‘It was like fighting a war with our own people’: anti-war activism in Serbia during the 1990s

This article discusses anti-war and anti-nationalism activism that took place in Serbia and, particularly, in Belgrade during the 1990s. It analyzes anti-war activism as aiming to combat collective states of denial. Based on fieldwork research conducted in 2004–05, and particularly on an analysis of interviews conducted with anti-war activists in Belgrade, this text closely analyzes the nuanced voices and approaches to activism against war among Serbia's civil society in the 1990s. The article highlights the difference between anti-war and anti-regime activism, as well as the generation gap when considering the wars of the 1990s and their legacy. Finally, this text emphasizes the role of Women in Black as the leading anti-war group in Serbia, and examines their feminist street activism which introduced new practices of protest and political engagement in Belgrade's public sphere.     

Community Planning: Fostering Participation in the Congested State?

The proliferation of partnership working across the British state raises difficult questions for democratic control and public participation. It is widely anticipated that 'community plans' - comprehensive strategies to promote social well-being - will address these issues, by facilitating public involvement in the governance of local areas. This paper examines community planning in Scotland to assess how far this hope is justified, drawing on government-sponsored research and a case study of community planning conferences. While community planning is extending opportunities for involvement, democratising local governance is subservient to dominant concerns with promoting joint working and demonstrating added value. Participatory events are structured to sustain belief in these activities.     

Building up French blackness through an Afrocentric lens?

The French national historical narrative, epitomized by the anthem ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, has long been a monochrome one. Despite a long black presence, Blackness was ignored. Black people were considered as outsiders. After the 2005 riots in the suburbs and the 2007 presidential election, they gained attention as a community significant to the constructing of a multicultural society. Black communities seize this time as an opportunity to remedy their political and social invisibility. One way chosen by some black people is to look back at history. Whether calling for an ‘African-centered’ or ‘black-centered’ perspective or knowledge, some now define their approach as Afrocentric. Though the ideas and concepts carried by Afrocentrism are not new in France, they now gain popularity among people of African descent as a means to challenge black people's outsider/insider status in French society.     

Not in our name: collective identity of the Serbian Women in Black

The Belgrade-based activist group Women in Black has been for twenty years now articulating a feminist anti-war stance in an inimical socio-political climate. The operation of this anti-patriarchal and anti-militarist organization, which has resisted numerous instances of repression, has not been until now systematically approached from a social movement perspective. This paper draws upon a range of empirical methods, comprising life-story interviews, documentary analysis and participant observation, to address the question as to how it was possible for this small circle of activists to remain on the Serbian/post-Yugoslav civic scene for the last two decades. My central argument is that a consistent collective identity, which informs the group's resource mobilization and strategic options, holds the key to the surprising survival of this activist organization. I apply recent theoretical advances on collective identity to the case of the Belgrade Women in Black with the view of promoting a potentially fruitful cross-fertilization between non-Western activism and the Western conceptual apparatus for studying civic engagement.     

New Unionism? Teacher Unions,Social Partnership and School Governance in England and Wales

Abstract

In the post-war period teacher unions in England and Wales have experienced considerable turbulence regarding their participation in the structures of system governance. Participation in governance had traditionally been conducted through the processes of collective bargaining until the abolition of national negotiating rights in 1987. After an extended period of exclusion from governance networks this situation was reversed in 2003 following the establishment of a ‘social partnership’ between employers and education unions. This article draws on data from the Economic and Social Research Council funded project ‘Workforce remodelling, teacher trade unions and school-based industrial relations’ to assess the significance of the social partnership for system governance. It combines empirical data from England and Wales with research frameworks drawing on teacher union research in the USA to contrast social partnership with collective bargaining and to assess whether social partnership working represented a genuinely new approach to governance and, in turn, a form of ‘new unionism’.     

Tyrone Grainger and the dilemma of blackness in London

Europe as terminus of Black dispersal holds much significance for the study of Black identity in the Diaspora due to its role in colonizing the African continent. More specifically, England was a major contender in the race to take control of human and natural resources in Africa and the Caribbean prior to and after the European slave trade. During the first 50 years of the twentieth century, Great Britain successfully lured Black West Indians to its shore with hopes of social, cultural, and economic freedom denied them in their homelands. This article explores the dilemma of Blackness and formation of African Diasporan identities in London during the twentieth century. It also examines the complexities of transnationalism and the impact of cultural memory and globalization on identity formation in Beryl Gilroy's novel Boy Sandwich (1989) through the experiences of Tyrone Grainger.     

Transcultural body spaces: re-inventing and performing headwrap practice among young Congolese women in London

ABSTRACT

This article examines embodied representation of race, ethnicity, and gender, questioning ideas of cultural appropriation. Using the London-based Congolese transnational fashion brand Kiyana Wraps as a case study, the article addresses how young Congolese designers re-invent their cultural heritage to conceive the label stylisation and construct meanings of Blackness/Africanness. The article also explores the brand’s social spaces, where the headwrap ritual is used by different actors to perform hybrid identities. In addition, wearing the headwrap reveals symbolic metaphors of empowerment, through which intertwined ‘feminist’ and ‘feminine’ identities are evoked. The paper examines how Congolese women are creatively taking inspiration from the environment of London to produce innovative fashion trajectories as lived socio-cultural experiences. It argues how the headwrap ritual signifies an aesthetic and material process through which specific racial and ethnic boundaries are transcended, fabricating transcultural body spaces which encompass individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds.     

