| 1. |
- Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis, 1973-
(author)
-
Human rights and socio-legal resistance against female genital cutting : an anthropological perspective
- 2011. - 1
-
Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Human rights-based interventions against genital cutting practices (FGC) have increasingly emphasised the need for legislation against such practices with little attention to the consequences. Accordingly,the international community has compelled state parties by linking international development aid to good governance and human rights- the rights of women and children- through the elimination of genital surgeries and other gender-based discriminatory practices by adopting appropriate legislation that will deter practitioners. This ethnographic study explores diverse local reactions among FGC practicing Ejagham ethnicities in Southwest Cameroon. It highlights the dilemmas inherent in an anti-genital cutting legislation. Drawing from the experiences of African countries that adopted anti- FGC legislation, it demonstrates that the ''bifurcated power structure” in the postcolonial Context and therefore multiple overlapping authority systems- between the national government and traditional village authority system - and the state's lack of '”statehardness” are some of the dilemmas compromising the adoption and implementation of an anti-FGC legislation in Cameroon.
|
|
| 2. |
- Vitalis Pemunta, Ngambouk, 1973
(author)
-
Moving beyond the hierarchical knowledge/power nexus in anti-Female circumcision campaigns in Africa
- 2013
-
In: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.. - New York : Nova Science Publishers. ; , s. 1-62
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- One controversial issue of unending emotional debate between Western and Non-Western societies pitting relativists against universalists is the ritual practice of female genital cutting (FGC). This debate mirrors larger issues of power about the social construction of reality and the positionality of actors, dichotomies between Western and Non-Western societies as well as a paradigmatic clash between modern/scientific knowledge and local knowledge systems and practices. This essay argues that there can be a synergy between modern and local knowledge systems in anti-FGC campaigns and not the outright rejection of the latter as “superstition” since both knowledge systems are not antithetical to each other. Based on ethnographic interviews from Cameroon and Sierra Leone, this chapter attempts an explanation of why decades of negative publicity which is the anchor of most anti-FGC activism, laws forbidding the practice and human rights activism has not been matched by any noticeable behavioural changes in attitudes and practices regarding this ritual practice. The chapter argues that the multi-dimensionality of ritual FGC as well as the entanglement of anti-FGC campaigns at both the global and local scales in unequal power relationships negatively affects these sensitization campaigns and has instead led to the hardening of identities and resistance at the local level. It suggests that to build effective dialogue and move the campaigns forward, interveners must adopt contextualism by “wearing native spectacles’’. They must think globally and act locally. In other words, they should set aside their Western cultural baggage on the normative …
|
|
| 3. |
- Andersson, Fredrik, et al.
(author)
-
Speglingar av en förvaltning i förändring: Reformeringen av Försäkringskassan
- 2012
-
Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Svensk statsförvaltning genomgår, precis som privat sektor, ständigt förändringar och omstruktureringar, drivna av olika samhällstrender, ledarskapsidéer och politiska styrfilosofier. Vid dessa förändringar ställs verksamheten inför vägval som på olika sätt kan påverka dess förmåga att leva upp till omgivningens krav och förväntningar. Samtidigt finns inte utrymme för risktagande, eftersom förvaltningens agerande och beslut kan vara avgörande för individers försörjning och framtid. Det ställer stora krav på dessa myndigheter, som balanserar ekonomimål, demokratimål och rättssäkerhetsmål. Denna bok avser att spegla olika organisatoriska dilemman och utmaningar som myndigheter i svensk och internationell statsförvaltning kan möta. Detta sker med utgångspunkt i en studie av Försäkringskassans enmyndighetsreform år 2005 och dess förändringsarbete under åren därefter. Bokens författare kommer från tre olika ämnesområden: företagsekonomi, nationalekonomi och statsvetenskap. Samtliga är knutna till Lunds universitet och till forskningsprogrammet ”Från många till en?” (2008-2012). Programmet finansierades av Försäkringskassan, men genomfördes självständigt. Med boken hoppas författarna kunna öka förståelsen – och intresset - för frågor om organisation, styrning och ledning i en statsförvaltning i förändring.
|
|
| 4. |
- Andersson, Janicke, et al.
