NGOization and de-NGOization of Public Action in Nepal: The Role of Organizational Culture in Civil Society Politicality

Abstract

This article explores the relation between organizational culture and the politicality of civil society organizations, or rather their social construction as political. It is based on a case study of a network (NW) of human rights NGOs in Nepal during the last few years of a Maoist insurgency and the period of autocratic rule by ex-king Gyanendra, and its immediate aftermath. Through detailed ethnographic material, this article highlights the central role of the NW's organizational culture in allowing it to act in ways that were recognized as political. Specifically, it shows how a process of ‘de-NGOization’ of everyday practices and values enabled NW to become a credible actor for political change during a crucial period of Nepal's history. This article contributes to the ethnography of civil society, urges that more attention be paid to the relation of civil society to the political domain, and suggests ways forward in researching this topic.     

E‐Informality in Venezuela: The ‘Other Path’ of Technology

The study explores arguments concerning the concept of the informal economy and makes the case that new media technologies, or more broadly, information and communication technologies (ICTs), as a socio‐economic phenomenon, tend to be exploited in the same way as other economic activities by those actors that operate in the informal economy. Moreover, this exploitation tends to show similar patterns in terms of growth and ownership concentration. In this context, the study analyses the patterns and tendencies that transpire when informal actors exploit ICTs. It aims to question the validity of the neoliberal paradigm that portrays informality and new media technology as a creative process that requires deregulation. The article is based on a field study carried out in Venezuela between 2003 and 2004.     

Beyond crisis management? The role of Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity in humanitarian aid: the case of Lesvos

Abstract

In recent years, what has been called citizen initiatives for global solidarity (CIGS) have grown considerably in numbers across Europe and beyond. Lately, CIGS have also received attention as they are responding to humanitarian crisis across the world. In Europe during 2015, citizens were heavily involved in catering for incoming refugees, putting up loosely organised voluntary-based initiatives. CIGS popped up in places such as Lesvos, which is the focus of our research. Humanitarian CIGS are quick in their response to needs on the ground, are quickly governed by rules and regulations as well as overall ideas about crisis management, and come to work either with or in opposition to other actors. We examine two examples of CIGS positioned at the margins of the humanitarian aid machinery in Lesvos. Through a lens of power and resistance, we discuss how they resisted paradigmatic ideas of crisis management and instead called for a different interpretation of how to think about and do crisis management.     

合作的想象

对民族志进行反思的过程,包括了对田野研究中民族志学者与当地报告人之间的合作关系的重新思考和定位,对与民族志文本伴随始终的想象特质的正视和承认,以及对民族志所承担的任务和作用的重新认识。在全球化的当下,人类学的民族志是民族志学者和对自己的角色有主见、有认识的地方合作者共同制造的想象,而民族志的功能则是对这种合作的关系进行深入的分析、研究,作为一个媒介而不是真理的知识,让人们能够了解、研究这种合作关系。     

Being women in a male preserve: an ethnography of female football ultras

This article looks at the characteristics of contemporary sports audiences from the perspective of gender, focusing on the phenomenon of female ultras or ‘professional’ football fans. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an Italian football ultras group composed of male and female fans, this paper offers an analysis of female participation in communities of organized supporters. In examining the role and position of women inside the considered group, the paper pays attention to their perception of the existing gender differences showing how female ultras explain inequalities on the basis of ‘natural’ and ‘innate’ differences and capacities between men and women. Existing patterns of male dominance are supported by female fans’ own discourses and performance of their gender identity in the ‘male preserve’. Rather than questioning male dominance and gender hierarchies, female supporters’ efforts appear aimed at being recognized as ultras ‘despite being women’.     

From encountering confederate flags to finding refuge in spaces of solidarity: Filipino temporary foreign workers’ experiences of the public in Alberta

ABSTRACT

By critically assessing Filipino migrants’ fraught and uneven experiences of the public, I illustrate how race and class hierarchies operate to mark Filipino temporary foreign workers as foreign ‘others’. Because public spaces are structured in gendered and racialized ways, Filipino migrants strategically navigate public spaces to ensure their safety and create their own spaces of belonging that give them refuge against xenophobia. I argue further that the paradoxical discourses of multicultural inclusion and economic protectionism invoke the figure of the ‘good’ migrant and the ‘bad’ migrant. These, in turn, promote contradictory actions towards migrants, whose public acceptance hinge on wildly variable and changing notions of inclusion/exclusion and economic acceptability. These lead to the passage of inconsistent policies where migrants are read as being ‘good’ one day, and as being ‘bad’ the next.     

Spirit and being: interdisciplinary reflections on drugs across history and politics

Abstract

Few commodities are as global as drugs. Cannabis, opium, heroin, amphetamines, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), khat, psychedelic cacti and mushrooms as well as an interminable list of other natural or synthesised substances travel and are consumed around the globe for all possible reasons. Human migration, trade, cultural trends, medical practice, political repression: together they constitute the drug phenomenon today – and indeed in much of human history. In this, drugs are spirit-like commodities, their value resting upon a fundamental ambiguity made up of individual, psychological, social, cultural, economic and medical circumstances. Defining a drug is an attempt at defining a spirit on the edge, which metamorphoses in time and space. At the same time, drugs remain a fundamentally political object. They are substances controlled by states, through mechanisms of policing, legitimated by judicial and medical evaluation, condemned often on moral grounds. Situated between a fluid social existence and a static legal dimension, drugs can become inspiring hermeneutic objects of study.     

Maintaining disorder: the micropolitics of drugs policy in Iran

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which the state ‘treats’ addiction among precarious drug (ab)users in Iran. While most Muslim-majority as well as some Western states have been reluctant to adopt harm reduction measures, the Islamic Republic of Iran has done so on a nationwide scale and through a sophisticated system of welfare intervention. Additionally, it has introduced devices of management of ‘addiction’ (the ‘camps’) that defy statist modes of punishment and private violence. What legal and ethical framework has this new situation engendered? And what does this new situation tell us about the governmentality of the state? Through a combination of historical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, the article analyses the paradigm of government of the Iranian state with regard to disorder as embodied by the lives of poor drug (ab)users.     

Who Am I and Where Am I From? Substitute Residential Home Children’s Insights into Their Lives and Individual Identities

Abstract

Decisions regarding children’s residential care reorganisation are primarily based on an adult’s perspective of children’s wellbeing and care. While these adults tend to be well-intended and base their decisions off relevant evidence, the children’s perspectives ‐ which reflects their actual lived experiences ‐ is almost never considered. However, since children are experts of their own lives, they should have the right to participate and express their opinion: Their point of view could be of great value in developing residential child care. In this article, we provide SOS children’s insights into their own life experiences and individual identities. The data was collected during an ethnographic research in one of Estonia’s SOS Children’s Villages (SOS CV). This article aims to answer to following research questions: 1. What are the main topics in SOS children’s stories when they talk about themselves and their everyday lives in substitute homes? 2. What kind of identity can be determined from children’s stories? 3. How can the subtext within the children’s stories be used to develop a child-centred residential care? In this article, we present and discuss several key-findings. First, it is important to note that there are gaps in the children’s life stories, as they sometimes lack information about important people and events in their lives. Second, this lack of adequate information can damage the children's identities and, in turn, undermine their development. Third, the opportunity to talk about important life events encourages the children to ask questions, as they are interested in obtaining additional information to complete the gaps. Fourth, the children’s stories indicate the shortcomings of substitute homes, related to both culture and communication.