DevISSues volume 15, number 2, November 2013

ACADEMIA AND ACTIVISMS

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Also in this issue: • From Generation to Generation – Victor Canda follows in parents’ footsteps at ISS • Jerome Gama Surur – Diary of an ISS alumnus • ISS Open Day 2014

DevISSues DevelopmentISSues

Volume15/Number2/November 2013

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From the Editorial Board The world is experiencing a global wave of activism: in communities, cities, and at the global level. It has spread quickly after its start in 2010 from North Africa (Tunisia, Libya, Egypt), Latin America (Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico), and Asia (Turkey, Indonesia, India), to European cities (London, Madrid, Athens), and to any major city in the world (Occupy Wall Street in 2011). Recent protests in India, Brazil, and Turkey underline that this is not just an incident, as several students will argue in the following pages.

As we all monitor these developments with a certain amount of optimism, several of us have more closely examined the dynamics, characteristics, and causes of this increase of transnational activism. As a result, many research papers and journal articles have been produced on global, as well as local, activism over the past few years. This was a reason for DevISSues to explore how this activism has entered the academic environment of the ISS. How have academics, and particularly ISS students and staff, been participating in these protests? And is it at all possible to combine ‘activism’ or an activist background with academic studies on development?

Already identified as an important topic in the previous (July 2013) DevISSues, the current special theme issue of DevISSues on ‘Academia and Activisms’ will explore these questions further by looking at examples, both inside the institute as well as outside. The May 2013 issue of Development and Change (the other ISS journal) dedicated its Forum Debate section to the theme of ‘Transforming Activisms’ (yes in plural, as activisms appear in many forms). For DevISSues we asked three ISS students and/or alumni to report on the activisms in their country in short blogs: Rui from Brazil, Madhura from India, and Cevahir from Turkey. All three were closely following the recent protests in their countries, and provide vivid personal insights.

We also carry a report by ISS faculty staff Wendy Harcourt on the special panel on Activism during the June 2013 conference at the ISS of the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPPE). There is an article by Ruth Milkman, a New Yorkbased researcher who wrote a research report on Occupy Wall Street, and spoke about this at the ISS in September this year.

Remko Berkhout discusses the importance of linking activists NGOs and academia and examines the Knowledge Programme between Hivos and the ISS, which has been successfully running over the past years to bridge the theory and practice of activisms.

And then we carry a story on the re-emergence of activist interest inside ISS in teaching courses, such as the new specialization on Social Movements (SMART). Especially the new course on Participatory Action Research (PAR) is examined.

It was fun to bring all these people together to write about Academia and Activisms, particularly in relation to the ISS and people working in the institute, and we hope it will inspire those who believed the two are incompatible. This issue demonstrates there is some creative and exciting new interaction happening, and we are quite sure this is only the tip of the iceberg….

About the cover ACADEMIA AND ACTIVISMS

Kees Biekart (Guest Editor)

Also in this issue: • From Generation to Generation – Victor Canda follows in parents’ footsteps at ISS • Jerome Gama Surur – Diary of an ISS alumnus • ISS Open Day 2014

DevISSues DevelopmentISSues

Volume16/Number2/november 2013

The cover photo was taken by Sacha Knox who graduated from ISS in 2012. It shows ISS students creating their own ‘web of meaning’ during one of the last lessons of the Participatory Action Research course.

This is what Sacha wrote about the photo and the activity: ‘The last activity that we did together: “web of meaning”. The web could not exist without the hands of each participant. As with the course, we created it together and I know that it will extend beyond these pages in almost infinite ways. My deepest thanks to all’.

ISS is the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam

Contents

Page 4 / On Activism and Scholarship Wendy Harcourt Page 6 / The Giant Awoke (Again) Rui Mesquita Cordeiro Page 7 / Reflections on the Occupy Wall Street Movement Ruth Milkman Page 10 / ‘Chapullers’ in Turkey: ‘Everywhere Taksim, Everywhere Resistance!’

Cevahir Özgüler Page 12 / Bridging Practice and Academia: the Hivos Knowledge Programme Remko Berkhout Page 15 / Protest Against Rape in India Madhura Chakraborty Page 15 / ISS News Page 17 / Re-merging Interest for Participatory Action Research Kees Biekart & Rosalba Icaza Page 20 / Passing the Torch: From Generation to Generation Victor Hugo Canda Page 22 / From Rotterdam to South Sudan: Politics and planting trees Diary of an ISS alumnus Page 23 / Development and Change Open Day

The views expressed in DevISSues are those of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute.

The online versions of all articles with full bibliography can be found at www.iss.nl/devissues

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On Activism and Scholarship Wendy Harcourt It may have seemed odd to hear Susan George, a well-known author of 14 books, in her keynote speech to the fourth IIPPE conference (held at ISS 9-11 July 2013) to be continually deferring to ‘academia’ as ‘knowing’ more than she did. At the same time, she kept suggesting what academics should be strategically writing about, and reminding them that there was a larger audience out there; if only academics could write about relevant issues. Given that this was a conference entitled ‘Political Economy, Activism and Alternative Economic Strategies’ you would hope that the academics in the audience were not only listening but also already engaged in writing societally relevant pieces.

Nevertheless, there remains a niggling concern at George’s speech – how is academic research relevant and important for activism? Given the tenets of her speech, it is important to acknowledge the friction between academia and activism. If academic research is to be relevant to activism, what kind of research is needed? Does it demand new forms of research and would such new forms be accepted in academe (given current academic concerns of ‘measurements’ of excellence)? Can such research be useful for activism and those wanting to bring about strategic change? How does doing research inform activism – who is the subject and object of the research? How does engaging in activism change the nature of the research itself? These are particularly relevant questions today as we watch a new wave of activism, since 2010, that harks back to the 1968 and other ‘revolutionary’ moments in quite extraordinary ways.

During the IIPPE conference there were several sessions where these questions were raised as researchers met to

discuss their research on activism. This article will focus on the session devoted to ‘Transforming Activisms Post- 2010’ that asked: ‘which type of (academic) research is needed to support the current wave of global activisms’?

The session was based on contributions to the Development and Change Forum 2013 issue that looked at ‘the upwelling of civic activism against the prevailing economic and political order’ (Biekart and Fowler, 2013: 527-546) across the world. The interest in that journal issue was in seeking answers to the question of what has led people in all walks and lives and locations to challenge ‘old politics’, leading to a spate of civic led actions since 2010 (op. cit. 529). While not yet being able to say if indeed 2010 was a turning point in the history of political and economic change, the issue examined how ‘old’ politics seems to be losing its connection ‘to time, place and generation’ as new and different forms of politics are emerging ‘surfing on the waves’ of the availability of and access to new social media and electronic communications (op. cit. 529).

The session did in part answer George’s question about the claims of the relevance of academic research. The four people presenting – Kees Biekart, Jenny Pearce, Nishant Shah and myself – undertake research as people engaged in activism. They see their work as part of a social enquiry helping to build new, more equitable social realities and social worlds. The presentations focused on learning by doing, aware of differences among the forms of activisms they were studying and engaging in. They were not interested in putting activisms into tidy boxes neatly labelled, but about creating new forms of knowledge that are co-productive rather than extractive

so that the process of writing about the activisms itself can help lead to change.

This positioning is a delicate one – how to write about activism in which you are yourselves engaged? This goes against the grain of claims of objectivity and distance from your subject in terms of historical distance as well as being too close to understand what are real and what are incidental changes that are happening due to personal bias. At the same time, the nature of activism is such that in order to study it you are yourself implicated in the process. You can only understand what is happening by being there and being involved. Indeed, just living in this time means we are witnesses and engaged in activism. Methodological issues of writing ontologically, reflexively, of listening and being engaged with the subject you are writing about, are at the root of challenging some forms of academic writing that prides itself on objective disengagement. How to write as academics not as journalists, or bloggers, or YouTubers about events that are unfolding? How to theorize well when many activists themselves are using theories to challenge the nexus of power and knowledge and are suspicious of western modern academic claims of truth?

These issues were taken up by the presentations that focused on the current wave of protests since 2010.

Kees Biekart opened the session by asking if this wave of protest post-2010 represents a tipping point and a historical rejection of neoliberal capitalism. Are we witnessing a new generation of activists that will lead to major economic and political change?

