KP Author Milford Bateman Reviews Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land

"Perhaps nowhere more than in the case of post-independence Zimbabwe has the land reform issue in Africa created controversy. Initially, and justifiably, this controversy arose because of the brutality, double-dealing, broken promises, lies and corruption associated with both sides to the land reform process - the Mugabe regime and the international donor community, particularly the UK government. The new book by Joseph Hanlon, Jeanette Manjengwa and Teresa Smart – Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land - takes as its starting point this land reform process, before venturing boldly into dismissing the often ideologically-driven, and sometimes simply racist, myths that quickly arose concerning the ability of the black community to efficiently farm and manage restituted land. Crucially, this book also provides an assessment of the economic and social policy implications of the new raft of smaller farms now owned by the black community. And although it follows fast on the heels of a couple of other excellent books looking into the same land reform topic,[i] in my opinion this book surpasses these earlier contributions, brilliantly extending, confirming, illustrating and nuancing many of the most important arguments and issues that needed to be raised.

Above all the book provides an important reality check to those who swallowed whole the narrative provided by the international development community, key western governments and a good many international media outlets, which was that the land reform process (in reality, a land restitution process) in Zimbabwe was horribly corrupted by the Mugabe regime, and that the sour reality emerging from the whole state-driven process was, predictably, a grossly inefficient agricultural system to boot. Dealing with these myths is the rationale for the book.

First, there is the crucial role of politics and ideology to deal with. To help illustrate the many absurdities here, we might just note the different attitudes to land reform/restitution shown in Zimbabwe and in another region undergoing a major process of change that I know quite well - the former communist states of Eastern Europe. The land reform/restitution process still taking place in the former communist states in Eastern Europe, where land was appropriated from private individuals by the state as far back as 1918 in the former Soviet Union, has actually been driven forward by the international community. At least partly, we know that this was done in order to build a completely new private sector elite, one that could forge important links to western business interests and would reflect the importance of certain western ideological preferences. Now contrast this scenario with the process of land reform/restitution in Zimbabwe as described in this book, a process that was all too often presented as an abomination that had no basis in legality or fairness or (as we will discuss below) efficiency, and so it was largely resisted by the very same international development community agencies and western governments that supported extensive land reform/restitution in the former communist countries. Indeed, many international aid agencies even refused to work with the so-called ‘land reform farmers’ in Zimbabwe. But the authors show that the land reform/restitution process in Zimbabwe was largely resisted by the international development community not so much because of its basic unfairness, but because it would undermine the white Zimbabwean business elite that was very well disposed towards western business interests and supported western country ideological preferences. Sadly, as the authors allude to, a healthy does of racism was also involved in the Zimbabwe case. Revealing the real rationale, as opposed to the stated rationale, behind policy-making and Zimbabwe’s engagement with the international development community is one of the most important aspects of this book for serious scholars.

However, this book is about something else that has much more importance in terms of the future of Zimbabwe, Africa and other developing countries too: it is about the economic and social efficiency of the particular agricultural structure thereby created by land reform/restitution over a generation, and the crucial policy implications this holds for other nations and communities also seeking the best possible agricultural system. To date, and not always for the most honourable of reasons, as we have noted, a large number of analysts have used the example of post-independence Zimbabwe as evidence that large plantation-style farming, previously under white control, was far superior to the much smaller farms under black ownership and control that emerged out of the messy land reform/restitution process. This book very thoroughly and engagingly dispels this long-standing and ultimately hugely destructive myth.

The book fittingly starts with the plight of war-veterans - the white war veterans, that is, who, returning to then Rhodesia from the battlefields of Europe and the Far East in 1945-7, were helped by state intervention to become the backbone of commercial farming in the country. This goal was largely achieved thanks to the rapid construction of a very comprehensive institutional support structure, notably comprising important public infrastructure, the establishment of well-capitalised and integrated (farm to retail) cooperatives, a large volume of subsidised credit and outright grants, and extensive training and extension services programs. These important measures were then ‘assisted’ by further dispossessing the black community of any remaining high quality agricultural land that was still in their individual or communal ownership. Rhodesia’s agricultural sector thus became one of Africa’s strongest. Importantly, it was by no means the supreme bulwark it is commonly assumed to be. On this, the book dispels many myths about the economic efficiency of the agricultural system prior to independence, notably showing that about a third of the farms remained unprofitable and that much good land was later abandoned and remained unused right up till independence.

