, not adequately captured by Hollingsworth (2014). Kiddle (2011) raises some intriguing questions about perceived security of tenure that are integrated into the Hollingsworth (2014) framework. The consolidated framework therefore focuses on a number of relevant indicators for establishing the perceived security of tenure as shown in Table 1. Table 1. Indicators of Perceived Security of Land Tenure

Ref Relevant Indicator Details 1. Perceptions of future loss Risk of losing a land right

2. Recognition of land rights held Recognition by State, Traditional Land Administration Authority

and local community

3. Availability of title Ease of issuance; its essence and role in security

4. Loss of rights in the past Actual instances of loss of land rights

5. Threat of evictions Protection from Traditional Authority

6. Bundle of rights held Autonomy in right to sale and; exclusivity in enjoyment

7. Access to credit Actual instances or perceived

Description: A framework for measuring perceptions about security of land tenure Source: Adapted from Hollingsworth (2014) The study was generally qualitative in nature, although quantitative tools (particularly, the Fisher’s Exact Test) were used to test the following hypothesis: Null Hypothesis (Ho): There are no significant differences in the perceived security of tenure between customary landholders with land ownership certificates and customary landholders without land ownership certificates; and Alternative Hypothesis (H1): There are significant differences in the perceived security of tenure between customary landholders with land ownership certificates and customary landholders without land ownership certificates. With the help of the Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE), the researchers identified a traditional settlement with the highest concentration of customary landholders with LOCs- the Malengwa settlement in Mongu. Limulunga area, which forms the capital of the customary areas (and houses the main Kuta- the Lozi traditional court as well as the Litunga) was also incorporated in the study. However, due to poor record keeping, the actual number of customary landholders could not be established. Hence, after extensive consultations and negotiations with the BRE, the sampling size of customary landholders had to be restricted to fifteen interviewees in each of the two strata (those with LOCs and those without LOCs). In the wake of the controversies surrounding the 1964 Barotseland Agreement, land related matters are very sensitive in Western Province such that a larger sample size was not possible. Nonetheless, since data saturation occurs by the 12th interview of a homogenous group (with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.7) (Guest, et.al., 2006 cited in Saunders, et.al., 2009), 30 interviewees (15 in each of the two strata of customary landholders) were considered adequate for this study. Further, two members of staff were identified from each of the


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statutory institutions; and three members from the BRE (Table 2). Table 2. Sampling Frame

CATEGORY (sampling units)

INTERVIEWEE (units of inquiry)

NUMBER OF INTERVIEWEES

Custodians of customary land

Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE) members 3

Statutory institutions Mongu Municipal Council Officers 2

Ministry of Lands (Lands Department in Mongu) Officers

2

Department of Agriculture in Mongu Officers 2

Landholders within the chiefdom

Customary Landholders with LOCs 15

Customary Landholders without LOCs 15 Description: Categories of interviewees identified for the research study Source: Authors, Field Survey 2014 In identifying the actual interviewees from the two strata of customary landholders, the BRE, the Mongu Municipal Council, Ministry of Lands and the Department of Agriculture, the snowballing approach was used. Interview guides were designed for all sample members while group discussions were focused on the BRE members. A reconnaissance visit was undertaken in order to develop a rapport in the Province. In fact, most traditional leaders do not entertain surprise visits. Many consider it to be disrespectful. As a result, a senior chief (known as Induna Inete) who is also a member of the Lozi traditional court ‘Kuta’ and the Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE) played a pivotal role in establishing the contacts for this study. The fieldwork was settled for one week in the month of November 2014. Qualitative data was analyzed using the narrative approach where themes were created from the interviewees’ answers. This approach allowed us to preserve the integrity and, convey actual social understandings of perceptions held by customary landholders. Furthermore, audio/ video-recordings of interviews were made to thoroughly capture the field data. 4. Case Study Profile- Mongu Western Province comprises of 7 districts namely: Lukulu, Kaoma, Kalabo, Senaga, Sesheke, Mongu and Shang’ombo. The provincial capital: Mongu that was selected as the study area of the research is bordered by Senaga, Kalabo, Kaoma and Lukulu (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. Locational Map- Western Province (Adapted from Wikipedia, 2015) Mongu district of the Western Province was selected because it has a well- organized customary land administration


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system and forms the administrative hub for the Litunga. 5. Results and Discussion 5.1 Litunga and the Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE) The Litunga is the overall head of the customary land administration system in Western Province. In fact he is referred to as ‘Minya-Mupu-Na-Ngombe’ (the owner of land and cattle). As a member of the BRE and the Kuta, the Litunga is privy and final authority to all land related matters. In Lozi, it is stated: “FoKutabile ngweshi” meaning that, “where the King has pierced no man can remove.” (BRE Group discussions, November 2014) The above statement signifies that if the Litunga makes a decision no one can oppose or refute it. Customary land in Western province is administered by BRE which consists of many members starting (in hierarchy) with the Litunga (at the top), Senior Chiefs (Induna Inete), Sub-Chiefs also known as area chief (Induna wa Silalo) and ordinary Indunas (Induna wa Silalanda). Other members of the BRE include the “Ngambela” and the “Natamoyo”.

Figure 2. The Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE) Description: Composition of the Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE) showing various categories of Chiefs and Royal family members being headed by the Litunga(Source: Authors, Field Survey, 2014). The “Ngambela” is the prime minister. He is the Litunga’s spokesperson. This is because the Litunga does not communicate directly with his subjects. It is the “Ngambela’s” responsibility to act as the medium of communication between the Litunga and his subjects. Another role the “Ngambela” plays is to stand for commoners in the day to day activities of the community. The role of the “Natamoyo” is that of a Minister of Justice. S/he pleads on behalf of the individuals in the community. The “Natamoyo” is a member of the royal family and is also called the “the mother of life/saviour.” Every district in Western Province is headed by a senior chief. He is also referred to as an “Induna Inete”. Like the land boards (in Uganda and Botswana) and Village land councils (Tanzania), Western Province has counts (“Silalo”) and sub-counts (“Silalanda”) which have similar roles and responsibilities at differing levels of authority- resolving disputes, allocating land and implementing customary laws. The “Silalanda” is headed by ordinary Indunas (Induna wa Silalanda) and is subordinate to the “Silalo”. Whereas, the Silalo is headed by area/sub-chiefs (Induna wa Silalo) and is made up of Silalandas. The Silalanda comprises of 12 villages. 5.2 Traditional Land Ownership forms According to the Mongu Municipal Council all land in the district (about 10,720km2) is held by the Litunga. A mere 30km2 is regulated under the statutory tenure. It was also found that there are five traditional forms of landownership. The Mubu-Wa-Ngweshi, which refers to all land that belongs to the Litunga. It is passed on from one Litunga to the other. This is the parcel of land from which the Litunga allocates land to people who request/ apply for land acquisition. Such land may be allocated for purposes of settling, agricultural or development. The Mubu-Wa-Luu land is given to individuals who are said to be the custodians of customary land. These include the senior chiefs, sub- chiefs and members of the Royal family. Acquisition of this land is attached to the position an individual holds in the BRE.


