| 1. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
-
Integration and green business development in a trust-building context
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference “Comparative Co-Production”, SunSquare Conference Centre, 5–7 November 2018, Cape Town, South Africa.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The success of social science research and collaboration projects which seek to gain involvement from a particular group of participants are highly reliant upon the quality of social relationships between all stakeholders and actors involved. This means that the quality of these relationships is reliant upon trust and obligations that are inherent within. Trust is a multifaceted process of sensemaking which is developed over time and is created and reproduced though social interactions at both an interpersonal and institutional level. It is argued that the most significant relationship within a project that seeks the engagement of immigrant communities is that between the project team and the gatekeeper. However, empirical examples show that projects focusing on specific kinds of development (like green development) may overshadow the project’s social context in terms of who it is really for. Moreover, such projects may also inadvertently cater to actors already established on the local market (rather than focusing on the neediest) or even breed stereotypes about immigrants (such as that “all” immigrants are farmers, and hence green development is suitable for them). Unsurprisingly, unreflective approaches to themed integration projects are likely to raise suspicion and, probably undeservingly, spawn negative media attention. This presentation focuses on the backside of implementing a themed integration process in a setting marred by low levels of trust in municipal authorities, past difficulties of implementation and general reluctance of key actors. By making use of reflexive autoethnographic methodology, this presentation opens up to both the possibilities and challenges of an integration project aiming to create new jobs within green development. It also includes a number of recommendations for successful implementation.
|
|
| 2. |
- Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
-
Toward a reconceptualization of the “urban” and “rural” as conceptual and analytical categories in the social sciences
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Arts and Social Sciences Journal. - : Aston Journals. - 2151-6200. ; 3
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Globalization implies a general shift in spatio-temporal relations and the simultaneous deterritorialization of cultural phenomena orchestrated by the multiple global flows of people, ideas, and fashions. Within the context of globalization, it is troublesome for social scientists to continue using the “urban–rural” dichotomy as distinctive analytical and methodological categories because it tends to suggest a contingency in the pattern and character of social phenomena. This article sets out to theoretically rethink this conceptualization because of the multi-stranded and culturally embedded nature of human behavior in both space and time which has led to difficulties in delineating rigid subject boundaries today unlike in the past. Drawing on empirical data from diverse social phenomena, but particularly from the urban procurement and consumption of medicinal plant recipes, “dualistic” religious inclination and urban agriculture, we demonstrate that the geographic, spatio-temporal conceptualization of distinctive urban and rural phenomena are problematic. We suggest the notions of “urban-ruralism” and “rural-urbanism” as theoretical and methodological reconceptualizations to capture multiple embedded processes and to show that there exists a type of behavioral continuum/consistency because individuals have adopted hyphenated identities.
|
|
| 3. |
- Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis, 1973-
(författare)
-
Challenging Patriarchy: Trade, outward migration and the internationalization of Commercial sex among Bayang and Ejagham women in Southwest Cameroon
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Health, Culture and Society. - United States of America : University Library System, University of Pittsburgh. - 2161-6590. ; 1:1, s. 166-192
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper documents the specific local and global social and economic forces that led to the outward migration ofBayang and Ejagham women to work as commercial sex workers on the Cameroon-Nigeria border regions in the1980s and 1990s. It demonstrates that these women’s personal accumulation strategies are adaptative- drawing ontime and space specific modes of capitalist accumulation and kinship systems of power. The intertwined nature ofthese forms of accumulation shows that patriarchal forms of power and capitalist forms of accumulation in thisregion were not competitive-but rather complementary systems. This conjuncture also gave women the latitude toclaim some form of sexual and economic agency, usefully suggesting that at least in Africa, patriarchy as a powerfield is dynamic and relational, simultaneously opening up spaces for both resistance and agency. Although theimpact of sex work has been disproportionate since most women were involved in subsistence sex and given the riskof violence and of contracting HIV/AIDS, they however reconfigured gender relations, but have not achievedliberation as most remain trapped in poverty.
|
|
| 4. |
- Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis, 1973-
(författare)
-
Human rights and socio-legal resistance against female genital cutting : an anthropological perspective
- 2011. - 1
-
Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)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.
|
|
| 5. |
- Keshavarz, Mahmoud, et al.
(författare)
-
Orientations of Europe : Boats, the Mediterranean Sea and the Materialities of Contemporary Mobility Regimes
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Borderlands e-journal. - Sydney, NSW, Australia : Borderlands. - 1447-0810. ; 17:2, s. 1-27
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper is an investigation of how the specific design and materiality of the artefact of the boat, as well as the various material, visual, technical and geographical practices at work in the space of Mediterranean Sea, orientate a specific space and produce a selective politics of seeing, saving and framing of bodies on the move. It highlights how the very presence and movement of ‘unseaworthy boats’ in this actively orientated space of the sea brings to the fore the many strategies and techniques that have been employed to make it a space of European control. We argue that this is an active and deadly orientation carried out in an often dispersed number of practices and interventions within a seemingly flat space of water. The paper concludes that border transgressors’ act of moving by boat, with all of the losses involved, both challenge and potentially reorientate European mobility regimes.