Notwithstanding, the agricultural system was a major prop to the white Rhodesian economy and society, especially in terms of consolidating white control and in generating valuable foreign exchange. As noted, the authors highlight the importance to the white farming community of extensive state support. This description offers a striking contrast to the shortfall of support offered to the black farmers after independence. Crucially, the authors point out that Zimbabwe’s white-owned plantation farms needed a major state export promotion program, including grants and subsidies, in order to make serious inroads into expanding global markets for niche agricultural products (e.g., mangetout peas, passion fruit and cut flowers). There should be no surprise here. As a growing number of development economists have begun to recount, notably Ha-Joon Chang[ii], and as a growing number of practical experiences elsewhere in Africa also appear to confirm,[iii] there are in fact almost no examples of a successful agricultural sector that did not count on comprehensive state support and financial investment/subsidies. Not all such individual programs ‘worked’, of course, but there are no successful agricultural systems that did not use such programs and policies. So Zimbabwe’s extensive set of agricultural interventions in the pre-Independence period were actually based on very sound economic principles. And they worked.

Understandably, then, the authors are right to repeatedly point out that when the black community began to move into farming in the post-Independence period thanks to the land reform/restitution process, it was therefore a major barrier to the new farmers to find that similar forms of state support were simply unavailable. This makes the ultimate success of the black owned and controlled farms even more astounding. This deleterious lack of support was not so much policy-driven, as the authors are quick to point out, but simply because of a lack of domestic resources in the country after a vicious liberation war and in the face of continuing military and economic attacks by the apartheid regime of South Africa. For example, although the existing agricultural marketing and extension services were immediately opened up to all Zimbabweans following Independence, the funding made available was not anywhere near in proportion to the enormity of the task at hand. Partly also, however, the problem facing Zimbabwe’s new black farming community was that the international community, then in thrall to the ideology of neoliberalism and structural adjustment, did not actually believe in, and so nor would they sanction, such forms of state support being funded with international loans and grants – instead, ‘the market’ was expected to take care of such important matters.

The authors paint a vivid picture of the new class of black farmers returning from the war of Independence only to encounter very much worse conditions compared to the previous white generation returning from duty in World War II. They also point to the serious drought in 2001-2 that followed upon a series of catastrophic droughts, notably in 1991-1992 (the worst of the century), which hardly made things any easier for the new black farming class. Nonetheless, it is the defining feature of the book to show how, seemingly in spite of all the odds, economically successful farms were eventually created by the black community upon their newly restituted land. Making use of peer-to-peer learning (often involving white farmers that remained in Zimbabwe), by the patient reinvestment of any initial surplus made on the farm, by experimentation with different crops and techniques, and through much collective effort, the new black farmers eventually began to reach, and then sometimes to exceed, the productivity levels reached by the former white farmers on much larger plantation-style farms using better quality land. The book thus makes a hugely important contribution to the ongoing debate over the economically ‘optimum’ farm size. The evidence presented here from Zimbabwe supports those analysts, especially those associated with the agro-ecological lobby,[iv] who claim that the key to a productive agricultural system is more likely to be found not in plantation-style farms, but in much smaller but still commercially-oriented farms.

