Deborah Johnston
Biographic Data
| ID | 102060 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah Johnston |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah |
| FAMILY NAME | Johnston |
| SIGNATURE | JOHNSTON D |
| AFFILIATIONS | SOAS University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0065-1105 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The politics of agricultural policy and nutrition
The concept of food and nutrition policy has broadened from simply being an aspect of health policy, to policy interventions from across a wide range of sectors, but still with potentially important impact on nutritional outcomes. This wider and more complex conceptualisation involves policy with multiple objectives and stakeholder influences. Thus, it becomes particularly important to understand the dynamics of these policy processes, including …
The Urban Food Question in the Context of Inequality and Dietary Change
Diets are changing globally, as agricultural and food systems have become globalised. Understanding how patterns of globalisation affect welfare is a key development question, but we know little about the way that the globalisation of food systems impacts different groups. This study explores food security and consumption among schoolchildren in Accra. We use a novel approach based on triangulation of primary data on food consumption and a synthe…
Imperfection Measures and the Production of Poverty
The Political Economy of HIV in Africa
Political Economy of HIV in Africa
Time-Use Analytics
There is a resurgence of interest in time-use research driven, inter alia, by the desire to understand if development interventions, especially when targeted to women, lead to time constraints by increasing work burdens. This has become a primary concern in agriculture-nutrition research. But are time-use data useful to explore agriculture-nutrition pathways? This study develops a conceptual framework of the micro-level linkages between agricultu…
Fairtrade and Labour Markets in Ethiopia and Uganda
Drawing on four years of fieldwork in Ethiopia and Uganda, this paper addresses gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms linking agricultural exports with poverty reduction, the functioning of rural labour markets, and the relevance to the lives of the poorest people of Fairtrade. Statistical analysis of survey evidence, complemented by qualitative research, highlights the relatively poor payment and non-pay working conditions of those employed in …
The asset debates
Asset indices are ubiquitous in the debate about well-being in African countries, not least because of the paucity of traditional household income and expenditure data. Indeed, asset data have fuelled the creation of a new, more optimistic picture of well-being in Africa, where both income and the middle class are growing fast. This is the first review of the use of asset indices for African countries. Readers are guided through key debates over …
Nudging or Fudging
TheWorld Development Report 2015: Mind Society and Behaviour(World Bank, 2015), seeks a redesign of development policy on the basis of insights emerging from behavioural economics. This article offers a critical assessment of the Report across four dimensions. First, it situates the Report within the broader and evolving knowledge role of the Bank. Second, it locates the Report in the context of the evolution of economics as a discipline and how …
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2015
Statistical Tragedy in Africa? Evaluating the Data Base for African Economic Development
Measurement is increasingly at the centre of debates in African economic development. Some remarkable upward revisions of GDP, which are signs of statistical systems improving, caused the declaration of a statistical tragedy in Africa. This special issue evaluates the database for African economic development with articles on the quality of the data on GDP, health and education, poverty, labour, agriculture and income distribution
The Welfare Effects of Trade in Phytomedicines
Paying the price of HIV in Africa
Despite biomedical innovation, HIV incidence remains high in some African countries. HIV-related cash-transfer projects propose a solution. However, the author raises concerns about their success from a political economy perspective. Where structural change is invoked by these projects, it is too narrowly conceived. Some cash-transfer projects focus solely on ‘nudging’ choices about risky sex, without considering the wider set of factors that inc…
The political economy of HIV
Given all the positivity and self-congratulation over HIV in the international policy world, it might be hard to remember how many lives have been destroyed and continue to be devastated by this illness. Looking to UNAIDS headlines, we hear of plans for an ‘AIDS-free generation in Africa’, ‘ending the epidemic by 2030’ and ‘eliminating stigma and discrimination’. In this case, the boldness of the goals is partly driven by what Michel Sidibe ́, Ex…
Mistakes, Crises, and Research Independence
Drawing on examples from rural Ethiopia and Uganda, this research note highlights some of the difficulties experienced in fieldwork. These difficulties do not justify the reluctance of increasingly risk-averse universities and funders to support independent fieldwork in Africa, but they do show that the rationale for research and the features of its design can provoke animosity and tensions. They also show that our own failure on occasion to appr…
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2014
Fairtrade cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda
