Archive
Volume 7, Issue 1 (2016)
A
Decentralization in Governance Project Screening Indicator for NGOs and
International Organizations
David Lempert
The article offers an easy-to-use
indicator for scholars and practitioners to measure whether NGOs,
international organizations, and government policies and projects
uphold the international legal consensus and related professional
standards for "decentralization"; a euphemism that has replaced the
universal principles in international treaties for promoting
"self-determination" and decolonization. Use of this indicator on more
than a dozen standard interventions funded today by international
development banks, UN organizations, country donors, and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) reveals that most of the major
actors in the field of development have failed to follow international
guidelines that many of them are bound to follow and appear to be using
"decentralization" as a cover for new forms of colonialism that are
simply more efficient. The indicator helps to further codify
international development law and points to specific areas for holding
organizational actors accountable to international agreements in order
to promote development goals of sustainability and good governance.
This article also offers a sample test of the indicator using UN
Habitat's Decentralization Guidelines as a case study.
Can the Subaltern be Heard?
Knowledge Production, Representation, and Responsibility in
International Development
Siavash Saffari
What are the limitations of
representation in the production of international development
knowledge? This paper argues that by engaging in the practice of
defining the needs, priorities, and collective goals and ambitions of
the recipients of development projects in the global South, development
experts and knowledge producers in the global North have contributed to
the further marginalization of subaltern voices and knowledges.
Moreover, this asymmetrical power relationship in knowledge production
has led to the deeper entrenchment of the hegemonic Eurocentric,
capitalist, and neoliberal norms and practices in international
development. Drawing on a body of critical scholarship that emphasizes
indigenous voices and knowledges, a case is made that for subaltern
voices to be heard privileged experts and knowledge producers have a
responsibility to disoccupy the discursive space in which development
norms, objectives, and strategies are defined.
Sustainable
Development Goals - An (Alternative) Future Scenario
Albert Denk
Twenty-first century globalization is
ubiquitous - global interconnectedness affects all areas of life. This
development entails the need for alternative future scenarios on a
global scale. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
illustrate a global strategy for facing global instabilities within the
realms of economic development, social inclusion, and environmental
sustainability. The author examines the SDGs within the realms of
fragmentation, legal obligations, and participation. It will be shown
that the selection of dimensions is inadequate; there is need for a
legally binding agreement as well as for strengthening participatory
approaches.
Ethnoscape-Financescape
Interface: Work Space Experiences for Indian Guest-workers in Germany
Amrita Datta
This paper looks at and explores the
socio-cultural experiences of exclusion and inclusion for Indian guest
workers in Germany, within the larger discourse of economic
globalization and international migration of labour. At the theoretical
level, the paper draws directly from Arjun Appadurai's concept of
'scapes' coming together to constitute 'disjuncture of flows'. Here
'guest-worker' is not the quintessential 'Gastarbeiter' rather a league
of Elite Migrants as they have come to be known as. They comprise
mostly IT, Banking and Finance professionals and are a part of the
global economy due to economic liberalization and globalization. The
salient focus of this paper is to evaluate the work space experiences
of differential levels of exclusion and inclusion for Indian guest
workers in the host society. Within the work space that largely defines
the 'finanscape', Indian guest workers in the host society are subject
to both universalistic principle of capitalism on one hand and their
ethnic particularities on the other. Within this context, this paper
aims at exploring how the subjects perceive and negotiate with and if
they experience social exclusion or inclusion in the process.
Dialectics:
the Ontological Basis of Self-Formation and Social Existence
Leon Miller
The East and West base their
understanding of self and social formation on Dialectics. This article
argues that Dialectics continue to play a role in the development and
progression of civilization in both the East and the West, because of
the relevance of its perspective on self and social formation along
with its contributions as to how to have beneficial interactions with
the natural order. That is to say, that in both the East and the West,
Dialectics developed into a perspective on the ontological basis of
human nature (i.e. humanity's pre-cognitive instinctual predisposition)
and how the self as ordained by the forces of nature can be enhanced by
cultivation within a culture to improve social and environmental
relations. This article explains the concepts and principles related to
classical sociology and why they continue to be considered a viable
basis for a scientific perspective on the ontological basis of global
social existence. In this sense the article proposes that the concepts
and principles of classical sociology continue to be relevant to the
contemporary challenges humanity faces in its attempt to shape global
social existence in a way that contributes to increasing beneficial
interactions with others as well as with the natural order.
Aligning
the Two Main Approaches to the Study of Democratization
Samsondeen Ajagbe
This article approaches
democratization from the point of view of an
assemblage of two main social forces - the elite and the institution.
It draws on
the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) ontology of association to connect
structural and
agential traditions- that treat elite and institution as separate
entities-in the field of
democratization research. It argues for the viability of ANT's ontology
of association
as a lens for understanding democratization as a domain-independent
association of
elite agency and institutional norms. This complex interdependency
between agency
and structure manifests in politics in ways political practices and
actions are fabricated
as permissible in the state of affair.
Bourdieu
in Japan: Selective Reception and Segmented Field
Kie Sanada
Bourdieu's overall theory of social
inequality explains that the existence
of social inequality has been perpetuated in the re
exive relationship between the the-
ory of cultural reproduction and the theory of symbolic violence.
Regardless of their
inseparability, an asymmetrical development in the reception of
Bourdieu's ideas is apparent in the relevant fields of study in Japan.
The myth of an
egalitarian society and
strong domestic political interests to establish the positive
relationship between the
proliferation of educational opportunity and upward social mobility
have contributed
to keeping scholars primarily focused on the theory of cultural
reproduction. On the
other hand, the theory of symbolic violence has been rejected as being
specific to the
French context. The general lack of reflexivity between the theory of
cultural reproduction and the theory of
symbolic violence indicates that Bourdieu's
habitus theory
has been appropriated in the Japanese cultural context as a simple
analytical tool,
while his overall theory exists as a discursive totality in discourses.
Due to this asymmetrical development, regardless of the fact that
Bourdieu, himself,
pointed out the
relevance of his theory to Japanese society, those studying Bourdieu in
Japan itself
have failed to produce relevant knowledge regarding the nature of
social inequality in
Japan.
Social
Structure and Globalization of Political and Economic
Elites in India
Suraj Beri and Christian Schneickert
Contemporary Social Sciences show a
strong interest in studying power and
domination in postcolonial societies. Elite research has become crucial
to understand
the changes in the political and economic dimensions of power
structures in the context
of democratic experience and economic development in countries such as
India. These
changes can be located within social structures and the globalization
of elites. This
study is an attempt to make sense of the ongoing transformations
happening in the
field of power in India. The existing scholarship on elites in India
has
been more
related to socio-political transformations post-independence, and less
on the relation
between globalization and changes in the composition of political and
economic elites
in India. Therefore, we study the context and impact of the process of
globalization
on the social background of these elites and the emerging larger
dynamics regarding
socio-economic changes in the Global South.
Gauging and Engaging Deviance
1600-2000, by Ari Sitas et al.
A Book Review by Yorim Spoelder
Changing India: Yesterday, Today
and Tomorrow, edited by Gernot Saalmann
A Review by Maryam Papi
