Bettina Engels

Contentious Politics of Scale: The Global Food Price Crisis and Local Protest in Burkina Faso

Global crises such as the financial crisis, the energy crisis and the food crisis have, without doubt, social, political and ecological repercussions on the local scale. This article explores the mechanisms that mediate global crises into local conflicts. Based on empirical insights, it aims to contribute to the study of how global structures and processes relate to local conflicts and protest. The study analyses conflicts over the high cost of living in Burkina Faso, where intense protests related to the global food crises have occurred. Scale and framing are used as the central analytical concepts. The location of a problem (such as high consumer food prices) on a particular scale (local, national or global) is a politically contested issue. Referring to the conceptual differentiation between ‘scales of regulation’ and ‘scales of meaning’, the article argues that scalar ascriptions and discourses as such are already integral parts of political conflicts and protest.

Social movement struggles against the high cost of living in Burkina Faso

Abstract In reaction to the global food price crisis, people marched in the streets of numerous cities of the Global South, protesting against unaffordable prices for foodstuffs. This article investigates the conditions that enabled this mobilisation. It analyses the case of Burkina Faso, where protests were particularly intense. Building on approaches from social movement studies, it is argued that in Burkina Faso, temporal political opportunities (the price crisis opening up a window of opportunity) and dynamic politico-institutional structures (“cycles of contention”), in combination with social movements’ organisational resources, explain the way the price issue was framed and why mobilisation was possible.

Different means of protest, same causes: popular struggles in Burkina Faso

The article examines the relationship of riots to more organised and sustained protests by trade unions and other established oppositional organisations. It focuses on protests related to the 2007–2008 food and fuel price crisis. In a case study on Burkina Faso, actors, means and achievements of the popular struggles are analysed. It is argued that protests by the trade unions on the one side and riots on the other relate to one another. Both present struggles by different segments of the popular classes that sometimes use different means but emerge from the same structural causes and address the same problem.

Umwelt und Entwicklung

Das Kapitel skizziert die umweltbezogenen Debatten der Entwicklungspolitik und -forschung von den 1960er-Jahren bis heute. Leitbilder wie „nachhaltige Entwicklung“ und „Grune Okonomie“ werden vorgestellt und eingeordnet. Daran anschliesend bietet das Kapitel einen Uberblick uber Forschungen zu Umwelt und Entwicklung aus dem Feld der Politischen Okologie. Diese stutzen sich theoretisch auf die Annahme von Natur und Gesellschaft als konstitutiv aufeinander bezogen. Dargestellt werden das Konzept „Environmental Justice“ sowie oko- und neomarxistische, feministische und poststrukturalistische Arbeiten.

Not All Glitter Is Gold: Mining Conflicts in Burkina Faso

This chapter analyses societal reactions to the expansion of industrial mining in Burkina Faso. It does so by referring to concepts from the study of contentious politics, namely repertoires of contention and political opportunity structures, and from spatial theory, notably place and scale. On the local scale of mining sites, spontaneous protests by artisanal miners and local communities occur frequently, though until recently there has been little mobilisation on the national scale by social movement organisations. While at first there seem to be few connections between spontaneous local uprisings and social movement organisations’ activities at the national scale, the presented case study demonstrates that they are, nevertheless, linked to the same processes of contentious politics.

Struggles Against the High Cost of Living in Burkina Faso

How do marginalized, vulnerable and resource-poor groups organize to identify shared political aims and mobilize to articulate collective aims and can they succeed? These questions have been under discussion in social movement studies since the 1970s, for example in relation to homeless people (Cress and Snow 1996; Wright 1997) or the unemployed (Bagguley 1991; Croucher 1987). This chapter deals with mobilization by social movements (including social movement-type trade unions) against the high cost of living in one country in the Global South, namely Burkina Faso, during an intense period of food price crisis in 2007–2008.

Radical political economy and industrialisation in Africa: ROAPE/Third World Network-Africa Connections workshop, held in Accra, Ghana, 13–14 November 2017

