Putting the discourse to work: On outlining a praxis of democratic leadership development

This article offers a praxis of democratic leadership development, arguing that the framework presented can act as a means of rethinking how collective forms of leadership are developed within and between organisations. Building on notions of leadership development as process and person-based, we interpret these as contested, democratic and contingent discursive achievements in a process of developing. Post-foundationalist theory, particularly the work of Ernesto Laclau, is introduced as a means of ‘democratizing’ key dimensions of leadership development: working with ‘leadership’ and ‘democracy’ as empty-floating signifiers holding the potential to generate energetic engagements between leadership development participants. A framework consisting of four dimensions is introduced, with particular attention paid within each dimension to its practice relevance. First, we seek to democratise the leader-subject, reinterpreted as a contested and contingent signifying subject of discourse. Second, we seek to radicalise the process of development through foregrounding conflict and agonistic practice. Third, we introduce the notion of symbolic violence as a means of thinking about direction setting within development contexts. Fourth, we argue for development that pays attention to the unknown, to the gaps in discourse. We explore each dimension in relation to an illustrative example, a cross-organisational women’s group in the Pacific

Feminist geographies in Aotearoa New Zealand: cultural, social and political moments

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Aotearoa New Zealand is a nation of promise, potential and enigma: it was the first country in the world where women gained the vote in 1893 and now boasts the youngest woman world leader in 2017. It is also a postcolonial nation where structural racism, homophobia, and sexism persist, yet it has also given legal personhood to a river. Our Country Report foregrounds Aotearoa New Zealand feminist geographic scholarship that responds to, reflects, and sometimes resists such contrasts and contradictions at the national scale. We employ the lens of the 2017 national election to critically engage with current gendered and indigenous politics in the country. Analyzing these politics through three ‘feminist moments,’ our paper highlights the breadth and scope of current Aotearoa New Zealand feminist geographic scholarship and directions

Women's and Men's Work: The Production and Marketing of Fresh Food and Export Crops in Papua New Guinea

© 2019 Oceania Publications Fresh food markets have been a fixture of the social and economic landscape of urban and rural PNG since colonial times. They were often the first points of engagement with the market economy, especially for women, who as small-scale producers, sold surplus produce from their food gardens located on communally-owned land. Although local food markets have remained an important livelihood for women, the later adoption and expansion of perennial export cash crops like coffee and cocoa overshadowed food production for local markets as men dominated export crop production on land alienated from communal ownership for decades or permanently. New forms of social relations of production and more exclusive forms of land tenure emerged to accommodate export crop production that were very different from those governing the production and marketing of fresh food. Market values and a trend towards individualisation of production with less capacity to mobilise labour through reciprocal labour exchange networks have characterised export crop production. With the income benefits captured largely by men, women began redirecting their labour to fresh food production where they were able to exercise more control of production and income while still mobilising labour through indigenous labour exchange arrangements. Attempts by men to appropriate the income of women and sons’ labour in export cropping were greater during flush periods when income levels were high, and they were less likely to attempt to appropriate this income in low crop periods when incomes were lower. However, with the recent emergence of female entrepreneurers earning relatively large sums of money in large-scale, profit-driven vegetable production, the moral frameworks governing food production are coming to resemble those governing export crops, and making labour more difficult to mobilise. Despite women being key players in these changes, we argue there is an emerging risk that men will attempt to assert control over this income or move into vegetable production themselves and possibly marginalise women in the process