He asked what were the driving forces for these new global phenomena?

One apparent answer is the use of social media to mobilize – there is a strong

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virtual visibility where calls for action can spread like wild fire via Tweets, blogs, email, web campaigns and other social media platforms to create massive public outrage, bringing together a huge diversity of participants and issues.

This rapid communication allows for a fluidity in organizing and mobilizing that is very different from the old political organizing style by trade unions, political parties or non-governmental organizations. Another drive of this wave of activism is mistrust of the old party-politics based representation, and huge frustration at the vast socioeconomic inequalities of neoliberal global economy fuelled by a growing sense of precarity, particularly among young men and women and the empty promise of consumer-led growth.

Jenny Pearce pointed to new forms of struggle emerging outside the work place – where the citizen consumer is at the heart of the activist struggle – the ‘precariat’ replacing the proletariat as, for example, when young people in Bradford protested for the right to consume designer jeans as much as for the right to work for a decent wage.

The interesting question is to understand what are the links between the ‘precariat’, the educated middle class, young and old, women and men who are turning up to protest in places like Occupy. Pearce, undertaking research in the UK, points to state disengagement from the welfare of citizens and how the notion of ‘Big Society’ constructs the citizen as the consumer. In her research she is working together with young people to co-produce knowledge about activisms that recognize new forms of non-authoritarian power coming from the activism of the community. The key actors are ‘precariats’ who are not

looking to the workplace or the state but rather to the community as the place to act. The form of activism she researches is new forms of cooperation in the communities, building new ways of living that are based on different forms of power that come from below in what Pearce calls ‘organic articulations’.

Nishant Shah sees virtual communication as key to the changes in the new activisms. He spoke of the spectacle of social change – the fluidity of the shared pictures, videos and slogans that move digitally from place to place. He sees the flattening of history as people live real and virtual change in a systemic shift to how we understand resistance and change. This potential is leading to many creative forms of protest: resistance in art, music and text that is not interesting in academic or business models of what is valid knowledge or truth.

I spoke instead about the mix of old and new activisms in the reconfiguration of power relations within feminist movements as part of the post-2010 activisms.

I argued that feminist movements are engaging in new activisms in ways that are shifting the context of feminist concerns. I gave as an example the biennial Forums of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID).

I see the AWID Forums as part of the new form of civic actions, while maintaining continuity with the values and principles of feminism. I proposed that future research needed to look at the tensions and contradictions within these spaces of the old and new as well as the importance of needing virtual and actual ‘safe’ spaces, particularly in relation to violence and violations against women that require rapid campaigning responses.

In the discussion that followed several observations were made that the researchers plan to take up as they continue their work through the ISS Civic Innovation Research Initiative (CIRI, see www.iss.nl/CIRI) There is something ‘new’ that has been happening since 2010 that requires different forms of research; forms that are co-productive and not extractive, but also there is a need for continuity between ‘old’ histories and understandings of how activist networks (whether virtual or not) operate.

It is important not to generalize about why activisms emerge. It is critical to look closely at the context – people will engage for many reasons: when they see possibilities opening, when they are angry or are desperate. It is important not to whitewash the anger nor the conflict and danger of violence.

At the same time the ‘contagion’ of these current activisms is very interesting. The importance of technology is clear – but technologies are not in the hands of civic activists alone; there is also the state, business and military using technologies – there are dangers and contradictions, as well as issues of access and censorship.

One question that resonated throughout the discussion was: how to undertake research that is about making things happen and is part of ‘what is to be done’. How are activisms unfolding – what triggers people to go to the square or blogspot? How do these actions move from protest to social movement organizing? How are they linked to changes in the community? How is protest and resistance leading to deeper transformation? The question goes back to the challenges raised by George in her keynote and in her own profuse writings – how to ensure that good social science is done not for its own sake, but for the process of contributing profoundly and importantly to societal change.

Dr Wendy Harcourt is Associate Professor at ISS. She has written extensively on sexual and reproductive rights, environment, transnational feminism, globalization and development from a gender perspective.

Participants at the IIPPE conference held at ISS in June 2013. Thanks to Susan Newman for the use of this photo

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The Giant Awoke

(Again)

Rui Mesquita Cordeiro On the 1st of January 2003, when Lula da Silva began his first term as elected president of Brazil, millions of people gathered in celebration in Brazilian streets for the inauguration of the first popular president elected in Brazil. Ten years later, millions of people gather on the streets again, now to protest against several different agendas, from the rising costs of public transport in Brazilian cities, to the perceived increase of corruption levels in all levels of government.

During the past decade, during which some 30 million people ascended into the so called Brazilian new middle class (‘class C’1), it seems that democratic and social justice policies now face a new grassroots push forward, with a renewed agenda. This agenda not only demands public access to public policies, but also that these policies are of a higher quality: not only quality of the final services rendered to the population, but also quality in the process of discussing, deciding and implementing the policies themselves.

June 2013 was a remarkable month in Brazil as protests erupted around the country. While protests against public transport fare hikes and corruption scandals (involving the exorbitant costs related to the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup hosted in Brazil) surfaced the most, ethics in politics and a deepened level of citizen participation, involving real

people’s decision-making, were also part of this new agenda. These protests continued beyond the June 2013 events and became the starting point of the so-called ‘Brazilian Spring’.

The consequences of the ‘Brazilian Spring’ are still being counted and debated. However, the process served to amplify social processes and counter movements of the past. For example, in late August 2013, Globo Media (by far the biggest Brazilian media and press company) stated that its editorial support to the 1964 military coup in Brazil was a mistake: ‘Since the events of June, a choir returned to the streets: “The truth is hard, Globo supported the dictatorship”. In fact, it is a truth, and also, in fact, a hard truth’2 stated the company, to the surprise of many.

Also important is the impression that social movements, especially youth movements, are starting to reassert/ re-learn, a clear separation of roles between civil society and government.

Following Lula’s election in 2003, there was major confusion within social movements and civil society in general, as supporters began saying ‘now we are government’. This is problematic on several levels, not least because the separation of citizens’ movements from the government is key to democratic health, irrespective of whether the government is elected by large sectors of such movements or not. This is

exemplified by the response of the current Roussoff government to the June 2013 protests: the President has, on the one hand, called for political reforms, while at the same time there have been renewed violent police tendencies3.

The Brazilian Spring is a heterogeneous movement, with no clear leadership, and with many of the calls to action being released through the social media channels, gathering people with different political views together, all to fight against the perceived corruption and for more public policies in general4.

This brings renewed hope not only to Brazil, but to Latin America as a whole, as many other countries are watching and wondering about their own processes. The hope that the Latin American ‘giant’ is again awaking, from inside out, is crucial to help us all understand what will be the future of the Brazilian development process, so far largely focused on a social justice model.

Rui Mesquita Cordeiro graduated from ISS in 2006 with an MA in Development Studies (speciali­zation Politics of Alternative Development).

He currently is a PhD researcher on Public Policy and Government at ‘Fundação Getúlio Vargas’ (FGV), in São Paulo, Brazil and director of Latin American and Caribbean programs at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. rui.cordeiro@gvmail.br and rmc@wkkf.org Full references are provided in the online version of this article.

Neri, M. (2010). ‘The New Middle Class in Brazil:

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The bright side of the poor’. São Paulo: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, FGV. Retrieved on 04/ Nov/2013 at: http://www.cps.fgv.br/cps/ncm/ 31/Aug/2013, at: http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/

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apoio-editorial-ao-golpe-de-64-foi-umerro-9771604

18/Jun/2013, at: http://goo.gl/YRgeYg

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As described by: Biekart, K. and Fowler, A.

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(2009). “Civic Driven Change: A concise guide to the basics”. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, ISS. At 04/Nov/2013: http://goo.gl/ NHxVuw and http://goo.gl/1aSdtC. Brazilian National Congress taken by protesters. Photo by ‘Midia Ninja’

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Reflections on the Occupy Wall Street Movement Ruth Milkman

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) burst onto the world stage on September 17, 2011 when about 2,000 protestors assembled in lower Manhattan and then occupied the small, previously obscure space of Zuccotti Park.