Going even further, the authors show that the old white-owned and controlled plantation farms in Rhodesia were not just much less economically efficient than was hitherto very widely assumed, but that such plantations clearly exacerbated the depth of general poverty and existing social divisions in the community along colour lines: that is, very much as is the norm across Africa, the few employees used on the plantation farms in white-controlled Rhodesia were very seriously exploited, while the local community rarely benefitted from even the most successful plantation farms that were in the vicinity. This unsatisfactory situation is then very usefully contrasted with the emerging situation in the post-Independence period, where the growing numbers of black-owned farms have begun to impel a very positive economic and social development trajectory at the local level. This new trajectory is marked out by rising individual farm incomes, growing levels of solidarity and intra- and inter-community trust, more local food self-sufficiency, and a lessening of previous high levels of inequality. So, smaller farms in Zimbabwe are not just doing very well in terms of productivity, as was noted above, but are also increasingly seen as a much better strategic option for local communities seeking generalised economic and social progress. Pointedly, even the international community is now starting to pick up on the radically different and significant reality that is Zimbabwe today, and is so carefully and intelligently described by the authors of this book.[v]

All told, this book is, first, a fantastic history lesson. At a time when another on-going land grab is dominating the world news as I write this review – the relentless and brutal dispossession of the Palestinians by the early Israeli settlers coming mainly from Europe, and the continuation of this program by their equally intransigent descendents – the appalling unfairness, brutality and stupidity of the white settler land grab from the late 1800s onwards in what is now Zimbabwe is pointedly and rightfully noted throughout the entire book. But, even more than this, this important book provides a much-needed antidote to so many of the myths surrounding the economic and social efficiency of the post-land reform/restitution agricultural sector in Zimbabwe. On this issue, it is informative, passionate and well-argued, and written in such a brilliantly engaging style that it was hard to put down. For this reason, it is an indispensible addition to the library of those working in land restitution and reform issues, and perhaps an even more important purchase for the probably much larger group of economists looking at the role of the agricultural sector in facilitating sustainable rural development everywhere around the world. This book cannot be rated too highly."

 

By Milford Bateman, author of the Kumarian Press publication Confronting Microfinance.

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[i] Notably, for example, Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Chrispen Sukume, 2010, Zimbabwe’s land reform: Myths and realities, Harare: Weaver Press.

[ii] Chang, H-J. 2009. ‘Rethinking Public Policy in Agriculture – Lessons from History, Distant and Recent’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 36 (3), 477-515.

[iii] Pointedly, the major improvements registered in Malawi thanks to targeted subsidies that were used to allow smallholder farmers to purchase fertiliser and quality seeds, and which within a few years transformed Malawi from a net food importer into a major food exporter. See Bello, W. 2009. Food Wars. London: Verso. 

[iv] For example, see Norberg-Hodge, H., and T Merrifield T, S Gorelick. 2002. Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, Zed Press: London.

[v] For example, ‘In Zimbabwe Land takeover, a golden lining’, New York Times, July 20^th, 2012.

What to Expect from KP in January 2013

Kumarian Press has a wide range of activities and books being released at the start of the new year.

New titles to look out for by Kumarian Press include:

• Poverty and Development in Latin America
• Development Challenges Confronting Pakistan
• Managing Drug Supply

Poverty is still widespread in Latin America, in spite of over five decades of international development efforts to eradicate it. While some progress was made during the first decade of the new Millennium, at least until the onset of the global food and economic crises, there are still over one hundred and eighty million people in the region who unable to meet their basic needs. This is the ‘poverty problematic’ that is at the center of this book. It addresses what are perhaps the most important questions of our time: What are the root causes of poverty? And how can it overcome? Also, with regards to the recent progress in the so-called war against poverty, the editors ask: How real is this progress? What or whose actions are responsible for this achievement? Through a critical analysis of public policies and development pathways, Poverty and Development in Latin America provides nuanced responses to these questions. The major conclusion reached and shared by the editors is that poverty reduction cannot be sustained with an anti-poverty strategy based only on social inclusion and economic assistance, or humanitarian relief.

In Pakistan, there has been limited substantive research conducted to identify the unique blend of structural impediments to development that prevail in the country today. Indeed, Pakistan’s prospects to promote viable, sustainable social development appear bleaker today than a decade ago. Development Challenges Confronting Pakistan seeks to rectify this void by bringing together scholars and practitioners—many of them from Pakistan—to provide a scholarly understanding of the structural impediments, or barriers, that have negative effects on Pakistan’s ability to eliminate poverty, promote social justice and implement policies to promote equity.