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Mubu-Wa-Bana-ba-Malena is held in trust by members of the Royal family. It is passed on from one generation to the other. However in cases where there is no one to inherit the land, it escheats to the Litunga. Management of this land is undertaken by the Royal family with the help of the Indunas. The fourth form, the Mubu-Wa-Lusika is ‘owned’ by the subjects. It is passes from one generation to the next. And the final form called the Mulalambuwa does not belong to any one and no one inhabits it. An individual interested in acquiring this land must follow prescribed procedures through the Silalo Indunas. 5.3 Land Allocation and Dispute Resolution Some interviewees claimed that there is a set of written rules used by the BRE in customary land administration. However, these were never made available to the authors. Nevertheless, since the state does not provide any legal basis for customary tenure, such rules (if existing) will be ineffective in providing de jure security of tenure. In any case, land allocation in Western Province begins from the household level (Lozi family members). Every indigenous person (i.e., Lozi person) in Western Province is entitled to a parcel of traditional land whether female or male. The family members acquire land through inheritance or as gift. However, if a family runs out of land, they may approach the village headman known as “Sibuku” in Lozi. The village headman allocates land if available. Notwithstanding the status quo, if the village headman has no land available, the applicant is referred to the “Silalanda” and thereafter progressively to the “Silalo”. The latter comes in when the “Silalanda” is unable to allocate land from within the 12 villages.

Figure 3. Customary Land Administration process in Western Province Description: Customary land administration process in Western Province showing the two streams: land allocation and dispute/conflict resolution. The process commences from the householders’ level and then gradually ends at the level of the paramount Chief (Source: Authors, Field Survey 2014). In addition to the above bodies, the area/sub-chiefs are also responsible for land allocation when the “Silalo” is unable to do so. Next in the hierarchy is the Senior Chief- the “Induna Inete”. At the apex is the Litunga, who is the overall authority from whom any person can acquire land if all other subordinate channels have proved to be futile. This effectively means that land is allocated at all levels based on availability. However, the LOC is only granted by the BRE.


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Figure 4. Dispute/ Conflict Resolution process in Western Province Description: Dispute/Conflict resolution process in Western Province. It is shown that the Indunas play a pivotal role in land conflict resolutions(Source: Authors, Field Survey 2014). Like the lands tribunal in Botswana, the “Kuta” is responsible for handling conflicts amongst customary landholders. However, its functions are not only restricted to land disputes, the group discussions also revealed that the “Kuta” is responsible for scrutinizing people who apply for land. The head of the “Kuta” is the Senior Chief and in most cases handles matters of conflict at the provincial level. However, he does not unilaterally take decisions but involves other Indunas in the area. There is a “Saa-Kuta” which is a Lozi traditional court at the district level. Customary landholders in Western Province appeal to the “Kuta” for dispute resolution only where the headman fails to satisfactorily adjudicate in the Saa-Kuta. Members of the “Kuta” include the Litunga though he only attends selective meetings, the senior chiefs, area/sub-chiefs and ordinary Indunas. It was found that the main “Kuta” is located near the Litunga’s residence in Limulunga (Mongu, Western Province). 5.4 The Land Ownership Certificates (LOCs) Based on the group discussions held with the BRE, it was found that long before the introduction of LOCs in the Western Province, customary land allocation was similar to other customary areas in Zambia where customary land is allocated by “mere word of mouth” (see also Sichone, 2010). Back then, a person interested in land would approach the village headman for assistance in acquiring land. The village headman would in turn go to the superior bodies of land administration for example the Silalanda to request for land on behalf of the interested party. In this case, the “Kuta” which is a Lozi traditional court would then hold a meeting to discuss availability of land for allocation. In addition, the “Kuta” would also establish the trust worthiness of the applicant. Successful applicants were required to pay homage known as “Showelela”. Showelela refers to a loyal salutation to the Litunga as a sign of receiving land and showing appreciation for being granted that parcel of land (Group Discussions with BRE members, November 2014). Failure to observe Showelela is considered disrespectful as it shows ingratitude. This Lozi custom is a must. The group discussions with the BRE in fact revealed that this act which signifies payment of homage signalled that the land now belonged to the applicant- effectively sealing the transaction. After this, the Litunga would by ‘word of mouth’ state that the land belonged to the applicant. It is at this stage that an applicant could voluntarily acquire a LOC from the BRE on the recommendation of a village headman or Induna. The village headman or Induna is required to apply to the “Kuta” on behalf of the applicant. Following this the Induna or village headman physically takes the applicant to the “Kuta” for introduction and scrutiny. The group discussion also indicated that scrutiny is important to avoid double allocation of land. If the Induna’s report is in affirmative, the applicant is granted a LOC. Thus, the LOC is prepared by the BRE in consultation with the Kuta. Where the LOC is being sought for an old allocation, the applicant is required to Showelela again. The issuance of LOCs is solely to provide a proof of landownership. However, the BRE sample members acquiesced that LOCs were also necessary to reduce cases of land contestations.


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Figure 5. Land Ownership Certificate (LOC) Application Process Description: Application Process for LOC. Note the ‘Kuta’ plays a pivotal role in soliciting a LOC for the customary landholder(Source: Authors, Field Survey 2014). 5.5 Characteristics of LOCs The group discussions with the BRE showed that the LOCs ought to include (as shown in Appendix A): 1) The elephant This is used as a symbol of traditional authority in the whole of Western Province and, any document showing this symbol is considered binding within the Lozi tribe; 2) The location of the land and, details of the customary landholder The specific location of the land is geo- referenced with physical features/land marks in an area where the land lies. 3) A date stamp from the BRE The LOCs must always be endorsed by at least four (4) Indunas for it to be binding. Where land was originally granted by the village headman, he must also endorse on the LOC. It was further found that temporal LOCs are also issued in rare instances where the land allocation process was incomplete. 5.6 Basic socio- economic data of landowners The findings show that most of the customary landholders were married (66.7%); were between ages of 35 and 50 years (50%); and studied up-to primary level (53.3%). Table 3. Socio- economic Data

Number Percentage Marital Status: Single 6 20% Married 20 66.7% Divorced 2 6.7% Widow/Widower 2 6.7% Age Distribution: Below 20 0 0% 20-35 10 33.3% 35-50 15 50% 50 and above 5 16.7% Education Level: None 5 16.7% Primary 16 53.3% Secondary 5 16.7% Tertiary 4 13.3% Totals 30 100%