Although the occupation attracted little attention at first, after about a week it made worldwide headlines, and soon hundreds of similar occupations popped up across the United States and around the world. In New York, the physical occupation lasted only two months, until November 15, 2011, when the New York Police Department (NYPD) forcibly evicted the park’s inhabitants, as part of a wave of such evictions in cities across the country. Two years later, Occupy’s impact on political discourse and on participants themselves is still much in evidence.

with 25 core OWS activists. (A detailed report on this research is available at http://www.iss.nl/milkman_ows).

For a progressive academic based in New York City, OWS was an irresistible object of study. I was fortunate enough to obtain funding on short notice from the Russell Sage Foundation, and persuaded two of my colleagues at CUNY’s Murphy Institute, sociologists Stephanie Luce and Penny Lewis, to join me. With the help of a team of 50 students, we fielded a representative survey of 729 participants in an OWSendorsed march held on May 1, 2012, and conducted in-depth interviews

Where did OWS come from? Who were the protesters? What motivated them to join this new movement? And why did the occupation gain so much traction with the media and the wider public?

Those were the questions at the core of our inquiry.

We easily won cooperation from movement participants (indeed we were ourselves participants to varying degrees, although none of us stayed overnight in Zuccotti Park). Some readers may find our analysis insuffi­ ciently critical of the movement; but no one involved attempted to influence or censor us. Although our report was self-published and distributed mainly over the internet, it has been widely read and cited by academics and activists alike. What distinguishes it from the outpouring of other ‘instant analyses’ of the movement is that we were able to conduct a representative survey of OWS participants, whereas other accounts either relied on convenience samples (e.g. on-line surveys in which respondents are self-selected) or solely on interviews and other qualitative data.

The first answer is that OWS did not appear out of nowhere. It was carefully planned by experienced political activists, inspired by the Arab Spring and the surge of mass protests around

the world in early 2011. The Zuccotti Park occupation aimed to focus public attention on the injustices associated with the global economic crisis and the staggering growth of inequality in 21st century United States, and succeeded far beyond the organizers’ own expectations. It attracted numerous participants who had little or no previous experience with political protest, many of whom were deeply radicalized by their involvement and will likely continue to be involved in progressive politics. In addition, OWS transformed US political discourse, highlighting the issue of inequality to an unprecedented degree.

As Manuel Castells has noted, OWS ‘was born on the Internet, diffused by the Internet’ (2012: 168). Its dependence on social media, moreover, brought together previously distinct activist networks into a single movement.

Many of those who helped to plan the September 17 occupation recounted that they were surprised to see few familiar faces at the planning meetings and later at the occupation itself.

Our survey found that OWS activists were disproportionately white, highly educated, from affluent family back­ grounds, and youthful. Despite their relative affluence, however, more than half of our survey respondents under 30 years old were carrying substantial debt, and over a third had been laid off or lost a job in the five years prior to the survey. These experiences gave

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respondents a personal connection to the issues OWS raised.

Many participants were prototypes of what social movement scholars call ‘biographical availability’ (McAdam 1986). It was usually underemployment, not unemployment, that rendered them available. Some were students, but many more were recent college graduates facing the dismal labour market that followed the Great Recession. Like many other movements of the past few years, indeed, OWS was driven primarily by what Paul Mason calls ‘the graduate with no future’.

OWS has often been compared to the right-wing Tea Party in that it is a largely middle class, white movement and in that its participants have views outside the mainstream (albeit at the other end of the political spectrum). Indeed, like OWS activists, many grassroots Tea Party leaders had extensive political experience in community organizations.

But the Tea Party is dominated by older whites, including many retired people (who are also ‘biographically available’), and focuses much of its energy on influencing candidates for elected office, with enormous funding from right-wing advocacy groups (Skocpol and Williamson 2011). In contrast, OWS has a much younger profile, its supporters are more highly educated (although many Tea Party members did attend college, contrary to popular belief). Moreover, OWS lacked a stable source of funding, and for the vast majority of its activists, electoral politics is anathema.

Contrary to what most veteran activists had expected, the police did not attempt to evict the protesters immediately, but instead let the occupiers settle in. A few days later, the NYPD became more confrontational, pepper-spraying nonviolent Occupiers on September 24, and then arresting 700 peaceful demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011.

Thanks to social media, rather than ending the protests, these actions drew worldwide public attention to the OWS protests, amplifying their appeal, and helping inspire other occupations around the country.

OWS famously refused to define its ‘demands’, a stance that was widely criticized in some circles. But our interviewees passionately defended that aspect of OWS and argued that it was a key ingredient in the movement’s appeal. As one asserted, it attracted ‘college students, people who were a little bit older, who’d lost homes, who really didn’t know why they were upset.

They didn’t know all the stats, they didn’t know all the details, but they just knew that it wasn’t working, and …

For some OWS activists, the rejection of mainstream politics reflected disappointment with Barack Obama who was disproportionately popular among the Millennials who dominated OWS when he ran for President in 2008.

For this group, political disillusion reinforced economic disappointment.

As one interviewee explained: ‘The Obama presidency was disillusioning to a lot of people, and that’s why Occupy Wall Street spread so much. We’d tried to get the best liberal we could, and then we got more of the same shit. Then it’s either cynicism or we’re going to try something completely different.’

The NYPD also inadvertently played a role in the movement’s success.

‘Dear Capitalism’ banner. Photo by Ruth Milkman

they just wanted to be there on the street, being a visual dissenting voice.’

The focus on Wall Street was another key element in the movement’s appeal.

As one activist explained, ‘There was total clarity on who the bad guys were…. They captured what everybody knows on some kind of subconscious level about who’s really running the country and who’s in charge’.

Although there were no formal ‘demands,’ our survey data suggest that several specific concerns motivated OWS participants. The issue most often mentioned was Occupy’s trademark, namely inequality and ‘the 1%,’ which nearly half of our respondents cited as a motivating concern. Ranked next were ‘money in politics’ and ‘corporate greed,’ followed by student debt and access to education.

One feature of OWS that helped it grow was the tactic of occupation itself, and the fact that it had a continual presence in Zuccotti Park, in close proximity to Wall Street. One interviewee said, ‘It was like a magnet. People just came

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there without even knowing what they were going to do there. They just wanted to be there, and hang out and have conversations with people. It was such a beautiful thing’. And another said, ‘The easy access to the park, the magic in the air that you step into, a near-religious experience, that the moment you decide you’re part of this, you are’.

... decisionmaking based on consensus...

OWS activists often rejected mainstream US political parties as hopelessly corrupted by corporate power; they also spurned traditional left-wing organizations as overly hierarchical. More influenced by anarchist and autonomist traditions than the socialist left, their eclectic political critiques and praxis combined elements of all these traditions, united by a tactical commitment to nonviolent direct action and to prefigurative politics, which shaped the ways in which decisions were made and the organization of daily life in Zuccotti Park.

In self-conscious contrast to the ‘vertical’ structures of mainstream political parties and traditional Left organizations alike, OWS embraced ‘horizontalism’. From the outset OWS adopted a decisionmaking process based on consensus, rooted in a self-consciously non-hierarchical structure. General Assemblies (GAs) in which anyone could participate, met regularly during the planning for September 17, and were convened twice daily in the park in the first weeks of the occupation. They were the movement’s only official decisionmaking body, while working groups were set up to focus on specific tasks.

The occupation of the park itself was the most obvious prefigurative aspect of the movement. As one activist explained, ‘To do an occupation immediately means that you need to recreate the means of daily reproduction. You need food, shelter, bedding, medical care.

Then you need all the other things that go with it: education, the library, psychological counselling, arts and culture’. OWS established working groups to manage these tasks, replicating the structure of the indigados’ encampments in Spain.

Yet many problems emerged during the two months that the Zuccotti encampment remained intact. As word spread about the availability of free food and shelter, New York’s homeless population began to join the occupation. OWS welcomed them as part of ‘the 99 per cent,’ but their growing numbers presented daunting challenges, not only in regard to providing food and medical care to everyone present but also in the dynamics of the GA meetings. While many among the homeless were active and constructive participants in the GA and working groups, others who suffered from mental illness or other challenges were not easy to incorporate.

Adding to the complexity, the police also began to infiltrate the movement.

It was not easy to distinguish between police informers and others who created problems in the meetings.

In addition, as the movement swelled to the point that hundreds and sometimes thousands of people began to turn up for the daily meetings, the consensusbased process became increasingly unwieldy. In this context, as several interviewees argued, horizontalism soon collapsed, marginalizing people of colour, women, and sexual minorities.

