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- Convenor:
-
Debjani Dasgupta
(University of Sheffield)
- Stream:
- A: Actors in addressing inequality
- Location:
- E5
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel will look at the linkage between citizenship and the outcome of various forms of participatory processes leading towards a richer understanding of the practices of citizenship, where the extent and quality of one's citizenship is a function of one's participation in that community.
Long Abstract:
This panel will look at the linkage between citizenship and the outcome of various forms of participatory processes. The concept of citizenship is intimately linked to ideas of individual entitlement as well as attachment to a particular community. On the other hand, in Gaventa’s (2006) analysis of power relations, ‘effective participation’ has been understood in terms of ‘empowerment’, construed in spatial terms of less powerful actors creating new ‘claimed’ spaces. This panel will explore the perception of participatory spaces created through development practices, and investigate their effects on the dynamic ways in which citizenship is claimed and exercised. This in turn will lead towards a richer understanding of the practices of citizenship, not only as a legal status as a member of a particular community, but as a desirable activity, where the extent and quality of one's citizenship is a function of one's participation in that community.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
I explore the everyday practices of villagers in Nepal's community forestry and practitioners who work to support them, and the ways in which these intersect to negotiate inequalities. It focuses on opportunities to understand and reflect upon the importance of the everyday in development practice.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws from on-going research which explores the everyday practices both of villagers in Nepal's community forestry and of practitioners who work to support them, and importantly the ways in which these intersect to (re)create - or potentially transform - inequalities. Inequalities in the distribution of costs and benefits arising from community forestry are most definitely created in the everyday, such as men making collective decisions about their community forest during their daily interactions, only to present that later as a 'community' decision during formal Community Forest User Group activities. Such insights are hardly new to critical scholars and there is widespread acknowledgement of such operations of power and injustice among practitioners too; the concern in this research is therefore with the everyday practices and processes of development which mean that the everyday (re)creation of inequality at the village level is seldom acknowledged or adequately accounted for in community forest interventions. The research thus considers opportunities available for learning and reflection within development practice. In an effort to understand how such practices - and thus the inequalities which they sustain - might be transformed, the research also explores 'innovative' development practices and professionals i.e. those that resist demands for 'quick', quantifiable outcomes and focus instead on processes and narratives of villagers and their everyday struggles for resource access and control.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which the introduction of Resident Welfare Association (RWA) mode of governance in poorer neighborhoods of Delhi problematizes the traditional patterns of authority (viz., that of pradhans).
Paper long abstract:
Subaltern politics in postcolonial societies has often been seen through an archetypal Gramscian lens of civil versus political society dichotomy (Chatterjee 2004). In my larger Doctoral project from which this paper emanates, I look at such contests through a 'multi-case' ethnography of Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) among the RWA representatives and traditional community leaders (viz., pradhans) among the Valmikis (i.e., a lower caste community) in Delhi. In this paper, however, I deal with the findings elicited from the RWA in Valmiki Colony, 100 quarters i.e., an authorized/legal colony of 100 households, as the very name suggests. But an adjoining illegal patch of land here (viz., 100 quarters extension) houses 105 more families in an illegal Jhuggi-Jhopri/ Slum cluster. As far as civil society bodies for local municipal governance is concerned, the valmikis here of late have resorted to a smarter move. On one hand, there exists the Pradhan of this area (who lives in the legal segment since 1944) and is an old aide of the centrist Congress party. In the illegal segment, a '100 Quarters' Mohalla Welfare Committee (MWC)' has been flagged off, which is technically a prototype of an RWA. Its members are residents of both the segments - legal and illegal. The representative head of this group liaisons with the right-leaning BJP party. Thus, following Deleuze and Guattari (1998), in this paper, I look into the role of such 'rhizomes' of co-optation of 'political society' that shape the calculus of power.
Paper short abstract:
This paper tries to identify the factors causing creation and withdrawal of participatory spaces (signified by the Village Development Committees), with the potential to forge new forms of participation and representation in the context of Gram Panchayats (village councils) of West Bengal in India.
Paper long abstract:
Participatory spaces have often been understood in terms of spaces for deliberations generating possibilities of resistance to challenge and reframe dominant discourses, and/or spaces that enable the masses to assert their active citizenship rights. In this context, local governance structures emerge as the key terrain that extends opportunities to the citizens of participating directly in the decision-making processes of the state institutions by engaging in public deliberations, and forming associational ties. This paper is trying to understand the factors causing creation and withdrawal of participatory spaces (signified by the Village Development Committees), with the potential to forge new forms of participation and representation in the context of Gram Panchayats (village council) in the Indian state of West Bengal, over the last two decades. Using the interpretive strategy of case-study analysis (examining the strategic case of West Bengal), this research draws on analysis of policy discourses, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with stakeholders at different levels (community representatives to state level policy makers) as evidences to provide better insight to context-specific causal processes. The findings of this research point towards a unilateral decision on the part of the state-level policy-makers to create and subsequently withdraw the participatory spaces for the masses. This move reflected authoritarian trends to suit elite purposes and led to shrinkage of spaces for deliberation and informed public debates at the grassroots. Consequently, this paper claims that representational practices in micro-institutions are inextricably linked to structural power relations and macro-level political changes.