The need for ‘Impact’: whatever ‘Impact’ means

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What happened to the scholar that didn’t embrace new media? They ran out of cassette tapes! Awful jokes aside, it’s more and more important for scientists, and particularly social scientists, to be plugged in to society to better interact with it. A recent Economist article highlighted that academic research papers in the humanities and social sciences are getting harder to read, more convoluted and stuffed full of jargon and incomprehensible sentences. There is a perception in the ‘outside world’ (perhaps pushed by populist political currents!) that academics are starting to talk more just to other academics rather than to society at large, which is at the very least not conducive to a high level of public discourse. In some cases, it has led to the removal of experts from the policymaking process. At the same time, and partially thanks to the growing legions of science communications officers and the phenomenon of ‘cool geeks’, there are more opportunities than ever for (social) scientists to spread their ideas and research in accessible, bite-sized and socially engaged ways. Even the Lowlands Festival has a science pavilion to show off the latest research on everything from the psychology of perceptions of equality, quantum physics, the creative possibilities of generative AI and much more besides.

Tom Ansell,  Sarah Njoroge (MSc) and Gabriela Anderson intend this blog as a call to academics to think along, repackage their work into fun and digestible gobbets and make use of the science communications talent available to help boost our collective ‘impact’… whatever ‘impact’ means!

This image was taken at Research InSightS LIVE #4 Conflict Compounded: Implications of the war in Ukraine on global development challenges

Social science is best when it’s in conversation with society

Aside from the self-fulfilment element, and the satisfaction of personal curiosity, social scientific research has a function of providing evidence-based approaches to societal questions that can inform various stakeholders in how they act. That could be the government, organizations, businesses or people themselves. Like many forms of scientific enquiry, it serves to further human knowledge, and so (indirectly and ideally) improve people’s lives or the society that they live in. The link between the academic and the society in which they function should be one of constant conversation, where ideas are presented to people, and then validated or reconsidered through their experiences and their interaction with the everyday (this is also expressed by Anthony Giddens as the ‘double hermeneutic’). Of course, this sentence may spark flashing lights in the minds of many academics reading this, but in short – social science is rooted in society and so should seek to be in conversation with ‘real’ people all the time. A social scientist that hides away in a university is an isolated one! This means that researchers must have a way of being in conversation with people. At least part of that conversation must be a clear transmission of social science theories in a compelling and clear way, and knowledge sharing in a form that is digestible, interesting and (hopefully) means that people in the ‘real world’ can see their own lives and questions in cutting-edge research.

This is especially true in the last few years , where a significant portion of the world’s institutions face ‘alternative facts’ and the rise of public discourse strongly influenced by a ‘post-truth’ world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the need to provide accurate and evidence-based advice to the general public was literally a matter of life and death. Knowledge of the mechanisms of how an mRNA vaccine worked (the Moderna one) helped ensure that enough people went and received the jab to reach the critical mass of vaccinated people. Now imagine if the various biologists had remained hidden behind a wall of jargon and specific terminology, and all the while remained in their labs and refused to speak to the public in understandable language. Naturally, the immediate risks aren’t quite the same in social science research uptake, but the need for public trust and mandate is the same. Where the influence of rigorous social scientific research would help, however, is in government policymaking. Imagine how the new Dutch international aid policy would look had various members of ISS’ work been consulted in its drafting. We can’t make policymakers listen to good research, but we can make it as easy as possible for them to find, digest and be interested by it.

Avoiding extractivism and ‘closing the loop’

Considering the other side of the conversation between research and the public, we need to move beyond the effort of making sure our writing reflects our values as researchers to be ethical and non-extractive only during the research process. Research even in these most critical and conscious of times still teeters on the lines of opinion-mining, often masquerading through notions such as ‘collaboration’ and ‘co-creation’. Jamie Gorman expresses this quite well in the quote (almost jokingly): ‘What does a social researcher have in common with an oil rig operator? The answer is that both can be miners engaged in the extraction of a precious resource’. For social science researchers, that precious resource is knowledge. A key part of making sure that research is non-extractive is ‘closing the loop’ and making sure that the people that have contributed to the research are both involved and can get something out of it (something called participatory research).

The potential impact of research does not stop before and during the research process, it needs to extend into the dissemination and communication of said research. By looking beyond the production of a research to how it can be shared to an audience outside of the academic community, we allow for a greater reach through inclusivity, accessibility and even opening up for future potentials in participation and, most importantly, allowing research to be useable (from theory to practice and vice versa). How is this done? By sharing research in different mediums and through different mediums and media. Examples include translated versions, both in terms of language and even the softening of academic and ‘waffle’ jargon, different (relevant) and contextual forms of outputs, such as radio broadcasts (in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo), video abstracts, infographics, posters, dialogue cafes, podcasts, etc. In doing so, we reach people at their different levels in all their differences of backgrounds, making room for a greater impact from our research.

Moving from inaccessible papers to socially engaged media

So, how do we actually move from rigorous, well-researched ideas to public discourse and policy that reflect them? The best science communication doesn’t just ‘simplify’ research, it translates, distils, demystifies and engages. It meets people where they are, using formats that are accessible without compromising complexity, and applies sky high thinking to everyday life.