These concerns were eclipsed, however, by the forcible eviction of OWS from Zuccotti Park in November. Once that occurred, the movement rapidly fell off the public’s radar screen. Some OWS working groups continued to meet regularly, but many participants returned home and resumed their previous routines.

group spun off a new group to address debt more broadly, which launched the ‘Rolling Jubilee’ in late 2012. It raised about US $350,000 in donations which was used to buy US $7 million in debt, which was then forgiven. In November 2012, OWS activists emerged to form ‘Occupy Sandy,’ a self-organized effort to assist the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. A day after the storm hit, Occupy activists were collecting donations and sending volunteers to check on neighbourhoods and residents. Within a few weeks, the group had coordinated over 50,000 volunteers, and collected almost US $600,000 in donations.

Equally important, OWS permanently changed the national political conversation. The frequency with which the issue of inequality was mentioned in the news media rose spectacularly over the period of the occupation, and although it did subside later, the US political discourse was permanently altered, with on-going references to ‘the 1 per cent’ and to other issues OWS highlighted.

Equally important was the transfor­ mation of individual participants who had not previously been politicized.

As one interviewee reported, the occupation ‘created this space for people to become radicalized.’ Not only individuals were transformed, but new networks were forged. Many partici­ pants told us how much they valued the personal relationships they had built with other Occupiers, and some were convinced that OWS was the beginning of a new wave of social movement activity. Although it’s too soon to know if they are right, the basic social conditions that sparked the movement remain. It does not seem farfetched to expect ‘the graduate without a future’ to move once again, with the aid of social media, to challenge the rampant inequalities that continue to fester in the United States and around the world.

Ruth Milkman is a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the Joseph F. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, where she is also Academic Director.

A detailed report on this research is available at http://www.iss.nl/milkman_ows

Nevertheless, ‘Occupy our Homes’’ continued organizing against foreclosures. The ‘Strike Debt’ working

(Due to space restrictions no references are provided here. Full references are included in the online version of this article).

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‘Chapullers’ in Turkey: ‘Everywhere Taksim, Everywhere Resistance!’

Cevahir Özgüler

In late May 2013 a peaceful demonstration began at Gezi Park, a public space at the centre of Istanbul, protesting against the uprooting of several trees to build a shopping mall. The police used disproportionate violence, such as tear gas and water cannons, and burning the tents of protestors camping in the park.

In reaction to this violence, the smallscale demonstration turned into to a large-scale uprising, both in terms of space and motivations to resist. Tens of thousands of people mobilized first in Istanbul and then in many other Turkish cities to show their solidarity with Gezi Park protesters.

As the police violence increased, in line with the authoritarian discourses and menacing manner of president Erdoğan, the movement went beyond protecting

a park and its trees. It transformed into a mobilization of millions of people who were dissatisfied with the conservative authoritarian neoliberal politics of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The pluralist nature of these millions of actors, who mobilized spontaneously without any leadership and with diverse motivations, characterized the resistance such that the only label under which they could be unified was çapulcular/ chapullers (literally meaning ‘looters’) as the prime minister called us.

However the meaning is subverted and appropriated by the protestors, and began to be used for a person who resists force and seek one’s rights (http://www.urbandictionary.com/ define.php?term=chapulling).

Largely young people who never took the streets before and never described themselves as supporters or part of a political struggle, supporters of football teams, as well as feminists, nationalists, Kemalists, environmentalists, Kurds, LGBTs, socialists, sex workers, anti-

capitalist Muslims, Alevi people, and many more went out onto the streets.

They were resisting in solidarity against the many ills that motivated them urban transformation, gentrification politics, income inequality, antidemocratic and discriminatory implementations, restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, privatization, environmental destruction, the education system, Syrian politics, restrictions on freedom of expression, and restrictions on the use of alcohol.

As an extra site of resistance, in addition to the streets, çapulcular/ chapullers used the social media to disseminate information or they stayed in the borders of the street and the house: at the window, in front of apartments shouting slogans, banging spoons against pots.

I am a PhD student at ISS. Due to my interaction with the international students and lecturers at the ISS, and through the various ISS seminars and courses in which I have participated –

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Street protests in Ankara. Photo by Tanju Gunduzalp

on social movements, environmental politics, feminist theorizing, and via the research groups – I have begun to see the current movement in Turkey in a more global context. I have become more aware of the current movements around the globe: Colombia, Spain, Egypt, Brazil, Zucotti Park …

As Chomsky, in his speech supporting the events in Turkey states: ‘...What is happening in Turkey.... is part of a major uprising, internationally against the neoliberal assault on the global population that has been going on for a generation. It takes different forms in different places, but it is happening everywhere...’ Pointing to international struggles he says that: ‘There should be a lot of mutual support and interaction.’

(See Noam Chomsky’s message at http://everywheretaksim.net/chomskyspecial/). I believe that the network established in academia that continues in virtual space offers the opportunity to enhance international solidarity, mutual support and interaction.

Within this context, I have been ‘chapulling’ (resisting the force), in three of the mentioned resistance sites, not only against the conservative authoritarian neoliberal politics of the AKP and the other related issues in Turkey I have juxtaposed above, but also against the global neoliberal assault. That’s why I shout ‘Everywhere Taksim, everywhere resistance!’

Cevahir Özgüler is a chapuller. She is also a PhD student both at the Women’s and Gender Studies Programme of Ankara University, and at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. Currently, she resides in Ankara, Turkey.

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Bridging practice and academia: the Hivos knowledge programme Remko Berkhout

Since 2005 Hivos has made substantive investments in a series of knowledge programmes. These programmes bring together activists, practitioners and academics to develop new knowledge on key development challenges, such as growing religious fundamentalism, loss of biodiversity and inclusive democracy. Reflecting on central features of the knowledge partnership between Hivos and ISS, this article shares lessons about the value added of academic-practitioner collaboration in a world marked by ‘thick problems’ and a development sector working on ever ‘thinner’ solutions.

In a 2011 think piece1, Michael Edwards uses the term ‘thick problems’ to characterize some of the major challenges of our time, such as climate change, the crises of trust between citizens and institutions and rampant socio-economic inequality. Stuck in a complex web of interrelated causes and consequences and heavily contested at every turn towards a possible way out, these problems cannot be addressed effectively within the frameworks from which they emerged. What is worse, the solutions pitted against them by the development sector are getting thinner, pushed by a fetish for quantitative results or ‘value for money’ and distracted by false promises of technology and the myths of the market.

And, argues Edwards, international

NGOs once hailed as magic bullets for development alternatives, have been particularly slow in moving on from what has grown into an increasingly irrelevant comfort zone: transferring money from North to South, whilst adding ‘bells and whistles’ such as capacity building and advocacy along the way.

With the Hivos knowledge programme, we have sought to alter the balance between thick problems and thin solutions by creating a space to deconstruct, re-imagine and produce new narratives, methods and coalitions for change. In this reflection I share a number of lessons from a knowledge partnership between Hivos and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Ties between these institutions go back

decades but were intensified with the design of a joint Civil Society Building knowledge programme in 2006.

Through a combination of action research, dialogue and critical reflection, this programme explored new insights into the dynamics of civic action and the effects of external interventions. The immediate results and inevitable flaws of this programme have been described and evaluated elsewhere. Here, I reflect on three unique features of the programme and the difference they have made.

OPEN QUESTIONS A first unique feature was ‘the nature of the questions’. We jointly agreed on a set of open questions and built a flexible portfolio of action research

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Participants at the CIRI conference, October 2013 - Remko Berkhout at back on right hand side in gray shirt. Photo by Sudh Barik

projects around them. We also agreed – and in fact even encouraged – critical analyses on the deeper assumptions underneath Hivos’ development approaches. The results were often confronting, but highly valuable. In Southern Africa for example, international ISS researchers delivered a wake-up call to Hivos’ good governance work, by exposing some of the myths surrounding countervailing power, civil society and the importance of formal rights2. And when we enabled social movements to analyse and document the many dilemmas and turning points in their struggles, we were offered unique perspectives on the relatively modest effects of our support efforts.