(author)
-
Att leva med tiden : Samhälls- och kulturanalytiska perspektiv på ålder och åldrande
- 2011
-
Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Att leva med tiden handlar om vad ålder och åldrande kan betyda i olika sammanhang och hur betydelsen förändras över tid och rum. I boken diskuteras olika samhälls- och kulturvetenskapliga perspektiv på ålder och åldrande. Boken belyser vilka konsekvenser vetenskapliga sätt att se på åldrande kan få i analys av, och relation till, vardagsliv, vetenskaplig verksamhet och i det offentliga livet. Förutom historiska tillbakablickar presenteras också teorier om ålder, normalitet och identitet samt ålder ur ett intersektionellt perspektiv.
|
|
| 5. |
- Vitalis Pemunta, Ngambouk, 1973
(author)
-
The Challenges of Conservation and Large-scale Agricultural Development in an Era of Neoliberal Environmental Governance in Cameroon
- 2016
-
In: Privatization: Policies, Developments and Challenges / [ed] Amelia Hansen, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.. - New York : Nova Science Publishers. - 9781634847490 ; , s. 1-50
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The adoption of Western imposed neoliberal development policies by most African countries have been accompanied by unfettered effects. Through these policies, Western-based development institutions (World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) have subsequently come to have a lot of leverage on development policies and practices in the donor dependent countries of the Less Developed world including Cameroon. In Cameroon, one area of neoliberal governmentality in involves the management of the environment which is at crossroads with the establishment of largescale agricultural plantations by Western multinationals in the country. This paper explores how the American-based agro-industrial company Herakles Farm has thoroughly disregarded state and international laws and codes of conduct in the setting up of its contentious oil palm plantation that is largely located in between protected areas in the ever-green forest of Southwest Cameroon. Through its creation of uninhabited spaces via protected areas in the region, as well as by the ceding of land around these same protected areas for large-scale agricultural development, the state of Cameroon is involved in the reordering of man-nature relationship. The state´s action bespeaks of the chasm between conservation and large-scale agricultural development in an era of neoliberal environmental governance. The paper argues that the Herakle concession is a means by which the state is territorializing and controlling this unruly frontier space. It is also representative of a long trajectory of the marginalization of this space that has been discursively produced over and over and that allows for dispossession and accumulation in the name of development. The state´s creation of developmentalizable and governable spaces has wrought violence on local livelihoods in a region that has been consistently produced as a frontier space by both colonial and postcolonial powers.
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
| 7. |
-
Ekonomisk sociologi : en introduktion
- 2014
-
Editorial collection (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Denna bok ger en bred introduktion till olika forskningsriktningar och problemområden inom det snabbt expanderande forskningsfältet ekonomisk sociologi. Vad betyder pengar i människors liv? Vilka roller och maktförhållanden präglar våra relationer på anonyma marknader? Hur ska vi förstå relationen mellan stat och ekonomi, och vilken roll spelar arbetstagar- och arbetsgivarparterna respektive de politiska organisationerna för hur denna relation utformas? Hur fungerar den globala kapitalismen och vilken roll spelar konsumismens kultur och motkulturer? Finns det olika vägar till en såväl ekologiskt som ekonomiskt hållbar utveckling? Många är de frågor omkring vårt samhälle som samtidigt är sociologiskt relevanta och ekonomiskt relaterade. Denna bok ger en bred introduktion till olika forskningsriktningar och problemområden inom det snabbt expanderande forskningsfältet ekonomisk sociologi. Som lärobok kan den användas såväl inom undervisning vid kurser i sociologi, som i närliggande discipliner med intresse för samspelet mellan ekonomi och samhälle.