Take podcasts, for instance. The Good Humanitarian bridges the gap between academic research and humanitarianism and the real-world challenges practitioners face. MOOCS, or open access-learning, allows people – whether they have an educational background in social sciences or not – to engage with contemporary debates. Written and visual storytelling, from in-depth interviews, infographics and posters to interactive web experiences, has made complex and socio-political topics more digestible for a general audience. Live shows, such as Research InSightS LIVE or dialogue cafes invite people to listen and engage on topics in enjoyable, yet succinct formats. In addition, social media is increasingly becoming more important for visibility, and as a way to link research that proposes an alternate world to the people that can achieve it. Even platforms like TikTok have been effectively used to debunk misinformation and explain key social science concepts in under a minute, but all face potential challenges of course.

At the same time, researchers must be empowered to engage in these spaces. Not everyone who can run a hefty statistical model or analyse complex patterns can seamlessly translate these insights for public consumption. This is precisely where science communicators come in – not to dilute these ideas but to ensure that big ideas are clarified and shared widely. Closing the loop isn’t just an ethical responsibility in participatory research – it’s a vital step toward ensuring that knowledge serves people by feeding back into their livelihoods.

Science communicators do more than just support researchers. They can be catalysts for expanding the reach and impact of academic work at its inception. Research can often benefit from creativity and audience awareness that can make it resonate beyond academia. In other words, researchers and science communicators can make an excellent team – if they truly collaborate. That means not just seeing communicators as an ‘add-on’, but valuing their input, trusting their instincts and recognizing their ability to turn rigorous research into compelling narratives that engage policymakers, practitioners and the public alike, also extending their inclusion to before and during the research process, not only after.

If universities and research institutes truly want to make an impact, they need to rethink the way they communicate knowledge. The challenge isn’t just about writing readable research papers. It’s about shaping public discourse, informing policy and making social science a living, breathing conversation. After all, what good is knowledge if it’s locked away in academic journals?

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the authors:

Tom Ansell

Tom Ansell is the coordinator and programme manager of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre, and the Coordinator of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. He has a study background in religion and conflict transformation, as well as an interest in disaster risk reduction, and science communication and societal impact of (applied) research.

Sarah Njoroge

Sarah Njoroge (MSc) is a multi-skilled communications professional who tells stories on societal issues through videos, articles, podcasts and more. She has extensive experience writing, designing and co-producing content on international development. Sarah is currently a Digital Content Manager at RNW Media and formerly worked as a Communications Officer at ISS.

Gabriela Anderson

Gabriela Anderson is the community manager of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre and coordinates the Humanitarian Observatories Network. Graduating with a Master’s from the International Institue of Social Studies in 2022 with a focus on the Governance of Migration and Diversity, her research focuses on notions of (self-)representation, placemaking and the importance of inclusive communication in its various forms and through its different mediums, especially in areas of Conflict & Peace with both academic and practitioner related organizations.

 

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Navigating the stormy waters: How the South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN) is furthering discussions on water diplomacy in the South Caucasus and beyond

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Source: Bliss

Water security in the South Caucasus region is under great threat. The three countries in the region, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, share the waters of the Kura-Aras River Basin with Iran and Türkiye (Turkey). The basin faces major water management challenges that can have a dire impact on the region’s water security in coming years. Third-party involvement in water diplomacy has potential to benefit the region greatly but also carries specific risks. In this blog article, Farhad Mukhtarov and Douwe van der Meer of the recently established South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN) discuss the network’s upcoming activities and show how it will help address issues related to transboundary water cooperation and beyond.

The Kura and Aras rivers are the lifelines of the South Caucasus, traversing the region diagonally from Türkiye (also known as Turkey) to Azerbaijan, where they meet to drain into the Caspian Sea. The levels of the two rivers have dropped dramatically over the past decade and are set to decrease even more as a result of national water management practices that fail to consider the wider region’s water security.

Source: Shannon1, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Several challenges can be discerned:

  1. Upstream dam construction

One major challenge for water availability, especially in downstream areas of the basin, is the construction of new water reservoirs (dams) in the upstream areas of two main rivers of the basin, the Kura and Aras. Some estimations (1) for example predict that the Kura-Çoruh Water Diversion is set to decrease the amount of water that flows from Türkiye, where the Kura originates, through neighbouring Georgia and Azerbaijan by at least 25%. Sakal (2) writes that the diversions of Kura river waters at Çoruh from the Caspian Sea Basin to the Black Sea Basin “means that the Government of Türkiye plans to divert 59.6% of the available volume of water in the Kura River, at the diversion”. Such major interbasin transfers may have a serious destabilising impact on downstream countries. Türkiye is also planning to construct a number of dams on the Aras River — a potential source of tension with downstream users Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

  1. Downstream water abstraction

Besides upstream dam construction, water scarcity is being compounded by increased water abstractions downstream and by climate change. In Azerbaijan, the country through which the two rivers run through last before draining into the Caspian Sea, the total size of irrigated land has nearly doubled from around 1 million hectares in the early 2000s to 1,8 million hectares by 2019 as part of a plan to develop an agriculture-based economy. This has placed further stress on available water resources and their equitable distribution among citizens — an enduring global priority (SDG 6 for example calls for ensuring universal and sustainable access to water and sanitation). A recent World Bank Country Climate and Development Report for Azerbaijan indicated that if adaptation measures are not taken in time, crop production in the years 2051–2060 will drop dramatically (e.g. the yield of onions slashed by around 70%, of tomatoes by 60%, and of maize and potatoes by 50%) (WB, 2023). This would hit the bottom 40% of population (by income) the hardest.

