The Road to Global Citizenship?

Barrientos A, Pellissery S, Leisering L, et al. The Road to Global Citizenship? ZiF-Mitteilungen. 2011;2011(3):15-28

Conflicting Climate Change Frames in a Global Field of Media Discourse

Reducing global emissions will require a global cosmopolitan culture built from detailed attention to conflicting national climate change frames (interpretations) in media discourse. The authors analyze the global field of media climate change discourse using 17 diverse cases and 131 frames. They find four main conflicting dimensions of difference: validity of climate science, scale of ecological risk, scale of climate politics, and support for mitigation policy. These dimensions yield four clusters of cases producing a fractured global field. Positive values on the dimensions show modest association with emissions reductions. Data-mining media research is needed to determine trends in this global field.Peer reviewe

The politics of social protection in rural India

Social protection should ideally create a framework of 'welfare rights' for the vulnerable individuals and households. The state, through a set of policies of promotive and protective measures, sets out to achieve this. However, gaining these welfare rights in a decentralised democratic framework could be a function of the bargaining power that each individual, household and social group may possess. Therefore the micro-level interactions involving claimant, bureaucrat and local elites constitute the key policy process. Study of the process itself can reveal why some households gain formal social protection and other fail. This study argues that the local practices and informal rules underlying these public policy processes are purposively guided by the private interests of the local elites.At the heart of this dissertation is a comparative case-study of two villages in the Indian state of Maharashtra, based on eight months ethnographic fieldwork. Bottomup evaluation of two social protection programmes, public works (promotive) and social assistance (protective) programmes shows that 60 per cent of eligible persons are excluded from welfare rights. The mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion in these programmes are studied. The study reveals that both eligibility and entitlement to 'welfare rights' are contested within the power structure of the local community. The social identity of the claimant, and the ability to build a relationship with the local leaders or labour market managers act as key routes to access welfare rights. The precedence of informal rules at the stage of implementation of social protection programmes reproduced the existing social and economic power structures. As a result, the welfare rights of individuals and households are affected by the competing forces in the non-state sectors. These non-state actors, through their network, were able to weaken the administration and fair allocation of welfare benefits.Through this analysis the thesis contributes to the understanding of the local state, and decision-making practices over welfare rights in a decentralised context.</p

Introduction: Property and social citizenship

Social policy as interventions by government and as an academic discipline developed in contexts where formal property rights were already well defined. As social policies travel to contexts where property rights are informally defined or where the majority of the population has no property rights, core concepts of the discipline require revision. This themed section revisits the concept of social citizenship in the context of property rights in land

The politics of social protection in rural India

Through this analysis the thesis contributes to the understanding of the local state, and decision-making practices over welfare rights in a decentralised context

Caste Matters in Public Policy: Issues and Perspectives

Caste in India, despite its historical resilience, has been undergoing transformation since independence. If caste as a system of rigid stratification has been on the decline, castes as autonomous interest-serving groups have been on ascendance. This book critically engages with the changing notions of caste and its intersection with public policy in India. It discusses key issues such as social security, internal reservation, the idea of Most Backward Classes, caste issues among non-Hindu religious communities, caste in census, caste in market, and service castes and urban planning. Drawing on in-depth case studies from states including Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and West Bengal, the volume explores the cyclical process of how caste drives policies, and how policies in turn shape the reality of caste in India. It looks at the impact of factors like protective discrimination, adult franchise and democratic decentralisation, horizontal and vertical mobilisation, land reforms, and religious conversion on social mobility, and traditional hierarchy in India.https://repository.nls.ac.in/books/1004/thumbnail.jp