Tuesday 29 January 2013

OUTLINE OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL



COVER PAGE: Include the name of the institution, department, the title and sub titles, researcher’s name and other details, and year.

Pre text pages including; declaration, dedication, acknowledgement, abstract (fit in one page without paragraphs), acronyms/abbreviations, list of figures and table of contents – This pages should preferably be in roman numbering.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
                   1.1 Back ground (Range between 2 to 3 pages) 
            1.2  Problem Statement (At least half a page)
         1.3 Objectives (General and Specific)
         1.4 Hypothesis/Research Questions
                   1.5 Significance of study
         1.6 Justification of study
         1.7 Scope and Limitation of study
         1.8 Operational definition of terms 

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW (at least 6 pages)
2.1 Review of existing empirical literature
2.2 Theoretical Framework
2.3 Conceptual Framework  

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research design
3.2 Area of study (Include your justification for selection of the area, among other characteristics- social, physical, demographic)
3.3 Target population
3.4 Sample size and sampling procedure
3.5 Unit of analysis and Unit of Observation
3.6 Instrumentation
3.7 Validity and Reliability
3.8 Data processing and Analysis
3.9 Expected Output and presentation format

SCHEDULE/TIME PLAN

BUDGET

REFERENCES (Alphabetical Listing of all the sources you have actually read and referred to in the curse of the proposal. Use APA 6th edition)

APPENDIX (Include Authorization letters, Data instruments, Maps)




COMMUNITY ENTRY



Community entry may be referred to as the process of initiating and sustaining working relationships with community members which may culminate into sustainable projects. It involves the application of various procedures and tools of community mobilization, identification and recognition of local leadership and reaching and working of community members. 

Steps in community entry
Collection of secondary information and Mapping out of the community with key emphasizes on different aspects of the community. This can be done through the use of various tools such as transect walks, observation, focus group discussion, interviews, social mapping and contacting of local leaders.

Conduct a stakeholder analysis to establish key persons within the community who may be crucial in achieving the objective of the proposed assignment. 

Interact informally with key informants identified higher. The key informants could be people with influence within the society. 

Arrange to meet with the key community leaders first as an individual then as a group. Before the group meeting, clarify on the role of your team. It is very important to recognize the position and roles of the community leaders in order that they will help the external entities to develop ways in seeking their co-operation and support for programme Implementation. In meeting with chiefs and their stool/skin elders, it is important to schedule meeting, times to suit the convenience of the traditional leaders. Follow protocol;
  • Meet the chief first and discuss your mission e.g. to know the history of the community and new health programme.
  • Meet elders also if possible.
In the community, leadership lies in the hands of a hierarchy of persons ranging from chiefs through town/village chiefs, clan/lineage heads to family heads. Apart from the chiefs and elders, there are various interest groups and personalities in every community who must be identified to serve as contact persons in working with the community. 

At the group meeting, agree on date, roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders, venue, time, agenda and other logistics for the open community meeting after obtaining their support for the programme.

Conduct the open community meeting on the site to share programme goals and activities. A major outcome of the meeting is an understanding of the project and issue to be solved. During the community meeting, discussion and decision making takes place. 

This will culminate in the initiation of community projects and evaluation

The development process should be participatory with an objective of sustainability.
                                                                              

Thursday 24 January 2013

Dissemination of research results is an obligation and an opportunity.



Social Research no matter how innovative it turns out to be, will not be of any value if it does not contribute to improved livelihoods. Researchers need to disseminate their findings in an appropriate and timely manner. 

They need to go beyond the classical research dissemination avenues - journals – to get the information closer to the public. Besides there is need for retraining of the researchers and community development workers on research dissemination.
Since research relies heavily on funding from donors, the idea of dissemination should ideally originate from the zeniths of research – the donors. Calls for proposals by the donors should embed a dissemination plan requirement. The dissemination plan should clearly outline the value of the research to the target population with outlines of resources and time frames to be dedicated towards the dissemination.