  1. Climate change

Water scarcity in the region is also likely to further increase as a result of climate change through a combination of decreasing and less predictable precipitation rates and the melting of the region’s glaciers, which would lead to strong surface water run-off into the sea. This brings the increased risks of droughts and floods together with landslides in mountainous areas of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. On average, river flooding already affects 100,000 people in Azerbaijan annually — the most affected country in the region due to its downstream positioning. If unaddressed, the costs of these disasters to the government would surge to USD 251 million per year.

  1. Water pollution

Water scarcity aside, water quality is another problem in the region, as most of the sewage and industrial runoff flowing or discharged into the Kura and Aras is untreated. Although water pollution is a problem throughout the region, downstream countries struggle the most due to the absence of wastewater treatment facilities along the Kura and Aras rivers; most of the raw sewage and industrial effluents flow in these two major arteries of the region untreated, whereas Azerbaijan depends on these waters for domestic water supply and sanitation.

The need for transboundary water cooperation (and why it’s not working)

These challenges show the need for collaborative solutions. This cooperation has not been easy in past in the region fraught by ethnic tensions, separatist movements, military conflicts, and rivalries of major powers for influence (3). While cooperation on water management between the countries sharing the basin could potentially alleviate water management problems, they have cooperated only minimally so far. No multilateral treaty governs the Kura-Aras basin, and the countries of the basin have signed only few bilateral agreements inherited from the Soviet Union period (4).  The political situation in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh and in the broader region moreover has been tense since the Second Karabakh War in 2020 and the ongoing Russia–Ukraine War, complicating current transboundary water relations.

Third-party involvement in water diplomacy

In light of these challenges and own motivations, external actors (those that are not part of the river basin) have become involved in water management in the South Caucasus. The EU has a strategic interest in the region traditionally seen as a “backyard” of Russia and Iran, with Türkiye also having a significant presence. For example, Türkiye and Azerbaijan have been in close cooperation, as recently manifested by the jointly prepared Karabakh Action Plan to revitalize agriculture in the region.

European Union countries consequently have a serious presence in the region (5) — both governmental and private sector companies from the Netherlands, Germany, and France are participating in water-related research, capacity-building efforts, and development projects. A big part of this presence is focused on helping Armenia and Georgia, countries committed to harmonising their water legislation with the European Union Water Framework Directive and other water-related directives, which include the adoption of new water management codes, the establishment of river basin management bodies, and the creation of participatory river basin management plans (6). The US also has a history of interest and engagement in the region, both geopolitically and from a developmental perspective; USAID has funded three projects on transboundary cooperation in the region in the past 20 years, with the latest launched in 2023 and to run until 2028.

Thus, third parties such as the European Union, USAID, and others have an important role to play in the river basins in the South Caucasus. While it is evident that these countries are active in the area out of self-interest, the impact of their presence can also be positive (e.g. enhancing dialogue, capacity building, and highlighting the attractiveness of the water sector for young professionals). Generally, external (or third-party) water diplomacy, both political and economic, has proven effective in fostering dialogue among participating countries and creating trade and economic ties that shift attention from resource sharing to benefit sharing(7). However, there are also complexities in this subject.

Short-term wins, long-term losses?

Indeed, third-party involvement in water diplomacy is not without risk (8). Powerful third-party donors, mediators, and development assistance partners may normalise unequal relationships in order to achieve tangible results such as basin agreements — a solution that may temporarily reduce tension but may backfire in the longer term due to the fact that arrangements have been forced from outside and without sufficient bottom-up trust-building and legitimacy. Such arrangements have been creating what has been called ‘negative peace’ for their tendency to create what seems to be peace on the short term while leading to greater tension on the longer term. This arguably happened in the Nile River Basin, where temporary diplomatic arrangements did not lead to a longer-term agreement among the riparian states involved in the negotiations (9). Instead, the situation escalated and is presently very tense.

Lastly, third parties also tend to prioritise technical cooperation and infrastructure projects, neglecting “soft” infrastructure such as trust building and information exchange; this perhaps has to do with the tangibility of technical cooperation and the challenges of institution building (10). This was one of the comments of the IOB, the Dutch Policy and Operations Evaluation Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in its analysis of the Netherlands development cooperation work for water diplomacy between 2006 and 2016. As a result, it is important for water diplomats of third parties working in the South Caucasus to realise that efforts to build confidence, trust, and promote public diplomacy through cultivating scientific, cultural, and educational links between societies of conflicting riparian states (i.e. track-2 and track-3 diplomacy) are as important as technical infrastructure and expertise.

Another potential danger comes from the difficulties in balancing multiple and at times conflicting objectives that third parties may have, such as building/maintaining peace, providing development cooperation, seeking geopolitical gains (e.g. issue linkages) and promoting trade. These difficulties have been discussed in other contexts in detail, where third-party actors have engaged in economic and political diplomacy to the detriment of basin-wide solutions. For example, active US role in the Mekong River Commission has been linked to the lack of political will of China to join basin wide discussions. On the other hand, the difficulties that the Netherlands experiences in adjusting its export of water governance expertise and making it more socially inclusive suggests the inherent difficulty of the “win-win” scenario – both getting profits and helping partner countries (11).

The creation of the South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN)

Academic and policy discussions and analyses of these complex dynamics is necessary both for increased security in the region and improved water diplomacy and management. This is important because there is little awareness both in the region and in European Union about the importance of water for economic and political stability in the region. It is also important because any meaningful change in water security will depend on the strength of bottom-up organic initiatives that emerge from the experts in the region themselves.

