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Transformative Grassroots Leadership: Understanding the Role of Rojiroti’s Women Leaders in Supporting Social Change
Get PDFMany have argued that supporting women’s leadership is an important pathway to women’s empowerment. However, there is still a need for better understanding of how women become leaders, particularly at the grassroots level, and how they support social change. This article explores women’s leadership as part of a grassroots microfinance organisation, Rojiroti. Through interviews and focus group discussions, it finds that Rojiroti’s women leaders were motivated to become leaders to create better opportunities for their families and communities, and that they lead in line with frameworks of transformative leadership by supporting relationship building, by facilitating and guiding knowledge transfer and by providing space for reflection and skills for action (Wakefield, 2017). In particular, their situated knowledge was essential for inspiring shared vision for challenging unequal power relations. Overall, better understanding their leadership, that particularly nurtures relationships and collaboration, due to their position as being from the social groups they sought to support, is critical to the current challenges facing interventions and activism that seek to promote women’s empowerment and contribute to social change
Cross-Scale Linkages of Centralized Electricity Generation: Geothermal Development and Investor–Community Relations in Kenya
Get PDFBased on a study of Kenya’s geothermal-energy development in Baringo-Silali, we explore how and with whom government actors and local communities in rural and peripheral areas interact when planning and implementing large-scale power plants. Starting from a comparison of decentralized and centralized energy systems, we demonstrate that the development of this large-scale infrastructure project and the associated investor-community relations are governed by various cross-scale linkages. To this end, we adapt the concept of cross-scale linkages from the literature on natural-resource governance to explore actors, rules, and practices at local, regional, national, and international levels
Gender in a Box? The Paradoxes of Recognition beyond the Gender Binary
Get PDFThe growing visibility of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals paved the way for a novel politics of transgender recognition in the legal sphere and state-governed public policies. Considering that the possibilities for registering multiple genders beyond male or female are taking effect in several countries, this article examines recent developments and claims that recognition is complicit with misrecognition for two main reasons. Firstly, because models of recognition tend to equalize all the interactions and all the fields of social life. Drawing on Axel Honneth’s notion of spheres of recognition, I argue that inasmuch as different forms of recognition (legal, moral, affective) are governed by different norms and gender regimes, the dynamics of recognition produce misrecognition. Secondly, because legal and institutional recognition tends to reify individual identity. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s critique of the identity model of recognition, I contend that the identity recognition model tends to impose a norm rather than recognizing diversity. Therefore, gender identity categories can—through a process of reification—block the entitlement to affirm one’s self-determined gender identity. The paradoxical dynamics of recognition are empirically illustrated through an analysis of third-gender markers and their effects upon the lives and narratives of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals. By examining the case of Nepal in comparative perspective with other developments in Asia and South America, it is demonstrated that the identity model of recognition is complicit with feelings and practices of misrecognition
Trans* Politics and the Feminist Project: Revisiting the Politics of Recognition to Resolve Impasses
Get PDFThe debates on, in, and between feminist and trans* movements have been politically intense at best and aggressively hostile at worst. The key contestations have revolved around three issues: First, the question of who constitutes a woman; second, what constitute feminist interests; and third, how trans* politics intersects with feminist politics. Despite decades of debates and scholarship, these impasses remain unbroken. In this article, our aim is to work out a way through these impasses. We argue that all three types of contestations are deeply invested in notions of identity, and therefore dealt with in an identitarian way. This has not been constructive in resolving the antagonistic relationship between the trans* movement and feminism. We aim to disentangle the antagonism within anti-trans* feminist politics on the one hand, and trans* politics’ responses to that antagonism on the other. In so doing, we argue for a politics of status-based recognition (drawing on Fraser, 2000a, 2000b) instead of identity-based recognition, highlighting individuals’ specific needs in society rather than women’s common interests (drawing on Jónasdóttir, 1991), and conceptualising the intersections of the trans* movement and feminism as mutually shaping rather than as trans* as additive to the feminist project (drawing on Walby, 2007, and Walby, Armstrong, and Strid, 2012). We do this by analysing the main contemporary scholarly debates on the relationship between the trans* movement and feminism within feminist and trans* politics. Unafraid of a polemic approach, our selection of material is strategic and illuminates the specific arguments put forward in the article
Guilt-Tripping: On the Relation between Ethical Decisions, Climate Change and the Built Environment
Get PDFThe curiosity of how the built environment, implicitly and explicitly, affects how citizens and users make choices in their everyday life related to climate change is on the rise. If there is a nicely designed bike lane, the choice to bike to work is much more easily taken than if the only option is a densely trafficked road. But which responsibility does the built environment have for citizens to be as climate neutral as possible and, in extension, who should it burden? Is it the individual user, the designer, the planner, the policymaker or global politics? Media is playing an important and complicated role here; it works both as a source of information and as a trigger, instigating both feelings of guilt, fear, and shame in order to set change in motion. In this article, I will discuss everyday climate-related decision-making fuelled by shame and guilt, drawing on Judith Butler’s writings on ethical obligations and narrating it with findings from a mapping study of daily transportation routes that I conducted in a middle-class suburb outside of Lund, in Sweden. There appears to be a dissonance between the relatively high knowledge about one’s responsibility concerning climate change and the limited space to manoeuvre in everyday life. Even though shame and guilt may be driving forces to make decisions, the possibility to imagine and to change needs to be expanded
