Paper short abstract:

The paper examines illegal wildlife demand reduction campaigns in Vietnam, and demonstrates that these campaigns represent 'ungrounded' environmentalism. This environmentalism risks deepening racist stereotypes and cultural misrepresentations steeped in conservation thinking and practice.

Paper long abstract:

The unusual marriage of socialist commitments with capitalist aspirations in Vietnam has unleashed a myriad of paradoxes that make the issue of state-society relations highly complex. The country has a poor reputation for their response to environment as well as conservation issues. It also has a reputation for constrained civil society space for activism. The one-party Communist state selectively adopts a neoliberal agenda to reinforce its monopoly of power as well as to advance capitalist accumulation of land and nature. Under this polity, civil society groups, including conservation non-government organisations, have to learn 'to dance within the constraints of the system' to carve out space to progress their agendas. The paper will draw on new empirical data to critically examine the dynamics and complexity of conservation activism in Vietnam as it has unfolded over time, focusing on leadership strategies, discourses, and operations that conservation civil society groups adopt in order to achieve their organizational objectives and influence the state. Likewise, it will analyse the extent to which wildlife conservation is taken up, connected or disconnected with more general environmental activism in the country. There are significant and sizeable lacunae in research on conservation activism as well as environmental activism in Southeast Asia's authoritarian contexts. The research will make two distinctive contributions. First, it will provide a grounded analysis of the ways, discourses and framings that conservation groups utilise to wage their activism around conservation issues. Second, it will explore how local conservation NGOs aspire to accentuate Vietnamese leadership in conservation.

Paper short abstract:

Disaster response can serve as conduit for repression, but also for resistance and solidarity. Based on qualitative fieldwork and activist self-reflection, we detail the engagement of civil society actors in response to 2015 cyclone Komen in Myanmar and the 2016 droughts in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

Paper long abstract:

Responding to disasters triggered by natural hazards is inherently political, and especially contested when it takes place in conflict-affected authoritarian settings. Disaster response can be a conduit to further a specific agenda, such as asserting party control or marginalizing minorities. But disaster response can also be a conduit for resistance and solidarity. Combining insights from one year of qualitative fieldwork (by first author, academic) and self-reflective organizational ethnography (by second author, activist in Myanmar), this paper details the engagement of civil society actors within three contested disaster response processes : the 2015 floods and landslides in Myanmar (overlapping with explosive identity politics), the 2016 drought in Ethiopia (overlapping with protests and a state of emergency), and 2016-2019 droughts in Zimbabwe (overlapping with a deepening social, political and economic crisis). The paper explores factors for low civil society mobilization and failures, as overwhelmingly observed in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Myanmar's Rakhine State, and successes, as found in Myanmar's Chin State. While bureaucratic restrictions and ambiguities, (threats of) violence, lingering trauma and socio-economic fatigue constrained mobilization in Chin State also, a diversity of civil society groups ranging from community organizations to formalized local non-governmental organizations could mobilize support via minority, diaspora and international aid networks. However, some of their lobbying activities were also constrained by international aid agencies. This suggests that studies of civil society activism should not only focus on the state and the authoritarian practices it engages with, but also on other non-state actors which co-shape the 'rules of the game'.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that though various modes of civil society activism, serve an immediate relief to workers however it surreptitiously works as a safety-valve to prevent the accumulation of labour unrest.

Paper long abstract:

With the change of waves in global politics and the rise of populist/authoritarian government, the nature of civil society/ civic leadership has also transformed. Not only has Civil society taken an invincible role (Hardt 1995) but it has also become a potent force in manoeuvring the institutional state apparatus of the postcolonial State (Gupta 2012). In my research on the modes of negotiations among Casual labourers in the Kanpur leather factories, for instance, one finds that the precarity of work, lack of forums for collective bargaining/unions and cumbersome institutional arbitration sees the coming up of three modes of civil society activism. Firstly, the cumbersome labour laws had made formal negotiation an economically unviable reality for the aggrieved workers. However, a battery of lawyers touted as a civil society, then comes up to fight the case on a fixed percentage. The second mode of civil society activism sees local leaders or strongmen act as mediators between factories and workers for alleged monetary share. The third form of civil society comes props up when certain factory owners collectively form an organization and act as an intermediary between management and workers. However, I would argue that these modes of civil society activism, though, renders an immediate relief to workers yet it surreptitiously works as a safety-valve to prevent the massive labour unrests. Further who adopts which route to negotiate is vastly dependent on the networks and social relations that channelise employment opportunities and also facilitate grievance redressal mechanisms (Desai 2017).

Paper short abstract:

This panel aims to examine the role of a resurgent civil society in redefining the broad modalities through which urban subaltern groups broker everyday negotiations with the State.

