Discordant connections

The importance of gender-equality and of women’s work in relation to the environment are considered to be crucial questions for development in ‘third world’ rural societies. ‘Development’ and a certain standard of welfare make these issues appear to be less urgent in a wealthier country like Sweden. In this paper I trace some of the contradictions and connections in the ways in which gender equality is conceptualised in women’s struggles vis á vis environmental issues in rural areas in Sweden and India. The paper throws light on two important insights: first, that in Sweden where gender equality has been actively pursued as the bedrock of modern societal organizing, the space to organize as women in relation to environmental issues was hedged around with ambiguities. Second, development discourses about equality and empowerment of oppressed third world women bear not only on how gender equality is conceptualised and practiced in the South but also shape the space for gender equality in the North. Analysing the two cases in relation to each other reveals the travel of ideas and conversations across distances. While ideas about the independent, empowered woman are used to deny agency to women’s collectives in India, gendered discrimination has taken different forms in Sweden, making it more difficult to contest. Understanding how this takes place opens an opportunity for interruption in an order and in a space that appears to have become narrower under the umbrella of development, welfare, and growth. It brings into question the category of development both in a Southern but especially so in a Northern context where the North and especially Sweden is taken as referent for questions of development and gender equality

Unsettling the order

The 1990s witnessed a shift in the rhetoric and policies towards people’s participation and gender equality in environmental issues and rural development. People are increasingly expected to take responsibility for the development of their own communities. Against this background, the thesis investigates the gendered implications of the changing nature of natural resource management and rural development, by directing attention to women’s agency. In case studies from rural areas in India and in Sweden, it studies the implications of women’s organizing for local forest management and rural development. It analyses the ways in which dominant ideas about development and gender equality shape the spaces in which women take action and how gendered discourses are produced, maintained and unsettled in dynamic relationships in context specific and general ways. The research draws on theories on gender, development, environment and women’s empowerment and participatory and feminist methodologies enabled an approach that allowed looking beyond how women might be included in local organizations, to understanding how women themselves framed needs and issues. The women in Sweden and in India did not organize themselves solely around resource issues. But in many ways, the issues were implicit and it was impossible to separate the forest issues from the others. Organizing as ‘women’ was neither natural nor self evident. Through their organizing the women consciously constructed a space for themselves. Paradoxically, in Sweden, where gender equality has been actively pursued, the space to organize as women was ambiguous. In India, the women used the opening provided by ideas on gender equality and a women’s programme to create an alternative space from which to act and bring about change. The research has implications for how local management and gender equality are conceptualised in theory and in practice and importantly for the framing of policies that seek to bring about gender equitable resource management

The sustainable development goals: A universalist promise for the future

The Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) have evoked optimism but have also been criticized for reproducing a universal template grounded in a western and neoliberal ideology. Identifying three strands of responses/critiques on the SDGs from a review of literature across several disciplines, I analyze what they have to say in the light of histories of past development work. I analyze how universalism is understood differently in different disciplinary approaches and how, despite its limitations, Agenda 2030 might provide a platform to meet current challenges across the world and a framework to talk across different geographies and disciplines. While a delinking from current development and global economic structures are needed for change, I explore how the SDGs can be used to redeploy development to change those very structures. I argue that decolonizing development calls for changing development structures from inside out as much as finding new ways of being outside it

The conundrums of formal and informal meritocracy: dealing with gender segregation in the academy

Despite the academy's commitment to the idea of meritocratic and fair principles in recruitments, promotions, student admissions and progress, gender segregation and gender inequalities continue to trouble universities worldwide. Through case-studies of two education programs at a Swedish university, we investigate how processes of formal merit, both formal (required for admission such as high grades) and what we identify as informal merit (needing to act in particular ways once admitted) work to obviate or reproduce gender-segregation. We analyze how everyday gendering processes in the classroom play a central role in what gets constructed as merit. Changing notions of merit during the period of study can hamper possibilities for ending gender segregation in HE or open up for ways to circumvent it. We show that a complex and ongoing construction of informal merit can restrain students from minority groups (in relation to gender, but also ethnic background, socioeconomic position, or sexuality) to enter, and importantly, remain in the program. At the same time, new ways of addressing the subject itself provides potential openings. We argue that in order to achieve gender balance at universities, it is urgent to understand how informal and formal merit interplay once students have joined the university and importantly also when they have made the leap and broken with gender segregated education choices