With this in mind, dr. Mukhtarov recently initiated the UNIC4ER seed funding project titled ‘Advancing EU Water Diplomacy in the South Caucasus’ in collaboration with the University of Oulu in Finland and the Koç University in Türkiye. UNIC4ER stands for UNIC for Engaged Research — an initiative of UNIC cities and universities to foster societally relevant research in a collaborative manner. The project sought to create a network of academics and practitioners from the region to collaborate on the issues of research and capacity building in the areas of water governance and diplomacy. You can read more about the project here.

Through this project, academic experts from all five countries of the Kura-Aras basin gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia from 3 to 5 April this year to discuss transboundary water relations and water diplomacy in the Kura-Aras basin. The workshop that took place in Tbilisi led to the establishment of the South Caucasus Water Academics Network (SWAN), which consists of regional water management experts and other experts on the topic of water governance from UNIC partner institutions. A follow-up meeting took place on 2 May in order to discuss the major outcomes of the inaugural workshop and to prepare for new events and activities. SWAN members will gather regularly to discuss follow-up activities such as writing joint grant proposals, supervising MA students, and conducting joint research, advocacy, and awareness raising. Two follow up events have already been planned and take place in June in the Hague.

Two upcoming network events

The first follow-up workshop is titled ‘The Water–Conflict Nexus and Diplomacy: The Case of the South Caucasus’ and will take place at the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague on 18 June 2024. This workshop, which includes panelists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the US, and Kazakhstan, is the first event to connect the discussion on water governance and diplomacy in the South Caucasus with the broader debates around third-party involvement in (regional) water cooperation to promote global security and solidarity.

The second follow-up event is a conference panel titled ‘Third-Party Engagement in Water Diplomacy and Governance: The Case of the South Caucasus’ that forms part of the Third International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding in The Hague. The panel will take place on 21 June 2024 and will enable discussion of the issues in the South Caucasus in the global context of water diplomacy, governance, and peacebuilding.

Through these two events, we hope to provide answers to some pressing questions and debates, including:

  • The links between water governance and water diplomacy in the South Caucasus (i.e. EU Directives and the standards they promote in Georgia and Armenia but not in Azerbaijan; donor dependency and public sector capacity in Georgia and Armenia; reform fatigue; the lack of trust among the riparian states to collaborate)
  • The nexus between water diplomacy and conflictwith a critical perspective on the role of donors (e.g. motivations of donors to fund projects given the multiple difficulties in the region)
  • The nexus between water diplomacy and energy resources/infrastructurewith a critical perspective on the role of donors (e.g. motivations of donors to fund projects given the multiple difficulties in the region)
  • Variation in how donors/third-party water diplomacy agents operateand in the agents themselves (who they are and how they operate); variation based on where they operate
  • Donor-dependency and donor-driven project landscapes of water governance and diplomacy in the region —issues and challenges (e.g. how to make impact sustainable beyond project timelines, how to make sure the power disbalances are not harmful in the longer-term, how to make sure there is attention to local communities and not only national level government specialists/experts/officials in projects with a strong regional focus)

The results of these two events will be discussed by SWAN members and will be published after the summer as part of the strategy of the newly established network to facilitate exchanges between scholars and practitioners working on water security in the region and to promote positive change.

Endnotes:

  1. Sakal, Halil Burak. “The risks of hydro-hegemony: Türkiye’s environmental policies and shared water resources in the South Caucasus.” Caucasus Survey 10, no. 3 (2022): 294–323.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Previous analyses have provided several reasons for the difficulties of transboundary collaboration in this complex context. See e.g. Campana, M. E., Vener, B. B., & Lee, B. S. (2012). Hydrostrategy, Hydropolitics, and Security in the Kura‐Araks Basin of the South Caucasus. Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education, 149(1), 22–32.
  4. See Sakal (2022: 300) and Campana et al. (2012) above.
  5. Bilgen, A. and Mukhtarov, F. (2024) Selling Excellence: Hydrohubs and Policy Mobility in Neo-liberal World Order. In Edward Elgar Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Water Resources. Eds. Oliver Fritsch and David Benson. Edward Elgar. Forthcoming.
  6. E.g. https://www.oecd.org/environment/partnership-eu-water-initiative-euwi.htm
  7. Pohl, B., Swain, A., Islam, S., & Madani, K. (2017). Leveraging diplomacy for resolving transboundary water problems (pp. 19-34). Anthem Press, London.
  8. E.g. Mukhtarov, F., Gasper, D., Alta, A., Gautam, N., Duhita, M. S., & Hernández Morales, D. (2022). From ‘merchants and ministers’ to ‘neutral brokers’? Water diplomacy aspirations by the Netherlands–a discourse analysis of the 2011 commissioned advisory report. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 38(6), 1009-1031. Also see footnote no. 8.
  9. See Pohl et al. (2017).
  10. Ibid.
  11. See for example Van Genderen, R., & Rood, J. (2011). Water diplomacy: A niche for the Netherlands. Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Water Governance Centre. Mukhtarov et al. (2022) studies the report by van Genderen and Rood (2011) and provided an analysis of the challenges of the “win-win” and “neutral broker” modes of operation for the Netherlands in practice. These modes of operation are commonly used to reconcile the donor interest (e.g. the Netherlands’ interest in economic spin-offs) and donor needs (e.g. Indonesian interest in keeping Jakarta floods-free).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Farhad Mukhtarov

Farhad Mukhtarov is Assistant Professor of Governance and Public Policy at the International Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam and an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University Singapore. Mukhtarov’s research can be summarized in three broad themes: water governance, politics of knowledge, and theories of policymaking. Geographically, Farhad’s work has covered Western Europe, the larger Mediterranean, and Central and South-Eastern Asia. He currently develops research in the South Caucasus.

