Ragnhild Lund

Slums of hope and slums of despair: Mobility and livelihoods in Nima, Accra

Slums are universally assumed to be the worst places for people to live in, and it is often taken for granted that the livelihood situations of slum communities are also uniform and homogenous. So pervasive is the latter idea that most studies examining the livelihood situations of slum communities do not compare the socio-economic and cultural differences within such communities. A distinctive feature of slum communities is the pursuance of multiple livelihood strategies that are tied to migration. However, the links between migration and livelihood situations in many slum communities have not been extensively examined. The article seeks to examine the many faces of Nima, a slum community in Accra (Ghana), and link these to livelihoods and migration. The data for the study are drawn from varied sources, including in-depth, key informant interviews, personal observations, and census reports. The complexity and varied migration patterns both internationally and internally tied to livelihoods in Nima are revealed. The changing character of slums is discussed and it is concluded that slums are not only a matter of the negative aspects of urban places but there are positive sides as well. The significance of migration and migrants is crucial for understanding Nimas role in urban development, and for making the appropriate recommendations for livelihoods development in Nima.

Why Children? Why Now?

Abstract In asking the questions why children? why now? we want to set stage for a discussion on the import of the global contexts of children and young people. There is significant discussion in the academic literature on this topic, and yet we feel that this discussion either does not go far enough in highlighting the role of young people in local and global processes or it is suffused with platitudes about children purported as our future. What we do here is something different. We want to challenge, in a very direct way, conventional wisdoms on both economic-development and child-development by bringing these concepts together and highlighting the ways they no longer enable appropriate understandings of our world and the place of young people in it. There is a tired inevitability to the progressive rhetoric of academics and policy makers, from local community activists to elected representatives of the United Nations, that requires energizing with new ways of knowing. This paper sets the stage for a new way of knowing couched in post-developmental, post-structural theories that are sensitive to the global lives of young people and that open up those lives to the political in new ways.

At the Interface of Development Studies and Child Research: Rethinking the Participating Child

Abstract Development research and child research experience contingent global discourses on participation. While child research concentrates on the role of the child to participate as a way to empower self and local communities, recent development discourse focuses on building capacities and strategising to achieve social and economic improvement at different scales. However, in disempowered and poor contexts, the discourse of participation may be inadequate, even irrelevant, to gain in-depth understanding of what takes place on the ground and how children participate. Case examples from different Asian and African countries illustrate how participation may be embedded in local, cultural contexts, but also how participation may be embedded in external structural forces related to globalisation and geopolitics. The participation of children may be passive or active, and it may reflect childrens vulnerability and how they, through their participation, may even be exposed to direct violation and fear. These forces will have to be deconstructed and acted upon and participation can be fully utilised as an enabling and capacitating force.

Markets and women's trade: exploring their role in district development in Ghana

The economic importance of periodic and daily markets as well as the crucial role played by women in these markets has been well noted in the development literature on West Africa. While markets in Ghana have been examined in various aspects, not enough work has been done on their potential role within the context of the current decentralized district development process. This article makes the case for market development with the study of markets in two district capitals in the Central Region of Ghana. In both districts, with little industry and a weak tax base, levies on markets serve as a major source of internally generated revenue to local government, namely District Assemblies. The study also indicated that, for many people, the markets in the district capitals serve as the main avenue for interacting with the ‘centre’ (urban), thereby promoting rural‐urban interactions. However, these markets are underdeveloped. This article emphasizes the need to upgrade the infrastructure in these markets in order to generate more revenue for district development, improve agriculture and income, and reduce poverty, especially among women, and generally provide an alternative means to district development.

‘Unpacking’ the narrative of a national housing policy in Sri Lanka

The article ‘unpacks’ the major policy narrative on housing in Sri Lanka, namely that there is One National Housing Policy (ONHP). Housing schemes have been part of poverty alleviation strategies designed to solve problems of internal displacement due to war, and more recently as part of the major recovery initiatives after the Indian Ocean tsunami event in 2004. The housing policy narrative is explored in a resettlement programme (1970s to date), in a case of war-induced internal displacement (1990s – early 2000), and in post-tsunami recovery (from 2005). The authors ask whether successful practices from the past have been incorporated into the post-tsunami recovery efforts. Although similar in structure and implementation processes – all highly centralised, technocratic, bureaucratic, and top-down – each scheme has its own policy narrative which is based on different local contexts and experiences. Housing plans are never neutral, but embedded in existing situations of tension and are highly politicised. New to the post-tsunami situation is that the housing policy has not sufficiently embedded the reconstruction practices in local realities and peoples own preferences and contributions. Ignorance among international organisations about previous housing policies and power relations has led to a silent acceptance of the ONHP.

