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Citizenship DRC Publications

The Citizenship DRC resources are the direct product of its research initiatives, and include working papers, bulletins, workshop reports, policy briefings and Zed book series amongst others.

All the publications of the DRC's work can be browsed by author surname, theme, title, or type.

Latest Publications

Hybrid Activism in the Brazilian Environmental Movement

Focusing on two case studies of environmental activism in Brazil, this paper by Angela Alonso argues against theories that consider local and global activism as two separate realms. Instead, it demonstrates how transnational activists circulate across the two spaces. In the global spaces, they build alliances with foreign groups, and in the local ones, they deal with the national state, other organised groups and ordinary communities living inside environmental areas they aim to protect. Activists live in both spheres and as they move, they carry with them local and global meanings, knowledge and forms of action and organising, mixing them through the continuous action of two mechanisms: adaptation and emulation. In this way, activists’ biographies – their lived experience, their meanings and strategies – intermingle with both spaces in one single trajectory of activism. Discussing the existing literature on transnational social movements, the paper makes that case that such activists forge hybrid identities in the sense of being at the same time local and global. The study is part of a group of research projects on global citizen engagements.

Citizenship Narratives in the Absence of Good Governance

The complex nature of the challenge posed by state–society relations to the realisation of citizenship rights in the poorer countries of the world reflects the incapacity or unwillingness on the part of the state to guarantee basic security of life and livelihoods to its citizens and its proneness to capture by powerful elites. Drawing on their work in Bangladesh, this paper by Nail Kabeer and Ariful Haq Kabir argues that access to resources continues to be defined by one’s position within an unequal social order that is largely constituted by the ascribed relationships of family, kinship, caste and so on. These relationships pervade all spheres of society, rendering irrelevant the idea of an impersonal public sphere which individuals enter as bearers of rights, equal in the eyes of the law. Indeed, given their reliance on patron client relations for their basic survival and security, the idea of individual rights is unlikely to have much meaning or relevance in the lives of most poor people.

Democratising Trade Politics in the Americas

This paper by Rosalba Icaza, Peter Newell and Marcelo Saguier explores the the ways in which civil society groups are contributing to the democratisation of trade policy and politics in the Americas. It describes the strategies adopted by a range of NGOs and social movements to influence the decision-making processes and the content of the trade agenda. This includes efforts to open up existing spaces of participation as well as the creation of new ones through forms of citizen engagement, democratic innovation and efforts to change the terms of debate. The authors concentrate on the cases of the women’s, environmental and labour movements in relation to the trade agenda promoted by the NAFTA, MERCOSUR and FTAA initiatives. The study is part of a group of research projects on global citizen engagements.

Show me the Evidence: Indian Asbestos Issues

This paper by Linda Waldman examines asbestos issues, mobilisation and citizenship in India. It shows how asbestos has been considered as a tool for Indian economic growth and modernisation and explores the scientific debates around its ‘safe’ use. The research finds that the state’s narrow definition of asbestos diseases enables it to officially document the lack of asbestos diseases experienced by Indian workers. This process, which defines sufferers as politically invisible and inconsequential, accompanied by the 30 year delay between exposure and the onset of disease, hinders anti-asbestos organisations as there is no constituency to be mobilised. Parallel (and partially interrelated) grassroots asbestos movements which are more worker-orientated are, however, marginalised from the transnational protests. Mobilisation around identity issues thus creates different contexts in India, in which activists are simultaneously both intimately connected and enormously distant to different aspects of the mobilisation process. The study is part of a group of research projects on global citizen engagements.

Democratising Trade Politics in the Americas

This paper by Rosalba Icaza, Peter Newell and Marcelo Saguier explores the the ways in which civil society groups are contributing to the democratisation of trade policy and politics in the Americas. It describes the strategies adopted by a range of NGOs and social movements to influence the decision-making processes and the content of the trade agenda. This includes efforts to open up existing spaces of participation as well as the creation of new ones through forms of citizen engagement, democratic innovation and efforts to change the terms of debate. The authors concentrate on the cases of the women’s, environmental and labour movements in relation to the trade agenda promoted by the NAFTA, MERCOSUR and FTAA initiatives. The study is part of a group of research projects on global citizen engagements.

The Case of the Global Campaign for Education

How do changing patterns of power and governance affect how and where citizens mobilise collectively to claim their rights? This paper by John Gaventa and Marj Mayo presents a case study of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a civil society coalition that came together in 1999 to mobilise people across the world in a campaign for the righ to quality, free education for all. The study is part of a group of research projects on global citizen engagements.