Territorial narratives: Talking claims in open moments

In the rural inland of northern Sweden, three mining projects are making the future of the land uncertain. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, we show how these potential mining interventions create ‘open moments’, turbulent events that destabilizes established claims to land. We analyse how actors such as reindeer herders, indigenous groups, local and national government and mining companies make claims to land, (i.e territorialising it) by drawing on discourses on environmental responsibility, sustainability, indigeneity or growth. By paying attention to language and knowledge production, we show how a multiplicity of actors narrate territory into being, allowing us to go beyond conventional notions of territory as produced ‘from above’ by the state or by counterterritorial movements ‘from below’. By ‘freezing time’ in the unfolding of the open moments we lend all these ‘territorial narratives’ equal space, in order to analyse the connection between actors and their relation to land. This allow us to show connections between what might otherwise be perceived as locked and antagonistic positions, but also how ongoing processes of territorialisation are influenced by and change peoples’ subject positions as the open moment unfolds on the ground

Unraveling the production of ignorance in climate policymaking: The imperative of a decolonial feminist intervention for transformation

Feminist decolonial scholars have called for disengaging from the current system built on a hierarchical logic of race and gender central to modern, colonial thinking. They have looked to worlds outside the modern system to lead us out of current unjust practices harming both humans and the environment. Although policymaking may be seen as the stronghold of the current political agenda and of the structures that have led to the climate crisis, we argue that climate policies too, are also crucial for rethinking and transforming societies. Our examination of climate adaptation policies in Sweden and the literature from Europe shows how policy documents ignore and unknow the oppressive intersections of gender and power despite the knowledge that exists on these issues in the public domain. Drawing on the tools of agnotology, we examine how this is achieved by strategies of 'denial, dismissal, diversion and displacement.' Building on feminist post and decolonial scholarship, we make explicit the gendered and racial hierarchies and dichotomies underpinning these policy documents. At the same time, we bring attention to the nuances in the policy documents we study and look for the openings that might be used to bring about transformation by making these hierarchies explicit and calling them into question. We argue that a transformation is possible through a feminist post and decolonial intervention, even in policymaking otherwise ignorant of culture, values and the colonial histories that have produced contemporary society

Discordant Connections

he importance of gender equality and of women’s work in relation to the environment is regarded as a crucial question for development in “third‐world” rural societies. “Development” and a certain standard of welfare make these issues appear to be less urgent in a wealthier country such as Sweden. In this article, I trace some of the contradictions and connections in the ways in which gender equality is conceptualized in women’s struggles vis‐à‐vis environmental issues in rural areas in Sweden and India. The article throws light on two important insights: First, in Sweden, where gender equality has been actively pursued as the bedrock of modern societal organizing, the space to organize as women in relation to environmental issues was fraught with ambiguity. Second, development discourses about equality and empowerment of oppressed third‐world women not only bear on how gender equality is conceptualized and practiced in the global South but also shape the space for gender equality in the North. Analyzing the two cases in relation to each other reveals the travel of ideas and conversations across distant geographical spaces. While ideas about the independent, empowered woman are used to deny agency to women’s collectives in India, gendered discrimination has taken different forms in Sweden, making it more difficult to contest. Understanding how this takes place opens an opportunity for interruption in an order and a space that appears to have become narrower under the umbrella of development, welfare, and growth. It brings into question the category of development in a southern but particularly so in a northern context, where the North, and especially Sweden, is taken as a referent for questions of development and gender equality

Disharmoniska förbindelser: Diskurser om genus och gräsrotsaktivism i två skogssamhällen i Indien och Sverige

Abstrakt på svenska finns ej

From crisis to sustainability: The politics of knowledge production on rural Europe

What does it mean to study places in ‘crisis’ and how does that affect the research done on the ‘rural’? To be considered to be in crisis is not really new as any literature review of rural studies indicates. And yet, we live now in a new context, with new challenges for ‘rural’ research, in particular that of sustainability. Sustainability is the new policy focus and is increasingly reflected in research on rural Europe. Although scholars are beginning to theorize on what is sustainable in and for rural areas, our intention is to take this further. We theorize on what the focus on crisis and, increasingly on sustainability, means for the research we do and the knowledge we produce on rural Europe. Our aim is to bring attention to the politics of past and present knowledge production on the rural to be able to imagine just and sustainable futures. In an analysis of literature primarily from Sweden and the UK, we argue that two construals, that of a rural crisis and that of rural–urban polarization, have set the tone for rural studies and may have overshadowed a more plural approach. We outline what might be needed from rural research to meet future challenges and what the notion of sustainability, with its emphasis on the entanglements of the social, economic and environmental, might mean for the future of rural research