Description: Basic socio- economic data of the 30 customary landholders(Source: Authors, Field Survey 2014)


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5.7 Customary Landholders’ Perceptions on Security of Tenure 5.7.1 Perceptions over future loss of land rights In Mongu, 66.7% (10) customary landholders with LOCs felt secure while very few without LOCs held a similar perception (33.3% only). When customary landholders without LOCs were asked to give reasons why they felt insecure they attributed it to the fact that Indunas in the area easily change their decisions. They stated that: “Indunas might allocate a parcel of land to an individual but later on give it to another. It is thus important to have a document that can prove landownership.” (Personal communication with customary landholders, 2014) This statement indicates that even though the Kuta scrutinizes availability of land, lack of precisely locating land parcels can devastate the land administration process. The survey also revealed that, already allocated plots are sometimes sub-divided for onward allocation to other people. Hence, customary landholders without LOCs feel insecure. Moreover, no customary landholder with LOC claimed to feel insecure. In fact, the BRE members confirmed that in times of land contestations, customary landholders with LOC were favourably considered. 5.7.2 Perceptions on the recognition of customary land rights by the local community, the Customary land administration system and the State Security of tenure is enhanced when the land rights of customary landholders are recognized by others- statutory bodies, customary bodies or people in the community generally. The recognition can either be legal or socially legitimate. From the works of the UN-Habitat (2011), this recognition gives landholders a confidence over land. The findings reveal that 100% (15) of customary landholders with LOCs feel that their land rights are recognized by the local community since they hold a BRE endorsed land ownership certificate. As for the customary landholders without LOCs, 60% (09) stated that they feel their rights to land are recognized by members of the community while the other 40% (06) claimed that their land rights are only partly recognized. The plausible explanation provided for the latter finding is that these specific individuals were settlers and not indigenous people of Western Province. The significance of these findings is that there exists a social cohesion in the local community that grants a perceived security of tenure whether de facto or otherwise. It was also found that all customary landholders (30) unanimously agreed that their land rights were fully recognized by the customary land administration system. However, their land rights are not statutorily recognized (de jure). 5.7.3 Perceptions on the essence of LOCs in land security It was found that 66.7% (10) of customary landholders with LOCs and 93.3% (14) of customary landholders without LOCs think LOCs or any form of proof of landownership are necessary to feel secure. In fact, 73.3% (11) of the customary landholders with LOCs perceive to be better protected than their counterparts. 86.7% (13) of customary landholders without LOCs stated that: ‘…yes LOCs are a necessity especially in customary areas where there are no written laws that customary institutions should abide by as is the case on statutory tenure.’ (Personal communication with customary landholder) Furthermore, only 6.7% (1) of customary landholders with LOCs think that LOCs are not really that important for customary land. It was felt that after all the LOCs are not recognized beyond the traditional boundaries of Western Province. 5.7.4 Perceptions over losing land rights The findings were that 66.7% (10) of customary landholders with LOCs think they are protected from losing their land whereas only 13.3% (02) of customary landholders without LOCs think they have protection. Moreover, customary landholders with LOC also said that: ‘[they] …can use their documents to prove their rights to land therefore there is no need for them to feel threatened’ (Personal communication with customary landholder). The customary landholders without LOCs who claimed to feel protected stated that no one can attempt to take their land because people in the community know who has which parcels of land- social legitimacy (Usamah et.al., 2012). The confidence that customary landholders have over their land can also be observed from the investments made to land. Most structures/houses on customary land were of a permanent nature using a combination of bricks and bamboos; or even blocks. Others were just built using local materials. 5.7.5 Perceptions on the administrative capacity in protection against evictions/ displacements Based on the argument that landholders are secure if they believe that authorities have the capacity to protect them against evictions and/or displacements (UN-Habitat (2011), the study found: 86.7% (13) of the customary landholders with LOCs believe that they are protected against evictions whereas only 46.7% (07) of customary landholders without LOCs feel protection will be provided to them if they face a threat of evictions/displacements. 5.7.6 Perceptions of the Bundle of legal rights held (rights to sell and exclusive use) All customary landholders stated that they are not allowed to sell their land irrespective of whether they hold a LOC or not. And being a sacred free gift from God, no monetary value could be assigned to land. Further, evidence from the


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field survey showed that both strata of customary landholders have the right to deny others from using their land unless prior permission was sought. Apparently, the LOC played no role in generating a favourable perception on the right to exclusive use. 5.7.7 LOC and its perceived role in the access to credit The research also tried to establish whether customary land in Western Province was used as collateral for accessing any form of credit- formal or informal. Of all the customary landholders, no one had attempted to access credit using their parcel of land as collateral. Traditional land was confirmed to be sacred that could not be sold. And using it as collateral was believed to be selling it. Ng’ombe and Mushinge (2014) in fact add that rights under customary land can only be transferred through bequest. 5.7.8 Statistical Significance in the differences in the perceptions of customary landholders with/without LOCs The Null Hypothesis (i.e., There are no significant differences in the perceived security of tenure between customary landholders with land ownership certificates and customary landholders without land ownership certificates) was tested using Fisher’s Exact Test at a 5% significance level for each of the proxies established for the security of land tenure. The results are presented in Appendix B and, clearly show that the Null Hypothesis should be accepted on all counts/proxies (with the exception of one) suggesting that there is no significant difference in the perceptions held in the two strata over security of land. On one count, however, that of protection from losing land rights, the Fisher’s Exact test suggests that the perceptions of the customary landholders with LOC are statistically different from those of the others. Evidently, customary landholders with LOCs better perceive the strength of their land rights. 6. Conclusion and Recommendation(s) This research shows that the traditional land administration system of Western Province is well organised and decentralised. It has a clearly defined process with responsible officials accountable at each level. The Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE) issues land ownership certificates (LOCs) that are locally binding but lack legal legitimacy. Nevertheless, all customary landholders perceive their land tenure under the customary land administration as secured. Hence, it can be inferred that the traditional land administration practices in Western Province collectively provide a de facto security of tenure. It is shown in this research that the provision of land ownership certificates (LOCs) provides the customary landholders with a perceived protection from losing land rights. However, it does not entirely improve other perceptions of customary landholders towards tenure security. The LOCs are insignificant in enhancing the customary landholders’ perceived security of tenure. The only plausible reason could be the absence of a legal recognition for these certificates within the Country. The research makes the following recommendations. In order to address tenure insecurity on customary land, land ownership certificates should be encouraged and recognized as legal evidence of land ownership. De jure security of tenure will strengthen all perceptions held by customary landholders in Western Province. Specific provisions for customary land rights should be made in the land policy. Additionally, a statutory instrument should be issued under the provisions the Lands Act No. 5 of 1995 of the Laws of Zambia recognizing the customary land rights of landholders in possession of LOCs. An effective institutional framework should also be put in place. The experiences of Botswana and Tanzania provide an invaluable resource in this regard where the Land Boards and Villages are respectively granted legal recognition in the land administration process. Acknowledgement(s) and Dedication The authors acknowledge with gratitude the assistance provided by: the Provincial Lands Office in Western Province; the Provincial Agriculture Office; the Mongu Municipality; the BRE; Induna Inete; and Customary landholders in completing this research study. This paper is dedicated to the profound memory of our dear friend and colleague: Dr. Austine Ng’ombe (Deceased) who has made an indelible mark in the understanding of Zambian land administration system. MHSRIP Reference Adams, M. (2004). Land reform, agriculture and poverty reduction. Working paper for the renewable natural resources