All members of the research team are listed at http://ftepr.org. However, it is important to emphasise that the material cited in this paper on the pattern of sales to smallholder coffee and tea organisations was mainly collected by Reta Hailu and Sam Bbosa.Notes on contributorsChristopher Cramer is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS, London. He has worked in sub-Saharan Africa for some 25 years. He works mainly on developm…
How to do (and how not to do) fieldwork on Fair Trade and rural poverty
The Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction (FTEPR) project investigated poverty dynamics in rural Ethiopia and Uganda. When designing fieldwork to capture poor people often missing from standard surveys, several methodological challenges were identified and, in response, four decisions were made. First, FTEPR focused on wage workers rather than farmers and improved on standard questionnaires when collecting labour market information. Second…
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2013
Migration as a Tool in Development Policy
The World Bank and UNDP have proposed that migration and mobility facilitate economic development. Yet the epidemiological and public health literature has often associated migration and population mobility with the extension and intensification of infectious diseases, most recently epitomised by the AIDS pandemic. Within the context of the well-documented negative developmental impact of AIDS, this suggests a potential clash in perspectives on t…
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2012
The ‘Bernstein & Byres Prize’ is the annual prize of the Journal of Agrarian Change (JAC). It is named after the founding editors of the Journal and has been awarded since the 2008 volume. The aim is to celebrate the outstanding contributions received by awarding a prize of £500 donated by our publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, to the best published paper in any one year. Through this, we also hope to reinforce the remit of the Journal in the fie…
Measuring socio-economic position for epidemiological studies in low- and middle-income countries
Much has been written about the measurement of socio-economic position (SEP) in high-income countries (HIC). Less has been written for an epidemiology, health systems and public health audience about the measurement of SEP in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The social stratification processes in many LMIC-and therefore the appropriate measurement tools-differ considerably from those in HIC. Many measures of SEP have been utilized in epid…
Value chains of herbal medicines—Research needs and key challenges in the context of ethnopharmacology
BACKGROUND: Value chain analyses are commonly used to understand socioeconomic and power relationships in the production chain from the initial starting material to a final (generally high value) product. These analyses help in terms of understanding economic processes but also have been used in the context of socioeconomic and socioecological research. AIMS OF THE STUDY: However, there is a gap in the ethnopharmacological literature in terms of …
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2011
This is the fourth time we have awarded the ‘Bernstein & Byres Prize’, which is the annual prize of the Journal of Agrarian Change (JAC). Named after the founding editors of the Journal, the prize has been awarded since the 2008 volume to the best article published in any one year. The aim is to reinforce the remit of the Journal in the field of agrarian political economy and to encourage scholarly work within this tradition. An award of £500 is …
A Note from the Editors
Searching for a Weapon of Mass Production in Rural Africa
Many recent arguments for land reform share a central proposition concerning the relative efficiency of small farm production. This article argues that the theoretical reasoning underlying this proposition is not coherent, and furthermore the empirical support for this size-efficiency relationship in Africa is astonishingly weak. Given the evidence, the continued focus on the efficient, egalitarian family farm can only be ideologically driven. Th…
Who Needs Immigrant Farm Workers? A South African Case Study
Recent writing on migration in Southern Africa focuses on the experiences and desires of migrants themselves. While it gives valuable insights, this article argues that it can obscure the role of employers in structuring migration opportunities. In the case of female migrants from Lesotho working in South African agriculture, farmer demand has clearly impacted on the spectrum of both legal and illegal employment opportunities available, with the …
Nudging or Fudging
TheWorld Development Report 2015: Mind Society and Behaviour(World Bank, 2015), seeks a redesign of development policy on the basis of insights emerging from behavioural economics. This article offers a critical assessment of the Report across four dimensions. First, it situates the Report within the broader and evolving knowledge role of the Bank. Second, it locates the Report in the context of the evolution of economics as a discipline and how …
Fairtrade cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda
All members of the research team are listed at http://ftepr.org. However, it is important to emphasise that the material cited in this paper on the pattern of sales to smallholder coffee and tea organisations was mainly collected by Reta Hailu and Sam Bbosa.Notes on contributorsChristopher Cramer is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS, London. He has worked in sub-Saharan Africa for some 25 years. He works mainly on developm…
The asset debates
Asset indices are ubiquitous in the debate about well-being in African countries, not least because of the paucity of traditional household income and expenditure data. Indeed, asset data have fuelled the creation of a new, more optimistic picture of well-being in Africa, where both income and the middle class are growing fast. This is the first review of the use of asset indices for African countries. Readers are guided through key debates over …
