Situating agency, embodied practices and norm implementation in peacekeeping training

Applying a Bourdieusian feminist practice theory approach to the study of norm implementation, this article introduces a fourth level of analysis, the embodied subject who is expected to be governed by peacekeeping norms. It does so by examining the training experiences of Rwandan tactical-level female military peacekeepers deployed in mix-gender contingents to UNAMID. It is argued that the pre-deployment training space is a field of norm contestation and negotiation, wherein gendered peacekeeper subject positions and gendered peacekeeping labouring practices are constructed and performed. The research findings suggest that by partially complying with the UN’s gender mainstreaming norms, the Rwanda Defence Force strengthens the military’s gender protection norms and establishes the sexual division of labour of the mission area. Trained to perform a scripted Rwandan female subject position, some women find they are not adequately prepared for the more challenging situations they find themselves in when working in multi-dimensional peacekeeping operations and devise alternative, informal training practices to better equip themselves prior to deployment. The case study draws on 65 depth-interviews with Rwandan military personnel, trainers and external consultants and non-participatory observations of field exercises

An analysis of the factors shaping teachers' understanding of HIV/AIDS

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 312-327).This study examined factors shaping teachers' understanding, experience, and teaching about sexuality and HIV/AIDS in some schools in the Western Cape and Mpumalanga, South Africa. Through the use of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with teachers and participant classroom observations in a select number of primary and secondary schools in the Western Cape and Mpumalanga, the study addressed two pertinent questions relating to (a) the content and form of HIV/AIDS and sexuality discourses in school and, (b) what actually happens in the act of teaching when HIV/ AIDS and sexuality is the focus. It began by asking questions about who the teachers are and what it is about themselves that they bring into the classroom. Questions were raised too, about what happens in classrooms when teachers invoke the body in its physical and sexual form, a body usually absent in the public arena of the classroom. The study worked from the premise that what teachers do in the classroom is not neutral

Articulations of equity: practice, complexity and power in facilitated art projects

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/732 on 28.02.2017 by CS (TIS)This is a practice-based research project which analysis how democracy and facilitation are articulated within two different social contexts. The purpose of this research is to make apparent, through two facilitated art projects- the Elder Flowers project and the Exwick Image Project - the contingency of meanings and methods of making democratic choice with participants. The argument is that my methods of facilitation, which embrace social and cognitive difference by 'attending to' (that is, using methods of empathic listening and responsive action), their outcomes and meanings are contingent to each specific interaction. These acts of creative facilitation ask new questions of how democratic choice can be made between people who are located within multiple (historical, emotional, familial, economic) power dynamics. The thesis uses theories of complexity and difference to articulate: the need to 'frame' meanings in order for facilitator and participants to understand each other's choices and the fluidity of signification and subjectivity that deconstructs the ability to fix meaning and therefore properly understand each other. A conflict is revealed within the objective of facilitating a project in a democratic manner. This is a conflict between acknowledging that choice will emerge through interaction between facilitator and participant, and the facilitator needing to index - make sense of - what is happening in order to develop the facilitation. Additionally, the democracy of representing the complexity of the facilitations, in the 'framed' form of project record within the PhD submission, is questioned. A series of practical experiments, explore how theoretical concepts of presentation can work with project material and how an intuitive approach to the project material can reveal the complexity of choice-making during the facilitations

