Thomas Vervisch

Livelihoods, power, and food insecurity: adaptation of social capital portfolios in protracted crises--case study Burundi.

The failure of food security and livelihood interventions to adapt to conflict settings remains a key challenge in humanitarian responses to protracted crises. This paper proposes a social capital analysis to address this policy gap, adding a political economy dimension on food security and conflict to the actor-based livelihood framework. A case study of three hillsides in north Burundi provides an ethnographic basis for this hypothesis. While relying on a theoretical framework in which different combinations of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) account for a diverse range of outcomes, the findings offer empirical insights into how social capital portfolios adapt to a protracted crisis. It is argued that these social capital adaptations have the effect of changing livelihood policies, institutions, and processes (PIPs), and clarify the impact of the distribution of power and powerlessness on food security issues. In addition, they represent a solid way of integrating political economy concerns into the livelihood framework.

Bridging community associations in post-conflict Burundi: the difficult merging of social capital endowments and new ‘institutional settings’

Associations have been labelled the main ‘building blocks ’ for creating social capital. It has been argued that community associations need to transform ‘ bonding ’ into ‘bridging’ ties to ‘ reach out ’ while also creating ‘linking’ ties to ‘ scale up ’. External development actions follow a reverse logic in promoting these associations : they assume that linking ties with the external intervener will reinforce prior social capital endowments. This article highlights the inherent difficulties of such a ‘social engineering ’ approach in the context of post-conflict reconstruction, describing three development interventions in the north of Burundi. It defines the process of ‘ institutional syncretism ’ – merging local with global institutional settings – as a key element to social capital building. The findings illustrate how the three interventions failed to reach this objective, and

The solidarity chain: post-conflict reconstruction and social capital building on three Burundian hillsides

Abstract Rebuilding social capital stocks after conflict has become an essential component of post-conflict reconstruction activities. At the community level this policy is translated into projects that combine economic recovery with reinforcing social cohesion through small-scale participatory “bottom-up” projects. This article presents an ethnographic examination of the “solidarity chain” as an example of this approach. It concerns a livestock credit rotating scheme, which combined livestock restocking with the promotion of social cohesion on Burundian hillsides after more than 10 years of civil war. The main findings are twofold. First, it is argued that the distinction between bonding, bridging, and linking social capital proves a useful, analytical framework to assess the impact of such activities on social community cohesion. In particular, the findings show how a combination of “weak” bonding and “unresponsive” linking social capital accounts for the solidarity chains failure to nurture more inclusive bridging social capital. Second, the general assumption that post-conflict reconstruction policy should focus on the transformation of exclusive bonding into inclusive bridging social capital is nuanced and refined: the findings present micro-empirical insights reaffirming the need to focus also on both the “deficiency” and “dark side” of social capital in post-conflict situations.

OTO – A DIY Platform for Mobile Social Robots in Education

This paper describes the design of OTO, a do-it-yourself expansion kit for OPSORO (Open Platform for Social Robots), that enables and facilitates the creation of mobile social robots. The expansion kit consists of modular, adaptable building blocks combined with a software toolkit, and is aimed at applications within the maker community, STEM education, and the market for creative inventor kits. Keeping reproducibility and adaptability in mind, the expansion kit can be produced entirely using digital manufacturing technology and low-cost, off-the-shelf components. Using the building blocks offered by this system, users can easily design, build and customize mobile social robots. The software is designed to address a wide range of users by offering different programming options depending on the user’s skill and experience. Inexperienced users are offered a graphical programming environment based on Blockly, whereas more advanced users can program their robot using Lua or Python. The OTO toolkit offers a fun and playful context in which a wide range of STEM-related skills are addressed.