Leaving the Household Out of Family Labour? The Implications for the Size–Efficiency Debate
Time-Use Analytics
There is a resurgence of interest in time-use research driven, inter alia, by the desire to understand if development interventions, especially when targeted to women, lead to time constraints by increasing work burdens. This has become a primary concern in agriculture-nutrition research. But are time-use data useful to explore agriculture-nutrition pathways? This study develops a conceptual framework of the micro-level linkages between agricultu…
How to do (and how not to do) fieldwork on Fair Trade and rural poverty
The Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction (FTEPR) project investigated poverty dynamics in rural Ethiopia and Uganda. When designing fieldwork to capture poor people often missing from standard surveys, several methodological challenges were identified and, in response, four decisions were made. First, FTEPR focused on wage workers rather than farmers and improved on standard questionnaires when collecting labour market information. Second…
The political economy of HIV
Given all the positivity and self-congratulation over HIV in the international policy world, it might be hard to remember how many lives have been destroyed and continue to be devastated by this illness. Looking to UNAIDS headlines, we hear of plans for an ‘AIDS-free generation in Africa’, ‘ending the epidemic by 2030’ and ‘eliminating stigma and discrimination’. In this case, the boldness of the goals is partly driven by what Michel Sidibe ́, Ex…
Mistakes, Crises, and Research Independence
Drawing on examples from rural Ethiopia and Uganda, this research note highlights some of the difficulties experienced in fieldwork. These difficulties do not justify the reluctance of increasingly risk-averse universities and funders to support independent fieldwork in Africa, but they do show that the rationale for research and the features of its design can provoke animosity and tensions. They also show that our own failure on occasion to appr…
Paying the price of HIV in Africa
Despite biomedical innovation, HIV incidence remains high in some African countries. HIV-related cash-transfer projects propose a solution. However, the author raises concerns about their success from a political economy perspective. Where structural change is invoked by these projects, it is too narrowly conceived. Some cash-transfer projects focus solely on ‘nudging’ choices about risky sex, without considering the wider set of factors that inc…
Introduction to a Symposium on the 2007–8 World Food Crisis
Africa and the Credit Crunch
THE BUTTERFLY FLAP OF FINANCIAL INNOVATION did not so much cause a flutter as aggravate a frenzy of anxiety and greed in international markets.1 What followed was chaos indeed. The financial bubble burst – as they do – and this time the global economy has given rise to not just a financial crisis but a global recession. Banks stopped lending to each other, credit for businesses and households caved in, demand has been throttled, and government de…
Bias, Not Error
Economists struggle to understand the macroeconomic impact of HIV/AIDS. To this end, they have constructed macro models that utilize simplified pictures of the working of the economy and then factor in channels by which HIV/AIDS will have an effect. These models have considerable influence on HIV/AIDS policy; however, they do have their critics. Criticisms in the literature have focused on the simplifications in the construction of the economy th…
From the New Editors
The state and development
Metadata only record
The state and development
Metadata only record
Neoliberalism
Searching for a Weapon of Mass Production in Rural Africa
Many recent arguments for land reform share a central proposition concerning the relative efficiency of small farm production. This article argues that the theoretical reasoning underlying this proposition is not coherent, and furthermore the empirical support for this size-efficiency relationship in Africa is astonishingly weak. Given the evidence, the continued focus on the efficient, egalitarian family farm can only be ideologically driven. Th…
HIV/Aids mitigation strategies and the State in sub-Saharan Africa – the missing link
BACKGROUND: The HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa is widely recognised as a development disaster threatening poverty reduction, economic growth and not merely a health issue. Its mitigation includes the societal-wide adoption and implementation of specific health technologies, many of which depend on functional institutions and State. DISCUSSION: Donor and International Institutions' strategies to mitigate HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are…
Leaving the Household Out of Family Labour? The Implications for the Size–Efficiency Debate
Ethical Sourcing
Who Needs Immigrant Farm Workers? A South African Case Study
Recent writing on migration in Southern Africa focuses on the experiences and desires of migrants themselves. While it gives valuable insights, this article argues that it can obscure the role of employers in structuring migration opportunities. In the case of female migrants from Lesotho working in South African agriculture, farmer demand has clearly impacted on the spectrum of both legal and illegal employment opportunities available, with the …
Counting Heads or Counting Televisions
There has been a vigorous debate about poverty measurement in Russia, where both the poverty line and poverty data have been subject to criticism. We outline some of the issues raised and discuss the use of an alternative welfare measure based on household assets. Asset indices have mostly been constructed for low-income countries, supported by two arguments: first, the asset index appears to have a number of empirical advantages in terms of data…