|
|
| 8. |
- Vitalis Pemunta, Ngambouk, 1973
(author)
-
Health and cultural values: female circumcision within the context of HIV/AIDS in Cameroon
- 2011
-
Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This book provides a nuanced analysis of the transformations that the ritual cutting of Female Circumcision (FC) recently underwent within the changing medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic among Ejagham tribes in Southwest Cameroon. Based on local level ethnography, it captures the multivocal perspectives and agency of participants thereby putting to question the uncritical feminist stance that Third World Women lack agency and are chattel. As the highest rite of patriarchy, the quintessential icon of gendered personhood and femininity, FC remains salient even when it is no longer the criterion for membership into the Moninkim secret society especially within the new medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic because it is intertwined with the whole cultural political economy of the Ejaghams. The commercialization of this feminine institution charged with feminine personhood through its spectacular performances (enacting matrimonial relations) within and beyond the Ejagham locale is evidence of its continuous centrality in the life world of participants. By focusing on health alone, anti-HIV/AIDS and anti-FC interventions by both the state and civil society actors miss the point. FC is increasingly becoming a human, social, gender rights and development issue calling for a multi-pronged development approach. The threat of the HIV/AIDS pandemic led to ferocious intergenerational debates over moral values about female inordinate sexuality and to the double appropriation of the concept of human security. Conservatives maintain that FC tempers women's sexuality and is therefore a useful mechanism to keep women in matrimonial service, a moral check on inordinate sexuality and a ''native'' antidote against the scourge of the pandemic. Anti-FC advocates point to the bloodletting entailed by the ritual procedures as fuelling the spread of the pandemic through the spread of diseases with HIV/AIDS inclusive among participants. A third group of cultural insiders opt for the cautious appropriation of modernity while simultaneously maintaining tradition: medicalisation of the ritual procedures. By reducing the complexity and nuances of the ritual cutting to health alone, anti-FC activism has instead produced a backlash marked by simultaneous contestation and practice. Paradoxically, the anti-FC campaigns have resulted in the privatization of FC on increasingly younger girls. However, the recent waiving of the ritual cutting as a precondition for membership into the Moninkim cult-because of the ageing of the initial initiates, the health risk of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and anti-FC advocacy campaigns by local NGOs-shows that change is underway. Simultaneously, inter-tribal marriages with members of non-circumcising tribes and romantic love relationships beyond the purview of the traditional patriarchal orbit have led younger lovers increasingly to seek mutually satisfying love relationships for which FC, a virtuous cut, becomes an obstacle.
|
|
| 9. |
- Vitalis Pemunta, Ngambouk, 1973, et al.
(author)
-
The tragedy of the governmentality of nature: the case of national parks in Cameroon
- 2013
-
In: National Parks: Sustainable Development, Conservation Strategies, and Environmental Effects, Georgia, United States / [ed] Johnson B. Smith, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2013, 1, p. 1-56. - New York : Nova Science Publishers, Inc.. ; , s. 1-56
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Cameroon’s rich humid tropical rainforest is degrading at an alarming rate. The government has deployed several governmentality regimes including fortress conservation through the establishment and gazzetment of national parks and protected areas to arrest this disastrous situation. On the basis of two case studies, this chapter explores the evolution of the governance of national parks and the institutional obstacles that make protected areas a parody in Cameroon. The paper argues that while the creation and implementation of national parks as artifacts and processes illustrate the nature and extent of global governmentality upon these regions, their people and their natural resources, it highlights the chasm between law as a governmental rationale which often fails to recognise traditional usage rights and creates conflicts between protected areas and local communities. This scenerio is compounded by the acute underdevelopment that characterises protected areas where top-down development is the norm. The paper suggests, among others-a middle ground that balances both local and national, as well as national and international interests as the basis for achieving sustainable people-centered development and conservation. This will entail a radical policy shift from the present paramilitary approach of outright protectionism which is a recipe for disaster to a system that takes account of the interests of local people while still conserving biodiversity as well as the re-institutionalisation of customary land tenure norms with new legal provisions. Furthermore, sustainable national park management practices are needed. This could include the creation of a Conservation Development Authority with the mandate to initiate private sector partnership and also encourage community development and participation in the effective management and control of protected areas. The mandate of this body must incorporate active community participation in decision-making and planning for the sustainable use of ecosystem services and development of ethno-tourism, if trends in rural emigration and depopulation are to be halted and the national park is to be protected in line with sustainability principles.
|
|
| 10. |
- Funck, Elin K., Docent, 1979-, et al.
(author)
-
Handbok för systematiska litteratur- och dokumentstudier inom samhällsvetenskapen
- 2021
-
Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Denna rapport syftar till att inspirera studenter (och forskare) att pröva på att använda systematiska litteratur- och dokumentstudier i sina uppsatser. Rapportens struktur följer en generell arbetsprocess för en uppsats som använder dessa metoder. Faser som planering, genomförande och sammanställning av studier beskrivs och problematiseras. I rapporten exemplifieras och konkretiseras de metodologiska diskussionerna med syften, frågeställningar, teoretiska inramningar, resultatbeskrivningar och analyser hämtade från såväl studenters uppsatser som vår egen forskning. En viktig del i rapporten är synliggörandet av studenters egna röster och åsikter. Tidigare studenter har bjudits in att för att reflektera över sitt arbete med litteratur- eller dokumentstudier. Studenternas reflektioner har vävts in löpande i rapporten, men redovisas också separat i ett eget kapitel.
|
|