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Appendix A Sample land ownership certificate (LOC)

Description: A replica of the Land Ownership Certificate (LOC) - Western Province Source: Adapted from BRE Records


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Appendix B Table 4. Fishers’ Exact Test on Data from Customary Landholders in Mongu (Zambia)


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Table Continued From Previous Page





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Food Vending Among Men in Kumasi: Socio-Cultural Advantages, Constraints, and Coping Strategies

John Boulard Forkuor1, Kofi Osei Akuoko1, Eric Henry Yeboah,1 Thilde Rheinländer2 & Helle Samuelsen2

1Department of Sociology and Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana 2Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology, Faculty of Health Sciences University of Copenhagen, CSS, Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK-1014 Copenhagen, Denmark 3Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK-1353 Copenhagen, Denmark Correspondence: John Boulard Forkuor, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Received: January 5, 2016 Accepted: January 19, 2016 Available online: January 27, 2016 doi:10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1278 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v4i2.1278 Abstract Research on men in female-dominated occupations has focused mainly on formal sector occupations in North American and Western European settings. It remains unclear whether men in informal sector occupations in the Global South enjoy advantages, face challenges and adopt coping strategies that are similar to those documented in literature. This research focuses on men in an informal and female-dominated occupation in Ghana. Using semi-structured interviews, this research explores the advantages men enjoy as traditional food vendors, their constraints, and the coping strategies they adopt. This research found that while male traditional food vendors face some social ridicule, they nonetheless enjoy certain gendered advantages at the expense of other female food vendors. This research contributes to a further understanding of the effects of gendered perceptions on the wellbeing of both male and female vendors, and thereby provides stakeholder organisations with knowledge needed to improve the well-being of street food vendors. Keywords: occupational segregation, gender, female-dominated occupations, street food, coping strategies 1. Introduction 1.1 Background of Study Segregation based on sex is common in the labour market in both developed and developing economies (Cross & Bagilhole, 2002; Simpson, 2005). This sex-based occupational segregation is embedded in socio-cultural norms that often determine the appropriateness of an occupation for a man or a woman (Schaefer, 2004). Nonetheless, some men and women do overcome occupational segregation by working in occupations that are not traditional to their sex (Cross & Bagilhole, 2002; Simpson, 2005). In the broader context of Ghana, street food vending is traditionally perceived as an occupation for women (Nimura & Eisen, 2010). Nonetheless, the changing economic conditions mean that men negotiate and challenge this traditional perception by engaging in food vending (Overå, 2007). Consequently, an increasing number of men are entering the street food sector as street food vendors. However, usually men vend fried rice and women vend Traditional Foods (TFs) (Fufu1, Banku2 and Kenkey3) and operate chop bars4 (Overå, 2007). This segregation of the sexes within the street food sector in Ghana has received very little research attention. Most of the research in Ghana for instance have focused on the quality of raw materials used by street food vendors (Afele, 2006), the hygiene of the vending environment (King, Awumbila, Canacoo, & Ofosu-Amaah, 2000; Rheinländer, Olsen, Bakang, Takyi, Konradsen, & Samuelsen, 2008) and the microbial content of street vended foods (Mensah, Yeboah-Manu, Owusu-Darko, & Ablordey, 2002). Thus, the focus of research has been predominantly on health and safety without much attention to the socio-cultural aspects of street food vending. Overå (2007) investigated broadly the livelihood and coping strategies of both men and women who cross gender barriers into different informal sector occupations within a patrilineal social setting (Accra) in Ghana. 1Fufu is prepared by boiling plantain and cassava and pounding in a mortar with a pestle, while turning it over with the hand (Feglo & Sakyi, 2012: 3). 2Banku is fermented maize dough dumplings prepared and served with either soup or stew (Mensah et al. 2002: 547). 3Kenkey refers to fermented maize dough dumplings wrapped in cornhusk, boiled, and served hot with pepper sauce and fish (Mensah et al. 2002: 547). 4A chop bar refers to a local eating-place usually serving Banku, Fufu, and Kenkey.