As one activist pointed out: ‘Look, it’s not so much that we don’t appreciate funding support, it’s important and when one source dries up, there always tends to be an alternative. It’s just that we’ve got so many bigger and more complicated issues to think and fight about that, in the bigger scheme of things, foreign funding is just not such as an issue’. More generally, contrary to the obsession in the development sector and development research

projects to produce evidence, tangible results, and recipes for replication, we found that our growing ability to search for and pose better and deeper questions was one of the most significant changes that occurred as a result of the programme.

BEYOND PARTNERS A second unique feature of the programme was the conscious effort to work with a wide variety of participants beyond the Hivos portfolio of programmes, countries and partner organizations. Most self-respecting development organizations operate with research and development departments that produce case studies, policy papers and evidence of what works. Yet few organizations realize how constraining it is to reflect on the world through the lens of partners, projects, and advocacy priorities. Baited with our questions, we deliberately cast the net widely and ended up with a colourful network of new allies far beyond the reach of our regular development programmes.

From Brazilian think-tanks on sexuality, to a new generation of activists in nearby Belgium, and ISS alumni from

Papua New Guinea, Peru and Nicaragua, this programme feature enabled Hivos to bring new vantage points on social change into its network and to expand its reach beyond the usual suspects in the world of aid.

Research on social justice strategies in South Africa for example enabled Hivos to move its programme portfolio closer to grass-roots movements on basic rights (such as the Anti-Privatization Forum and the Shack dwellers movement) and migrant issues that seemed to signal new momentum for political change3.

MIXING METHODOLOGIES Many participants were drawn to the knowledge programme because of a third unique feature: the space to experiment with new methods of knowledge production and dissemination, ranging from e-books to five minute videos. Inspired by exchanges with Chiapas, facilitators from Hivos and ISS worked with four prominent social movements to document and reflect on their past decade of struggle4. Most of these movements had been subject to

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academic research before, but they had never been enabled to thoroughly self-reflect and produce and share their own ‘knowledges’ on their past and future trajectories. Building on this experience, the programme gradually started to invest more in convening and process facilitation. For example, in the wake of Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street, Hivos and ISS joined forces with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, Brighton, UK) and The Centre for Internet Society in Bangalore (India) to convene knowledge explorations around the changing face of civic action. For two days, a global group of 35 academics, NGO practitioners, and on and offline activists jointly tried to make sense of what appeared to be a new wave of global protests akin to 1968. The insights generated two academic journal issues and also inspired the emergence of the ISS Civic Innovation Research Initiative5.

CHALLENGES Inevitably, the emergent nature of the programme also produced tough challenges. Despite solid, longer term partnership arrangements, both ISS and Hivos staff involved in the project struggled to negotiate a balance between process and output, with each other and with respective senior management. From an NGO-point of view, research processes were long and tedious. From an academic point of view, Hivos practitioners appeared at

time impatient. In addition, the richest processes often tended to be far more difficult to ‘capture’ than some of the better papers written by participants far removed from grassroots realities. Hivos staff struggled internally to make the step from questioning and deconstruction to propositions and new programmes. In a similar vein, ISS staff struggled to produce solid academic work out of messy participatory research processes.

CONCLUSION And yet, on balance the previous sections offer ample evidence of added value. Against thinning tendencies in the development sector, the case of the civil society building knowledge programme shows how collaboration between activists, practitioners, and academics has produced better questions, deeper insights, stronger connections and a larger variety of working methods to thicken our response to some of the tough challenges that we are working on.

Much of that work has been made possible by core-funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With such support in fast decline, institutional imperatives beg the question whether we can afford these kinds of programmes in the long run. A better question is: can we afford not to? After all, what, if not knowledge and facilitation, will become the core business of NGOs like Hivos when their role as a financial intermediary has

faded into irrelevance in decades to come? The NEBE-Cocoon project, in which Hivos and ISS work together with the University San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador) and the environmental NGO LIDEMA (Bolivia) to research the nationalization of extractive industries in Bolivia and Ecuador, is one example of a collaborative research effort that has managed to run on external funding from the Dutch Science Council (NWO-WOTRO). Moreover, both Hivos’ ´Future Calling´ strategy and the ISS CIRI programme might well be of interest to private foundations that understand that Edwards´ thick problems which started this reflection, demand innovative solutions from unusual coalitions.

And just in case all that all doesn’t work, I would gladly apply the programme spirit of participation to the DevISSues community and say: suggestions welcome!

Remko Berkhout works as a knowledge officer at the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Hivos) on the Knowledge Programme.

More information about this programme and its publications can be found at www.hivos.net

Edwards Michael (2011), Thick problems, thin

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solutions. How NGOs can bridge the gap. Hivos, the Hague -http://www.hivos.net/HivosKnowledge-Programme/Themes/Future-Calling/

Global dialogue Scene from a 2011 global dialogue on the changing face of citizen action where activists, develop­ment practitioners and academics discussed the new wave of civic protest that shocked the world An NGO practitioner: ‘Look at all these revolutions in the Middle East. For years we thought that nothing was moving. And now there is momentum for change. We need to act.

Where are our partners? New funding is coming in and there are new organizations that need it. We need to push for women’s rights, constitutional reform, election monitoring, but where to start?’

The Egyptian scholar leans back and sighs: But you see that’s precisely the problem: you’ve been doing things for years and nothing moved. You may have made useful contributions to some sections of civil society, but meanwhile you were completely out of touch with not feeling the pulse of the street, the blogs on the web and the politics of the kitchen table. Why do you always want to do something? Isn’t the fact that these events took us all by surprise the ultimate reason to do less, listen more and try to understand. If you want to help, why don’t you create spaces for activists in the Middle East to make sense of the times they live in and trust them to make decisions on how to move forward…

Short-Reflections/Thick-Problems-and-ThinSolutions, last accessed 13.10.2013.

Brouwers, Ria (2011), When civics go governance,

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synthesis report. www.hivos.net, last accessed on 18.09.2013.

See Handmaker, J. and Berkhout, R. (eds) 2010,

3

Mobilizing social justice in South Africa, Perspectives from researchers and practitioners, Pretoria University Law Press, South Africa.

Biekart K., Icaza R. (2011), Knowledge dialogues

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with social movements in Central America, Erasmus University of Social Studies - http:// repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32140/ last accessed 13.10.2013.

Biekart K. (ed) (2013), Development and Change,

4

Forum 2013, May 2013 (Wiley Blackwell, UK).

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Protest against rape in India Madhura Chakraborty The media worldwide covered the spontaneous outpourings of protesting youth on the streets of India following the brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi in December 2012. However, it is not just a single incident of violation but the continuing assault on women and girls in the public space that brought people to the streets. From the girl who was stripped and beaten up by a mob outside a pub to the girl who was hounded by men, pursued through public streets in a state of undress and beaten up because she dared, as a person belonging to a marginalized community, to participate in a protest rally - there are numerous such incidents and it is very heartening that young people, whatever their affiliations, have taken to the streets in such large numbers.

I have been part of such protests, particularly in Kolkata, and, along with a friend, founded the Take Back the Night Kolkata chapter which takes part in direct action in the ‘unsafe’ public spaces of the city. My activism has certainly been sharpened by critical engagement with relevant literature from the fields of gender, activism and development that I encountered at ISS. I am able to critically assess how the media is influencing and distorting protests. For instance, the domestic media is continuing to exceptionalize rape as THE crime against women, while sex-selective abortions, trafficking, child marriage, dowry deaths and other crimes against women, both inside the home and in public places, continue to happen without any focused media attention. Aid-driven interventions

focusing only on urban public spaces as ‘unsafe’ spaces for women are also becoming rife. At the same time, we are seeing how violence inside the home is being pushed to the margins as the legal system refuses to take cognizance of marital rape as a criminal offence.

It is at this time that my training at ISS is helping me to nuance my activism and broaden the narrow agenda that is dominating the mainstream discourse.

My training at ISS has been of invaluable help to me as an activist and I hope I am able to make use of my training and make some difference to the women’s movement in India.

Madhura Chakraborty is ISS almumna.

She graduated with the MA batch of 2011-2012, specializing in Women, Gender, Development.

ISS News Where are you now?

Our alumni are very important to us and we hope that ISS remains important to you. There are several ways that we try to keep you informed about what’s happening at ISS and to your former study colleagues:

The ‘Social’ at the Institute of Social Studies Do you follow us on Twitter? Do you like us on Facebook?

Have you seen our photos on Flickr! and our videos on YouTube?