Gendered spaces - socio-spatial relations of self-employed women in craft production, Orissa, India

The present article concerns female self-employment in craft production in Orissa, India. Although industrial policies in India have attempted to address some of the socio-economic problems in local craft production through cooperative societies and subsidies, issues of the division of labour, factors of production and the processes of constructing individual gender identity are embedded in the gender structure and remain invisible to the new social order. Socio-spatial relations of gendered spaces are also deeply embedded in the traditional Brahmanical social order. The analysis is based on the individual story of one female businesswoman. The significance of the individual narrative is discussed with reference to feminist geographies and the self-reflexivity of the researchers. The story of Mami is about her struggle to become a successful businesswoman, and highlights the interrelationship between her actions, her perceptions of work and the socio-economic spaces that she has to relate to. Her story reveals that self-employed women can act as role models for other women and contribute to increasing their power in local and place-bound situations.

Real-time research: decolonising research practices – or just another spectacle of researcher–practitioner collaboration?

This article examines the experiences and outcomes from collaboration between a group of researchers and a Northern NGO to improve recovery work in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. A Real-Time Research methodology was established to follow and intervene in the recovery practices as they took place on the ground. What was learned and achieved through this collaboration is assessed, with particular reference to the relationships between various stakeholders in the collaboration.

Geographies of eviction, expulsion and marginalization: stories and coping capacities of the Veddhas, Sri Lanka

This paper identifies why the Veddhas, the indigenous population of Sri Lanka, have been exposed to forced relocation and marginalization at various historical junctures. Their history is a dramatic story of eviction, expulsion and marginalization, and a sad story of deprivation, ethnic discrimination and lack of human rights. The disempowerment of the Veddhas primarily relates to the dominating powers of authority of the Sri Lankan State and its effectuation of detrimental development policies and practices. The key concepts of marginalization, eviction and expulsion are discussed in relation to an analytical model illustrating how external and internal factors, collective capabilities and individual characteristics interact on and influence peoples coping capacity. Veddhas in two villages have given accounts of their understanding of the situation. It is concluded that the disempowerment and disappearance of the Veddha culture are due to ignorance and the unwillingness of the State to procure an enabling environment that would improve the coping capacity of its indigenous population.

It is all about livelihoods: A study of women working in stone chip production in Cape Coast Municipality, Ghana

Outcrops of granite in several localities in the urban and peri-urban fringes of Cape Coast Municipality in Ghana have led to stone chip production becoming a major livelihood strategy for vulnerable and poor women. Previously, this work was primarily carried out by men, but today female workers dominate the workforce, and increasingly it is seen as a way for women to seek a viable living in conditions which are otherwise marginalized and poor in economic terms. The demand for stone chips has increased with the high demand for construction materials for housing in the town of Cape Coast. However, the womens choice of livelihoods strategy (stone cutting) prevents them from gaining other experiences from more lucrative processes. Hence, as stone cutters, they are disadvantaged within the increasingly commercialized economy. Against this background it can be argued that a feminization of poverty is taking place. The data for the study were derived through structured and unstructured interviews, focus group discussions and direct observation, and analysed according to a livelihoods framework.

Globalisation, place and gender

Current processes linking different parts of the world together economically and culturally are referred to asglobalisation. Though this term has gained immense popularity within a short time, critics have argued that it is hard to find empirical evidence that the world is becoming ‘one’. A crucial question is thenhow to look for such evidence. In many studies of globalisation, the general view taken is that of ‘global’, meaning that one searches for a global overview, or outlook, which is situated at no specific place. The present paper argues for a shift of focus, reasoning that to understand what is global we have to start with the local. The experiences of the global take place in particular local places, and to study such processes of change we need to situate our study in such a way that we can study the relationships between the local and the global. The particular place where our study takes place is rural Malaysia. Changes related to industrialisation are often spoken of in rather deterministic terms, in the sense that the local population are ‘victims’ of a global shift, whereas we argue for an alternative approach, analysing women workers as agents of change within their local community. Globalisation also mainly refers to external forces imposed on local actors, whereas we find the local to be imperative for the strategies of industrialists, as well as for the present processes of change.