Craig Johnson
Associate Professor
BAH (Queen's University), MA (University of Toronto), Ph.D. (London School of Economics)

Office:514 Mackinnon
Office Phone:519.824.4120 Ext. 53531
Email:cjohns06@uoguelph.ca

Areas of interest
Comparative politics; Asian politics; international development; poverty; human security; climate change; democratic governance; decentralization; Thailand; India; Bangladesh.
I teach in the field of international development, and specialize primarily on the politics of aid, the politics of India and the political economy of globalization and development. I hold a Ph.D. in International Development from the London School of Economics (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/DESTIN), where my work on environmental degradation and ethnic conflict in Southern Thailand explored the conditions under which local communities can establish proprietary rights of access and conservation in common pool resources, such as forests and fisheries. Prior to joining the University of Guelph in 2002, I was a post-doctoral fellow with the Overseas Development Institute (www.odi.org.uk) in London, England. In 2008 and 2009 I was a James Martin 21st Century Visiting Fellow in the Environmental Change Institute (http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk) at Oxford University.
Outside of my professional life, I am a father of three and am married to the locally-renowned furniture and cabinet maker, Sara Moore. I live in the “Royal City” of Guelph, Ontario.

Current research interests and opportunities

My research lies in the field of comparative and Asian politics, and concerns the politics of decentralization, democratic governance and human security, primarily in Thailand, India and, more recently, in Bangladesh. One major area of work for me concerns the long-term patterns of migration, displacement and violence affecting the political and economic security of India’s religious minorities. A central aim in this research is to understand the factors affecting the participation and inclusion of religious (and primarily Muslim) minorities in India’s local democratic forums, the “panchayats”. Currently, I am leading a three year project (funded by SSHRC, starting in 2009), which is looking at the protection, accommodation and participation of India’s religious minorities in the panchayats. Field research for this project will not begin until 2010, but I am currently recruiting prospective graduate students (at either the MA or Ph.D. level). Information about the project and about possible opportunities for graduate study may be obtained by emailing me at cjohns06@uoguelph.ca.

A second area of interest concerns the institutional mechanisms by which international development assistance may strengthen the rights and entitlements of populations displaced by the impacts of climate change. Currently at Oxford I am taking forward new work on the ways in which asset transfers, conditional cash transfers and other forms of social protection may facilitate pro-poor adaptation to climate change. Later this year, I will be helping to design the second phase of the UK Department for International Development’s Chars Livelihoods Programme (www.clp-bangladesh.org), a 7-year program aimed at strengthening the livelihoods and reducing vulnerability of very poor households to chronic flooding and long-term environmental change in the island “char” communities of central Bangladesh.

Finally, I take a long-standing interest in the state of the art of development theory and practice. My book Arresting Development (Routledge, 2009) looks at the ways in which competing ideologies have shaped the construction of knowledge for development (http://www.routledge.com/books/Arresting-Development-isbn9780415381536). A central theme concerns the rise and fall of the “grand” development theories of Marxism and dependency, and the various intellectual traditions that have now entered the field. A central claim is that development has become very good at documenting the nuance and complexity of local development processes, but is now rather less good at connecting these “ground realities” to wider, historical trends and forces. This is due in large part to the (apparent) collapse of the Marxist paradigm (circa 2008!), the rise of postmodernism and the now dominant role of neo-classical theory in development theory and practice. To advance the debate, a case is made that development needs to re-capture a comparative and inductive methodology that searches for commonalities and connections to broader historical trends and problems while at the same time incorporating divergent and potentially competing views about the nature of history, culture and development.

Selected publications

Books

2009 – Arresting Development: The Power of Knowledge for Social Change London and New York: Routledge Press (195pp)
2006 – Policy Windows and Livelihood Futures: Prospects for Poverty Reduction in Rural India. Oxford, New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press (Co-edited with John Farrington, Priya Deshingkar and Daniel Start) (365pp)