Academic life has thrived on the undertaking and publishing of research results with seldom any emphasizes given to the application of the research results. There is a need for a paradigm shift towards the evaluation of academe along its contribution to the welfare state. Universities should be encouraged to actively work with communities and service providers in an effort to affect their activities. Besides the peer reviews of articles within the journal cycles, scholars should be able to actively participate in community forums and effectively design tools to reach lay peoples with their research results. 

Effective dissemination of relevant research results depends on many factors. It is often difficult to clearly understand the causes for either success or failure in the adoption of research findings. Failure in adoption of research results may either be related to consumer’s ability to adapt the innovation or the fault of the dissemination avenue. Most of the researches undertaken within the rural communities; focus on the institutional factors that hinder the dissemination of research findings. There is a need to refocus efforts towards establishing the community based barriers that may hinder the dissemination of research findings.



Wednesday 23 January 2013

PAPER - MARX DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM.

A GOVERNMENT IS AN INHERENTLY EVIL INSTITUTION AND APPARATUS MEANT FOR THE OPPRESSION OF THE POOR.  
 
Dialectic contains different elements that are naturally antagonistic to one another. It is similar to a compass or map which allows sociologists to get their bearing in the turmoil of events and permits them to understand the underlying processes that shape the world. Hegel called these the thesis and antithesis1.
According to Sidney (1958) Marxism like Christianity has its bible, its council, its schisms, its orthodoxies and heresies, its exegeses, profane and sacred. And like Christianity, it has its mysteries of which the principal one is the dialectic2.
The dialectic is like an argument or a dialogue between elements that are locked together. The word dialectic comes from the greek word dialektikos meaning discourse or discussion2. For example to understand good you must at the same time understand bad. To comprehend one you must understand the other. Good and bad are locked in continual dialogue. Hegel argued that these kinds of conflicts would resolve themselves into a new element or synthesis which in turn sets up a new dialectic every synthesis contains a thesis that by definition has conflicting elements. So in our example if you truly understand that good is defined by the presence of bad-if the dialectic becomes active for you-then your comprehension of the good/bad issues changes. After such an insight, it can never be the case that good triumphs over evil, they are mutually dependent.
The least significant aspect of Marx dialectical method is its division into triadic phases. However, it is not so much the number of phases; a situation has which makes it dialectical but a specific relation of opposition between those phases which generates a succession of other phases. The necessary condition of a dialectical situation is at least two phases, distinct but not separate. The sufficient condition of a dialectical situation is given when those two situation is given when those two phases present a relation of opposition and interaction such that the results exhibit something qualitatively new, preserves some of the structural elements of the interacting phases and eliminate others3 (Sidney 1958).
Dialectical materialism explain the laws of evolution, which sees the world not as a complex ready-made thing, but as a complex of processes, which go through an uninterrupted transformation of coming into being and passing away1 (Shaw 1978).
Materialism acknowledges that the world is in a process of constant flux. Human beings are a part of nature and evolved from lower forms of life to the present. Human beings think and are conscious. The human brain alone is capable of producing general ideas. For materialists, there is no consciousness a part from the living brain which is part of a material body. Marxists do not deny that mind consciousness, thought, will, feeling, sensation are real. While rooted in material conditions, human beings generalize and think creatively. They in turn change their material surroundings2 (Shaw 1978).
According to Bien (1955), weber understood materialism as an attempt to deduce all culture from economics…for likacs, it is a way of saying that all relation among men are not the sum of personal acts or personal decisions, but pass through things, the anonymous roles, the common situations and the institutions where men have projects so much of themselves that their fate is now played out outside them. As… the personal interests become self-contained in class interests, the personal conduct of the individual reobjectifies itself, necessarily alienates itself and at the same time exists without him as an …independent force3.
In his essay on dialectical and historical materialism, stain lists three principal features of Marxists; that the world is by its very nature material, that the multifold phenomenon of the world constitutes different forms of matter in motion, and that the world develops in accordance wiith the laws of movement of matter and therefore stands in no need of universal spirit to explain it4.
According to Gustav (1958), Marx liked the historical process implied in Hegel’s dialectic but he disagreed with its ideational base. Marxists materialism stands in opposition to Hegels idealism which regards the world as the embodiment of any absolute idea a universal spirit of consciousness. Contrary to idealism which asserts that only our minds really exists and that the material world being, nature exists only in our mind in our sensation, ideas and perception, the Marxists materialism holds that matter, nature being is an objective reality existing outside and independent of our mind and that mind is secondary derivative since it is a reflection of matter, a reflection of being1.
Marx argues that human beings are unique because they creatively produce materials to fill their own material needs. Since the defining feature of humanity is production, not ideas and concepts, Marx found Hegel’s notion of idealism false. The dialectic is oriented around material production and not ideas- the material dialectic. Thus the dynamics of the historical dialectic are to be found in the economic system with each economic system inherently containing antagonistic elements. The dynamic or motor within the dialectic comes from the tensions that must be resolved. As the antagonistic elements work themselves out, they form a new economic system. According to Marx any society experiences internal economic contradictions that lead to a push for a social change resulting into a new economic system and social relations (Bottomore et al 1992).
According to tucker (1978), Society is not like an organism that gradually and peacefully becomes more complex in order to increase its survival chances, as outlined by the functionalism. Rather society is filled with human beings who exercise power to oppress and coerce others. Periods of apparent peace in the society are simply times when the powerful are able to dominate the populace in an efficient manner. However the suppressed become enabled and will eventually overthrow and change the system. Social change in the society thus occurs periodically and through social upheaval.