Managing Drug Supply (MDS) is the leading reference on how to manage essential medicines in developing countries. MDS was originally published in 1982; it was revised in 1997 with over 10,000 copies distributed in over 60 countries worldwide. The third edition, MDS-3: Managing Access to Medicines and Health Technologies reflects the dramatic changes in politics and public health priorities, advances in science and medicine, greater focus on health care systems, increased donor funding, and the advent of information technology that have profoundly affected access to essential medicines over the past 14 years.

Events

1. January 9th: The Society for International Development, DC Chapter, will host a presentation of Susan Ross's work, including an introduction to her Kumarian Press release Expanding the Pie. The event will range from 12:30pm - 2:00pm.
2. January 15th: Radio Peacebuilding will interview Max Stephenson and Laura Zanotti about their new KP release Peacebuilding Through Community-Based NGOs.
3. January 28th: Author Joseph Hanlon will speak on Voice of Africa radio about his new release Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land.

To receive review and/or exam copies of the titles listed, please contact the Marketing Associate: Jennifer@styluspub.com.

Guest Blog Posting by Kerry Fosher of Practicing Military Anthropology

Practicing Military Anthropology
Edited by Robert Rubinstein, Kerry Fosher, and Clementine Fujimura

Sometime in 2008, I realized I was spending a third of every conference presentation talking about things I don’t do in the course of my work with the U.S. military. I do not spy. I do not do classified research. I do not work for the Human Terrain System. I do not collect information about the people who live in places where U.S. forces are deployed. Many anthropologists who worked with military and intelligence organizations were experiencing similar problems. We joked about wearing t-shirts or displaying posters listing all the things we don’t do so that we could spend our presentation time on what other anthropologists were able to, our work and research. The idea for the book, Practicing Military Anthropology, began in those discussions of how to provide better information about what it means to be a military anthropologist.

Between 2006 and 2008, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) began to take note of an increasing interest in anthropologists and anthropology on the part of military and intelligence organizations.  As the discipline became aware of the Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS) concept, much of the discussion came to center around that program. Many in the discipline felt that HTS epitomized the problems that arise when anthropologists get involved with government organizations, especially those involved with spying and the use of force.  Many conference panels on militarization, military anthropology, ethics, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were organized. Anthropologists spoke to the press and began to publish their concerns about the connection of anthropologists to the military. The first report from the AAA’s Commission on the Engagement with U.S. Security and Intelligence Communities (CEUSSIC), which tried to introduce some of the scope of work anthropologists were doing in the security sector, was nearly eclipsed by the discipline’s new awareness of HTS and the questions it raised. The work of CEUSSIC was extended to allow a more thorough investigation of HTS.

As I and other anthropologists involved with the military participated in these discussions, it became clear that we were swimming upstream against strong assumptions. Almost every discussion was sent spinning off in strange directions by the assumption that military organizations only wanted was anthropologists to do fieldwork or act as spies. The discipline had little frame of reference for thinking through the significant ethical, professional, theoretical, and methodological questions our work raised. Much of the critique was based on macro-level assessments of the problematic nature of working within flawed institutions. Relatively little incorporated the sorts of empirically grounded knowledge that the discipline normally prioritizes. It became clear that if we wanted to have a more robust discussion, we would need to do more than react to assumptions and assertions. We also needed to provide information on what we actually do and how we think about it.

When Syracuse University’s Anthropology Department approached me and Brian Selmeski with a generous offer to support a symposium about military anthropology, the timing was perfect. It was not only a chance to produce the accounts of practice we felt were so urgently needed. It also allowed us to bring together old and new colleagues to think about what it might mean to work with military and intelligence organizations in the future and the broader issues the topic raised. In particular, it was a chance to engage with anthropologists who had examined some of this realm before, people like my co-authors Robert and Clementine, Anna Simons, and Jessica Turnley. As discussions and work on the book progressed, it became apparent that there was no one set of conditions or decisions that led people to work with the military. People had varying degrees of interest in the things that were preoccupying people at AAA meetings and located themselves differently within those debates. In fact, despite the book’s title, some of the authors, including myself, do not think of ourselves as military anthropologists. Rather than trying to standardize what the authors addressed, we chose to let the differences be part of the message of the book. Although other demands on his time caused Brian to have to leave the project toward the end, in that choice and in other ways his influence is still felt in the volume.

