Against the background of attempts to explain the poor Corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of transnational oil corporations in the Niger Delta in the context of flawed approaches, processes and inadequate CSR packages, this paper contests not only the explanations for the failure of CSR, but the core idea that CSR is capable of engendering sustainable community development at all. Given the enormity of the development challenge in the region, corporations cannot, even with the best of intentions, make meaningful impact on host communities, mainly because of the structural constraints arising from the profit-seeking ethos which drives corporate behaviour.

Microfinance practices were originally developed in offline contexts. Modern microfinance practices were based on development models for the financial and social empowerment of the poorest of poor in developing countries. Several of these practices drew from existing traditions of money lending within local communities that were reformed to be in sync with rural development and the empowerment of the underprivileged individual. In present ‘postmodern’ times, microfinance providers are using online tools in the hopes of broadening the reach and extending the advantages provided by such a model of micro-lending and micro-borrowing. In this article, we examine an online peer-to-peer lending and borrowing website, Kiva.org, which uses online social networking tools in microfinance. The study is thus a close look at the actual content of the website with a view to understanding the representational practices of online space through Internet mediated microfinance.

High food prices in 2008 sparked food riots around the world, with urban West Africa suffering many of these disturbances. Urban Mali appears to have been spared the worst of this crisis as consumers shifted from rice to sorghum, a grain whose production increased steeply as cotton production collapsed in the wake of lower global prices for this commodity. This study comments on the ‘rice bias’ in policy circles, the tension between cotton and food production, and the hidden blessing of geographic isolation. The findings are based on household surveys and analysis of national-level production data.

This article reviews some of the main arguments advanced by scholars operating at the interface of religion and development. It then seeks to expand the current literature on religion and development to include more ‘uncomfortable’ subject matter, such as homosexuality and discrimination. Using the 1995 Zimbabwe Book Fair as a case study, the author argues that international religious NGOs engaged in evangelical activity must show greater attention to the contexts in which they operate. In particular, they must take an explicit stand against homophobia and discrimination. Otherwise, their development interventions risk strengthening and legitimating cultures of exclusion in countries like Zimbabwe.

In 2006–08, Ethiopia experienced high food and non-food inflation. This study shows that the recent inflationary spell is likely to have significantly worsened poverty in urban areas, given the reliance on the market for most consumption needs. In rural areas the distributive impact of inflation is less easy to measure. In Ethiopia's rural areas, many households are net food buyers, and non-food items weigh significantly in their budgets. Thus, it seems unlikely that high inflation was beneficial for poverty reduction, a position which seemed to underpin much of the policy response to the crisis.

Besides wars and revolution, Russia and its neighbours suffered two major agricultural shocks in the last century: the collectivisation crisis of 1929–33 and the collapse of the collective farms in the 1990s. Both were in some sense policy-induced and linked with sharp declines in agricultural terms of trade. The crises were connected by the historical coincidence of the formation and collapse of the collectives, and the political and philosophical bases of Communist rule. This article investigates relative price changes, the consequences for rural people, and the political backgrounds of the crises. It draws attention to international aspects which many studies neglect.

Agricultural wage labourers in the Philippines were especially vulnerable to the food-price increases of 2007–08. Their wages do not cover the costs of food, clothing, and shelter, much less healthcare and their children's education. Food-price inflation reached 17.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2008. Farm workers had to spend most of their average daily wage of US$ 3 on buying rice, which meant foregoing the purchase of other foods and key necessities. Measures to reduce the price of calories for landless labourers are of critical importance to poverty alleviation. Improved social protection programmes would have helped in the short term. In order to achieve long-term food security, the Philippines must develop self-sufficiency in rice, based on small-farm agriculture. A key challenge is to generate productive, high-paying jobs and ensure that every poor household is gainfully employed or has its own source of livelihood.

Women and Indigenous Religions, , edited by Sylvia Marcos, Santa Barbara, CA, Praeger, 2010, ISBN: 978 0 275 99157 9, 256 pp.

This article reports on the Warwick Conference on Humanitarianism, where practitioners and academics shared their experiences of the problems and limitations of humanitarianism, and how they dealt with them.

This article focuses on one of the assumptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR), namely its usefulness as a tool for eradicating poverty. The claims that business and CSR strategies can be effective in fighting poverty face major challenges, in particular the wide divergence of understandings about the notion and implementation of CSR, and the absence of clear understanding of underlying ideological bases concerning business and poverty. The authors find that, although usually considered as ideologically neutral, the CSR discourse requires the introduction of ideological debate if it is to meet the goal of poverty eradication.