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Unlike Overå’s study, the present study specifically explores how men negotiate their position as Male Traditional Food Vendors (MTFVs) within a matrilineal social setting (Kumasi) in Ghana. The uniqueness of this study therefore lies in its focus on male advantages, constraints and coping strategies within a traditionally prescribed female occupational field (traditional food vending), in a matrilineal social setting with patriarchal values. With such a focus, this study complements the existing literature on street food research in Ghana and to the emerging and broader literature on Men in Female-Dominated Occupations (MFDOs). It contributes to a further understanding of the effects of gendered perceptions on the well-being of both male and female vendors, and thereby provides stakeholder organisations with knowledge needed to improve the well-being of street food vendors. 1.2 Theoretical Framework of Study Relying on the typology developed by Williams & Villemez (1993), Simpson (2004) found three main categories of men (seekers, finders, and settlers) according to their mode of entrance into female-dominated occupations. Seekers are those who actively choose female-dominated occupations, while finders are men who come across the female-dominated occupation as they search for a job (Willliams & Villemez, 1993). Settlers are those who, after failing to achieve job satisfaction in male-dominated occupations, ‘settles’ for the female-dominated occupation. In explaining what motivates them to move into female-dominated occupations, some MFDOs emphasize job satisfaction and self-fulfilment while others emphasize pay increase and career progression as motivating factors (Simpson, 2005). However, irrespective of their motivations, men often enjoy certain gendered but ‘hidden’ advantages within female-dominated occupations (Williams, 1992; Evans, 1997; Lupton, 2000; Cross & Bagilhole, 2002; Simpson, 2004). These advantages help further the career of men, a phenomenon that Williams (1992) terms as the ‘glass escalator’, an escalator that ‘kicks’ men up the occupational ladder at the expense of the dominant females (Williams, 1992). Although the glass escalator may not work at all levels of a female dominated occupation (Williams, 1992) and is also affected by race differences (Maume, 1999), it will be interesting to see whether this concept lends analytical power to a study conducted in an informal occupational setting where there are unclear or non-existing social and administrative hierarchies. Another important concept used to explore the advantages that MFDOs enjoy is Floge & Merril's (1986) concept of the ‘heightened visibility’. This concept argues that the advantages that minority groups might enjoy in organizations result from the fact that as a minority group, their actions are easily noticed or highly visible, creating the impression that they are working harder than others, which in reality may not be so. Sometimes the name and some other personal identification of members of minority groups are known more than that of the dominant group members, making them easy to find within particular organizations (Floge & Merril, 1986). This concept will help investigate whether MTFVs in Ghana enjoy occupational advantages as a result of their minority status within the street food sector. Despite the advantages that MFDOs may enjoy, literature has also highlighted socio-cultural occupational challenges. Studies in Great Britain and England for instance, have shown that some MFDOs suffer identity crisis, a challenge to their masculinities, and a questioning of their sexualities (Lupton, 2000; Cross & Bagilhole, 2002; Simpson, 2005). One study further stressed that MFDOs may suffer ‘role strain’ because of the need to maintain masculine identities against the feminine demands of the job (Simpson, 2005). One strategy that MFDOs use in coping with these challenges is to redefine their job to fit masculine conceptions (Evans, 1997; Lupton, 2000; Simpson, 2004; Simpson, 2005). For instance, Cross & Bagilhole (2002) reveal that male carers redefine their work as ‘enablers and facilitators’, for the needs of others. Another common strategy is for men to change their perception of what it means to be a man (Lupton, 2000). Lupton (2000) reports of MFDOs who argue that masculinity is demonstrated by the ability to work in a female-dominated environment. Thus, perceptions of masculinity are modified to make transition into a female-dominated occupation much easier (Lupton, 2000). These and other strategies allow MFDOs to create ‘islands of masculinity’ within the female-dominated occupations (Egeland & Brown 1988 cited in Evans 1997). The literature reviewed above engages with the formal sector and not much is known about MFDOs in the informal sector or MFDO’s in low and middle-income settings. Do men enjoy gendered advantages or constraints in the informal sector in Ghana? What can explain such advantages and constraints when men venture into female dominated occupations in an informal sector? Would men in an informal sector employ similar coping mechanisms as used by men in the formal sector? These questions guided this research. 2. Research Setting The city of Kumasi lies 270km north of Accra, the capital city of Ghana. The 2010 population and housing census revealed that the Kumasi metropolis had a population of 2,035,064 (Ghana Statistical Service, 2012). Kumasi is a major trading and transport hub in Ghana and in the West African sub-region. As a result, a lot of travellers, goods, and services pass through the city to other parts of Ghana, and the West African sub-region on a daily basis (Adarkwa, 2011). Because of the city’s inability to attract many direct foreign investments, the growth of the city of Kumasi has mainly been driven by the private and informal sectors (ibid). It is estimated that about 75% of the city’s labour force work within the informal sector (Adarkwa, 2011). Approximately 60% of those employed within the informal sector are engaged in


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trading, including hawking and street food vending (ibid). As at September 2014, it was estimated that approximately 20,000 street food vendors operated in the Kumasi metropolis (Personal communication with the Metropolitan Environmental Health Director, 5th September 2014). These street food vendors serve as an important source of food for both the people in Kumasi as well as for travellers and traders passing through the city to other parts of the country and the West African sub-region. In terms of its inhabitants, Kumasi is the home of the Ashantis and capital of the Ashanti region, which has always been an influential region of Ghana (Amoako, 2011). The Ashanti people are one of the most prominent ethnic groups of the Akan speaking groups in Ghana. As an ethnic group, the Ashantis are organised around matrilineal descent systems and this matrilineal descent system serves as a foundation for social organisation (Johnson, 1970). Like many of the Akan speaking groups however, Ashanti men occupy privileged positions, are traditionally respected and revered, and their word has/is perceived to have more authority than that of females (Ankomah, 1996). Even though men continue to be dominant and respected in this matrilineal system, one prominent area of dominance and authority for Ashanti women is in trading and in food preparation and sale. Clark (1994) asserts that street vending not only serves as a valuable source of income for women in Kumasi, but also as a source of social status and prestige. As a result, trading and food vending in general is a ‘stereotypically’ female occupation among the people of Kumasi. 3. Research Methods The study reported here is part of a larger research that investigated the street food sector in the Kumasi metropolis. Fieldwork was carried out over a period of 23 months, from October 2012 to September 2014 by the first author. The study used the qualitative tools of participant observation and interviews in different forms to gather information from respondents. 3.1 Data Collection In addition to the overall insight gained from the larger study, this paper specifically draws on data from 39 street food vendors (14 MTFVs and 25 female street food vendors), 7 consumers and 17 street food regulators. Because MTFVs are a small and unique sub-set of food vendors within the metropolis, food vendor associations like the Traditional Caterers Association of Ghana (TCAG) served as key informants in identifying three MTFVs. From these initial MTFVs, snowball-sampling techniques were used to identify the remaining 11 MTFVs. Going through the vendor associations ensured that researchers gained the trust of the initially identified MTFVs, whose recommendation in turn facilitated access to and the willingness of other MTFVs to participate in the study. The MTFVs selected as part of this research represent a diversity of age, experience, and mode of operation. Three of the MTFVs operated from within large markets; three operated close to the roadside, one hawked the food, while the remaining operated from within their respective communities. All MTFVs had employed helpers (mostly female), ranging from one to five per MTFV. As part of the larger research study, twenty-five female vendors vending a variety of foods were selected from areas of high food vendor concentrations. Including these female vendors made it possible for researchers to confirm and or contrast some of the themes that were emerging as the research progressed. For instance as a result of the emerging themes, female food vending stands were observed in terms of organisation, hygiene, and management and then compared with that of MTFV food vending stands. Female food vendors were also interviewed on their perceptions of the emerging phenomenon of MTFVs and its effect on the street food sector. Semi-structured interviews with these street food vendors took place at their vending sites. The selection of consumers was done by convenient sampling from male food vending stands. The consumers were interviewed about their perceptions and experiences with male and female food vendors in the metropolis. Interviews with the consumers were unstructured and conversational in nature. Purposive sampling techniques were also used to select 17 street food regulators. Interviews with regulators were semi-structured and took place in their offices at arranged times. These interviews focused, among other things, on their experiences with and perceptions of male and female food vendors within the Kumasi metropolis. Interviews were conducted by the first author and a research assistant, both fluent in the native language of Twi (used when interviewing vendors and consumers), and in the English language (used when interviewing food regulators). In addition to the interviews, the first author and the research assistant visited and observed different street food vendors during the course of the fieldwork, at different times of the day and on different days of the week. Researchers observed the interaction between MTFVs and their customers for instance, as well as the general organisation of MTFVs and other female food vendors. Observational and reflective notes were taken to provide context for the transcripts, to enrich the interview data and to deepen or challenge emerging themes and assumptions from the interviews. 3.2 Data Management and Analysis All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed ad verbatim by the first author and the research assistant. After the transcripts had been read through, it was organised under two broad categories (the socio-cultural advantages men enjoy