Although it was not a focus in most of the chapters, one of the interesting side effects of the interaction among the authors was the discussion about how the focus on military anthropology raised (sometimes resurrected) issues for other aspects of anthropology. In the concluding chapter of the volume, Robert raises some significant issues for how the debates reflect on work in the academy. Unsurprisingly, we also found that the same issues of the potential for bias, enabling flawed institutions, requirements for ongoing decision-making, and compromises necessary to influence policy apply in anthropological advocacy and applied or practicing projects across domains. Some of these domains, such medicine, public health, work with NGOs, human rights actions, etc., are seen as topically and contextually less problematic in the discipline and, therefore, receive less scrutiny. The work of fully articulating these commonalities remains to be done.

For several authors it was a period of intense personal and professional decision-making. Almost all of us changed jobs or focus during the development of the book. So, while there is diversity within the book, the chapters also represent snapshots of lives that were simultaneously shaped by and shaping the practitioner context.  Many of us were in the midst of intensive work to create or significantly reshape the programs and institutions in which we worked. Some of us had been brought into the organizations to instigate such changes. Others were taking advantage of what we knew to be a momentary wobble in powerful institutional processes in order to insert changes.

Far from being constrained by the dictates of the state, some of us had fundamental disagreements about what kinds of engagement were appropriate, about the legitimacy of critiques being made of military anthropology, even about what anthropological theories to teach to military personnel.  Those disagreements took place among people who were almost constantly on travel, away from home for long periods of time, tired and cranky. Yet the discussions remained civil and constructive.

The civility of this process and the similar atmosphere in CEUSSIC matter greatly. At a time when the debates were at their most polemic among military anthropologists and the broader discipline, it has been possible to create places where difficult questions can be asked and possible answers discussed in ways that do not a priori categorize and exclude certain participants. It also has been possible to expand discussion outside of the frames proposed by the loudest voices, frames that do not always take the complexity of practice into account. Practicing Military Anthropology represents one such effort, moving beyond assertions that rely on one reductionist view of anthropologists in military contexts and delving into the complexity of practice that must be understood for informed debate to take place.

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 Practicing Military Anthropology is available to purchase through Kumarian Press and retails for $24.95. To request review and/or exam copies, email Jennifer at Jennifer@styluspub.com.  

Guest Author Posting by Teresa Smart

Zimbabwe Takes Back iIs Land

By Joseph Hanlon, Jeannette Manjengwa, and Teresa Smart

Esther and Teresa are both land reform farmers in Mazowe, Zimbabwe. We first met Esther and her friend Teresa at a field day at Kia Ora Farm. They each have 15 acre plots of top quality land. The former white farms had been subdivided into 50 or 60 fifteen acre plots. These two women had impressed us with their tales of how much and what they produced on their farms. Esther talked about harvests of 100 tonnes of maize from 35 acres (her own 15 plus a borrowed 20 acres). Esther says that during 10 years of farming, she had invested her money in farming equipment.

My namesake, Teresa, has invested her profits in buying cattle and sending her two children to university in South Africa. She borrows a tractor and irrigation pipes from her friend Esther. When we asked how they had managed to produce so much, Teresa leant down and picked up some earth and showed me the earth and her work roughened hands; good soil and hard work was her answer.

We were researching our book, Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land, looking at what has happened to the 170,000 black farmers who controversially occupied 4,000 white farms in 2000 and 2001. Although the local agriculture extension officer independently verified their stories of production and equipment, we wanted to see it with our own eyes. On our visit we saw the tractors, irrigation equipment, planter, and pumps. All are in good working order and Esther already knows how she will spend the profit from the coming harvest – this tractor needs new tires and she wants to buy a harvester. Every penny from her production is invested in the farm. But her pride and joy is her maize – strong, clean, well-weeded fields of maize. She is expecting three tonnes per acre, which the extension officer confirms. She has hedged her bets by planting three different seed types: one high yielding, one lower yield but drought resistant, and one for late planting in case of late rains. So whatever the weather her yield will always give an average of three tonnes per acre.