AIDS, Citizenship and Global Funding: A Gambian Case Study

The last decade has seen an array of new international initiatives and funding mechanisms for health. These dimensions of governance exemplify, in the health sector, the decline of the nation state’s pre-eminence, and the rise of new forms of authority through arrangements including global public-private-philanthropic partnerships. This Gambian case study unpicks the picture of an emergent ‘therapeutic citizenship’ in this context – of condom demonstrations and public disclosures – looking to the strands of authority and governance linked to an epistemic structure initiated by the Global Fund. This paper by Rebecca Cassidy and Melissa Leach looks at the construction of HIV-related problems, solutions and notions of identity and political affiliation in Gambia in the period up to the end of 2006 in which this local-global axis came into being.

Transnational Agrarian Movements Struggling for Land and Citizenship Rights

This paper by Saturnino M. Borras Jr. and Jennifer C Franco demonstrates how rural citizens are increasing invoking their rights at the transnational level. La Vía Campesina, an international campaign in protest against neoliberal land policies, is a prime example. La Vía Campesina has advocated for, created and occupied a new citizenship space that did not exist before at the global governance terrain – a public space distinct for poor peasants and small farmers from the global South and North.

Mobilising and Mediating Global Medicine and Health Citizenship

A new paper by Steven Robins investigates teh ways in which global health messags and forms of health citizenship are mediated by AIDS activists in rural South Africa. It focuses on how international health agencies and NGOs engage with local communities through AIDS prevention and treatment programmes.

'Rude' Accountability in the Unreformed State

‘Rude’ forms of accountability are central to how poor people negotiate their entitlements on the frontline of service delivery in Bangladesh. This paper by Naomi Hossain documents the unorganised, informal pressures that poor citizens exert on officials in a context where effective formal systems for accountability are absent. Download the paper here, or the two-page research summary here.

A Critical Look at Brazilian Participation

Steven Robins, a Citizenship DRC researcher from the University of Stellenbosch, explores the dilemmas of post-apartheid South Africa in the recently published From Revolution to Rights in South Africa. Jean Comaroff of the University of Chicago writes of the book: “ What becomes of popular politics in post-revolutionary times, when liberation meets liberalization, and struggles against colonial inequality give way to a rhetoric of rights? In this provocative, richly-illustrated book, one of South Africa’s most thoughtful scholars probes the everyday meaning of “rights talk”, “citizenship” and cultural identity.”

Rethinking Citizenship in the Postcolony

This paper by Steven Robins, Andrew Cornwall and Bettina von Lieres argues for an approach to researching citizenship and democracy that begins not from normative convictions, but from everyday experiences in particular social, cultural and historical contexts. The authors consider the ways in which the terms ‘democracy’ and ‘citizenship’ have been used in the discourses and approaches taken within mainstream studies of citizenship and democracy, drawing attention to some of the conceptual blind spots that arise.

Public Participation on Dam Building in South Africa

This paper examines the participatory processes which led to the building of the Berg River Dam in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The government-led participatory processes stand in contrast to the mobilisation of environmental activists against the building of the dam. In this case, the creation of formal participatory forums both subverted and neutralised resistance by the environmental movement and civil society against the building of the dam, largely through the mobilisation of policy discourses on water ‘scarcity’.

The MDGs and Water Service Delivery in South Africa

In this article by Lisa Thompson and Ndodana Nleya, the authors investigate the link between poverty alleviation and the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). The fieldwork for the paper, supported by the Citizenship DRC, looked at the ways in which the achievement of targets on water service delivery help to improve the quality of life of poor communities in the township setting of Khayelitsha, Western Cape. The authors conclude that the MDG goals may obscure aspects of chronic poverty relating to services by hiding the realities of ill-conceived and implemented water and sanitation policies on the ground behind a front of deceptively packaged water and sanitation provision statistics.

Global Engagements with Global Assessments: The Case of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development by Ian Scoones (2008), IDS Working Paper 313

 

Feature Publications

Spaces for Change? The Politics of Citizen Participation in New Democratic Arenas Andrea Cornwall and Vera Schattan Coelho (eds), London: Zed Books
Rights, resources and the politics of accountability Peter Newell and Joanna Wheeler (eds), London: Zed Books
Science and Citizens Globalisation and the challenge of engagement Leach, M., Scoones, I. and Wynne, B. (eds.), (2005), London: Zed Books Introduction
Inclusive citizenship: meanings and expressions Kabeer, N. (ed.), (2005), London: Zed Books Introduction

 

Policy Papers

 

Building effective states: taking a citizen's perspective (2006)

by Rosalind Eyben and Sarah Ladbury

Implications for aid practice: taking a citizen's perspective (2006)

by Rosalind Eyben and Sarah Ladbury