Gender, Development, and Empowerment in Qinghai Province

A report on the initiatives of Shem, a Qinghai-based Tibetan women＇s group dedicated to empowering Tibetan women and their communities through grassroots development.     

Economic Development,Social Identity and Community Empowerment in the Central and Western Amazon

A multi-dimensional and multi-scalar perspective is used to contrast different experiences with community development involving new settlers, the historic riverine peasantry and Amerindians on and beyond the advancing frontier in the Brazilian Amazon. Local development is shown to occur only when a compromise is reached between the economic development of individual farmers, common social background and community political empowerment. However, the local development of communities does not necessarily result in regional development because contradictions present between political actors can cancel out gains in one dimension or scale vis-à-vis others and so frustrate wider processes.     

The Palestinian Uprising,Bread Riots and Arab Democratisation

In most theoretical treatments civil strife and domestic political conflict are interpreted as deconstructive and negative, as exemplified by Gurr 1980, p. 239 . Yet no messengers from Christ to Muhammad , no leaders from Bolivar to Gandhi , and no revolutionaries from Lenin to Mao to Mandela ushered in new orders and ideas without conflict. Whether viewed diachronically or synchronically, humankind's history is the history of conflict. However, domestic conflict is neither always negative, as Dixon and Moon 1989 have shown, nor does it always have only short-term effects, as Bienen and Gersovitz 1986 have assumed. There is ample historical evidence for this in the aforementioned cases. Against the backdrop of domestic conflict these historical figures effected positive and lasting changes. Hence the chief postulate of this essay: domestic political conflict, despite the 'inherent plausibility' of its harmfulness, presents opportunities for positive change with long-term effects. This position is tested using examples of Arab bread riots and the spill-over effect of the Palestinian intifadah uprising . Support for this position is found in the context of the recent wave of Arab democratisations. Although generally guided and controlled, Arab political liberalisations especially that of Sudan, Algeria and Jordan have their roots in pressure from below. Elsewhere as in Tunisia and Egypt , similar pressure helped consolidate, or, at least, place political reform on the agenda of delegitimised ruling elites. When compared with other regions, the Arab Middle East AME can readily be shown to have advanced on the road to democracy, even if such a democracy is yet to presage polyarchal rule. Democracy and democratisation in the AME have almost invariably meant a trend towards 'parliamentariasation' and 'electoralisation'. Between 1985 and 1996 the AME has experienced no less than seventeen multi-party elections, twice more than the entire preceding period since the early 1960s when many Arab countries won independence from colonial rule. While renderings of Arab democracy tend to be either 'exceptionalist' projecting pessimistic scenarios or euphoric equating democracy with the number of polls , they fail to consider the role of domestic political violence in the rise of Arab electoral activities, a vacuum area taken up by this essay.     

Representing Crisis: The Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation and the Project of Development in Post-Rana Nepal

Erik Eckholm is attributed with having popularized a theory of environmental crisis in the Nepal Himalaya. In his treatise Losing Ground (1976), he links population growth to contemporary upland deforestation and soil erosion, which are presumed to cause downstream flooding and silting. Since the 1980s, this theory has come under intense criticism on empirical, theoretical and ideological grounds, although it remains a sacred cow in the popular press. A historiography of the theory reveals that representations of and discourses on the nature and extent of environmental degradation have been an important dimension of three distinct aid regimes that shaped the post-World War II development project in Nepal. As such, within specific historical and institutional constellations, some conclusions have seemed more tenable than others, and certain interventions have become more legitimate. Moreover, the production of environmental interventions is intimately connected to the production of environmental knowledge, both of which are intrinsically bound up with power relations. Therefore, the facts about environmental deterioration have become subordinate to the broader debates on the politics of resource use and sustainable development.     

The Memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

In memory of Alina Margolis-Edelman     

Between Control and Empowerment: Governmental Strategies towards the Development of the Non-profit Sector in China

Continuous economic reform and social development have induced and forced the Chinese government to adjust its strategies towards non-profit development. Enhanced state capacities, emergent legitimacy of non-profit organisations, genuine demand for non-profit partners, public management modernisation and other factors have not only enriched the “control” mandate by introducing persuasive means, but have also driven the government to become a major empowering force for non-profit development. Advanced local governments in China take the lead in adopting mixed strategies of control and empowerment to forge a path of non-profit development in favour of non-profit organisations that are politically inactive and professionally capable. This paper shows the resilience of the regime by presenting examples of evolving governmental strategies of control and empowerment at the local and national levels. It argues that the Chinese government’s non-profit strategies are increasingly multidimensional and complicated, featuring changes in purpose, constraints, available means and government–non-profit relations.     

The Tragedy of the Highway: Empowerment,Disempowerment and the Politics of Sustainability Discourses and Practices

It is argued in this paper that the orthodox sustainable transport vision leads to the further empowerment of technocratic and elitist groups in society while simultaneously contributing to the further disempowerment of those marginalized social groups who were already bearing the burden of the environmental problems resulting from a troubled transport system. Scalar redefinitions of the transport problem play a prominent role in the twin processes of empowerment and disempowerment. Furthermore, the contributions of spatial planning and neo-classical transport economics to the sustainable transport discourses will be critically investigated. The issues of transport inequality and transport poverty should be re-inserted into the dominant transport policy debates and practices.     

Environmentalists,Rubber Tappers and Empowerment: The Politics and Economics of Extractive Reserves

Extractive reserves are important initiatives in tropical forest zones which seek to integrate conservation of natural resources with development and human welfare objectives. Increasingly in such initiatives empowerment of local communities is seen as both a means of achieving this integration and as an end in itself. This article presents a theoretically informed analysis of the interactions between rubber tappers and environmental organizations in the establishment and implementation of extractive reserves in Rond? nia, Brazil. It distinguishes two dimensions of empowerment — political and economic — and examines how the alliances between organizations have impacted differentially on the two dimensions. The analysis suggests that these alliances have so far been more successful in enabling political rather than economic empowerment. Advances in political empowerment are shown, in the short‐term at least, not to have resulted in improvements in livelihood conditions of poor forest dwellers.     

(En)Gendering the Maoist Insurgency in India: Between Rhetoric and Reality

ABSTRACT

This paper attempts a gendered analysis of the ongoing Maoist insurgency in India, particularly focused on women’s position within the movement, the continuum of gender based violence that they experience and the potential for transformative politics. The contemporary Maoist movement in India has been informed by a stated commitment to ‘progressive’ gender politics and social transformations; in that it marks a departure from the Naxalite movement of the 60s and 70s. Yet women remain concentrated in the group’s lower ranks and are absent from leadership positions. In addition, sexual and gender based violence and discrimination within the movement further undermine the commitment of the revolution to create opportunities for transformative politics including gender justice and equality. We consider it important that women’s lived experiences of the conflict - as combatants, supporters as well as civilians affected by it - are brought to the foreground. Drawing from postcolonial feminist approaches, we reflect on the challenges and possibilities for feminist politics and ethics within the Indian Maoist movement. We conclude that the rhetoric and reality of gender equality within the Maoist movement provides a unique opportunity to further investigate and analyze the ways in which feminist activism and the women’s movement in India have alienated the concerns of marginalized women from dalit and adivasi communities.     

Ethnic and Religious Violence in South China: The Hakka-Tiandihui Uprising of 1802

In 1802 the second major Tiandihui (Heaven and Earth Society) uprising erupted in the mountains of Huizhou prefecture near Canton.Before it was suppressed over a year later,the disturbances came to involve several tens of thousands of people and nearly a quarter of Guangdong province.This study,which is based on extant historical sources and fieldwork,takes an interdisciplinary approach,combining the methodologies of history,anthropology,and folklore.The areas where the uprising occurred were predominantly Hakka,an ethnic Chinese minority who came into conflict with the earlier settlers,known as the Punti.As violence escalated,both sides organized their own paramilitary units:Hakka formed Tiandihui groups and Punti formed Ox Head Societies.Significantly too,the Tiandihui groups in Huizhou belonged to a much wider network of secret society and sectarian organizations that spread across the Hakka heartland on the Jiangxi,Fujian,and Guangdong border.This article addresses key issues concerning the social,political,and religious contexts and motivations of this Hakka-led uprising.