Entrepreneurial Administration

A core failing of today’s administrative state and modern administrative law scholarship is the lack of imagination as to how agencies should operate. On the conventional telling, public agencies follow specific grants of regulatory authority, use the traditional tools of notice-and-comment rulemaking and adjudication, and are checked by judicial review. In reality, however, effective administration depends on entrepreneurial leadership that spearheads policy experimentation and trial-and-error problem-solving, including the development of regulatory programs that use non-traditional tools. Entrepreneurial administration takes place both at public agencies and private entities, each of which can address regulatory challenges and earn regulatory authority as a result. Consider, for example, that Energy Star, a successful program that has encouraged the manufacture and sale of energy efficient appliances, is developed and overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). After the EPA established the program, Congress later codified it and, eventually, other countries followed suit. By contrast, the successful and complementary program encouraging the construction of energy efficient buildings, the well-respected LEED standard, is developed and overseen by a private organization. After it was developed, a number of governmental authorities endorsed it and have encouraged LEED-certified construction projects with both carrots and sticks. Significantly, while neither the Energy Star nor the LEED program were originally anticipated by any regulatory statute, both have had a tremendous impact. The Energy Star and LEED case studies exemplify the sort of innovative regulatory strategies that are taking root in the modern administrative state. Despite the importance of entrepreneurial administration in practice, scholars have failed to examine the role of entrepreneurial leadership in spurring policy innovation and earning regulatory authority for an agency (or private entity). In short, administrative law needs a richer and more textured account of agency action, why entrepreneurial leadership matters in government, and how agencies should operate. This Article explains that the conventional view of agency behavior — either following the specific direction of Congress or the President to use notice-and-comment rulemaking or adjudication processes — does not adequately portray how public agencies and private entities develop innovative regulatory strategies and earn regulatory authority as a result. In particular, this Article explains how governmental agencies like the EPA or private entities like the Green Building Council (which oversees the LEED standard) depend on entrepreneurial leadership to develop experimental regulatory strategies. It also explains how, in the wake of such experiments, legislative bodies have the opportunity to evaluate regulatory innovations in practice before deciding whether to embrace, revise, reject, or merely tolerate them. This Article highlights the importance of entrepreneurial leadership in government, providing a number of examples of emerging regulatory experiments and suggesting how Congress should evaluate such experiments. This discussion explains how entrepreneurial leadership and a culture of experimentation and trial-and-error learning is necessary to develop innovative strategies and overcome the pressure to manage the status quo. In so doing, the Article underscores how policy entrepreneurship is integral to agency effectiveness, an important corrective to public choice theory, and a missing piece of modern administrative law scholarship

Entrepreneurial Administration

A core failing of today’s administrative state and modern administrative law scholarship is the lack of imagination as to how agencies should operate. On the conventional telling, public agencies follow specific grants of regulatory authority, use the traditional tools of notice-and-comment rulemaking and adjudication, and are checked by judicial review. In reality, however, effective administration depends on entrepreneurial leadership that spearheads policy experimentation and trial-and-error problem-solving, including the development of regulatory programs that use non-traditional tools. Entrepreneurial administration takes place both at public agencies and private entities, each of which can address regulatory challenges and earn regulatory authority as a result. Consider, for example, that Energy Star, a successful program that has encouraged the manufacture and sale of energy efficient appliances, is developed and overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). After the EPA established the program, Congress later codified it and, eventually, other countries followed suit. By contrast, the successful and complementary program encouraging the construction of energy efficient buildings, the well-respected LEED standard, is developed and overseen by a private organization. After it was developed, a number of governmental authorities endorsed it and have encouraged LEED-certified construction projects with both carrots and sticks. Significantly, while neither the Energy Star nor the LEED program were originally anticipated by any regulatory statute, both have had a tremendous impact. The Energy Star and LEED case studies exemplify the sort of innovative regulatory strategies that are taking root in the modern administrative state. Despite the importance of entrepreneurial administration in practice, scholars have failed to examine the role of entrepreneurial leadership in spurring policy innovation and earning regulatory authority for an agency (or private entity). In short, administrative law needs a richer and more textured account of agency action, why entrepreneurial leadership matters in government, and how agencies should operate. This Article explains that the conventional view of agency behavior — either following the specific direction of Congress or the President to use notice-and-comment rulemaking or adjudication processes — does not adequately portray how public agencies and private entities develop innovative regulatory strategies and earn regulatory authority as a result. In particular, this Article explains how governmental agencies like the EPA or private entities like the Green Building Council (which oversees the LEED standard) depend on entrepreneurial leadership to develop experimental regulatory strategies. It also explains how, in the wake of such experiments, legislative bodies have the opportunity to evaluate regulatory innovations in practice before deciding whether to embrace, revise, reject, or merely tolerate them. This Article highlights the importance of entrepreneurial leadership in government, providing a number of examples of emerging regulatory experiments and suggesting how Congress should evaluate such experiments. This discussion explains how entrepreneurial leadership and a culture of experimentation and trial-and-error learning is necessary to develop innovative strategies and overcome the pressure to manage the status quo. In so doing, the Article underscores how policy entrepreneurship is integral to agency effectiveness, an important corrective to public choice theory, and a missing piece of modern administrative law scholarship

Emotions, Senses, Spaces: Ethnographic Engagements and Intersections

This volume draws together three core concerns for the social sciences: the senses and embodiment, emotions, and space and place. The chapters engage with intersections between space, sense and emotion through a range of experiences and activities including dance, bullfights, healing ceremonies, celebrations and music. The authors herein critically examine diverse contexts, in and through which relations between sensate bodies, spaces and places, and emotions are constituted. The chapters draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork from which the authors critically engage with their material on a fundamental level and contribute to contemporary debates about the nature and experience of emotions, the sensing body, and spaces and places

Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods

Diaspora and transnationalism are widely used concepts in academic as well as political discourses. Although originally referring to quite different phenomena, they increasingly overlap today. Such inflation of meanings goes hand in hand with a danger of essentialising collective identities. This book therefore analyses diaspora and transnationalism as research perspectives rather than as characteristics of particular social groups. The contributions focus on conceptual uses, theoretical challenges and methodological innovations in the study of social ties that transcend nation and state boundaries. This volume brings together authors from a wide range of fields and approaches in the social sciences, as studying border-crossing affiliations also requires a crossing of disciplinary boundaries.Diaspora en transnationalisme zijn veel gebruikte begrippen in zowel het academische als het politieke discours. Hoewel beide termen oorspronkelijk naar heel verschillende fenomenen verwijzen, overlappen ze elkaar tegenwoordig steeds meer. Deze inflatie van betekenis gaat hand in hand met een gevaar van stereotypering van collectieve identiteiten. Daarom analyseert dit boek diaspora en transnationalisme als onderzoeksperspectieven in plaats van als kenmerken van bepaalde sociale groepen

Negotiating intersecting forms of oppression : female genital cutting (FGC) and cultural change after migration

Global instabilities, the resulting international displacement and rising inter-cultural tensions within Western societies have relocated gendered cultural practices at the heart of contemporary debates on multiculturalism, social cohesion and migration. In this context, female genital cutting (FGC) has re-emerged as a symbol of savagery, Otherness and global violations of women’s rights. While the increasing attention given to these practices is a testament to reinvigorated feminist activism, FGC has also been harnessed for the purposes of reproducing colonial discourses about the “Third World”, which have been integral to the revival of assimilationist policies and the creation of the “Fortress Europe”. This thesis contributes to new knowledge by illuminating how cultural change and FGC-affected women’s experiences of trauma are shaped by state policies on asylum, migrant incorporation and cultural diversity. In locating inclusion, co-production and power as core issues in both anti-FGC activism and research in this area, I utilised a participatory approach through recruiting a Community Advisory Board made up of FGC-affected women who informed the different stages of the research process. The findings presented in this thesis are based on thematic and narrative analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews, focus groups and feminist zine-making with 12 FGC-affected women and 34 participants from communities and organisations working with African and Middle Eastern migrants in Scotland. By tracing migrant women’s experiences of departure, displacement and resettlement, this thesis demonstrates the intersecting social, cultural, political and economic conditions which sustain women’s continuums of violence before and after migration. The findings illustrate how the collision of anti-FGC and anti-immigration discourses creates barriers for women to remake their lives after violence and displacement. I illuminate how these discourses materialise to perpetuate further trauma and to constrain women’s spaces for action to challenge FGC and other forms of gender-based violence within their communities.Global instabilities, the resulting international displacement and rising inter-cultural tensions within Western societies have relocated gendered cultural practices at the heart of contemporary debates on multiculturalism, social cohesion and migration. In this context, female genital cutting (FGC) has re-emerged as a symbol of savagery, Otherness and global violations of women’s rights. While the increasing attention given to these practices is a testament to reinvigorated feminist activism, FGC has also been harnessed for the purposes of reproducing colonial discourses about the “Third World”, which have been integral to the revival of assimilationist policies and the creation of the “Fortress Europe”. This thesis contributes to new knowledge by illuminating how cultural change and FGC-affected women’s experiences of trauma are shaped by state policies on asylum, migrant incorporation and cultural diversity. In locating inclusion, co-production and power as core issues in both anti-FGC activism and research in this area, I utilised a participatory approach through recruiting a Community Advisory Board made up of FGC-affected women who informed the different stages of the research process. The findings presented in this thesis are based on thematic and narrative analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews, focus groups and feminist zine-making with 12 FGC-affected women and 34 participants from communities and organisations working with African and Middle Eastern migrants in Scotland. By tracing migrant women’s experiences of departure, displacement and resettlement, this thesis demonstrates the intersecting social, cultural, political and economic conditions which sustain women’s continuums of violence before and after migration. The findings illustrate how the collision of anti-FGC and anti-immigration discourses creates barriers for women to remake their lives after violence and displacement. I illuminate how these discourses materialise to perpetuate further trauma and to constrain women’s spaces for action to challenge FGC and other forms of gender-based violence within their communities