In mapping out the past of historical dialectic, Marx categories five different economic systems that is means of production along with their relations of production- pre-class societies, Asiatic societies, ancient societies, feudal societies, and capitalistic societies. Pre-class societies are like the hunters and the gatherers. These were small groups of people with minimal division of labor- what Marx termed as natural division of labor and communal ownership of property. Ancient societies such as the Rome developed around large urban centers. Private property and slave labor were replaced by feudal systems wherein the primary economic forms was the serf labor tied to the land of the aristocracy. Feudal systems were later replaced by capitalists systems. Hopefully the capitalistic systems will be replaced by socialism and that in turn will be replaced by communism. Marx argues that social changes come through structural dynamics. It is the structural relations in society that bring change not individual actions (tucker 1978).
According to Marx, production involves three intertwined issues; the means of production or the actual process of production, the social relationships that form because of production and the end results of production that is the product (McClellan 1973).
According to Shaw (1978), means of production are identified by Marx as the material factors of production, the objective conditions of labor, and labor’s material and means. Marc declares that both the instruments of labor and the objects of labor are means of production. The relations of production are those relations within which production is carried on. The process of production always and necessarily involves men in some relations with each other and the means of production. The actual relations within which production proceeds are designated as the work relations of production that is the material, technical relations which govern the actual labor process itself1.
In classic feudalism for examples, people formed communities around a designated piece of land and a central manor for provision and security. At the heart of this local arrangement was a noble who had been granted the land from the king in return for political support and military service. At the bottom of the community hierarchy was the serf. The serf lived on and from the land and was granted protection by the noble in return for service, feudalism was a political and economic system that centered on land – land ownership was the primary means of production. People were related to the land through oaths of homage and fealty that is the fidelity of a feudal tenant to the lord. These relations functioned somewhat like family roles and spelled out normative obligations and rights. The way People related to each other under feudalism was heavily influenced by that economic system and was quite different from the way current societies related to one another under capitalism. The worker under capitalism does not see the boss as a family.
According to O’neill (1966); the evolution of human nature proceeds in terms of the interaction between man, nature and the technology and social relations of production which mediate that process. The potentiality of human nature may be regarded as a function of the means and relations of production1.
Because of the simple fact that every succeeding generation finds itself in possession of the production forces won by the previous generation which serve it as the raw materials for new production a connection a rises in human history, a history of humanity takes shape which has become all the more a history of humanity since the productive forces of man and therefore his social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual development whether they are conscious of it or not2 (O’Neill 1966).
The capitalists lift economic work out of all other institutional forms. Under capitalism the relationships we have with people in the economy are seen as distinctly different from religious, familial or political relations. In the previous economic system these relations overlapped for example in the agriculturally based societies family and work coincided. Fathers worked at home and all family members contributed to the work that was done. Capitalism lifted this work away from the farm where work and workers were embedded in family and places it in urban based factories. Capitalism separates the worker from his or her social networks and makes labor a commodity (Tucker 1978).
According to O’Neill (1966); under capitalism man is estranged from the product of his work which in turn estranges him from his own nature as a sensuous and social being. Under such circumstances the meaning of work becomes merely a means of subsistence for the satisfaction of purely animal needs and loses its nature as a human need which is to work creatively even in the absence of physical need. According to Bien (1955); Marx says that capital is not a thing but rather a social relationship between persons mediated by things. Historical materialism is not the reduction of history to one of its sectors. It states a kinship between the person and the exterior, between the subject object which is at the bottom of the alienation of subject in the object and if the movement is reversed, it will be the basis for the reintegration of the world with man.
According to Cohen (1978), both Marx and Hegel see all relations of production as class relations, that is a certain class of people in society has been privileged in regard to the productive forces. However, the two are quick to note that the means of production did not always involve class relation. Primitive man had produced communally and of course socialism would establish the classless production relations. Economically demarcated classes are also classes in a social sense, essentially because members of the same class tend to view the world in a similar way.
According to Marx what keep the two classes together is not principles but rather the material conditions of existence, two different kinds of property, it can be likened to the contrast between town and the country. Upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiary formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. the ideology of the ruling class, tends to predominant over that of the other class because of the ruling class’s hegemony over intellectual as well as material production, the class which has the means of material production at its disposal usually controls the means of mental production2 (Cohen 1978). The determinant of social life is the work people are doing, especially work that results in provision of the basic necessities of life, food, clothing and shelter. Marx thought that the way the work is socially organized and the technology used in production will have a strong impact on every other aspect of society. He maintained that everything of value in society results from human labor. Thus, Marx saw working men and women as engaged in making society, in creating the conditions for their own existence.
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Marx 1971:20).
Capitalists increase the levels of industrialization, exploitation, market driven forces such as commodification, false consciousness, ideology and reification. Marx argues that these factors have dialectical effects and will push capitalism inexorably towards social changes. Conflict and social changes begin with a change in the way we are aware of our world. They begin with class consciousness. Marx notes that classes exist objectively whether we are aware of them or not. He refers to this as a ‘class in itself’ that is an aggregate of people who have a common relationship to the means of production. But classes can also exist subjectively as a ‘class for itself’. It is the latter that is produced through class consciousness. Class consciousness has two parts; the subjective awareness that experiences of deprivation are determined by structural class relations and not individual talent and effort and the group identity that comes from such awareness (O’Neill 1966).
1Under feudalism, it is evident that a surplus product is extracted, but the ulitarian character of the production relation is concealed, the situation is reversed under capitalism, Cohen G.A, ‘Karl Marx and the Withering away of social science’ pp 190-191.