Douwe Meer

Douwe van der Meer is a recent graduate of Leiden University with a degree in International Relations. As an intern at Clingendael Institute, Douwe researched transboundary relationships around the Aras River’s management. Douwe is active as a freelance researcher, consultant, and tour guide in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.

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From balloons to masks: the surprising results of doing research during the COVID-19 pandemic

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The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown that ensued caused disruption in every possible dimension of life, including the way in which academic research projects were conducted. In this article Wendy Harcourt, who led the recently completed EU-funded WEGO project, reflects on the effect the pandemic had on the project, showing how its network of researchers had to think and work together creatively and innovatively to keep the project going.

In March 2018, I was proud to launch the EU-funded WEGO (Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity Innovation Training Network) project – my dream project. I had been awarded 4 million euro to set up this innovative training network with a group of dynamic feminist political ecologists and had the chance to select 15 talented young people from around the world to do their PhDs with us. As we celebrated with balloons and cake on Women’s Day at the ISS, what we couldn’t have foreseen is that the COVID-19 pandemic would appear smack bang in the middle of our four years together. The pandemic scattered the dreams we had but, as I suggest here, it also offered surprising insights into how to do research differently. The project was recently concluded, which allows me to reflect on what happened during the past four years – the good and the bad.

WEGO’s research focus was the hugely challenging idea to investigate how communities were building resilience strategies to cope with environmental, political, and economic change in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa by learning from the ground up. WEGO PhD projects were designed as intimate studies on communities’ resistance to extractivism, embodied experiences of ageing and care, community economies, emotional engagements with water, and contested academic debates around and political protests.

The PhD researchers, supported by a network of nearly 30 academic mentors from around the world, headed out in 2019 to record and analyze the dynamic everyday experiences of damaged and contested environments, collaborating with women and men in communities who are rarely visible in political ecology research. The network used participatory action methods along with self-reflective and non-extractive feminist research approaches to engage with individuals, local communities, and social movements.

Then COVID-19 hit in early 2020, and all PhDs had to close down their research projects and literally flee to places where they had permission to reside. For some, that meant going home; for others it meant moving back to the place of their university. For all of them, it meant major adjustments to their research plans. The network as a whole was thrown into the unknown – could we continue to do research as the world was shutting down? Would we continue to be funded? We worried that it seemed we had to break every rule in the EU book. But, like everywhere else in the world, the EU had to adjust – and so did we.

And, to our surprise, we survived and even, in an odd way, became stronger. The two-and-a-half years of the pandemic meant moving from individual research projects with rigid expectations of what were to be the results to learning to work collectively, connecting online, opening up conversations about how we dealt with our emotions, as well as our concerns about how the (often very vulnerable) communities with whom the PhDs were doing research were coping with pandemic restrictions and lockdowns.

The pandemic changed the nature and focus of WEGO’s research in creative and unexpected ways. Going online meant opening up new questions about embodied and in-place convergences and between the personal and political space. This posed a challenge in the implementation of feminist methodologies engaged with participatory action research techniques, but it also allowed for creativity to transform how we harnessed digital spaces to reach faraway voices in the places the research was situated.

Doing research during the pandemic allowed the network to raise diverse questions around languages of care in feminist and environmental justice research, and politics. The encounters with the virus, and our isolation, reinforced conversations about how to include more-than-human actors to think together with non-western epistemologies, natures, and voices.

Moving from a research project that was designed for face-to-face connections to going online, forced us to respond and adapt to disruptions. We realized it was important to make visible the troubles of doing politically engaged research, learning from the pandemic restrictions on mobility, lack of face-to-face engagement, as well as the possibilities of using the technical openings in digital space. We created new methodological, theoretical, and epistemological ways of doing research across geographical arenas, breaking down some older barriers around needing to travel and be in-place. As a result, WEGO produced writing that is collaborative and fluid (Harcourt et al. 2022) allowing for reflective, emotional, and creative responses to the thorny questions we found ourselves asking about power, resistance, and pain, using art, photos, drawings, and storytelling.

The experience of WEGO during the pandemic illustrates the importance of innovation and adaptation in research. It is crucial to be experimental, creative, and flexible in order to deal with individual, institutional and global uncertainties. And, in this way, we learn to cope with disruption as the new normal.

Reference

Harcourt, W., K. van den Berg, C. Dupuis and J. Gaybor (2022) Feminist Methodologies: Experiments, Collaborations and Reflections

Download for free here

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr Wendy Harcourt was appointed full Professor and a Westerdijk Professor together with an endowed Chair of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague in October 2017. She was Coordinator of the EU H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017 Marie Sklodowska-Curie WEGO-ITN from 2018-2022. From 1988-2011 she was editor and director of programmes at the Society for International Development in Rome, Italy. She has published 12 monographs and edited books and over 100 articles in critical development theory, gender and diversity and feminist political ecology.

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Covid-19: Increased responsiveness helps South Korea legitimize authoritarian pandemic response measures

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People lined up at a pharmacy to buy masks in Sejong City. Image Credit: Rickinasia on WikiMedia (Created 16 March 2020).