Over the past couple of years ISS has become more and more active on social media, using it to share what we do, how we do it and to keep in touch with our alumni and friends worldwide. On Facebook particularly we are very active with not only a fan page, but also a special alumni group and pages for prospective students and PhD researchers.

• electronic alumni newsletter 6x per year • dedicated alumni pages on our website (http://www.iss.nl/alumni/ ) • regular alumni meetings throughout the world • the ISS alumni Facebook page (www.facebook.com/issalumni ) Don’t receive the ISS alumni newsletter? Maybe we don’t have your valid email address - update us through alumni@iss.nl

https://www.facebook.com/iss.nl https://twitter.com/issnl http://www.youtube.com/user/issmedia http://www.flickr.com/photos/iss_thehague/

Let’s keep in touch!

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ISS News ISS welcomes 168 new MA students The official opening of the 2013-2014 MA programme took place on 6 September.

This year, we welcomed 168 students from all corners of the world. Following the words of welcome from Deputy Rector Dr. Freek Schiphoorst, the keynote speech was given by Renée Jones-Bos, Secretary-General of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs on ‘Dutch Foreign Policy: Adapting to a Changing World’. A Personal perspective on three decades as a foreign policy practitioner.

New Prince Claus Chair holder Dr. Jumoke Oduwole In September, just as the new academic year was starting, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, the new PCC chairholder arrived at ISS. Dr. Oduwole, from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, will spend her time as chair­holder conducting research on The Right to Development in the African context and in relation to trade and human rights. Dr. Odwolde will give her inaugural lecture at ISS on 20 May 2014.

Honorary Doctorate for Robert Chambers as part of EUR centenary celebrations On 9 November 2013, EUR hosted the official celebration of its 100th anniversary.

As part of these celebrations ISS was proud to bestow upon Robert Chambers an Honorary Doctorate.

ISS selected Robert Chambers for this EUR Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his exceptional contribution to participatory development research and methodological reorientations.

Robert Chambers is the founding father of participatory development research, an approach that focuses on the role and influence of local stakeholders in the development process. This research method has helped build modified approaches to understanding poverty and livelihoods.

ISS postgraduate courses don’t miss the deadlines!

Now’s the time to apply for ISS postgraduate courses starting in April 2014.

• Children, Youth and Development • Governance, Democratization and Public Policy • Sustainable Local Economic Development (LED) Applications are welcome until 1 February 2014.

Applications for our fourth postgraduate course, Universalizing Socioeconomic Security for the Poor are closed for this year, but you have until November 2014 if you want to take part in this course in 2015! Check the ISS website at www.iss.nl/applicationdates Join Ariane, Richard and Holly as an ISS PhD graduate You’ve finished your Masters but want to study further? Since the 1980s over 100 young scholars have completed our 4-year PhD in Development Studies programme. In September alone three researchers graduated with their PhD: Ariane Agnes Corradi with her thesis entitled ‘Critical Learning Episodes in the Evolution of Business StartUps: Business Incubators in South-Eastern Brazil’

Richard Ameyaw Ampadu writing on ‘Finding the Middle Ground: Land Tenure Reform and Customary Claims Negotiability in Rural Ghana’

Holly Alexandra Ritchie (cum laude) with her research on ‘Negotiating Tradition, Power and Fragility in Afghanistan.

Institutional Innovation and Change in Value Chain Development’ Find out more at www.iss.n/phd-programme Passing away Sunila Abeysekera It was with a feeling of great loss that ISS shared the news that Sunila Abeysekera, one of the most amazing and determined feminists and human rights defenders from Sri Lanka, passed away on Monday 9 September, in Colombo (Sri Lanka), at the age of 61. Sunila had suffered from cancer. Sunila was an ISS alumna (MA Women and Develop­ ment 1993/1994) and a guest researcher at ISS from 2010 2012. Well known and hugely respected around the world for her work on human rights and women’s rights in her native country, Sunila will also be remembered for her sharp analytical mind, her incredible wit and sense of humor, and for her joyous love of everything that is life-affirming.

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Re-merging Interest for Participatory Action Research Kees Biekart & Rosalba Icaza Activist and participatory research has always been an important focus within the ISS. In recent years we have seen an increase in Research Papers with topics related to social movements, alternative forms of knowledge co-production, and the application of creative, and new participatory tools. For the past two years the ISS curriculum has also offered a new Research Techniques course on Participatory Action Research, responding to this tendency.

There appears to be an uneasy relationship between the tense practice of protesting and being involved in activism on the one hand, and the relative peace and space for reflection in the academic realm on the other.

When you are in the middle of a fierce street protest, or a campaign, or part of a semi-legal activist group, it is very hard to maintain the necessary distance to your cause, which is the typical academic attitude. However, the tension between the academic and the activist practice can also be a source of great creativity. It can stimulate critical self-reflection on mainstream notions of academia as a space for reason and the production of ‘objective’ knowledge, which is disconnected from power and dominant constructions of reality. It can open up the possibility of understanding academia as a site of resistance and of activism, as well as a site in which knowledge-practices are being generated. This is typically a perspective of ‘action research’.

Activism has, in a way, also re-entered the ISS. In 2012 ISS started running a specialization in Social Movements and

Action Research Techniques (SMART).

This is a sub programme of the Major ‘Social Justice Perspectives’, which also oversees the specializations on Human Rights, Gender Studies and Security and Conflict. The new SMART specialization is indirectly a successor of the PAD (‘Politics of Alternative Development’) specialization, which also focused on issues of social justice, political economy, and collective action. Starting in the early 1990s, the PAD programme was one of the largest ISS specializations, attracting many practitioners, often from activist backgrounds. Looking at the titles of their Research Papers, PAD graduates (such as Rui Cordeiro from Brazil, with a blog elsewhere in this issue) generally used their MA studies to theoretically reflect on their professional practice in order to be even better equipped with analytical and practical skills when returning home.

About five years ago, PAD student numbers gradually declined. This was caused by a number of developments, such as a changing interest of applicant students, but also by the sharp reduction of scholarships available for

Latin American students, a historically strong group within PAD. Additional reasons were that other specializations emerged from PAD, such as the specializations on international political economy (IPED), governance and democracy (G&D), as well as the new specialization on human rights. Maybe the idea of ‘alternative development’ had also become a more mainstream idea, as the phrase was also appearing in official World Bank documents.

Therefore, it is really encouraging ‘that’ after ‘see’ the new Participatory Action Research’ (PAR) course is so successful.

This course has been offered as one of the optional Research Technique courses for MA and PhD students at ISS since 2012. We actually had to limit the number of participants in order to keep the course really participatory. About a decade ago a similar course on participatory approaches was running under the auspice of Marlene Buchy, but when she left ISS to work in the United Kingdom the course was unfortunately discontinued. We decided to redesign the ‘participatory approaches’ course and to insert more attention to ‘action

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Kees Biekart After becoming politically active as a teenager, I became an urban ‘squatter’ activist whilst starting my political science studies in the late 1970s in Amsterdam. There was a shortage of housing, especially for young people, at a time when lots of old office buildings (including Canal houses) were abandoned due to the economic crisis. The squatter´s movement emerged rapidly as one of the most articulated social movements in that period. Being very well and decentrally organized, it occupied these empty buildings and made them suitable for housing, often as community group accommodation, but also as alternative spaces to develop a new type of political and cultural practice. We set up our own shops, a cinema, a printing shop, bookstores, cafés, restaurants: it was a genuine alternative community. This was of course challenged by the big landlords, and the movement had to be well organised to defend itself against their assault groups as well as against the riot police. Hence we had endless discussions on how to resist police violence.

It was difficult in such a setting to prepare for exams and lectures and many students (including myself ) dropped out of university and became full-time activists. After five years, and having travelled abroad, also in Latin America, I realised I needed to reflect and write.

So I decided to return to my Political Science faculty, where I was very well supervised. Being older and politically more mature, it was really rewarding and productive to theorize about my activist period. I now recognise a similar urge with students at the ISS: drawing lessons from strategic and ideological dilemmas and discovering you are not the only one dealing with these complicated issues.