Paper long abstract:

In the wake of a resurgent right-wing wave across the globe in recent years, we have duly witnessed the potential of populist politics in not only re-shaping political realignments (Laclau 2005), but also in a) re-drawing moral boundaries between groups and b) re-defining the very identification of categories like 'us' and 'them'. It is in this context, that the present paper teases out through an 'extended case-study' (Burawoy 1998) the ways in which newly emerging residential welfare associations/ neighborhood associations have employed populist political strategies in re-constructing place/space/territorial cleavages of subaltern groups (Chatterjee 2019. In this paper, I trace, the genealogy of local urban governance in Delhi and the populist developmental discourse within which such RWAs were instituted in the city of Delhi in general and among the valmikis in particular. I also explore as to how the setting up of a Resident Welfare Association (RWA) in a marginalized (dalit) neighbourhood in Central Delhi, has unsettled the hegemony of old, traditional community leaders viz., pradhans. Based on a 14-month field study, I show as to how the erstwhile/allegedly authoritarian right wing forces morph themselves into a discourse of 'new urban politics' which capitalizes on both a) the old cultural identity and b) the new economic precarity of the erstwhile culturally marginalised/ subaltern groups. Thus, in so doing, the paper, argues that the populist use of civil society forums like RWAs, have put forth a more nuanced and 'strategic' politics of brokerage (Bjorkman 2014).

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the role played by queer activist during conflict transitions by looking at the case study of Sri Lanka during its constitutional coup in October 2018. It argues, that the queer activism has exploited the moments to advance queer agenda through an intersectional approach.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the role of queer activism in the democracy movement, which emerged during the Sri Lankan president's move to sack the prime minister and dissolve the parliament in late October 2018 (which became known as the 'constitutional coup').It was considered undemocratic and unconstitutional by the majority of the population and thousands of people and activists started rallied to reinstate democracy. The crisis was brought to an end in December 2018 with the reinstatement of the sacked prime minister.

During such moments of ruptures or transitions, many civil forces and political groups working for democracy, including the queer movement, took the struggle both into streets and the courts. This has created a space for queer activists to work alongside other democratic forces. Looking through the experiences of organizations working on the issues related to the persons with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and sex characteristics (SOGIESC), the paper highlights how queer leadership was able to devise a creative intersectional agenda that was instrumental in bringing both the democratic struggle and mainstreaming queer agenda together. It argues that the queer activism was able to exploit the moments of transitions in such a way that capitalized on the democracy movement to mainstream the queer agenda through an intersectional approach. The queer activism has been instrumental in the queer communities' creative utilization of collective agency, providing a new political landscape where SOGIESC organizations can effectively transcend the limits of liberal NGOs.

Key Words:

Constitutional coup, Queer Activism, Democracy movement, SOGIESC NGOs

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the forms of civic leadership emerging amongst national NGOs in South Sudan in the context of growing authoritarianism and a large-scale, internationally-led humanitarian response. It shows how NGO leaders use the humanitarian space to pursue civic and political goals.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on participant observation and over 50 life history interviews with the leaders and staff of a range of South Sudanese NGOs, this paper explores the changing fortunes of different forms of civil society in South Sudan. The outbreak of widespread conflict in 2013, and the resulting large-scale humanitarian response, provided opportunities for some organisations which, through their brokering role, have grown rapidly. The paper reveals the forms of civil society that are flourishing in this context, and those that are struggling. It also examines how organisational tactics and strategies are shifting, and how they leverage the power of the international humanitarian response.

Ultimately, the paper argues that the founders and leaders of national humanitarian NGOs in South Sudan represent a form of emerging civic leadership in an exceptionally harsh environment. To access funding, South Sudanese NGOs must conform to some degree to the professionalised 'work rules' of the international system (Massoud 2015). Yet, we also see actors taking advantage of these spaces to articulate and pursue their own civic agendas, behind or alongside the conventional demands of the humanitarian system. This paper shows how, as brokers of transnational flows of care (Fechter 2019), South Sudanese NGO leaders can draw on the material resources, social and political capital and, to some degree, protection, that come from association with the international humanitarian system, in order to pursue their own civic and political goals, and to enact forms of care that are not prioritised by international actors.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore how civil society organisations have interfaced with the state in Malawi in their effort to shape mining laws. It will interrogate the dynamics of new forms of leadership challenging the authoritarian state and offer new leadership alternative.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 2000s, Malawi has witnessed unprecedented levels of investment into the mining sector. This development has attracted a lot of civil society organisations (CSOs) activism around environmental justice. Celebrated by the public as representing the "other" alternative leadership in the governance of the extractives, CSOs have actively been involved in the review of the 1981 Mines and Mineral Act, which was promulgated by Parliament in December 2018. The extractive industry, however, is anchored in complex local and international economic and political structures that generates contentious interests and agendas. Through the concept of governmentality, this article explores CSOs-state power struggles during the review of the 1981 Mines and Minerals Act. It is based on semi-structured interviews with government bureaucrats, CSOs leaders, local communities, political leaders and private mining companies. The article highlights how CSOs have not only shaped legislative change around their interests, but have also institutionalised marginalisation of the local communities they claim to empower. This is so as existing political and economic structures have fashioned survival-compromises between CSOs and the state. Contrary to the belief that new forms of leadership represent potential resistance to populist leadership, this paper highlights how the existing formal political space constrains achievement of certain goals. Thus, the article signals how, existing structures are not only confronted but also embed and institutionalise emerging leadership into an existing hegemony.