While we are admiring her maize, she tells us her story. She was a teacher, but she had grown up on a farm and always wanted to be a farmer; so when the land reform started she applied for land. When she was granted her 15 acres, she gave up her job, but her husband stayed in his job in the police and paid the household bills while she ploughed all of her savings into the land. The first year she produced 100 tonnes and spent the money on buying a second hand tractor. The second year she bought irrigation pipes and pumps so that she could grow winter wheat giving her two crops a year. The third year she bought another tractor and so on. Her husband has since died so she has full financial responsibility for the family. The problem with farming is that you have to pay bills for fuel, workers, electricity, school fees and food every week but you only receive money once or twice a year when you sell your crops. Esther resolves this in two ways: When she sells her crops she immediately buys fertilizer, seeds and new equipment for the next year; and, then she has diversified running a small shop for local farmers and making peanut butter to sell so she has a small fund coming in every day.

Esther and Teresa are some of the best of the new farmers, but overall the new farmers are using more of the land than their white predecessors and now producing nearly as much. Research shows that it takes two decades to reach the maximum potential of a farm, so the new farmers are only halfway through that process, and seem set to produce more than the former white farmers.

At independence in 1980, only one-third of what farmers were doing well, and one-third were bankrupt. Our surveys and other studies show a similar spread for the new farmers, with a third becoming serious commercial farmers like Ester and Teresa. But what is equally impressive is standing with Joe, whose father was thrown off his land by white settlers 55 years ago, or Agnes who lost her leg as a guerrilla in the liberation war, in the middle of their resettlement farms, and of their pride not just in regaining their land, but in what they have built on their own farms in the past decade.

Many problems remain in Zimbabwe. But United States sanctions are not just against an evil elite, but against Esther, Teresa, Joe, Agnes and the other 170,000 land reform farmers. As President Barak Obama goes into his second term and looks again at foreign policy, perhaps it is time to rethink how the U.S. approaches Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land releases later this month. The book is available to pre-order through Kumarian Press and retails for $26.95. To request review and/or exam copies, contact Marketing Associate Jennifer Kern: Jennifer@styluspub.com.

Guest Author Posting By Anthony Ware

Context-Sensitive Development
Anthony Ware

How do you write an up-to-date book about a context that is changing as fast as Myanmar? I commenced research for this book several years ago, and began writing  my findings in earnest during 2010 and 2011. However, as anyone at all familiar with Myanmar will know, political and social change has been unexpectedly rapid in this country over the last 18 months or so, making it difficult but most important to keep checking and updating the research and findings right up until the final hour before printing. Accordingly, the last revisions were made to the text in late July 2012, for an early October book launch date!

On the back of numerous visits to the country between 1992 and  2007, and a lot of reading about the history and context over the years, I commenced formal research specifically for this project during an extended visit in 2009. I have had several visits since, but that initial research period was about a year after Cyclone Nargis devastated the country at a loss of some 140,000 lives, an event which greatly change the involvement of international actors in Myanmar. Actually, the cyclone itself was not a significant factor motivating my research; to me the challenge was more about understanding how we foreigners could most effectively assist in poverty alleviation within such an enigmatic context. Poverty in Myanmar has been amongst the worst in Asia, and the state in Myanmar has long been highly bureaucratic, authoritarian, incompetent and often brutal. Complicating the issue, however, Myanmar has also long been greatly suspicious of Western motives, while itself being sanctioned by Western governments over human rights violations and a failure to respect the democratic voice of the people. How do we help alleviate poverty in such a context? That was what I set out to document.