|
|
| 6. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(författare)
-
The role of trust in street-level organisations within integration projects
- 2019
-
Ingår i: The 17th Annual ESPANET Conference: “Social citizenship, migration and conflict – Equality and opportunity in European welfare states”, The European Network for Social Policy Analysis, 5–7 September 2019, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Swedish immigrant integration holds a unique contradiction in that it is lauded as having the ‘best’ policy in Europe (MIPEX), but its outcomes are amongst some of the poorest (Eurostats). Currently, responsibility of implementing integration policy is held by national agencies at the macro-level. Such a structure, however, is likely to overshadow what goes on at the micro-level, an oversight which is also reflected within current research. By adopting a street-level organisation (SLOs) approach, this research sets out to explore the gap between formal policy provision and measurable outcomes, where trust is situated as a critical dimension within the process of integration that is yet to be captured by other means. This presentation explores trust as a reason for the disparity between policy and outcomes, with the help of a case study that involves an SLO situated in Gothenburg; more specifically, a suburb characterised by a 90% immigrant population, and its unexploited social capital. To resolve this issue Gothenburg embarked on a four-year EU sponsored project concerned with labour market integration. Under this umbrella, a sub-project has been launched to engage 500 immigrants visiting an SLO within green business development as a means to integration. However, while initially promising, several intricacies surrounding the studied SLO, including its structure, history and leadership, has brought forth a number of worrying insights that have severed trust-building and impeded future work. Previous studies exploring the success of projects at the street level have successfully used qualitative methods, including reflexive non-participant observation. In our research we have used field notes collected over a six-month period from the project’s inception, supplemented by time lines of interactions and stakeholder engagements. The data have been coded to decipher key incidents and exchanges where trust has played a pivotal role in the dynamics between stakeholders, and for the direction of the project, as such. Given the responsibility that SLOs currently hold within immigrant integration, the personal street-level interactions from which (dis)trust evolves need to be regarded as significantly important. Our findings suggest that trust is greatly underestimated within SLOs, with distrust disrupting the success of the integration process, often resulting in project failure. This presentation will make recommendations as to how a SLO approach can contribute to trust-building, which will go some way in addressing existing ambiguities and inconsistencies between policy and outcomes concerning immigrant integration.
|
|
| 7. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
-
Land or people? On the iatrogenesis of conflation
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Acta Geobalcanica. - : Geobalcanica Society. - 1857-9833. ; 2:2
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In a wish to abandon essentialism to contingency, this paper looks into whether the rural-urban binary could be a cultural burden so incompatible with the layered realities of advanced deprivation that instead of helping the deprived, it deprives the help of its carrying capacity. Departing from the idea that cultural mechanisms are capable of allowing for conceptual dichotomies to create oppression, this paper addresses the concepts of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ as potentially counterproductive ideas in policy and planning when deployed in areas of severe social deprivation. Using a local example, this problem is addressed in the context of a recently finalized development project, whose focus of approach shifted from ‘urban’ to ‘rural’. We demonstrate how ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ are not neutral spatial qualifiers but problematic filters superimposed onto the already problematic concept of “social sustainability”. Here, we draw on the principle of iatrogenesis, which denotes any benevolent action that inadvertently produces undesired outcomes. We argue that since many areas lack the presumed conceptual foundation for a specific brand of action, development programs labeled as ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ are not only likely to fail, but also to potentially cause harm. We conclude that more context-sensitive understanding of the human condition beyond inflexible labeling is needed in order to arrive at more adequate interventions.
|
|
| 8. |
- Geissinger, Andrea, et al.
(författare)
-
Assessing user perceptions of the interplay between the sharing, access, platform and community- based economies
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Information Technology and People. - : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 0959-3845 .- 1758-5813. ; 33:3, s. 1037-1051
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: Digitally intermediated peer-to-peer exchanges have accelerated in occurrence, and as a consequence, they have introduced an increased pluralism of connotations. Accordingly, this paper aims to assess user perceptions of the interplay between the sharing, access, platform, and community-based economies.Design/methodology/approach: The sharing, access, platform, and community-based economies have been systematically tracked in the social media landscape using Social Media Analytics (SMA). In doing so, a total material of 62,855 publicly posted user-generated content concerning the four respective economies were collected and analyzed.Findings: Even though the sharing economy has been conceptually argued to be interlinked with the access, platform, and community-based economies, the empirical results of the study do not validate this interlinkage. Instead, the results regarding user perceptions in social media show that the sharing, access, platform, and community-based economies manifest as clearly separated.Originality/value: This paper contributes to existing literature by offering an empirical validation, as well as an in-depth understanding, of the sharing economy's interlinkage to other economies, along with the extent to which the overlaps between these economies manifest in social media.
|
|
| 9. |
- Vitalis Pemunta, Ngambouk, 1973
(författare)
-
Moving beyond the hierarchical knowledge/power nexus in anti-Female circumcision campaigns in Africa
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.. - New York : Nova Science Publishers. ; , s. 1-62
-
Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)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 …
|
|
| 10. |
- Biegańska, Jadwiga, et al.
(författare)
-
From policy to misery? The State Agricultural Farms vs. 'the rural'
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Quaestiones Geographicae. - : Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan. - 2082-2103 .- 2081-6383 .- 0137-477X. ; 38:4
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 1989 was a turning point within the socio-economic development in the former Eastern bloc, initiating a system transformation that affected the society at large. It also contributed to the crystallisation of certain cultural landscapes, hitherto largely illegible due to the inhibition of spatial processes encountered during Communism. In Poland, after a quarter-century of free market economy, the focus on social problems began to expand to the spatial realm as well. It became apparent that the progressive social polarisation that followed was most prominent in environments striated by a particular landscape type – the former State Agricultural Farm (PGR). Considering PGRs “the epitome of rurality” subject to ideas informing the direction of contemporary “rural development” prompts a different way of looking at the problem. In this paper, we investigate the concept of rurality in the discursive tenor of implemented policy and contrast it with contextualised empirical examples. Our findings suggest that efficient policy should be confronted with the expectations of residents at the local level, while introducing top-down actions usually ends in failure as in the case of post-PGR estates.
|
|