Despite the South Korean government’s authoritarian Covid-19 measures that have sparked concerns over the possible violation of personal rights, no public protests against the government’s response have been witnessed thus far. In this article, Seohee Kwak explains why, showing that the high level of responsiveness of the government in tackling the pandemic lowers the perceived need for contentious political action.

People lined up at a pharmacy to buy masks in Sejong City. Image Credit: Rickinasia on WikiMedia (Created 16 March 2020).
People lined up at a pharmacy to buy masks in Sejong City. Image Credit: Rickinasia on WikiMedia (Created 16 March 2020).

While the fight against Covid-19 remains arguably the most pressing issue worldwide, protests that express opposition to the government are erupting in many parts of the world. Protesters are mainly concerned about government measures to contain the virus and how governments are handling the economic fallout arising from the slowing down of economies and life through lockdown measures.

In South Korea, the Moon Jae-in administration has done its utmost to contain the virus as well as to mitigate public concerns, and it is often seen as a success case, with infections contained despite an initial surge. South Korea has a strong protest culture, citizens taking collective action when they wish to make political demands. One of the most remarkable examples is the 2016-2017 candlelight protests, when Korean citizens took to the streets to call for the resignation of the president and the protection of the country’s democracy.

However, mass protests against the government’s responses to Covid-19 have not yet materialized in Korean society. A closer look shows that certain governing strategies may have helped this on despite the relative invasiveness of the government’s measures in fighting the virus.

Contact tracing through surveillance

The government has instituted several measures since the virus outbreak, including drive-through and walk-through testing facilities and a compulsory 14-day quarantine and monitoring of inbound travelers.[1] In particular, state authorities have implemented so-called ‘contact tracing’ of those who have tested positive. Public officials have the authority to trace the recent travel history and contacts of those who have tested positive by screening GPS on their mobile phones, credit card transactions, and closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras in places visited by potential carriers. Municipalities publicize information on the respective government portal and send emergency text alerts to people’s mobile phones to keep them updated about new cases in their region.

Balancing public health concerns and privacy breaches

The authority to collect and process personal data is guaranteed, if necessary, for epidemiological investigation and in the name of public health. Two government acts, the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act and the Personal Information Protection Act, ensure that data may be collected, but has to be responsibly managed.

Initially, personal information about infected persons was made public, causing social stigma for carriers. Also, small businesses were hurt, since people avoided going to shops and restaurants that those who tested positive had visited despite disinfection measures having been taken. Correspondingly, whereas contact tracing has been made possible by a certain degree of public consent, critical concerns over privacy breaches have been raised.

Moreover, to prevent the spread of the virus, Seoul and several other municipalities have banned people from assembling in some public spaces and religious facilities in the name of public safety. This has sparked condemnations, being interpreted as restrictions to the freedom of assembly and religious freedom. These measures do not correspond to the Constitution of South Korea that protects these rights.

Countering privacy breaches by openness in governing the pandemic

As criticism over the violation of privacy increased, the government adjusted the scope of the public release of information, not disclosing the names of the places that infected persons visited and officially erasing the information after 14 days of their last contact with someone.

In addition, the Korean government has made commitments not only to fight the virus in the name of public safety, but also to interact with the public to fulfill its duty of vertical accountability. State authorities have held press conferences every day or even twice a day. Also, informative press releases and official statistical data moreover are easily accessible by anyone.

South Korea’s balanced approach

While ministries and municipalities have exercised their authority which arguably limits people’s rights, they have released statements that respond to public concerns and correct media reports so as to ensure the public has sufficient and correct information about two key elements: how the pandemic is developing, and how the government is responding to it.

Despite many complaints made both online and offline, the ruling liberal party won a landslide victory in the general election in April 2020, indicating that public support has not been compromised since the pandemic’s outbreak. Moreover, a monthly survey by Gallup shows that 85% (May), 77% (June), and 78% (July) of around 1,000 surveyed respondents were satisfied with the government’s Covid-19 responses[2].

The current Korean government’s Covid-19 measures can be viewed as a balanced approach of strong authority and a high level of responsiveness. In other words, the government’s authority used for the common goal of tackling Covid-19 is tolerated to an extent that people have the low perceived need for contentious collective action.

[1] A further explanation of the Korean government’s response system is available at http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/en/baroView.do?brdId=11&brdGubun=111&dataGubun=&ncvContSeq=&contSeq=&board_id=&gubun=

[2] The report is available only in Korean. It should be noted that the satisfaction rate with the government’s Covid-19 measures is not the same as the approval rating of the incumbent administration.

About the author:

Seohee KwakSeohee Kwak is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Her current research focuses on political action and state response in Vietnam. With a geographical interest in the Southeast and East Asian regions, her academic interests include political rights, protest, state repression, and state-society relations.

COVID-19 | “Stay safe” conversations that illuminate the glass walls between her and me by Mausumi Chetia

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Disasters are lived in different ways by different classes of people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the differential impacts of disasters lie in the blurred spaces between populations fortunate enough to focus on ‘productivity-during-lockdown-times’ and others who focus on ‘providing-food-for-their-children-and-having-a-home-during-lockdown-times’. For generationally disaster-prone or disaster-torn populations of India, this global pandemic is only widening the class gaps that have characterized local realities for the Indian society for centuries.