Unexpectedly, just as I was in the midst of writing up my research, military strongman Senior General Than Shwe resigned as president. This event, of course, paved the way for the now-familiar reforms under new president Thein Sein, something we are all very pleasantly surprised to see coming to partial fruition. I had been aware that the November 2010 elections were to be held, but I did not give them must consideration. Along with most of the international community, I was taken completely by surprise when Than Shwe resigned to allow a more civilian government to form, and even more surprised by the content of Thein Sein's March 2011 inaugural speech, which outlined an ambitious reform agenda. Without taking anything away from my discussion of this in the book, let me just say that from his first speech, Thein Sein has set a very different path to that of his predecessor.

While the reforms which began to take shape over the months following Thein Sein taking power were extremely welcome, they had major ramifications for me as an author in the middle of a book about the country. Naturally, I was immediately nervous that my research and findings might become irrelevant. Thus I planned several follow-up visits during 2011 and 2012 to remain up with the changes, and consider their impact on the work of international NGOs in the country.

So I found myself back in Yangon in July 2011. I remember feeling quite frustrated at the difficulty I was having securing appointments with the Australian ambassador, the AusAID team, and others, when then news came out that Kevin Rudd, then Australian foreign minister, had arrived to assess the reform; the first Western ministerial-level visit to Myanmar in decades. I hardly minded not getting an appointment that week! (Although I was delighted to receive an invitation for an appointment with the ambassador the week after he left.)

I returned again in December 2011, just in time for Hillary Clinton's visit. It was quite interesting to find myself in a house in Insein district, chatting about her major speech to the press with local informants just the morning after the speech. As it turns out, I then flew back into the country during the second week of April 2012, just after the by-elections that saw Aung San Suu Kyi and 42 members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) elected to parliament. It was a privilege to be sitting with local residents in one of the electorates won by the NLD just a week after the election, and able to talk about their reactions to the by-election. But I did start getting a little paranoid foreign political leaders were stalking me when UK Prime Minister David Cameron appeared in the country that same week. Not that I got to see him personally, of course! What capped it all off, though, was travelling back to Myanmar yet again in June 2012, to make the final edits to the manuscript, and find that yet again I was there within days of the visit by the new Aus­tralian, Senator Carr, as he announced ground-breaking policy changes and new aid commitments by Australia.

Watching these events unfold, largely from a position inside the country, gave me the opportunity to monitor the changes closely, and incorporate these into the manuscript right up to the last moment it was sent to the printer. I have to say, Kumarian were wonderful with this – so flexible in trying to deliver the most relevant and up-to-date book to readers. The final edits sent through were dated 24 July 2012, and included several updates and an Afterword. Thank you so much to Jennifer, McKinley, Jim and everyone at Kumarian for your flexibility and encouragement in this endeavor.

Context-Sensitive Development is available for purchase through Kumarian Press. To receive review and/or exam copies, please contact Marketing Associate Jennifer Kern: Jennifer@styluspub.com.

Interested in Publishing with Kumarian Press?

Hello, KP Readers:

Do you have a great book idea? We would like to invite you to send your editorial proposals to us for review.

Below are a few helpful tips to help you get started:

The length of the manuscript is an important part of the contract: it is a key factor in determining the list price as well as the cost of producing and printing the book. Manuscript length is expressed as thousands of words. Book length is expressed in multiples of 16-page or 32-page "signatures," which are the number of pages created by folding and gathering paper mill reels or large sheets of paper into a bound book. Accordingly, a typical Stylus contract may stipulate a manuscript not exceeding 84,000 words, which, allowing for front ("prelims") and back matter (usually bibliography and index), will yield a 224-page book of a given trim size and using a page design with a particular typeface

The word count allows for the fact that a number of pages are set aside for such elements as the title page, the copyright page, dedication, acknowledgments and table of contents (the "prelims"). A typical double-spaced word-processed page of 12-point type comes to about 380 words.

If a book is to be illustrated or will present a great deal of tabular material, or needs a design with lots of indents and bullet points, this needs to be discussed at contract stage so that these factors are taken into account in determining length.