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as TFVs; and the socio-cultural constraints men face as TFVs), which were further scrutinised, given descriptive codes and organized into themes. All authors have been actively involved in discussions of the data and the analytical framework. Findings will thus be presented by two sub-themes of ‘socio-cultural advantages that men enjoy as TFVs’ including ‘uniqueness and attraction’ and ‘gendered perception of neatness and trust’, and Socio-cultural constraints and coping strategies’. 3.3 Ethical Considerations The ethical issue of informed consent was overcome by sending a formal request to institutional heads (the metropolitan Environmental Health Director of KMA) outlining the nature of the research, the intention, the methods to be used and the time. All participants in the study including food vendors also gave their consent to participate. At the beginning of each interview, the researcher made respondents aware of their right to withdraw from the interview or refuse to answer a particular question, without fear or favour or without harm to their person, reputation and esteem. The real names of respondents and places of operation have been changed in the presentation of findings in order to preserve the anonymity and confidentiality of respondents. Respondents’ gender and years of operation have been maintained. 4. Findings With the exception of one of the MTFVs, a hawker of street foods, the remaining MTFVs were permanent vendors and operated from wooden structures with separate cooking and eating areas. Their working lives involved working up to 15-18 hour days for six days a week. All but one of the MTFVs were married with children. Nonetheless, only one of the married MTFVs worked with their wives as food vendors. The wives of the other MTFVs were engaged in other informal sector occupations. All but two of the MTFVs were Ashantis. The two other MTFVs were migrants from the Central and Northern regions of Ghana respectively. These are the socio-demographic characteristics of the MTFVs included in this study. All but one of the MTFVs included in this research indicated that vending TFs was not an ideal occupational choice but rather an occupation that they came into as a result of either a tragedy in life or because it was the only available option while they were seeking for a job. The MTFVs mentioned occupations like being in the Army, Furniture making, and Tailoring as their intended or ideal occupations. Thus, most of the MTFVs included in this research can be classified as ‘finders’, those for whom vending was either a second option or simply the available option. For one of the MTFVs however, food vending was his dream occupation and he actively worked to achieve this dream. This particular MTFV can be classified as a seeker, those men who dream of and vigorously seek to engage in a predominantly female occupation (Simpson, 2004). Irrespective of their mode of entry however, these men enjoy certain gendered advantages and constraints when they become street food vendors. These advantages and constraints are discussed in the following sections. 4.1 Uniqueness and Attraction of Male Traditional Food Vendors When a group of people form the extreme minority in an occupation, they become highly visible, and their actions easily noticed (Floge & Merril, 1986). Similarly, being an MTFV serves as a form of attraction, drawing consumers to a particular food stand. One female consumer explains: ‘Well, for that one it is not normal. We know it is women who cook, and so if you see a man selling, that alone attracts you to go and try. We know that the kitchen is not a place for men, so you see a man selling Kenkey and, because of that attraction, you decide to go and try this man’s food. If it is good, then you begin to prefer the man’s food to that of other female food vendors’ (female consumer). This ‘abnormality’ of the MTFV then serves as a force of attraction, and sometimes even when there are other women in the vicinity vending similar foods, the man will usually get more customers not because of the better taste of his food per se, but mainly as a result of the uniqueness or deviant nature of his activity. The example below by a female consumer helps to illustrate this point: ‘For instance, where I am coming from, one-man sells Kenkey and he is in a line with many women who are also vendors of Kenkey. He is the only man but when you see the crowd that is always at his stand, and you wonder what kind of Kenkey he is selling. But when you taste the foods, they all taste the same, it’s just this issue of him being a man and selling food, that attracts people’ (female consumer). Clearly, being a man and vending TF is a huge advantage in terms of customer attraction. Sometimes, a fascination with the activity of these men attracts consumers. Kojo explains that for some of his female consumers, it is ‘a beautiful sight for them to behold! Many men come here but many women do also, and for the women some do come here, watch me work and they laugh. When I ask them why, they say they are fascinated’ (Kojo, a male chop bar operator for 23 years). Another important point is that consumers do not only buy food from MTFVs but they also tell others about them. When a person comes across one MTFV in their community, they inform their friends and relatives. Afful explains that