Local Territorial Cohesion: Perception of Spatial Inequalities in Access to Public Services in Polish Case-Study Municipalities
Get PDFThe aim of this article is to investigate a research area situated off the mainstream of social inequality considerations: territorial inequalities at the local (municipality) level. The marginalisation of this aspect can be seen both in EU cohesion policies and in academic discourse. The European policies focus their attention (and funding) on the regional level, and researchers who study more local contexts tend to be interested in spatial inequalities in the urban environment with an emphasis on metropolises. This article downscales territorial inequalities to the level of municipalities that are varied in terms of size, location and function. The perspective I take on in the study concentrates on accessibility of selected public services such as public transportation and childcare within the locality, and the perception of spatial inequalities in the eyes of local actors from the public, civic and business sectors. The research indicates that a subjective view on local inequalities does not necessarily match the actual level of service provision. In the article I reflect on the reasons for this disparity and potential consequences for local policies and bridging the gaps
Learning to Care, Learning to Be Affected: Two Public Spaces Designed to Counter Segregation
Get PDFIn response to social fragmentation and segregation, public space is increasingly conceived of as an instrument for fostering openness towards differences. Drawing on two recent public spaces—Superkilen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Jubileumsparken in Gothenburg, Sweden—this article explores the ethical potential of two different design approaches to the sharing of public space—designing for an ethics of care and an ethics of affect. Although different in terms of design, Superkilen and Jubileumsparken are both influenced by artistic approaches in their aspiration to make people connect emotionally to the space. In their design, the two spaces display contrasting approaches to community: Jubileumsparken invites its visitors to join shared projects, suggesting that community is a potential that may be realised through processes of collective care—it is a space in which we learn to care when working together. Superkilen works in an almost opposite way, confronting its visitors with transnational formations, diversity and designed fragmentation leading to situations, or moments, in which we may learn to be affected by distant atmospheres and faraway people and places. When studied together, the two spaces display a range of everyday situations in which the personal, or even the intimate, may be experienced along with the deeply collective—be it through shared work or the exposure to those or that different from you. It is finally argued that this palette of everyday situations, in which we learn to care and learn to be affected, holds an ethical potential of expanding the notion of community beyond sameness and unity, as seen in Superkilen and Jubileumsparken
Politicization and Regional Integration in Latin America: Implications for EU–MERCOSUR Negotiations?
Get PDFRegional integration in Latin America has experienced different periods of politicization. The most recent goes back to the 2000s and is related to the domestic political changes resulting from the so-called ‘left turn’ which sought alternative economic and development policies to neoliberalism as the state regained centrality. These transformations led to a broad process of politicization of regionalism which changed the terms of the debate surrounding whether regional integration and free trade are the only way for these countries to integrate regionally and internationally. Analyses have thus underscored the postliberal character of this phase of regionalism as reflected in the greater weight of social and political agendas at the expense of economic and trade issues. The Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) was no exception to this trend. However, in 2010 the bloc rather surprisingly agreed to relaunch negotiations with the European Union (EU). Why did MERCOSUR decide to resume these negotiations—stalled since 2004—in a context of high politicization of regional integration? This article argues that internal politicization did not lead to a paralysis of the international agenda. Moreover, internal politicization, coupled with external pressures and the demand for group-to-group negotiations by the EU, drove and supported the conduct of international negotiations. In so doing, this article also contests the idea that after the 2000s, MERCOSUR moved inexorably towards a postliberal model, thus rejecting any trade component. Findings suggest that these accounts may have overemphasized change and underestimated continuities in regional integration dynamics as the case of the external agenda shows
Slow Rise of Trade Politicisation in the UK and Brexit
Get PDFSince the Brexit referendum, the UK government has deployed a vision of ‘Global Britain’ revolving around trade agreements, yet, this was not a key issue in the referendum. Drawing on politicisation literature, we explore the absence of visible activism around future trade policy, in contrast to moderate activity around the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). We identify actors in UK TTIP mobilisation and trace their actions post-referendum, revealing politicisation as campaigners participate in channels for attempting to influence future UK trade policy. In the presence of these channels and lack of full clarity on future policy, to date, recourse to visible mobilisation in the public space has not yet occurred. Tracing this dynamic process, intertwining Brexit and trade policy, enables us to understand how politicisation of one process affects another. Crucially, given the context of re-nationalisation of trade policy, it allows us to explore how politicisation is operationalised in the absence of one of the key conditions for politicisation suggested in the literature: the transfer of authority to a more remote level of governance
Women in China Moving Forward: Progress, Challenges and Reflections
Get PDFWhile China’s socialist revolution has been credited with improving the status of women, gender inequality remains. Drawing on macro data, this article provides an overview of gender equality in China, focusing on labor force and political participation in the past 70 years, particularly since 1978, the onset of socioeconomic reform. Specifically, the article describes, compares, and examines the progress and challenges that women face in accessing economic opportunities and political resources. We find a more equal relationship between male and female when resources are relatively adequate, but that females are disadvantaged when resources are scarce, for example, including representation in more prestigious occupations, higher income, and political positions. These findings illustrate how inequality is maintained and reproduced, and suggest that despite China’s progressive socialist agenda, its gender revolution remains ‘stalled.