My husband and I recently witnessed thousands of daily-wage workers and families marching towards a bus terminal near our home in Delhi. From there, they would take buses to their hometowns. Many were travelling on foot, too, trying to make their way to their homes hundreds of miles away from Delhi after the entire country was placed under lockdown from 25 March. This involuntary exodus of workers from India’s many cities that has continued despite fatal consequences is an oxymoronic act that seems to oppose the social distancing measures prescribed by the WHO and related suggestions from developed nations. It is not that these workers are unwilling to keep safe—it is simply that a substantial part of India’s population, including these workers, cannot afford to do so, as has been emphasized repeatedly.

My current research looks at the everyday lives of families facing protracted displacement due to the disaster of riverbank erosion along Brahmaputra River in Assam, a state in India. The families I engage with for my research source their income from daily wages. As economic activity suddenly ceased in March, the small stream of income stopped. Consequently, many of the workers were not able to travel back to their families, as they usually would when on leave or a break period. Many male members of these families are currently trapped in the towns within Assam where they work. They were unable to travel to their homes, many miles away, not only because of the physical cost of walking or taking a bus home, but for a different set of reasons as well.

Conversations on care and health that are classes apart

Pic 11
Rita and her friends after collecting firewood for cooking from a neighbouring paddy field. February 2020

A few days after the Delhi exodus, calls from concerned families I work with increased significantly. “You should have just stayed back here with us,” Rita Saikia, a regular caller, often quips. “Come back to the village whenever you can.” Megacities like Delhi have much higher infection rates than rural places, as many of the rural inhabitants I work with recognize.

Besides the exchange of well-intended thoughts and mutual worries, these telephonic conversations are constant reminders of the class differences in the everyday lives of people that surround us, beginning with those of the researched and the researcher. Ironically, despite my power position over the families I work with for my research, they offered me what they thought I did not have in Delhi: a sense of safety they felt in the countryside. Here, thus, they were able to close the distance between the researcher and the researched. Nevertheless, the challenges that these families are facing are colossal in comparison to those I am facing, such as not being able to travel to my university in Europe or being anxious about my inability to work on my dissertation as effectively as I would have liked to from home.

Rita[1] is from one of my host families in one of the villages where I spent time conducting research. With no other choice, she has been managing the household and two children all by herself this entire period. Ajeet, her husband, is a construction worker surviving off daily wages. He is currently stuck at one of his work sites, around 100 kilometers away from his family village. For now, the family is surviving from its meagre savings. Rice has been provided by the children’s school and another one-time ration (of rice) provided by the local government. Quietly hiding away from the eyes of authorities, Rita, along with other women from her village, regularly goes to collect firewood behind their village in the dry paddy field. Refilling the cooking gas cylinder from their savings is a luxury they cannot afford right now.

Ajeet had left the family’s only mobile phone at home, so he calls his family once every three days from his co-worker’s phone. Last night, their younger child of four cried himself to sleep because his father’s call was disconnected before the child could speak to him. The mobile credit had probably run out. The older child of six years smiled and casually said to me, “you know pehi[2], Deuta[3] will not come home now even if the virus dies, but only later. He needs to bring the money home.” This understanding of the daily realities and hardships, and the acceptance of the hardships of life, contrasts sharply with how more privileged people experience the coronavirus pandemic, like any other disaster.

Amidst all of this, the annual season of extreme winds in Assam has begun. Homes of three of the research families have been battered by these winds. The families plan to complete the rebuilding process once the lockdown is relaxed, unable to do so during the lockdown. In addition, come June, the monsoon will make its appearance, inviting the annual visit of the floods, erosion of the banks of Assam’s rivers, landslides and associated socio-economic insecurities that are now compounded by those the lockdown has brought about. A slowing economy post-pandemic and consequential decrease in sources of income, along with exposure to the said disasters, will significantly push these already displaced families further to the brink of poverty.

Living through the intersections of inequalities

Poverty is both a driver and a consequence of disasters[4]. The year 2020 could become one of the most barefaced examples of this. Many socio-economically and politically insecure populations elsewhere in India and in the neighbouring countries of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia etc. are also disaster-prone or -torn. Once the world gets back on its feet post-COVID-19, these populations are set to face increasing human insecurities in their everyday lives arising due to the pandemic and its after-effects, like the families in Assam.

A society’s many aspects are unclothed in the aftermath of a disaster[5], which continues to reinforce social inequalities[6]. Disasters, therefore, including the current pandemic, hardly manage to break the walls of class structures – political, economic, social, and so forth. If anything, they increase the height and depth of these walls – between societies within a nation, between different nations, and, most definitely, between the researcher and the researched.

Pic 1
The Brahmaputra River at the backyard of one of the families’ home (from the research). January 2020

[1] All names of research participants have been changed
[2] Assamese word for paternal aunt
[3] Assamese word for father
[4] https://www.preventionweb.net/risk/poverty-inequality
[5] Oliver-Smith, Anthony, and Susanna M. Hoffman, eds. The angry earth: disaster in anthropological perspective. Routledge, 2019.
[6] Reid, Megan. “Disasters and social inequalities.” Sociology Compass 7.11 (2013): 984-997.

This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Find more articles of this series here.

Mausumi ChetiaAbout the author:

Mausumi Chetia is a PhD Researcher at the ISS. Her research looks at the everyday lives of disaster-displaced people in Assam, a northeastern state of India.