Kees is Associate Professor in Political Sociology at the ISS and recently edited the Forum 2013 issue of Development and Change on ’Transforming Activisms’.

research’, since many recent students are also looking for ways to link their activist experiences with academic research. It requires, for example, that researchers become conscious of their powerful position in order to avoid imposition and abuse of their privileged role as data collectors. In particular, the nexus of power and knowledge is explored by contrasting examples of top-down (often consultancy) style research with different attempts of self-representation by marginalized communities and groups (indigenous people, women, LGTB, etc.) in research and media.

The concept ‘Participatory Action Research’ (PAR), refers to a methodology coming from critical social theory but also has its roots in community development practices of the 1970s, especially in Latin America. Elaborated by reflective practitioners such as Fals Borda (Colombia), Paolo Freire (Brazil), and Rajesh Tandon (India), and further developed by many other scholar-

activists over the years, PAR has become a set of principles about doing research in an empowering and reflective way with the poor and marginalized, as a basis for collective action to change their own reality. It uses a wide range of basic and participatory tools to collect information, such as focus groups, community surveys, storytelling, ranking exercises, but also drawing and theatre techniques. The key idea is that marginalized people, despite their minimal schooling, are important knowledge bearers, if not experts on their own change processes. Since most research methods (also in development studies) are actually rather extractive and disempowering, PAR tries to counter this by offering alternative and hands-on tools, constantly linking research with action through a permanent process of reflection.

This on-going reflecting is also central in the course: we ask the students to keep a diary after each session in order to write up ideas, lessons, to comment on the

literature or reflect on their emotions.

This ‘journal’ or ‘diary’ is a useful field research tool, which we have used ourselves as well. The journals also form the basis for the (inevitable) final assessment of the course and offer an alternative to asking participants to write an essay or to do an exam. One partici­ pant wrote this in her diary after the first session: “I remember being the first among the students to arrive. I found Kees and Rosalba forming the chairs into a big circle. I am really excited about this course. I look forward to the learning and the ‘unlearning’ process that I am about to experience. Like most of us I assume, we have been exposed to the different processes of participation in different avenues. Myself for instance, I have been immersed into different ‘participatory approaches’ especially in dealing with communities and different types of groups for the last six years in the jobs I have been affiliated with. Now is a good time for me to assess the experiences I’ve had vis-à-vis the theories and more stories from others as well.”

Another activity in the course is group work: students are divided in small groups with each group having to prepare, design, and facilitate a full 90 minutes session. In other words, they are asked to be teachers and facilitators, rather than only ‘students’ during the course. Each group selects and reflects on a different participatory tool, which is then presented and practiced with all the participants. In this way we have practiced, for example, ‘role plays’, ‘chapati diagrams’, participatory mapping, and the use of drawings in research. Each group is responsible for planning the session, including its objectives, activities and an ice-breaker.

This way of working generated many interesting experiences which sometimes also required careful intervention, such as the session last year in which one student felt discriminated by another student due to her nationality. This generated a long discussion afterwards on student relationships in the institute.

The PAR course also has been a great opportunity for us (as staff members) to learn from the students themselves, reversing in an interesting way the hierarchies that generally operate in a post-graduate higher education setting. In the words of one participants,

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Carolina Frossard (SPD 12/13): “the way the course was structured allowed me to unpack my role as a full time participant of a graduate-level course, and become particularly aware of the different parts I was required to play and how those related to different aspects of know­ ledge production, a process always permeated by power relations. I consider this sharpened gaze to be a great lesson from my time in the course, and one that will certainly be of value to me as researcher and as a knowledge producer”.

The PAR course, which is offered in the third term (April-June), also has attracted Master and PhD students from other (Dutch) universities. It shows scholars are interested in participatory approaches to research and non-extractive research methodologies, and that these courses are not easily found elsewhere. We are pleased with this unexpected popularity and it makes us realise that ISS remains an important ‘space of resistance’ in the generation of knowledge!

Rosalba Icaza I became politically engaged very early. I was 16 years old when I first organized my first event in my high school in Mexico City: the showing of a video by Canal 6 de Julio (Channel 6 of July) on the 1986 electoral fraud in Mexico produced by alternative media. This was an important moment as I realised the power that formal spaces of education have to produce or constrain active and critical engagement in political and power issues. Later on, during my university studies in International Relations at a Jesuit university, I became involved in collectives supporting the Zapatista indigenous army uprising in 1994.

All my subsequent research, including my BA and postgraduate work, was in one way or another connected to the ‘causes’ behind the Zapatista uprising.

At the end of my university studies, I became part of the RMALC network, a group of organizations resisting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through research and activism. Lately, in the Netherlands I have been working with anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal social movements and networks based in Latin America, including some indigenous and feminist collectives to which I am politically committed, such as the Transnational Network Other Knowledges (RETOS). My main interest has been to identify the ways in which their knowledge-practices challenge mainstream assumptions over what is supposed to be a dignified life.

Rosalba is an ISS Activist/academic writing, teaching and researching on social resistance of indigenous and working-class women to interrelated forms of global oppressions.

Photo Kees Biekart

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Passing the Torch: From Generation to Generation Victor Hugo Canda Who out of the current - or past ISS students can say that both their parents previously studied at ISS? My guess is not many. The year was 1992 and my parents felt the time was right to pursue their studies: two and a half years had passed since the Revolution had ended in Nicaragua (after about five years of civil war, the general elections were held in 1990 and the Sandinistas lost the election and gave up power). The change in regime in Nicaragua was the catalyst that persuaded my parents to leave the country and study: they had both participated in the revolutionary process of the 1980s and served in various capacities in the Sandinista government.

The political polarization when the new government took office in 1990 was so deep that it was virtually impossible for anyone who had any connection to the revolutionary process of the 1980s to keep or get a decent job, whether it be in the state or in the private sector and my parents immediately lost their jobs.

The second reason, and deeply linked to the first, is that both of them realized that because of their high levels of insecurity it was of strategic importance to pursue higher education. A degree would increase their chances of finding decent jobs in the future and make them better prepared to face a unipolar world (the USSR had just disintegrated) which would inevitably become more globalized and competitive. They finally took the bold step of leaving Nicaragua with a small child (at this point I was

just 3 or 4 years old) to study at ISS – my mother for the 15-month MA programme and my father a few months later for the 12-month Postgraduate Programme.

Whilst my parents were attending lectures I started my education at the Karavaan School after which I would be taken to a nearby crèche to be collected by one of my parents. When my father was still in The Hague, he would pick me up and then cook dinner for when my mother came back to the dorm.

My father left the Netherlands in August 1993 and my mother took over the role of taking me to school and collecting me from crèche. When the time and climate allowed it, we would go to Delft on Saturdays and to Scheveningen on Sundays and I still have fond memories of my time here.

... Following in my parents’ footsteps..

After graduating from ISS, my father started applying for jobs in other Central American countries and by late-1993 had found a job with a Danish NGO in El Salvador. Once she had completed her MA, my mother and I joined him there in December 1993 and it is here that we remained until 1999. Once she had completed her MA, my mother was able to put the know­ ledge she had learnt at ISS to the test in El Salvador as she worked freelance in the consultancy sector. My parents both enjoyed their time at ISS and were happy to see that the knowledge they had acquired could be put into practice in a developing country such as El Salvador (which had also gone through a civil war similar to that in Nicaragua). Eventually, back in Nicaragua, things would get better for them as they found jobs in the cooperation sector, working in many Nordic embassies. Indeed, their studies at ISS opened many doors for them and these doors helped them to develop both academically and professionally.

Years later, after I had received my bachelor’s degree in Political Science I started thinking about doing a Masters Programme abroad. My parents had always encouraged me to consider ISS as I too wanted to pursue my studies in the area of development studies.

In 2012 I started looking seriously into the possibilities of following in my parents’ footsteps and in early 2013 was happy to receive the notification letter informing me that Nuffic had granted me a scholarship to study at ISS. My parents were extremely happy to hear the news and in the days ahead would talk to me about their memories

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at ISS and the Netherlands. It was a great moment for our family: their only son was now about to attend the same Institute that they had attended twenty years previously. Thus, personally I feel tremendous joy in being able to follow my parents’ footsteps. Both of them are persons that I deeply admire, not only because of their academic and profes­ sional achievements but also because of their personal goals. To get a bit closer to what they have done and accomplished in their lives would be an honour to me and studying at ISS is a major step forward in achieving that.