Our Stylus contract calls for you to submit your final manuscript in both hard copy and disk forms. In this digital age, hard copy is still important for transmitting detailed instructions to those involved in converting your manuscript into a book, and as a safeguard in case of corrupt files.

It is also very important to adhere to the following instructions in preparing your manuscript. In addition to the quality of the content, the physical form of submission is a key element of what constitutes an acceptable manuscript.

These instructions are designed to streamline the work of the many people who will be involved in editing, designing and printing your book, and enable them work effectively with you in the process.

Be sure to check out our manuscript submission guidelines for more information.

Are you ready to begin working with us? Contact Editor Jim Lance: JLance@kpbooks.com. We look forward to working with you.

New Titles Releasing Next Month

Kumarian Press has a slew of new titles in the fields of foreign affairs, anthropology, advocacy and more. Pre-order these titles now:

Practicing Military Anthropology: “Professor Rubinstein’s shocking revelations of brutal and cruel professional malfeasance committed by leading scholars against other contributors to this volume lays bare a shameful and deeply rooted pathology within the disciplinary culture that poses a grave threat to the collective integrity and, indeed, to the very future of anthropology itself."- George R. Lucas, Jr. (Ph.D.), Professor of Ethics & Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School, Distinguished Chair of Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy

In this book, a number of anthropologists who have either worked with the US armed forces or who teach at military service academies reflect on what they do and teach in their military anthropologist personae. Through their personal accounts they show that the practice of military anthropology is much more than HTS and that they are more than mere “technicians of the state” as critics allege.

Confronting Power: "Jeff Unsicker's Confronting Power provides new knowledge for policy advocacy practitioners so that they understand the contributions they make as advocates. I found myself cheering Unsicker's writing and the stories he, his students and colleagues uncovered. Students of policy advocacy can learn from the case studies which demystify advocacy as they respect the advocates' serious work. Academic discipline does not stand in the way of making the advocates work come alive. We come away valuing the public work of policy advocacy and wanting to engage in it."- David Cohen,Co-Founder , Advocacy Institute

Confronting Power provides an academically rigorous, yet practical and comprehensive framework and concepts for planning, implementing and evaluating policy advocacy. Based on the author's experiences both as teacher and activist, the framework is general enough to be relevant for advocacy in a variety of sectors such as poverty alleviation, human rights and the environment, in different national and cultural contexts, and at levels ranging from influencing a town council to transnational institutions such as the World Bank.

Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land: "Land and farming rights have been the most powerful issue in Zimbabwe for over 100 years, as I discovered when I wrote my MSc thesis on this subject in the 1960s. While white farmers were evicted in a brutal fashion and many of Mugabe's cronies were the beneficiaries, this is not the whole story. This excellent book describes how agricultural production is now returning to the level of the 1990s. If tens of thousands of poor Zimbabwean farmers are now able to make a livelihood from the land, some significant good will have emerged from a terrible period of Zimbabwe’s history." - Sir Malcolm Rifkind, MP, Former UK Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary

The news from Zimbabwe is usually unremittingly bleak. Perhaps no issue has aroused such ire as the land reforms in 2000, when 170,000 black farmers occupied 4,000 white farms. A decade later, with production returning to former levels, the land reform story is a contrast to the dominant media narratives of oppression and economic stagnation. Zimbabwe Takes Back it Land offers a positive and nuanced assessment of land reform in Zimbabwe. The book stresses that the land reform was organized by liberation war veterans acting against President Mugabe and his cronies and their corruption.

NGO Leadership and Human Rights: “Addresses a critical issue that has received scant scholarly attention in the mainstream human rights/humanitarian affairs literature.”- Prof. George Andreopoulos, Center for International Human Rights , John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY

NGO Leadership and Human Rights covers various topics of importance to those who work in development and/or advocacy organizations with human rights orientations and for undergraduate and graduate students aspiring to such careers. This book provides context, definition and guidance for the perplexed seeking entrance into a challenging but rewarding endeavor.

Find these books and more on our website and contact Marketing Associate Jennifer Kern if interested in obtaining a review and/or exam copy: Jennifer@styluspub.com.