Paper

Modern Intimacies and Modernist Landscapes: Chinese Photographs in Late-Colonial Mozambique

Authored by Lorenzo Macagno, Modern Intimacies and Modernist Landscapes: Chinese Photographs in Late-Colonial Mozambique addresses a specific aspect of the social and cultural life of the Portuguese-Chinese in Mozambique. The first contingents, coming from the Chinese province of Guangdong, began to arrive in that region of East Africa in the second half of the 19th century.

Abstract:

Modern Intimacies and Modernist Landscapes: Chinese Photographs in Late-Colonial Mozambique addresses a specific aspect of the social and cultural life of the Portuguese-Chinese in Mozambique. The first contingents, coming from the Chinese province of Guangdong, began to arrive in that region of East Africa in the second half of the 19th century. Most settled in the city of Beira. By the 1950s, the Chinese community was already well integrated into modern life in the colonial Beira. The city was undergoing an unprecedented urban and architectural ebullition. In that period, the Luso-Chinese, in their capacity as merchants, also began to stand out in the field of photography. Based on a multi-sited research among the Luso-Chinese in the diaspora – and their family photo albums – this article reflects on two inseparable aspects of late-colonial modernity: architecture and photography.

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On the Nature and Determinants of Poor Households’ Resilience in Fragility Contexts

Authored by Christophe R. Quétel, Guy Bordin, Alexandre Abreu, Ilektra Lemi & Carlos Sangreman, On the Nature and Determinants of Poor Households’ Resilience in Fragility Contexts published in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities – Taylor & Francis Online (31 May 2021) – focuses on the resilience of placed populations in the face of great adversity.

Abstract

Several global policy frameworks focus on managing (risks of) disasters affecting broad populations. In those frameworks resilience is a conceptualisation that possibly has important ideological implications. It is often opposed to fragility, and used to validate the notion of recurring insecurity, promote individual adaptability almost in the form of an obligation, and push the idea that crises/catastrophes are opportunities for profound changes. While effects from the COVID-19 pandemic have brought the protective role of the state to the fore, applying the word resilience to poor people requires clarification, especially in contexts of weak state public services and because assessment of complex poverty situations too often remains oversimplified and error-prone. We argue that to build capacity for resilience poor households need policies that protect and help them out of poverty, and that policy-making processes require engagement with people. Individuals must be asked about their perceptions and management of risks and threats, both in daily life and under exceptional circumstances, especially if the resulting stress factors accumulate and interact. This socially informed, place-specific, and multi-level approach could contribute substantially to identifying interventions, reducing poverty and poverty related risks, enhancing well-being and promoting development and cooperation programmes that meet people’s expectations.

Disarray at the headquarters: Economists and Central bankers tested by the subprime and the COVID recessions

Authored by Francisco Louçã, Alexandre Abreu and Gonçalo Pessa Costa, Disarray at the headquarters: Economists and Central bankers tested by the subprime and the COVID recessions explores the discussions among economic modellers, central banks research staff and decision-makers, namely on the adequacy of unconventional monetary policy and fiscal expansionary measures after the crisis and to COVID 19 recession.

Abstract:

The article explores the discussions among economic modellers and central banks research staff and decision-makers, namely on the adequacy of unconventional monetary policy and fiscal expansionary measures after the subprime crisis and as the COVID recession is developing. First, the article investigates the arguments, models and policy proposals of several mainstream schools of economics that challenged the traditional Chicagoan orthodoxy based on Milton Friedman’s views, and developed the Lucas Critique, the New Classical synthesis and Real Business Cycle approach that replaced monetarism as the main rivals to old-time Keynesianism. Second, the transformation of Real Business Cycle models into Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models is mapped, as it extended the ideas of the iniquity of government intervention and unified academic and central bank research. Yet, a battery of criticism was levied against the DSGE models and, as the debate emerged over quantitative easing and other tools of unconventional monetary policy, the need for policy pragmatism shattered the previous consensus. The article then proceeds to discuss how the leading mainstream academic economists reacted to changes in central banks‘ practices, noticing a visible dissonance within Chicago-school and DSGE economists, as well as major contortions of central bankers in order to justify their new postures. The article concludes with a call for an extensive menu of fiscal, industrial and innovation policies in order to respond to recessions and structural crises.