the 19th Annual Conference of the Development Studies Association, held in Dublin in early September 1995. The theme of the conference was famine, in history and in present-day Third World reality-the first two papers, by Osmani and Elbadawi, were originally presented as plenary lectures directly related to this theme. Osmani's paper, in an original way, examines the connections going from famine to endemic poverty rather than the other way about, emphasizing the role of active coping strategies adopted by the poor rather than a characterization of the poor as the passive victims of famine. The paper by Elbadawi focuses on two of the external influences most frequently accused of aggravating famine conditions in recent times: drought and pressure to reduce public expenditure in favour of the poor mediated through 'structural adjustment'. It is shown that droughts tend to have a more severe human impact in Africa than elsewhere, and that drought has sometimes tended to aggravate this; suggestions for the more imaginative design of structural adjustment programs are made.
Three of the papers also analyse the coping strategies adopted by the rural poor, though often in a broader context than that of food insecurity. The paper by John Cameron addresses the problems of combining qualitative and quantitative analysis of labour markets in the context of Bangladesh. Hazel Johnson's paper examines, using qualitative methods, food insecurity among maize farmers in Honduras. Delia Davin's paper focuses on the gender dimension of rural livelihood systems, examining both the causes and effects of migration by Chinese rural women in the light of data from the 1990 census.
More broadly still, this conference issue also contains an essay by Mushtaq Khan on the efficiency implications of corruption-an issue often discussed, but less often seriously analysed, by development theorists and aid donors in the light of current concerns about the role of governance and development, and a Policy Arena on gender and development edited by Susan Joekes of IDS, Sussex.