Bias, Not Error
Economists struggle to understand the macroeconomic impact of HIV/AIDS. To this end, they have constructed macro models that utilize simplified pictures of the working of the economy and then factor in channels by which HIV/AIDS will have an effect. These models have considerable influence on HIV/AIDS policy; however, they do have their critics. Criticisms in the literature have focused on the simplifications in the construction of the economy th…
From the New Editors
Africa and the Credit Crunch
THE BUTTERFLY FLAP OF FINANCIAL INNOVATION did not so much cause a flutter as aggravate a frenzy of anxiety and greed in international markets.1 What followed was chaos indeed. The financial bubble burst – as they do – and this time the global economy has given rise to not just a financial crisis but a global recession. Banks stopped lending to each other, credit for businesses and households caved in, demand has been throttled, and government de…
Linking migration, mobility and HIV
Population mobility is commonly identified as a key driver of the HIV epidemic, both linking geographically separate epidemics and intensifying transmission through inducing riskier sexual behaviours. However, beyond the well-known case studies of South African miners and East African truck drivers, the evidence on the links between HIV and mobility is nuanced, contradictory and inconclusive and is in part attributed to the abstract definitions o…
Introduction to a Symposium on the 2007–8 World Food Crisis
The Bernstein and Byres Prize in Agrarian Change
A Note from the Editors
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2010
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2009
Measuring socio-economic position for epidemiological studies in low- and middle-income countries
Much has been written about the measurement of socio-economic position (SEP) in high-income countries (HIC). Less has been written for an epidemiology, health systems and public health audience about the measurement of SEP in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The social stratification processes in many LMIC-and therefore the appropriate measurement tools-differ considerably from those in HIC. Many measures of SEP have been utilized in epid…
Value chains of herbal medicines—Research needs and key challenges in the context of ethnopharmacology
BACKGROUND: Value chain analyses are commonly used to understand socioeconomic and power relationships in the production chain from the initial starting material to a final (generally high value) product. These analyses help in terms of understanding economic processes but also have been used in the context of socioeconomic and socioecological research. AIMS OF THE STUDY: However, there is a gap in the ethnopharmacological literature in terms of …
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2011
This is the fourth time we have awarded the ‘Bernstein & Byres Prize’, which is the annual prize of the Journal of Agrarian Change (JAC). Named after the founding editors of the Journal, the prize has been awarded since the 2008 volume to the best article published in any one year. The aim is to reinforce the remit of the Journal in the field of agrarian political economy and to encourage scholarly work within this tradition. An award of £500 is …
Migration as a Tool in Development Policy
The World Bank and UNDP have proposed that migration and mobility facilitate economic development. Yet the epidemiological and public health literature has often associated migration and population mobility with the extension and intensification of infectious diseases, most recently epitomised by the AIDS pandemic. Within the context of the well-documented negative developmental impact of AIDS, this suggests a potential clash in perspectives on t…
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2012
The ‘Bernstein & Byres Prize’ is the annual prize of the Journal of Agrarian Change (JAC). It is named after the founding editors of the Journal and has been awarded since the 2008 volume. The aim is to celebrate the outstanding contributions received by awarding a prize of £500 donated by our publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, to the best published paper in any one year. Through this, we also hope to reinforce the remit of the Journal in the fie…
Fairtrade cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda
All members of the research team are listed at http://ftepr.org. However, it is important to emphasise that the material cited in this paper on the pattern of sales to smallholder coffee and tea organisations was mainly collected by Reta Hailu and Sam Bbosa.Notes on contributorsChristopher Cramer is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS, London. He has worked in sub-Saharan Africa for some 25 years. He works mainly on developm…
How to do (and how not to do) fieldwork on Fair Trade and rural poverty
The Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction (FTEPR) project investigated poverty dynamics in rural Ethiopia and Uganda. When designing fieldwork to capture poor people often missing from standard surveys, several methodological challenges were identified and, in response, four decisions were made. First, FTEPR focused on wage workers rather than farmers and improved on standard questionnaires when collecting labour market information. Second…
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2013
Economics (26 works) · Political science (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Economic growth (17 works) · Agriculture (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Development economics (12 works) · Agrarian society (11 works) · Geography (11 works) · History (11 works)