Rights and Advocacy in Research with East Timorese Asylum Seekers in Australia

Abstract

This paper aims to derive lessons from a retrospective and comparative analysis of two previously unconnected projects that assessed the well-being of East Timorese asylum seekers residing in Australia. Despite disciplinary differences between psychiatry and social science research, overlapping philosophies and approaches emphasizing human rights and well-being paradigms were adopted. Drawing on these experiences, we explore the unique circumstances of East Timorese asylum seekers in Australia, and the applicability and positive effects of human rights-focused research and related methodologies including researcher-advocacy research amongst minority groups exposed to trauma and ongoing political pressures. Key issues examined include the complexities of adopting multi-method frameworks of investigation; individual and collective benefits in responding to a need for direct intervention, challenges in engaging an alienated community, and the need to frame the research and the intervention in an historical and political context. In addition, the process allowed us to confront some key challenges in the field, especially the relevance of traumatic stress and its treatment in assisting marginalized asylum seekers.     

Building the Capacity of the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector: Challenges of Theory and Practice

Abstract

As voluntary and community organizations in the UK (VCOs) expand their role in the provision of public services, they are under increasing pressure from governmental funders to improve their management and organizational systems - to “build their capacity.” This paper considers the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the idea of “capacity building.” It also looks at the challenges for VCOs of meeting the capacity building agenda while simultaneously retaining organizational distinctiveness and independence. Action research is proposed as a means to meet the challenges.     

Slavery food,soul food,salvation food: veganism and identity in the African Hebrew Israelite Community

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the transformation of meaning of food items central to African American fare from symbols of slavery to means of salvation as the African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC) live out their Biblically inspired lifestyle and perfect the vegan diet at its core. Although originating in Chicago in the late 1960s, for over 40 years the institutional and residential base of this transnational millenarian community has been in the Israeli desert town of Dimona. Based on long-term ethnographic acquaintance with their foodways in Israel and in the US, our analysis follows the AHIC’s eclectic incorporation of circulating religious, political, and scientific theories into their Bible-based cosmological-nutritional tenets of regenerative health and spiritual salvation. We argue that their ‘Edenic Diet’ reacts to the traumatic history of African Americans as slaves and as a discriminated against minority in the US, by serving as a means in their struggle for place and acceptance in modern Israel and an active component in their social and spiritual plans for the future.     

Can the World Bank Build Social Capital? The Experience of Social Funds in Malawi and Zambia

Social funds have been one of the main manifestations of the World Bank's move toward promoting projects with a participatory orientation. Supporters of social funds argue that participation in social fund activities builds community social capital. Critics of the Bank's use of social capital argue that it ignores power structures but these critics have focused on the Bank's research rather than its operations. This paper examines ‘social capital’ in a project context: social funds in Malawi and Zambia. In contrast to the model of collective action suggested by proponents of social funds, it is shown that the nature of community participation is indeed shaped by existing power and social relations. Project identification and execution is led by a small number of people in the community, usually the head teacher in cooperation with the PTA and traditional authorities. The community is then mobilised using the traditional structures of village headmen. Most community members participate actively in making bricks, but passively in decision making. However, this process should be seen as an institutional adaptation to what social funds offer, not elite capture. Most community members are satisfied with the outcome, although the chosen project is not what they would have chosen themselves. Given these processes, social funds do little to build social capital but instead, appear to be users of existing social capital.     

Black lives and climate justice: courage and power in defending communities and Mother Earth

Abstract

This article shares examples of the leadership of Black communities and social movements in the struggle for climate justice, in four different parts of the world: resisting extraction and promoting community health in Nigeria; addressing extreme climate impacts and building people’s sovereignty in Haiti; confronting repression, defending territory and Mother Earth in Honduras; and cultivating community control and building a land-based movement in the US. Together, these examples have rich lessons to share around the importance of linking climate justice with racial justice; of combining strategies of resistance with those of creating alternative models; of maintaining focus on Black communities’ connections with land, territory and Mother Earth; of recognising and creating space for women’s leadership; and of intersectionality across geography and sector.     

Moroccan Diaspora in France and the February 20 Movement in Morocco

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the links between the so-called 20 February 2011 Movement in Morocco and the Moroccan migrant organizations in France. The research examines how the 50-year-long history of these organizations shapes Moroccan migrants' political experiences and their ties to homeland in order to explain why they do not play a significant role in the events unfolding in Morocco in 2011. To this end, concepts such as diaspora and transnationalism are mobilized to grasp how activists are connecting to places and territories and reducing the distance between them, while preserving a certain unity in their collective action.     