This introduction to the Accra workshop on ‘Radical political economy and industrialisation in Africa’, held on 13–14 November 2017, explains the rationale behind the initiative to have three Africa-based ROAPE meetings, why they are important and how they relate to historic socio-economic transformations, the most significant of which remains the great Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, whose centenary month coincided with the Accra workshop. Industrial transformation has been pivotal to such large-scale change. As Ghana’s experience underlines, when industrial change has failed or faltered, societies and polities have paid a steep price, certainly in terms of overall development that transforms the lives of all their peoples and, it seems, in terms of sovereign or autonomous economic development and freedom from foreign domination of their economies. That the workshop also coincided with Ghana’s 60th anniversary of independence made the reflections in Accra doubly important, focused as they were on strategies of industrialisation and Africa’s non-dependent development broadly defined. It was also the appropriate starting point for the trilogy of meetings: the upcoming meetings in Dar es Salaam in April and Johannesburg September 2018 will explore alternative development strategies and the politics and character of resistance and change respectively. ROAPE has historically convened large formal conferences. These included, to name a few, ‘The transition to socialism’, Leeds, 1982; ‘The world recession and food crisis’, Keele, 1984; ‘State, mining and development’, Leeds, 2007. In 2016, however, the journal’s Editorial Working Group (EWG) decided to adapt this approach and to help convene and establish a series of dialogues of enquiry and interrogation of issues over a longer time frame with activist and other non-academic actors in Africa. Our website initiative of www.roape.net has certainly increased accessibility and range of material from Africa with a modest view of trying to be more engaged in Africa. The series of three workshops is intended both to build on this initiative generated by the new website and to extend and deepen ROAPE’s grounding in Africa.

Mobilisierung und Ressourcen im Konflikt um die Mine Bissa Gold in Sabcé, Burkina Faso

FORSCHUNGSJOURNAL SOZIALE BEWEGUNGEN 30. Jg. 1 | 2017 am 18.01.2017. 31 Siehe Online-Berichte über die Proteste: https://centruldecultura.wordpress. com/2011/11/11/the-daily-recipe-of-a-goldcorporation-banning-news-and-chockingprotests/, zuletzt eingesehen am 18.01.2017. 32 Siehe Artikel von Claudia Ciobanu bei open demoracy: https://www.opendemocracy. net/can-europe-make-it/claudia-ciobanu/ revolution-begins-with-rosia-montana, zuletzt eingesehen am 18.01.2017. 33 Verschiedene Videos über die Aktionen finden sich bei youtube, unter dem Stichwort Rosia Montana. 34 Siehe: http://www.robinwood.de/f i leadmin/Redaktion/Dokumente/Magazin/2014-1/120-12-19-rosia-montana.pdf 35 Siehe: https://stop-ttip.org/blog/when-protecting-the-environment-gets-expensive/ 36 Siehe: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ report-on-business/international-business/ european-business/gabriel-resources-ceovows-to-sue-if-romania-kills-europes-biggestgold-mine/article14240950/ http://www. theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/ industry-news/energy-and-resources/gabriel-may-seek-billions-in-arbitration-over-stalled-romanian-mine/article18341095/ 37 Siehe verschiedene Berichte bei campact: https://blog.campact.de/2016/08/schiedsgerichte-das-verlockende-geschaeft-fuer-investoren/ sowie https://blog.campact.de/ tag/juergen-maier/, zuletzt eingesehen am 15.02.2017. 38 http://www.gabrielresources.com/documents/GBU_closingofpr ivateplacement_140716_close_filing.pdf, zuletzt eingesehen am 18.01.2017 39 Siehe Bericht von Claudia Ciobanu bei reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/ us-romania-mine-idUSKBN13426G, zuletzt eingesehen am 17.01.2017.

Overcoming the Material/Social Divide: Conflict Studies from the Perspective of Spatial Theory

In conflict studies it has become a trend to link space and conflict theoretically as well as empirically (see e.g. Raleigh et al. 2010; Stephenne et al. 2009; Wucherpfennig et al. 2011). So far, however, few substantial arguments have been made that consider how the relationship between space and conflict can enhance our understanding of conflicts. One challenge is that the landscape of theoretical narratives and empirical studies is rather fragmented along the line of different disciplines. Social geographers, political scientists, conflict researchers and development scholars alike suggest that we broaden our understanding of space in order to reflect on the conditions, dynamics and effects of conflict more precisely, without much engagement between these disciplines. One central question discussed in these different bodies of literature is whether space is an external, material condition that influences human action, or whether a different understanding of space is required.

Ernährungsunsicherheit und Ernährungskrisen

Rund 870 Millionen Menschen weltweit sind unterernahrt: Das entspricht 12,5 % der Weltbevolkerung oder jedem achten Menschen auf der Welt. In den Entwicklungslandern, wo die grose Mehrheit der an Unterernahrung Leidenden lebt (uber 850 Millionen Menschen), sind es sogar durchschnittlich 15 % der Bevolkerung (FAO 2012). Auch wenn sich die Hungersituation global leicht verbessert hat (von Grebmer et al. 2012), bleibt das Ausmas besorgniserregend und der Hunger zudem auserst ungleich verteilt – zwischen den Weltregionen und Staaten ebenso wie innergesellschaftlich zwischen sozialen Gruppen und entlang von Kategorien wie Ethnizitat, Klasse und Geschlecht. Niemand wird bezweifeln, dass Hunger und Unterernahrung ein grundlegendes Problem menschlicher und gesellschaftlicher Entwicklung bilden.