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‘since I am a man and doing a woman’s job, that is what attracts the customers. Somebody may come and buy food, when they go they will say to their friends, I went and bought food at such and such place and it was men who were vending’ (Afful, a male chop bar operator for 4yrs). To the extent that wherever a man vends TF, they are well known within that particular community. The observation of this research confirms this fact. The MTFVs are affectionately referred to as ‘barima nkwan’, which literally means ‘a man’s soup’ in their respective communities. Hence, consumers advertise these men to their friends and relatives and this heightened visibility, as has been demonstrated, serves as an important economic advantage for MTFVs. 4.2 Gendered Perceptions of Neatness and Trust Within the Kumasi metropolis, some traditional and religious beliefs have effect on the behaviour of consumers and in turn translate into gender based economic advantages for MTFVs. These advantages are discussed under two main themes: the gendered perceptions of neatness; and the uniqueness of MTFVs. 4.2.1 Neatness The interviews revealed that there exists a strong gendered perception of neatness, with MTFVs regarded as more hygienic compared to female vendors. As a result, some consumers prefer to buy food from MTFVs because: ‘MTFVs are neat, when you go to their places, these places are neat. But excuse me to say that when you visit some of the women at their places of business, it is not nice’ (Kofi, a male chop bar operator for 13yrs). The traditional association of women with child care also serves as another advantage for MTFVs. In discussing why she prefers purchasing food from MTFVs, this female consumer explains: ‘it is because the MTFVs are neat … they will not go and wipe the buttocks of their baby and use it to come and sell food for you.’ The concern here is that a female vendor with a child may come and sell without properly washing her hands. The fact that this sentiment is expressed by another female is in itself a powerful indication of the extent of the disadvantage that domestic responsibilities pose for the economic well-being of women and the economic advantages that men enjoy as a result. In addition to the above, in terms of personal appearance, men are considered to be ‘far far better than the women’ (female food regulator), since the women ‘usually have a lot of problems including bad dressing, unkempt hair, and usually appear dirty’ (male food regulator). Based on his experience of regulating food vendors, this male food regulator argues that: ‘when you go to the food premises where men are selling, they are smart in serving and they serve you quickly. They have better customer relations and I have observed that their eating-places are neat and personally, they are neat’. These gendered perceptions of neatness encourage some consumers to prefer purchasing food from MTFVs rather than from their female colleagues. By increasing the consumer base of MTFVs, these gendered perceptions enhance better profit margins for MTFVs than for female vendors. Thus, these gendered perceptions could be viewed as push factors, a form of a glass escalator, enhancing the occupation and economic well-being of MTFVs at the expense of female food vendors. The fact that men do not menstruate also serve as a major advantage for MTFVs. Among some consumers, the uncertainty regarding whether or not a female vendor is menstruating is enough reason for them to patronise the foods of MTFVs. The statements of Ayisi and Kofi below illustrate the strong feelings that exist about menstruation: ‘Even the Bible indicates that ideally even if a woman menstruates, she should not even cook for the husband or even eat with the husband. You can study and find out, the women food vendors are always selling throughout the 30 days, including during their menstrual period. However, when you menstruate it is filth! Why should you menstruate, come and cook for people?’ (Ayisi, male chop bar operator for 6yrs). Kofi, a male chop bar operator for 13yrs further argues that ‘some women, huh! She will do “it” (have her period) and come and sit down with ‘it’ and sell food. Even if the menstrual pad is ‘there’, she will come and sit there with it and sell food. But a man will not have his period; he is always clean’. These religiously founded ideas about menstruation add to the general perception of ‘women as unclean’ that female vendors are faced with compared to MTFVs. Menstruation, which is an aspect of womanhood is therefore used to enhance the distinction between men and women and to increase the ‘perceptions of dirtiness of women’. The MTFVs are aware of the advantages that these believes produces and take full advantage of them. Takyi explains that: ‘For a man, at all times there is no filth/dirt attached to you. You see some women will menstruate and be cooking and selling with it. However, for a man, still strong, we are always available and we are always clean. Therefore, if it happens that a man is really determined to vend food and you are a good cook, they will definitely patronise your food more than the women will. Therefore, men have such an advantage’ (Takyi, a male chop bar operator for 12yrs). 4.2.2 Trust Interestingly, observations revealed that despite the perceptions of dirt and uncleanliness attached to female vendors, all the MTFVs employed women as helpers to do the cooking. What the men did mainly was to supervise the preparation


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of the food and to have customer contact. Kojo explains in relation to his female employees that, ‘I may sometimes stand over them and direct them while they work…I will then come and stand by it and sell it myself’. Thus, it could be argued that these MTFVs occupy managerial positions, similar to other MFDOs. Furthermore, observations of both MTFVs and female headed TF vending stands revealed that there were no significant differences in terms of cleanliness, order and hygiene. Some female vending sites were clean just as some male vending sites were unclean. Nonetheless, the mere presence of ‘a man’ appeared to assure some members of the public of order and hygiene. In a conversation with one street food regulator, he insisted that ‘when there are men involved, you will see that there is discipline…the men are disciplined’. This demonstrates that in addition to neatness, perceptions of trustworthiness and discipline of men serves as important advantages for MTFVs. As a result, some female TFVs become ‘jealous…because they are aware that you are a man and that people buy your food a lot’ (Kojo). Together, the gendered perceptions regarding cleanliness and menstruation, and the emerging issues of trust serve as important platforms for male advantage over females; it serves as an escalator that pushes men higher up by increasing their consumer base than that of women. Men are subsequently perceived as a ‘safer, cleaner and trustworthy’ source of food for a number of people. 4.3 Vending Traditional Food: Socio-Cultural Constraints and Coping Strategies Contrasting the above positive discrimination of men, men performing a role which society considers as ‘female’ are also at risk of suffering social sanctions in various forms (Lupton, 2000). Drawing on interview responses, this study found that in addition to gendered advantages, all male vendors also experienced sanctions in the form of social ridicule. Kojo’s illustration below demonstrates how strong social reactions can be when there is a perceived breach of the cultural norms regarding gender appropriate occupations: ‘since I started this job, people complained, why is a man selling Kenkey? Why don’t you go and find a better job to do? Some people may see you and say that…why should you do a woman’s job?’ (Kojo). It appears that finding a ‘better’ job to do and not doing ‘a woman’s’ job then is what is expected of a man. Interestingly, despite consumers and the public’s trust in MTFVs’ organisational and managerial capabilities in preparing food hygienically, MTFVs are still expected to find a better job. This applies in an even stronger sense to mobile MTFVs who carry the foods around to sell; the social reaction goes beyond ridicule to that of questioning that man’s masculinity. Ayisi explains that: ‘each day after cooking, I carried the food on my head…and each time I carried, they called me ‘obaa barima’ (translates into: man-woman)’ (Ayisi). In Twi (language of the Ashantis), ‘obaa barima’ is derogatory for those men who demonstrate behaviour socially associated with females. Once again, it is difficult to reconcile the fact that MTFVs are considered as unique and attractive, clean and trustworthy to some consumers, yet in other instances, certain consumers ridicule MTFVs. Some consumers, in view of the prevailing economic situation in Ghana, understood why some men would vend traditional foods. Nevertheless, these consumers still insisted that food vending was not an appropriate occupation for a man ‘it is because of the difficult economy…that is why men are doing women’s work. However, it reduces their masculinity. Men are not even supposed to sell rice. Of course, God did not assign the sale of rice to women but it is disgraceful if they sell it. However, it is because of the difficult economic situation’ (female vendor). Thus, from the preceding comments, these consumers are attempting to understand the emerging urban phenomenon of MTFVs in times of change and economic difficulties and within a complex setting where beliefs and religious ideologies persist. Since masculinity confers advantages on men, men usually devise ways of protecting their masculinity whenever it comes under threat (Lupton 2000). This research found that MTFVs adopted two main strategies, either to focus on the advantages that the job provides or try to justify the work they do. With the first strategy, MTFVs indicated that they coped by arguing that they focused on what was ‘important’, that is, the profits they gained from the job. Kofi for instance indicated that, the profit he got and the subsequent ability he had to feed his children was enough justification for the work he did. He explains that ‘what is important is what you will do to get money…for chop bar business, if you do it and do it well, it is good because even if you don’t get a lot of money, your children will be fed’ (Kofi, male chop bar operator for 13yrs). Similarly, Abu emphasized the assurance of a better future in addition to the ability to take care of his children ‘well whether it does reduce my masculinity or not I do not care. What is important is how I can take care of my future… how I will be able to take care of my children, which is what is important’ (Abu, a male chop bar operator for 6yrs). In the second strategy, the emphasis was on the job itself and the legality of the activity. MTFVs indicated that they responded to the social ridicule by asking those who taunt them whether they would prefer that they were engaged in an illegal activity. Asamoah, a male mobile food vendor for 12yrs explains, ‘Oh, I tell them that if they had met me being beaten up as a thief what would they have said, and so if I am doing this why are they complaining’. By these strategies, MTFVs respond to the socio-cultural constraints by adopting a different attitude in order to continue enjoying the gendered advantages that comes with working within a female dominated occupation.