Meat lottery: a spectacle in transition from Ethiopia to Israel

ABSTRACT

Meat is a key idiom in the lives of the Ethiopian Jews, both private and collective. This paper focuses on meat lottery as a unique praxis in Ethiopia and in the move of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) community, from Ethiopia to Israel. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the egalitarian divide of meat to be consumed by all partners and its accompanied lottery ritual is described and analyzed, directing the gaze to its socio-cultural and symbolic meanings. Beyond the mitigating aspects of the lottery from a social perspective, i.e. circumventing potential rivalries in the distribution of the meat of a single animal among several partners, it is connected at heart with the notions of sacrifice and transformation.     

The Arts,Social Health,and the Development of Cultural Indicators

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the arts and the growing research literature on social indicators in the United States. Building upon research and theory that identifies the need for indicators of “social health” that are broader than traditional measures of economic well‐being, this paper suggests that the arts are particularly useful terrain for conceptually extending quality of life research. After illustrating the broad range of thinkers who have argued that arts benefit society, the paper provides an overview of the various forms of arts data that are currently collected. Focusing on recent efforts to evaluate the quality of life within local communities and recent research on arts education, the paper suggests that scholars need to focus on building a clearer framework that connects arts data with the broader arguments about the social contribution of the arts. The paper concludes by identifying diversity, creativity, community, and participation as examples of concepts that can link existing arts data with the widespread belief in the democratic value of the arts, and argues that quality of life research needs to incorporate key community “assets”, including participation and practice in a vibrant arts world, into both the methodological and normative framework for defining social health.     

Locating black feminist resistance through diaspora and post-diaspora in Edwidge Danticat’s and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short stories

ABSTRACT

Migrating to the US is transformative in the short stories in Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak! and Chimamanda Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck. The currents of Blackness, gender and class alter their characters' experiences of the world, shaped by the global flows of migration taking place under neoliberal capitalism. This essay explores the nuanced and conflicting ways diaspora and post-diaspora spaces can facilitate Black feminist resistance in Danticat's ‘Caroline's Wedding' and Adichie's ‘Imitation'. I offer a Black feminist analysis, paying attention to the literary body as the site where tensions are dramatised. My reading of Danticat's and Adichie’s short stories leads to a progressive reconsideration of diaspora.     

A Child-Centered Refugee Resettlement Program in the United States

ABSTRACT

Refugee children are exposed to numerous risk factors resulting from war, genocide and resettlement, and are facing multiple difficulties to cope with the resettlement process. These challenges set refugee children apart from the mainstream community and can stifle their overall adjustment and development. Unfortunately, policy makers have paid little attention to the caring for refugee children during their initial resettlement. This paper examines systematic barriers to refugee children's successful resettlement in the U.S., and presents a child-centered framework as an option to better address the needs of refugee children, and offers recommendations for policy changes and effective social work practice.     

Belonging and Political Participation: Evidence from the 2011 President Election in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This study examines the effects of social embeddedness on interest in politics and electoral behaviour using data from a nationally representative survey conducted shortly after the 2011 presidential election in Kyrgyzstan. We find that interest in politics is positively associated with community trust, public sector employment and a sense of national belonging. Controlling for the effects of interest in politics, community trust and public sector employment are also positively associated with voting in this election, whereas evidence on ethno-cultural inclusion is mixed. These findings highlight the role of social embeddedness in political participation in young post-communist democracies.     

Social Ties,Collective Efficacy,and Crime-Specific Fear in Seattle Neighborhoods

While research suggests that individuals’ interactions with their communities—such as their social integration into the community and perceptions of collective efficacy—impact their perceived risk of victimization, only a handful of studies have examined the influence of these characteristics on crime-specific, emotional fear. Using the Seattle Neighborhoods and Crime Survey, we conduct multilevel models to examine whether social ties and collective efficacy are associated with perceived risk and emotional fear of violence and burglary. The results show that individuals’ social ties to the community are negatively associated with perceived risk, but not emotional fear of violence or burglary, while perceived collective efficacy is negatively related to both cognitive and emotional fear. Moreover, the results suggest that individuals’ social integration into the community functions through perceptions of collective efficacy to predict perceived risk; however, this process does not extend to emotional fear of either violence or burglary.     

‘The new Europeans’: the image of the African refugee in European literature

Abstract

This essay examines the representation of African refugees and asylum seekers in European literature in general, as well recent life writings and literature for young adults in particular. Examples will be drawn from writers as diverse as Benjamin Zephaniah and Senait G. Mehari. It is argued that the selected refugee stories invest in narrating an imagined community of ‘the new Europeans’ and thus invite readers to a plural reading of history. Following this train of thought, I am particularly interested in the interplay between images and motifs that evoke and shape various nation-states while illuminating an imagined European community. I therefore seek to excavate a transcultural imagery that characterizes refugee and asylum seekers as the ‘new Europeans’ by utilizing narrative strategies which reflect Paul Ricoeur's ideas about a new ethos for Europe.