Industrialization has two effects on class consciousness; it tends to increase exploitation and alienation. Alienation is the feeling of being psychologically disenfranchised. It is the state of being cut off from species being (the unique way in which human survive as a species by creatively producing all that it needs). The objective state can produce a sense or a feeling of belonging to a group that is disenfranchised that is class consciousness. As capitalists employ more machinery to aid in production, the objective levels of alienation and exploitation increases. As the objective levels increase so does the probability that workers will subjectively experience them, thus aiding in the production of class consciousness (Tucker, 1978).
The second effect of industrialization is an increase in the level of worker communication. Worker communication is a positive function of education and ecological concentration. Using more and more complex machines requires increasing the levels of technical knowledge. For example using a bull and a plough requires less knowledge and skills and compared to using a modern tractor for farming. Increasing the use of technology in general requires an increase in the education level of the worker. Besides, industrialization generally increases the level of worker concentration. Moving workers from small guild shops to large scale machine shops or assembly lines made interaction between the workers possible in ways never possible before especially during break sessions when hundreds of workers would gather. Economics of scale tend to increase this concentration of the work force as well.
These two processes- education and ecological concentration, work together in increasing the level of communication among the workers. Further these processes are supplemented through greater levels of communication and transportation technologies. According to Marx communication and transportation would help the worker movement spread from city to city (Bien, 1955).
Class consciousness comes about as workers communicate with each other about the problems associated with being a member of the working class. These things occur due to structural changes brought about simply because of the way capitalism workers. Capitalists are driven towards increasing profits and as a result they use industrialization which sets in motion a whole series of processes that tend to increase the class consciousness of the workers. Class consciousness among the workers increases the possibility of social change. As workers share grievances with one another they begin to doubt the legitimacy of the distribution of scarce resources which in turn increases the level of overt conflict. As class inequality and the level of bipolarization (distinctiveness of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) increases, violence of the conflict will tend to increase, which in turn will bring about deeper levels of social change (Tucker, 1978).
However, class consciousness has been difficult to achieve. The triad relationship between the state, the elite and the workers is the reason for these difficulties. Marx felt that as a result of the rise of class consciousness and other factors such as the business cycle, workers unite and act through labor unions to bring about change. Some of the work of the trade unions would be violent but it would eventually lead to a successful social movement. In the end the labor movement would bring about socialism. In the triad relationship Marx is interested in two actors who are working in collusion. Under capitalism the state is basically an arm of the elite. It is controlled by capitalists and functions with the capitalist’s interests in mind. Majority of the top governing officials come from the same social background as the bourgeoisie. For example the Kenyatta and Moi families in Kenya where those pushing to form the next government are people from the Bourgeoisie class. Besides the elite tend to cross over, with military officers serving corporate boards and as high placed political appointees and directors functioning as political advisers. Policy and regulations by the elite and the ruling class function to keep the capitalist system intact by maintaining the capitalist position, silencing the workers and preventing class consciousness from adequately forming (Fromm 1961).
The state is also active in the production of ideology. According to Marx, the state is ill defined, where the state begins and ends in capitalist democracies is hard to tell. The state functions through many other institutions such as the schools, police and its ideology is propagated through such institution. Police power, for instance, is used to enforce property rights and guarantee unfair contracts between capitalist and worker. Oppression also takes more subtle forms: religion serves capitalist interests by pacifying the population; intellectuals, paid directly or indirectly by capitalists, spend their careers justifying and rationalizing the existing social and economic arrangements. The worker is faced with a fairly cohesive ideology coming from various sources. This dominant ideology creates a state of acceptance of the way the world works against which it is difficult to create a class consciousness. The economic structure of society molds the superstructure, including ideas (e.g., morality, ideologies, art, and literature) and the social institutions that support the class structure of society (e.g., the state, the educational system, the family, and religious institutions). Because the dominant or ruling class (the bourgeoisie) controls the social relations of production, the dominant ideology in capitalist society is that of the ruling class. Ideology and social institutions, in turn, serve to reproduce and perpetuate the economic class structure. Thus, Marx viewed the exploitative economic arrangements of capitalism as the real foundation upon which the superstructure of social, political, and intellectual consciousness is built (Marx 1971).
The movement of capitalist exploitation across national boundaries accentuates the trickle-down effect of capitalism in the major capitalist states such as the United States. Because workers in all the capitalists states are been exploited, the workers in a particular country can be paid considerable wages in comparison to other areas. In addition, this is functional for the capitalists in that it provides a collection of buyers for the world’s goods and services. Moving work out of the majority capitalist states and making it the world’s marketplace changes the kind of ideology or culture that is needed. There is a movement from workers identities to consumer identities in such economies (Tucker 1978).
According to Fromm (1961), Capitalists use these world labor markets to pit workers against each other. While wages are certainly higher due to exported exploitation, workers are also aware that their jobs are in jeopardy as work is moved out of the country. Capitalists always require a certain level of unemployment. This is supported by the business cycle that emphasizes that zero unemployment means higher wages and lower profits to the firms thus a small level of unemployment is necessary to maintain the economy. The world labor market makes available an extremely large pool of unemployed workers. Workers in advanced industrialized economies therefore see themselves in competition with much cheaper labor. This global competition hinders class consciousness by shifting the workers focus of attention away from the owners and onto the foreign labor markets. The workers are up in arms against each other instead of directing their energies towards the elite in the society. The workers are threatened and are inclined to always look at the economic problems in terms of political and global issues rather than class issues. The workers are divide themselves over issues other than class (Tucker 1978).