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4. Discussion of Findings This study investigated the advantages men enjoy as TFVs in Kumasi, the socio-cultural constraints that MTFVs face and their strategies for handling the socio-cultural constraints. It’s been revealed that some local beliefs and values work in many ways to give MTFVs advantages even within a female-dominated occupational sector. In both formal and informal employment sectors, such advantages tend to enhance the careers of men (Williams, 1992), in this case, by increasing the consumer base for MTFVs. This finding is consistent with the reviewed literature about MFDOs where men are perceived by management to possess better managerial qualities and so are ‘kicked upstairs’ on a glass escalator with increased pay and prestige (Williams, 1992; Evans, 1997; Lupton, 2000; Simpson, 2004). The male vendors in Ghana similarly take these gender-related privileges with them into a female-dominated occupation of food vending–even within an informal sector lacking any clear managerial and hierarchical structures and within a traditionally matrilineal society like Kumasi. Within the study context of patriarchal values (Ampofo, 2001), like in other patriarchal societies, men are often considered to possess the qualities for effective management, and male attributes are often used to describe who a good manager is (Heilman, 2001; Eagly & Carli, 2008). This is more so when culturally and socially prescribed male attributes in Ghana include authority, power, and good leadership while those for women include submissiveness, obedience, conformity and empathy (Ampofo, 2001). This may explain why, even though some MTFVs are not directly involved in the preparation of foods, consumers and the public trust that the mere presence of a man assures order in terms of hygiene. Here, this study re-emphasises the prominence of gendered patriarchal values over matrilineal ideals, the assertion that gendered attitudes emerging out of patriarchy often transcend lineage type (Ampofo, 2001). Even though some women, including queen mothers, traders and market women in matrilineal societies occupy prominent positions and enjoy economic and political advantages compared to women in other African settings (Boaten, 1992; Gneezy et al., 2009), findings from this research further questions the extent of female economic advantages and competitiveness within urban and modernizing matrilineal social settings such as Kumasi. As a result of cultural expectations, choosing to vend TFs mean a compromise of what it means to be a ‘man’ in Kumasi since being a man means getting out of the house and engaging in economic activities that demonstrate ‘virility and wisdom’ (Dako-Gyeke & Owusu, 2013). Such contradictions demonstrate some of the contradictions that emerge between locally held norms and values and newer and modern ideas of gender and occupations in urban settings like Kumasi (Barker & Ricardo, 2005). The two main coping strategies identified in this study are similar to strategies identified in other research studies on MFDOs (Lupton, 2000; Cross & Bagilhole, 2002). By emphasising the financial rewards, MTFVs were emphasising aspects of their jobs that underlie their qualities as ‘men’ since, having a source of income and gaining financial independence is one of the ways of achieving and maintaining one’s manhood in Africa (Barker & Ricardo, 2005). These strategies help to support and maintain masculine identities and masculine advantages that otherwise are threatened by being associated with feminine characteristics (Simpson, 2004). The fact that these men are negotiating gender roles lends more evidence to the argument that gendered division of labour has never been historically fixed (Kornblum, 2003). According to Kornblum (2003), gender roles have historically been adapted to suit new and emerging conditions, from hunting and gathering societies, through horticultural and agrarian societies to industrial and post industrial societies. In modern urban societies, Overå (2007) has suggested that the migrant status of informally employed men and the anonymity they enjoy in urban areas as a result, allow men to negotiate and play with gender roles, which otherwise would have come under close critique from family and friends. Thus, the urban area, characterized by impersonal relationships (Kornblum, 2003) and emphasis on economic and financial well-being, presents MTFVs with a unique arena to negotiate gender roles and to gain advantages in a female economic sphere like traditional food vending. The data revealed some contradictions at play within the socio-cultural setting of the study. Even though menstruation is considered as a sign of fertility, power, and womanhood among the Akans of Ghana (Agyekum, 2002), this research has revealed contrasting and negative perceptions of menstruation which serves as important forms of advantages for MTFVs within the study setting. While the argument has been made that such negative perceptions are waning because of modernization, not all aspects of cultural beliefs are modified through social change (Agyekum, 2002). The preceding discussions also reveal that, while MTFVs enjoy the advantages of the glass escalator, they have to learn how to negotiate the gendered challenges that come with working in a female-dominated occupation in order to continue enjoying the advantages of the glass escalator. Based on this, we argue that the glass escalator is not a given for these MTFVs, as it is sometimes portrayed to be in literature (Maume, 1999; Budig, 2002; Wingfield, 2009). On the contrary, the escalator, like its literal counterpart is only effective when its doors are worked at or opened and the appropriate buttons pressed. 5. Conclusion The informal street food sector in urban cities of Africa is rapidly growing and men are now an active part of this


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traditionally female-dominated sector. This research has confirmed that Male Traditional Food Vendors enjoy advantages emerging out of the socio-cultural context, advantages which present new challenges for women in the sector. These men are also battling different socio-cultural constraints compared to women in their jobs (including social ridicule from members of the public), and adopt coping strategies that are similar to other men in formal sector female-dominated occupations. This research makes important contribution towards the emerging understanding of gendered perspectives of men in female-dominated occupations in the under-studied context of an informal occupational sector in a Sub-Saharan African setting. As such, this study complements findings from other gender based occupational research studies which has largely focused on formal sector occupations in Western and urban settings. This research also furthers an understanding of how the concept of ‘glass escalator’ works within an informal occupational sector by demonstrating that in the informal street food sector, the glass escalator works in the form of increased consumer base for men vending Traditional Foods. This study also contributes to a deeper understanding of how local and traditional beliefs of cleanliness, trustworthiness, and filth are gendered, and influence the economic well-being of male as well as female vendors. It is appropriate also to conclude that given the economic advantages enjoyed by men, an increasing number of men may continue to enter the street food sector as street food vendors in Africa, especially in the face of changing economic conditions, in modernizing urban African settings. Consequently, this research provides an important knowledge base for stakeholders working to improve the conditions of the numerous men and women engaged in the informal street food sector. Acknowledgements This research received funding from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), through the Ghana Street Foods Project in Kumasi.

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International Journal of Social Science Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, February 2016