Women’s Participation in Communal Activities in Rural Bangladesh

This article seeks to examine the extent of women’s participation in communal activities in rural Bangladesh, based on an analysis of a development programme, namely REFLECT (Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques). This article evaluates the REFLECT programme with regard to its stated goal of enhancing female participation in local community affairs. Using Michael Mann’s classification of sources of power, the study emphasises the importance of participation as a contribution to political as well as ideological power in the community of Monsurabad Island in rural Bangladesh. To that end, this article aims at analysing women’s participation in community decision-making processes through voting behaviour, traditional village court (Salish) involvement and other civic activities. This study also reviews the views of village elders (matabars) on women’s participation at the communal level and the resulting empowerment. Based on the views of participant women themselves, the study concludes that the implementation of the REFLECT project in the local community under investigation has indeed resulted in empowering women, but this effect remains confined to their families and the handling of women’s issues. As the effect of the REFLECT project has not reached out to the realm of community politics, its impact on women’s participation in the community has been limited. This study argues that without any change in the existing social fabric of Monsurabad, women’s ideological power in that community could not be transformed into political power in accordance with Michael Mann’s theory.     

Technical Standards and Institutionalization Processes in New Deal Art Projects

While some practitioners adopt a reductionist approach to inquiry in the cultural management discourse, this article is a critical reflection upon the practice of cultural management as an academic discipline. The article deals with a theoretical framework on how to formulate cultural management strategies that promote the sharing of cultural values throughout the global community. The article traces the history of graduate education in arts management from the late 1960s to the present, as well as discussing policy, research reports, and programs that have helped to build arts management as a comprehensive field of study. Though multidisciplinary in conception, the article posits that practitioners should acquire general training in the management sciences and proceed to professionalize in one distinct field of the arts and culture. Relevant courses in the social sciences and business studies should be incorporated as well. Five critical domains of cultural planning are discussed—arts and culture, citizenship and identity, spatial culture, communications, media and planning—as major concerns for the successful training of dynamic arts managers. The authors predict a time when cultural management will cease to be an adjunct discipline and become an independent school within the university system.     

Practicing What We Preach

SUMMARY

This paper describes the creation of a “Job Club” at Michigan State University to facilitate employment searches in Community Psychology. The goal of the Job Club was to provide a setting where graduating Ph.D. candidates could gain the skills necessary to be successful in both academic and non-academic job searches. The Job Club was student-driven, and emphasized principles of community psychology such as collaboration, network development, social and instrumental support, and empowerment. The importance of small group size and the ongoing commitment of a senior faculty mentor are highlighted. A curriculum for Job Club was created that included: resource allocation; network development; document development (vitae, resumes); practicing job talks, teaching demonstrations and interviews; and accepting the offer. Successes, lessons learned, and suggestions for creating Job Clubs in other settings are offered.     

Can participation be induced? Some evidence from developing countries 1

Influenced by Amartya Sen, over the last decade, The World Bank has allocated nearly US$80 billion to local participatory development projects targeting poverty, improved public service delivery, and strengthened social cohesion and government accountability. But the success of these programs is hindered by both endogenous local factors and flawed program design and implementation. Two especially important local obstacles are (1) entrenched interests of political agents, civil bureaucrats, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with either incentives to resist or capabilities to appropriate program resources, and (2) poverty and illiteracy, as the poor and illiterate participate less and benefit less from participatory projects than do the wealthier, more educated, and more connected. After reviewing hundreds of participatory projects, three lessons are clear for program planning. First, contextual factors like inequality, history, geography, and political systems (among others) are important. Second, communities do not necessarily have a ready stock of ‘social capital’ to mobilize. Third, induced participatory interventions work best when supported by a responsive state – donors cannot substitute for a non-functional state, and successful programs combine enlightened state action from above with social mobilization from below. Future participatory development projects would benefit substantially from revised planning and considerably more attention paid to evaluation and monitoring. Project managers have historically paid little attention to context, monitoring, or evaluation, in part because The World Bank’s operational policies did not provide incentives to do so. Donor agencies should also exercise greater patience and allow for flexible, long-term engagement to facilitate contextual and programmatic learning, including learning from failure.     

The ‘girl effect’: liberalism,empowerment and the contradictions of development

The ‘girl effect’ – the idea that investment in the skills and labour of young women is the key to stimulating economic growth and reducing poverty in the global South – has recently become a key development strategy of the World Bank, the imf, usaid and dfid, in partnership with corporations such as Nike and Goldman Sachs. This paper examines the logic of this discourse and its stance towards kinship in the global South, situating it within the broader rise of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ as development objectives over the past two decades. Empowerment discourse, and the ‘capability’ approach on which it is based, has become popular because it taps into ideals of individual freedom that are central to the Western liberal tradition. But this project shifts attention away from more substantive drivers of poverty – structural adjustment, debt, tax evasion, labour exploitation, financial crisis, etc – as it casts blame for underdevelopment on local forms of personhood and kinship. As a result, women and girls are made to bear the responsibility for bootstrapping themselves out of poverty that is caused by external institutions – and often the very ones that purport to save them.     

Combating Violence against Women in India: Nari Adalats and Gender-Based Justice

Using qualitative methodology—field observations and in-depth interviews—the study examines the role of Mahila Samakhya (a group advocating women's equality) and Nari Adalats (informal women's courts) in India in combating violence against women. Interviews were conducted with members of a Mahila Samakhya in the southwest state of Karnataka and complainants who appeared before Nari Adalats. Nari Adalats in Karnataka are an innovation of Mahila Samakhya, a Government of India development program. The results indicate that Nari Adalats exercise broad authority to investigate and dispose of a wide range of domestic violence cases in India. The Mahila Samakhya serves as an advocacy group and provides shelter, legal assistance, and social help as well as education for victims of domestic violence.     

Regional parliamentary empowerment in EU affairs. Building an analytical framework

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the effects of the Lisbon Treaty provisions for regional parliaments in EU decentralised systems by looking at the early warning system (EWS) for subsidiarity control. It argues that the implications of this mechanism for parliamentary empowerment at the regional level should be assessed carefully and their links with political mobilisation, institutional restructuring and policy involvement in a particular context should be analysed as precisely as possible. For this reason, this article proposes a conceptual and analytical framework that allows the detection of several kinds of regional empowerment under the EWS and explains their transformative effects in different national contexts.     

论代理制度的独立性——从一种法技术运用的角度

德国民法所创设的独立的代理制度所采用的抽象技术方法与物权行为理论同出一辙,代理权授予行为的独立性为提取意定代理和法定代理的共同规则并形成独立的代理制度创造了条件,而授权行为的无因性则使其独立性具有了保护交易安全的实质意义。我国民法承认了授权行为的独立性,应进一步承认其无因性。     

中国职工权利状况、维权意识与媒介选择 —— 基于全国 1019份问卷调查和深度访谈

通过问卷调查和深度访谈发现，职工权利受损偶有发生。它不仅表现在物质层面（如薪酬），还 有精神层面。无论是权利知识的传播，还是权利意识的启蒙，以及通过信息传播赋权职工，都彰显了大众媒体的 不可替代性。另一方面，职工对大众媒体职工权利议题的报道并不特别满意，不只是数量方面，还有报道质量方面。     

From ‘gender equality and ‘women’s empowerment’ to global justice: reclaiming a transformative agenda for gender and development

The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.