CONCLUSION
Marx's view of history might seem completely cynical or pessimistic, were it not for the possibilities of change revealed by his method of dialectical analysis. (The Marxist dialectical method, based on Hegel's earlier idealistic dialectic, focuses attention on how an existing social arrangement, or thesis, generates its social opposite, or antithesis, and on how a qualitatively different social form, or synthesis, emerges from the resulting struggle.) Marx was an optimist. He believed that any stage of history based on exploitative economic arrangements generated within it the seeds of its own destruction. For instance, feudalism, in which land owners exploited the peasantry, gave rise to a class of town-dwelling merchants, whose dedication to making profits eventually led to the bourgeois revolution and the modern capitalist era. Similarly, the class relations of capitalism will lead inevitably to the next stage, socialism. The class relations of capitalism embody a contradiction: capitalists need workers, and vice versa, but the economic interests of the two groups are fundamentally at odds. Such contradictions mean inherent conflict and instability, the class struggle. Adding to the instability of the capitalist system are the inescapable needs for ever-wider markets and ever-greater investments in capital to maintain the profits of capitalists. Marx expected that the resulting economic cycles of expansion and contraction, together with tensions that will build as the working class gains greater understanding of its exploited position (and thus attains class consciousness), will eventually culminate in a socialist revolution.
Despite this sense of the unalterable logic of history, Marxists see the need for social criticism and for political activity to speed the arrival of socialism, which, not being based on private property is not expected to involve as many contradictions and conflicts as capitalism. Marxists believe that social theory and political practice are dialectically intertwined, with theory enhanced by political involvement and with political practice necessarily guided by theory. Intellectuals ought, therefore, to engage in praxis, to combine political criticism and political activity. Theory itself is seen as necessarily critical and value-laden, since the prevailing social relations are based upon alienating and dehumanizing exploitation of the labor of the working classes.



REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPIES
1.      Sebastiano, Timpanaro, (1970), on materialism; NLB charlisle street, London.
2.      Joseph Bien (1955); adventures of the dialectic, Heinemann, London.
3.      Gustav A. Welter, (1958), dialectical materialism ‘a historical and systematic survey of philosophy in the soviet lenim Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
4.      Stalin I.V;Sochineniya (works), Moscow 1946, on I-XIII: English version, works Moscow London 1952/3 on I-XIII.
5.      J.V Stalin. O Dialektichuskan, I Istoricheskom materializme in voprosy leninizma 11th edition, English version on dialectical and historical materialism in problems of Leninism.
6.      Sidney Hook (1958). From Hegel to Marx’studies in the intellectual development of Karl Marx, humanities Press, New York.
7.      Jean Hyppolite & John O’Neill, (1969), studies on Marx and Hegel, Heinemann London, Great Britain.
8.      Lawrence & Wishart (1934), Marx to annenkov, Brussels, December 28 1846 selected correspondence 1846-1895 translated by Dora Torr (London)
9.      John O’Neill (1966), Marxsim and mythology ethics LXXVII.
10.  William H.Shaw (1978), Marx’s theory of history, Hutchisnson & Co. United States of America.
11.  Tucker R.C (ed) (1978), the Marx-Engel reader, Norton, New york.
12.  Bottomore T. Harris, et al (1992), the dictionary of Marxist thought (2nd ed), Cambridge, MA: Blackwell
13.  Fromm E. (1961), Marx’s concept of man, Continuum, New York
14.  McClellan D, (1973), Karl Marx. His life and thought. Harper and Row, New York.
15.  Cohen G.A (1978), Karl Marx’s theory of history, Clarender Press Oxford England.
16.  Marx, Karl. (1971) Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Tr. S. W. Ryanzanskaya,M. Dobb. London: Lawrence & Whishart.
17.