The popular uprising that began in Syria in 2011 generated an unprecedented number of YouTube videos recording events in Syria; this emphasized how the social media platform had become an important alternative space for news and information, a space beyond the control of the government. In this article, I address the role of Syrian video activism in the Syrian revolution, and pay particular attent

Less than 10% of the estimated total of 11 million Syrians who fled their homes, have actually reached Europe; around 4.8 million Syrian refugees live in neighbouring countries and over 6.6 million are internally displaced people (IDP) within Syria (Migration Policy Centre, 2016). In 2014, the author travelled back to northern Syria, where she conducted anthropological fieldwork in the past betwee

17.Wessels, J.I. (2016) “” in by Sebastian Kim, Pauline & Sue Yore (eds.), , UK. ISBN (10): ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8371-9.

Denial of Kurds for the sake of a supposedly civic nationalism was the root cause of Kurdish problem. However, simple recognition of Kurds as an ethnic minority doesn’t mean the end of Kurdish problem. Recognition of Kurds as an ethnic minority opens multiple ways for the evolution of Turkish nationalism and the fate of Kurds in Turkey. The relation between the (Turkish) nation-state and Kurds can

The upward revision of GDP in Ghana, announced in November 2010, attracted considerable attention in the media, in the development community, and from development scholars. This paper clarifies what caused this upward revision and discusses how the revision was handled. Many other countries have outdated base years and do not utilize data sources fully. They can learn from the Ghanaian experience

The unreliability of African income estimates was highlighted when Ghana announced that GDP estimates were revised upwards by 60.3 percent in November 2010. Similar revisions are to be expected in other countries. Many statistical offices are currently using outdated base years. It is argued that with the current uneven application of methods and poor availability of data, any ranking of countries

What is the role of the economics discipline in teaching and studying international development today? This paper draws upon experiences of teaching and reading economics with students in interdisciplinary international development studies. The main conclusion is that economic literacy is a key ingredient in development studies. This paper discusses different interpretations of what economic liter

The political economy of agricultural policies – why certain interventions may be preferred by political leaders rather than others – is well recognized. This paper explores a perspective that has previously been neglected: the political economy of the agricultural statistics. In developing economies, the data on agricultural production are weak. Because these data are assembled using competing me