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This study aims to explore how Farming Organisations (FOs) have utilised collective action to overcome the barriers that undermine women farmers’ participation in the agrarian economy in Malawi.

Key informant interviews were conducted with 17 stakeholders from across relevant governmental departments, non-governmental agencies, commercial agricultural organizations and FO officials. Focus groups discussions were conducted with women participants from five FOs.

Analysis identified barriers to women farmer’s full participation in the agricultural sector in three domains: structural (concerning land ownership and control), material (concerning access to agricultural services and markets) and socio-cultural (regarding gender roles and responsibilities). Malawian FOs demonstrated strength in addressing material barriers and in fostering re-alignment of socio-cultural conventions, but have not, to date, effectively engaged in structural issues of land reform.

Research was conducted with a limited number of stakeholders and FOs identified through snowball sampling. There is potential for findings to be non-representative of the country as a whole, and more systematic study of FOs in Malawi is warranted to determine the generalisability of observed trends.

The study draws attention to the crucial importance of action regarding land reform if women are to be more effectively and equitably engaged in the agrarian economy in Malawi.

The paper is an examination of the experience of women farmers in Malawi and speaks to the potential contribution of FOs in addressing the challenges they face.

While Hemingway noted that all stories end in death, this story begins with a death in the family. I recount my mother's (Ma's) death from a sociological point of view, making use of an autoethnographic perspective. Such a perspective encourages a frank portrayal of my involvement in the story as well as more detached reflection of various behaviors (enacted by Ma, her children, her grandchildren, and her friends). I also focus on Ma as a child of the Depression, a young adult during World War II, and a casualty of a middle class lifestyle. Her death, while unwanted, allowed her to create and construct authentic encounters with her children, grandchildren, and friends – encounters that she had avoided while living the middle class life. Her story allows me to reflect on her death as encouraging an authentic understanding of my emotions.

A hobby is any purposeful use of leisure time. Due in part to an increase in the amount of leisure time available to most Americans, the hobby and recreation industries have grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years. There are countless publications on hobbies ranging from genealogy to doll collecting, from painting to needlepoint. Obviously, a compilation such as this cannot include publications on every imaginable hobby, so rather than appear biased, this author has attempted to include primarily publications that discuss many different hobbies, or deal with one major group of hobbies.

The Mexican restaurant industry in Southern California has flourished in the past. However, due to currently tough economic times and the overabundance of Mexican restaurants, it has now become much more difficult to run a successful Mexican restaurant. The majority of the Mexican restaurants that will survive are those that are managed for “excellence”. For the purposes of this article (and since sufficient resources were not available to take in‐depth looks at income statements, balance sheets, 10 year histories, etc.), an “excellent” Mexican restaurant is classified as one that has been around for at least 10 years, is expected to remain in business, and there is at least a small chain of these restaurants.

In the past year, S‐K‐I Ltd. has snowballed into the largest ski resort company in North America—under the guiding hand of strategist Hank Lunde. As COO and president, however, Lunde not only helps to plan acquisitions—he implements corporate strategy on a day‐to‐day basis.

We have long been obsessed with the dream of creating intelligent machines. This vision can be traced back to Greek civilization, and the notion that mortals somehow can create machines that think has persisted throughout history. Until this decade these illusions have borne no substance. The birth of the computer in the 1940s did cause a resurgence of the cybernaut idea, but the computer's role was primarily one of number‐crunching and realists soon came to respect the enormous difficulties in crafting machines that could accomplish even the simplest of human tasks.

There are three main analytic challenges to studying kids, especially where the core focus is inequality: (1) minimizing the power imbalance between adults/researchers and kids/participants, (2) attending to the active and imaginative communication styles of young people, and (3) getting beneath the superficial rhetoric of meritocracy, colorblindness, and post-feminism. In this chapter, we draw from our own qualitative insights when studying middle school kids (grades 6–8, ages 11–14) in providing a systematic analysis of the effectiveness of distinct visual strategies and their respective strengths and limitations for producing rich, useful, and specific data. The insights gleaned are applicable to analyses of kids, understandings of inequality, and even methodological training.

Utilising qualitative research methodology, this pilot study of telecottages/business resource centres in South‐east England interviewed 13 centre managers to identify problems, needs, models and ideas that could be related to enterprise televillage development. The research also aimed to improve the quality of management guidance and the long‐term future for these centres. Questions were posed to identify the extent to which centre managers perceived their business strategies to be entrepreneurial and innovative, as they attempted to decrease dependence on public funding by generating additional business income. Emergent strategies, networking, telecommunications and building partnerships with both private and public organisations allowed some centres to expand and to move from total reliance on public funding to a mix of private and public sources of income. Although initial public funding is seen as an important factor in reducing the early vulnerability of business resource centres, the ability of opportunity‐seeking managers to develop an innovative range of services, including a mix of those offered free and those that required fees, was an important factor in survival. Two detailed case studies (private and mixed) are presented as generic prototypes.

During my early years as a junior high school librarian, I was frequently beseiged with requests for heart‐throbbing love stories and mysteries. However, as the years passed and the divorce rate increased, I began to encounter students who specifically asked for books about “mean stepparents” or “families where there are problems.” I initially wondered whether these new entreaties emanated from a small minority or from a more substantial cross‐section of the school population. Several well‐received book talks concerning the impact of divorce and a few discreet inquiries regarding the number of single‐parent families at my school convinced me that a general need existed.

First of all I must stress that my remarks do not necessarily, or even probably, reflect Intercom's attitude — and I trust that you will treat this as personal data, in the spirit of the Act.