I must admit that I did not fully know what to expect when I came to ISS on Saturday August 31st, 2013. Even though the website gives you an idea of how things are going to be, it is not until you actually arrive here that you get a better sense of things. So far I must say that I am enjoying my time at ISS and I am glad to see that ISS, as it did in my parents’ time, is still willing to look beyond the mainstream. The many

readings we as students have, provide us with meaningful insights that help us develop our analytical skills in ways that perhaps few other readings had done before. The Masters Programme is still multidisciplinary in its approach and analyzes all relevant theories of develop­ ment. In this sense ISS remains quite different from other institutes that largely limit their attention to main­ stream theories and debates.

Furthermore, it is really special to be able to interact with people that come from all corners of the globe. More than 150 new students with different languages, cultures, religions, traditions, and customs are present in one single institute. All of us are here with one purpose: to obtain sufficient knowledge and skills that can contribute to the development of our countries . . . and I truly believe that ISS will help us in achieving that goal!

Victor Hugo Canda is currently studying for an MA in Development Studies at ISS, majoring in

Victor in The Hague as a child. Thanks to Victor

Governance, Policy and Political Economy.

Hugo Canda Gutierrez for the use of this photo

ISS Alumni Fund – help others to follow in your footsteps Why? You have studied at ISS and you have experienced the impact this study has had on our career and your life. So many young people from all over the world, especially from countries in development, would like to have that same experience. Some of them are lucky enough to get hold of funds but others are not. And it would be wonderful if some of them could be supported by you, a friend and former student of ISS. Former students who support future students – that’s the idea.

How? The ISS Alumni Fund has been set up as a specific fund within the Erasmus Trust Fund. This Fund is a recognized charitable organization in the Netherlands. How to make your gift? There are several simple ways to donate to the ISS Alumni Fund.

1 Online All the details can be found on www.iss.nl/issalumnifund 2 Make an international bank transfer to the Erasmus Trust Fund ISS Alumni Fund/Erasmus Trust Fund, Rotterdam Rabobank account: 11 69 09 463 IBAN number: NL02rabo011 9094063 Please indicate your name and ISS when you make your payment For other payment possibilities and further information, please contact: ISS Alumni Fund Drs. Sandra Nijhof International Institute of Social Studies Kortenaerkade 12, 2518 AX The Hague, The Netherlands

www.iss.nl/issalumnifund

22

From Rotterdam to South Sudan: Politics and planting trees Diary of an ISS alumnus

MONDAY

THURSDAY

The topic of cattle theft is on today’s agenda.

This is one of the most pressing problems in our country. In these difficult economic times, many people unfortunately see no alternative than to steal and plunder. It is our job to take measures against this.

Thursday is the day that, together with the governor and the cabinet ministers, we reach difficult but important decisions. Today, for example, we decided that cafés serving alcohol will only be allowed to open after five o’clock on a Monday to Friday. And we have christened Friday and Saturday ‘cultivation days’, in a bid to promote food production and thus become less dependent and more self-sufficient.

After fifteen years of armed fighting, our country, South Sudan, gained its independence from the Republic of the Sudan on 9 July 2011. As deputy governor of Eastern Equatoria, I am responsible for ensuring that the 14 ministries and five committees in this state are effective and efficient. My diary is full of meetings with these bodies every week. Monday: the ministers.

Tuesday: organizations representing the community such as women’s organizations, youth networks and religious organizations. Wednesday: the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS), UN representatives, international and national NGOs and the heads of the committees in my state.

It is always a busy but interesting day, because the topics we discuss concern the wellbeing of our society. The decisions are usually about improve­ments that will make life safer for all of us.

FRIDAY No meetings are planned for a Friday.

My office is open for individual appointments. As a member of parliament it is my duty to be available for consultation, particularly with my voters. But it is usually members of other political parties that pop in.

SATURDAY Saturday is tree-planting day. I am one of the founders of the AFED, the Agro­forestry and Environmental Development Association. Each Saturday is dedicated to developing the organization and

planting trees. We plant teak trees, eucalyptus trees, acacias and different types of fruit tree. We have also set up a tree nursery that produces different seedlings that are available in exchange for a sum to cover the costs. We also propagate and distribute young banana trees and cuttings of cassava plants and sweet potatoes. It is good, rewarding work. I view working with trees as a combination of exercise and stress relief.

It also provides extra job opportunities, particularly for young people and experts in the field of agroforestry, and we are also working on a better environment.

SUNDAY Sunday is a day of prayer and family time. We take things slowly, but effectively, so that we can recharge our spiritual and physical batteries once more for the new week. I sometimes go out with my family in search of a bit of peace. But I often end up discussing politics with other people. Politics is quite simply an essential part of my life.

Jerome Gama Surur studied Public Policy and Administration at ISS in the period 1984-1985.

He is currently deputy governor of Eastern Equatoria State in the Republic of South Sudan.

He kept a diary for Erasmus Alumni Magazine.

This article is reprinted with the kind permission of Erasmus Alumni Magazine.

23

Development and Change Vol. 44, issue 5 September 2013 Sonja K. Pieck

sphalt Dreams: Road Construction A and Environmental Citizenship in Peru

Lata Narayanaswamy

P roblematizing ‘Knowledge-for-Development’

Tor Benjaminsen, Mara J. Goldman, Maya Y. Minwary and Faustin Maganga

Wildlife Management in Tanzania: State Control, Rent Seeking and Community Resistance

Petra Debusscher and An Ansoms

Gender Equality Policies in Rwanda: Public Relations or Real Transformations?

Katarzyna Grabska

The Return of Displaced Nuer in Southern Sudan: Women Becoming Men?

Longyi Xue, Mark Y. Wang and Tao Xue

‘Voluntary’ Poverty Alleviation Resettlement in China

Review Essays Servaas Storm

Why the West Grew Rich and the Rest Did Not, or How the Present Shapes Our Views of the Past

Matías Vernengo

Rául Prebisch: A Peripheral Economist at Centre Stage

Open Day In June ISS hosted its very first open day to introduce the institute and its MA programme to potential students living in the Netherlands. The event was such a success that we’ve planned two more and plan to hold them annually from now on.

The second Open Day has just taken place, on 23 November and was combined with the International Day. So not only did staff and current ISS students give a short presentation on the five Majors we offer at ISS, visitors also experienced what the multicultural world of ISS really means as students showed off their culture, music and cuisine.

If you couldn’t make it to this Open Day, we’ll be holding the next one in April 2014.

Working Papers The ISS Working Paper series provides a forum for work in progress which seeks to elicit comments and generate discussion.

The series includes academic research by staff, PhD participants and visiting fellows, and award-winning research papers by graduate students.

“Shifting in� migration control. Universalism and immigration in Costa Rica, Voorend, K. (Koen) September 2013

Spaghetti and noodles. Why is the developing country differentiation landscape so complex?

Fialho de Oliveira Ramos, D.N. (Djalita) and Bergeijk, P.A.G. van (Peter) September 2013

What is unpaid female labour worth? Evidence from the Time Use Studies of Iran in 2008 and 2009 Ghazi Tabatabaei, S.M. (Mahmoud), Mehri , N. (Nader) and Messkoub, M. (Mahmood) August 2013

Land governance of suburban areas of Vietnam: Dynamics and contestations of planning, housing and the environment Wit, J. de (Joop) June 2013

Coping with shocks in rural Ethiopia Debebe, Z.Y. (Zelalem), Mebratie, A.D. (Anagaw), Sparrow, R.A. (Robert), Abebaw, D. (Degnet ), Dekker, M. (Marleen), Alemu, G. (Getnet ) and Bedi, A.S. (Arjun Singh) May 2013

DevISSues is published twice a year by the Institute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, the Netherlands, tel: +31 (0)70 4260 443 or 4260 419, fax: + 31 (0)70 4260 799, www.iss.nl, DevISSues@iss.nl Editor: Jane Pocock.

Editorial Board: Natsuko Kobiyama, Susan Newman, Lee Pegler, Sunil Tankha. With thanks to Karen Shaw Editorial Assistant: Marie-Louise Gambon. Design and Production: Karen Shaw. Circulation: 6,500.

The text material from DevISSues may be reproduced or adapted without permission, provided it is not distributed for profit and is attributed to the original author or authors, DevISSues and the Institute of Social Studies. ISSN: 1566-4821. DevISSues is printed on FSC certified paper.