Improving Sanitation in the Slums of Mumbai: An Analysis of Human Rights-Based Approaches for NGOs

Human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) can challenge the underlying structures and power relations that perpetuate poverty. They have thus emerged in the development field as a prominent instrument for addressing development issues. Access to clean water and sanitation are now internationally acknowledged as human rights, and have become a stand-alone Sustainable Development Goal of the international community’s commitment to international development. This paper analyses the potential use of HRBAs by local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working on sanitation issues in slums in Mumbai. It is argued that it is more productive for local NGOs to build (i) partnerships with duty-bearers (in this case the state and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) and (ii) the capacity of rights-holders, in particular women, than to rely on litigation strategies to create momentum for change. HRBAs are more useful as a political tool for NGOs for establishing good working relationships with government agencies rather than as a legal instrument, which can be counter-productive to the poverty reduction objectives of NGOs.     

Gendered-Caste Violations and the Cultural Politics of Voice in Rural Orissa,India

Despite the legal ban on untouchability over four decades ago, caste discrimination and atrocities perpetrated against ‘untouchable’ women (or Dalits) continue to be a part of the social landscape in India. Based on a decade-long partnership between a Canadian NGO, a partner Dalit/Adivasi local organization and 75 partner villages in South Orissa, this article provides a localized snapshot of the contemporary nature of caste atrocities committed against Dalit women in the Mohana administrative block. It briefly elaborates on Dalit explanations for such assaults and suggests that when it comes to addressing gendered-caste victimization, there are limits to open democratic advocacy which need to be acknowledged by activists and critical scholarship engaged with the cultural politics of ‘voice’.     

Equity Policies for the Production and Distribution of Wealth

Abstract

This paper applies the methodological approach of “see-judge-act” put forward in Pope John XXIII’s encyclical letter Mater et Magistra (1961) to argue in favour of a greater emphasis on social equity considerations in development policies, rather than a more restrictive emphasis on the promotion of wealth alone. As countries move from conditions of underdevelopment and poverty to new levels of economic sustainability and prosperity, the question of who benefits from the distribution of wealth remains crucial. Too often, the rich benefit at the expense of the poor.     

Community-based development, non-governmental organizations and social capital in post-apartheid South Africa

Community-based development strategies are gaining in credibility and acceptance in development circles internationally and notably in post-apartheid South Africa. In parallel, the concept of social capital and the role of supportive nongovernmental organizations are receiving attention as key catalytic elements in encouraging and assisting community-based initiatives. In this paper, a well-documented initiative, the Hertzog Agricultural Co-operative in Eastern Cape province, is re-examined after the passage of several years to assess the impact of social capital and the involvement of a particular non-governmental organization in ensuring the sustainability and economic survival of the project. While both elements have proved critical to the project's life-cycle, particularly in recent years, concerns over possible dependency and project sustainability exist.     

Hidden Histories in Geography: A politics of inclusion and participation

Many geographers benefit from the support of unheralded teachers whose inspiration leaves important marks on their thinking. This paper considers the legacy of Jan Monk's professional contribution in terms of her fostering of wider structures that support the development of a disciplinary capacity for and commitment to good educational practice, her work in researching and bringing to light the hidden disciplinary roles of women in the development of the discipline, particularly in the USA, and the place and significance of her early work in Australia at the intersection of geography and indigenous studies. It concludes that her insistence on the importance of place and context, her attention to people's own sense of place in shaping their relations with each other and their wider worlds, continues to provide a powerful starting point for benchmarking our work as teachers, mentors and researchers.     

Reterritorilizing the Relationship between People and Place in Refugee Studies

The article discusses different conceptions of space and place in refugee studies, especially contributions from anthropology and geography. A main distinction is drawn between two understandings of space and place; an essentialist conception, stating a natural relationship between people and places and an alternative conception attempting to de-naturalize the relationship between people and places. The consequences of applying different conceptions of space and place for the development of refugee policies and representations of refugees and displaced persons are addressed. For many displaced persons, displacement is experienced as being physically present at one place, but at the same time having a feeling of belonging somewhere else. It is argued that though attempts to de-naturalize the relationship between people and places have been important for how the refugee experience is conceptualized, there has been too much focus on imagination accompanied by a neglect of the local perspective of migrants and displaced people. In the local perspective of forced migration, the present lives of displaced people are emphasized. Especially the attitudes from the host communities, the policy environment that displaced people are part of, and their livelihood opportunities are the focus of regard. 'Territoriality' and 'reterritorialization' of the relationship between people and places are discussed as tools to analyse the local perspective of forced migration in general and the strategies of internally displaced persons and their hosts in Sri Lanka in particular.     

北京市公共服务设施供需协调发展的时空演化特征——以教育医疗设施为例

公共服务设施的优化配置是构建和谐社会、改善民生的内在要求。本文通过构建协调发展度模型,对北京市2001年和2012年16个区县教育医疗设施供需关系及二者协调发展的时空演化特征进行研究。研究认为:①教育设施\"供不应需\",供需差距增大;协调发展等级总体较低且有下降趋势;协调发展水平由\"东高西低\"向\"南高北低\"格局演变,空间差异增大。②医疗设施\"供不应需\",供需差距缩小;供需协调发展等级较低但有上升趋势,空间格局由\"中心集聚\"向\"南高北低\"演变,空间差异减小。     

从考古发现看先秦时期城市的给水与排水

先秦时期城市的给水主要来源有两个,一是凿井取水,二是穿渠引水。井水水质纯净,渠水水量较大。城市的排水主要依靠管道将城中的雨水和生活废水排往城外的护城河中。     

Working for Inclusion? Conditional Cash Transfers,Rural Women,and the Reproduction of Inequality

Throughout the global South, conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs) are used to promote socially inclusive development. CCTs are widely evaluated for their capacity to build children's human capital. In contrast, this paper aims to hold “social inclusion” to account by elucidating the impacts of Peru's CCT “Juntos” on the poor, rural mothers who are expected to meet programme conditions. Grounded in extensive ethnographic research in households, clinics, schools, and village halls, the paper interrogates the work of social inclusion in spaces where uneven development manifests itself in privation. Considered in light of critical feminist theories of performativity and social reproduction, the findings shed light on a far less optimistic reality for the work of social inclusion. This paper contributes a rich empirical account to critical literature on cash transfers and the discourses that drive them, and suggests that the circumstances under which women are required to fulfil programme conditions challenge the substance of contemporary “inclusive” development.     

Interpreting Gender Mainstreaming by NGOs in India: A comparative ethnographic approach

This article examines the way gender mainstreaming is interpreted by specific non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India whose development initiatives draw upon particular ideologies of gender equality in their attempts to apply gender analysis. Its purpose is to locate and situate gender mainstreaming in the culturally specific contexts in which it is practiced to capture the complex realities in which gender policies are implemented and women are positioned to effect change. This is an important focus given that gender mainstreaming now pervades transnational governance and yet is informed by feminist analysis. Moreover, NGOs form key sites in which these policies are expected to be implemented. Of the critiques of gender mainstreaming which have emerged in the last 10 years, I examine how potentially conflicting models of gender inequality and equality take local expression and expand on the importance of framing in making gender mainstreaming meaningful by attending to indigenous interpretations of feminism and gender equality. The analysis I offer provides an ethnographic and comparative contribution to an understanding of gender mainstreaming as a contested site whose possibilities and limitations can be revealed by an attention to its feminist origins, namely a focus on context, process and identity formation.