Peer reviewed journal articles

Under review – “Mitigating Climate Disasters: The Ethics and Politics of Human Resettlement,” Environmental Politics
Forthcoming – “Making the Grade? Private Education in Northern India,” The Journal of Development Studies (with Michael Bowles)
2007 – “Does Devolution Deliver? Institutional and Political Dimensions of Self-Help Programmes in India,” IDS Bulletin (38): 1, pp. 33-44 (with Priya Deshingkar, John Farrington and Daniel Start).
2006 – “Lessons from the Epicentre: What Donors Can Learn from the Asian Tsunami,” Alternatives Journal (32): 2, pp. 19-23.
2005 – “State Transfers to the Poor and Back: The Case of the Food for Work Program in India,” World Development Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 575-91 (with Priya Deshingkar and John Farrington)
2005 – “Grounding the state: devolution and development in India’s panchayats,” The Journal of Development Studies Vol.41 No.5, pp. 937-70 (with Priya Deshingkar and Daniel Start)
2004 – “Uncommon ground: the ‘poverty of history’ in common property discourse,” Development and Change (35): 3, pp. 407-33.
2002 – “In the Eyes of the State: Negotiating a ‘Rights-Based Approach’ to Forest Conservation in Thailand,” World Development (30): 9, pp. 1591-1605. (with Tim Forsyth)
2001 – “Community formation and fisheries conservation in Southern Thailand,” Development and Change (32): 5, pp. 951-974.
2001 – “Local Democracy, Democratic Decentralisation and Rural Development: Ideas, Challenges and Options for Policy,” Development Policy Review (19): 4, pp. 521-532.
2000 – “Common Property, Political Economy and Local Resource Management: Reflections on ‘Rights-Based’ Fishing in Southern Thailand,” Southeast Asia Research (8): 1, pp. 31-53.

Book chapters

2008 – “Post-Rio Realities and the Politics of Environment in Thailand,” in J. Diez and OP Dwivedi (Eds.) Global Environmental Challenges: Perspectives from the South Peterborough: Broadview Press, pp. 63-90.
2006 – “Political Reform: Local Power and Politics in India,” in John Farrington, Priya Deshingkar, Craig Johnson and Daniel Start (Eds.) Policy Windows and Livelihood Futures: Prospects for Poverty Reduction in Rural India. Oxford, New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 13-23.
2006 – “Does Governance Matter? Power and Politics in the Gram Panchayats” in John Farrington, Priya Deshingkar, Craig Johnson and Daniel Start (Eds.) Policy Windows and Livelihood Futures: Prospects for Poverty Reduction in Rural India Oxford, New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 373-93 (with Priya Deshingkar and Daniel Start)
2006 – “Governance, Corruption and Food for Work in Andhra Pradesh,” in John Farrington, Priya Deshingkar, Craig Johnson and Daniel Start (Eds.) Policy Windows and Livelihood Futures: Prospects for Poverty Reduction in Rural India Oxford, New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 411-28 (with Priya Deshingkar)
2006 – “Politics, Livelihoods and Poverty: Concluding Remarks and Options for Policy,” in John Farrington, Priya Deshingkar, Craig Johnson and Daniel Start (Eds.) Policy Windows and Livelihood Futures: Prospects for Poverty Reduction in Rural India Oxford, New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 429-49
2005 – “Rights-based approaches to development” in Timothy Forsyth (Ed.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of International Development London and New York: Routledge
2005 – “Institutions and the environment,” in Timothy Forsyth (Ed.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of International Development London and New York: Routledge
2005 – “Common pool resources,” in Timothy Forsyth (Ed.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of International Development London and New York: Routledge
2002 – “Accountability, Effectiveness and Aid: Narrowing the Gap between Donor Priorities and Local Realities,” in Mak Arvin (ed). New Perspectives on Foreign Aid and Economic Development Westport CT: Praeger, pp. 89-106.
1997 – “Climate Change and the Politics of Energy and Environment in Canada,” in Jyoti Parikh et al. (ed.) Climate Change and North-South Cooperation New Delhi: Tata/McGraw-Hill, pp. 148-86. (with David Runnalls)

Research reports and working papers
2008 – Annual Review, Chars Livelihoods Programme, submitted to the UK Department for International Development, Bangladesh Office
2008 – Evaluation of Cost Effectiveness, Chars Livelihoods Programme, submitted to the UK Department for International Development, Bangladesh Office
2007 – Political and Administrative Decentralisation, Political evaluation submitted to the Madhya Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Programme, DFID (with Amitabh Singh)
2006 – Vulnerability and the Environment: Ecological, Socio-Economic and Institutional Dimensions of Exposure, Adaptation and Collapse. Geneva Association Working Paper (with Robert McLeman)
2005 – Aid and Accountability Final Report submitted to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) January 2005.
2004 – “Livelihood Options? The Political Economy of Access, Opportunity and Diversification,” ODI Working Paper 233 London: Overseas Development Institute (with Daniel Start)