COVID-19 | How Kerala’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting inadequate responses elsewhere in India by Sreerekha Sathi

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The Indian state of Kerala seems to have addressed the COVID-19 pandemic remarkably well, limiting the amount of virus-related infections and deaths through its assertive approach. Kerala’s outlier position in India is well known, and its development model that differs from those of other Indian states might well be the cause of its successes in responding to COVID-19. Central to this development model—and the state’s response—is a well-functioning public healthcare system rooted in the state’s left-wing government. The rest of India and other countries can learn several lessons from Kerala’s government and its people, if they are willing to listen.

By the end of April, India’s coronavirus infections exceeded 40,000 cases, while around 1,300 people have died from the virus. India has been under a severe lockdown since 25 March, which due to the country’s socio-economic dynamics has caused many problems for working-class and unemployed people, especially for the large body of internal migrant labourers and marginalized communities, many without the resources to self-quarantine. Millions of Indians will face starvation due to a sudden loss of income as the lockdown has made it impossible for them to engage in economic activity. More than 90 percent of India’s population of 1.3 billion people work in the informal sector, while two-thirds of the population moreover have to get by on less than US$2 a day.

Kerala, a small state on India’s southern tip, was hit first and hardest. The state reported its first case of coronavirus (COVID-19) on January 29th, and by May counted 500 infections, however had only three virus-related deaths with a recovery rate above 90 percent. It is evident that the state with its population of 33 million people has had significant successes thus far in staving off the virus. Here, for example, there is no shortage of medical masks for health professionals, no lack of hand sanitizers, and people living in the state have not been running around trying to hoard basic necessities as has happened in rich countries like the United States. The story of the state’s success in controlling the pandemic has attracted global attention, particularly because this state in India, one of the poorest countries in the Global South, has managed to do what many others with vastly more resources have not been able to.

So how has Kerala been doing this?

The coronavirus epidemic hit the state as it was in the process of recovering from two majors disasters that occurred in 2018—severe floods and the spread of the deadly Nipah virus. These disasters shaped responses to COVID-19 by creating a readiness to respond to future disasters, so that when the coronavirus emerged, the state and local communities were dedicated toward collectively fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, knowing what was at stake.

When the number of coronavirus cases reached around 100, the state government’s popular health minister declared a campaign called ‘Break the Chain’ to fight the further spread of the virus. The campaign that reached deep into Kerala’s densely populated cities and villages was focused on sharing information about the virus and how to fight it by educating people on maintaining personal hygiene. The state government in a short time installed water taps in all important public transportation hubs and public offices and provided free hand sanitizers. It also informed people about the importance of social distancing and self-quarantining. Students from colleges and universities along with volunteers from different sectors were entrusted with the duty of producing facial masks and hand soap and distributing them through community institutions. This engaged public response is world away from the policies elsewhere in India and many other parts of the world that consigned people to their houses, leaving them to fend for themselves without providing adequate support.

As in other countries, while health professionals remain at the center of the fight against the virus, it is important to point out just how central the community healthcare workers in Kerala have been. The backbone of the fight have been women called Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and Anganwadi workers (Sreerekha, 2017) who are employed in the state’s social welfare schemes and who were able to reach every nook and cranny of the state’s numerous cities, villages, and towns to trace contacts effectively. Alongside these women workers have been the state police and fire departments as well as other emergency services who have helped the state fulfill services such as distributing essential medicines to non-corona patients.

Most importantly, state-backed community kitchens have been a lifeline for many hungry residents. For the first time in history, by the third week of March, Kerala opened community kitchens in every village and municipality of the state, providing free cooked food so that no-one would go hungry during the lockdown. This contrasts very sharply with the experience of poor people in many other parts of India, where they are left mostly at the mercy of NGO or volunteer help.

How Kerala does it differently

A well-functioning public healthcare system is at the core of the state’s response, the foundation for which goes back to the much popular, well-debated and critiqued Kerala development model (Ravi Raman, 2010). The state is led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), well known for its experiments with projects related to the grassroots decentralization of government and community-driven developmental planning in the 1990s. The Kerala development model does have its limitations, especially in addressing issues of gender and caste hierarchies and discrimination, and its successes have been achieved even alongside the pressures and compromises with liberal modernity. The state’s successes in fighting the pandemic though have been possible due to relevant steps taken on time and owing to the functional state mechanisms supplemented by the support and commitment of local community networks and an educated population.

With a very high number of expatriates and a big tourism industry the state needed to quickly implement restrictive measures. This has not been an easy path for Kerala, especially considering the fact that its officials are in a constant battle with the right-wing BJP central government. Time and again, the BJP central government has tried ‘to teach Kerala a lesson’ by cutting its funds or even halting the arrival of aid during emergencies. The right-wing party has until now failed to ever win any elections in the state.

Amidst all these dynamics, Kerala presents a useful lesson to the world as a state that even in the face of extreme adversity through sensitive and practical programs and with the support of a politically educated community has been able to take major steps to protect the interests of its residents, particularly marginalized and working class populations. Although the COVID-19 threat remains, Kerala has collectively mobilized to confront it. Kerala’s public healthcare system functions through effective local development measures and community and state networks to make it possible not only to tackle the COVID-19 threat, but also to protect the well-being of its people in so doing.

This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Find more articles of this series here.

About the author:IMG_4882

Sreerekha Sathi is Assistant Professor of Gender and Political Economy at at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University in The Hague. Her research interests span theories of women’s work, feminist critiques of development, feminist research methodologies and social movements in the global south, specifically South Asia.

Fleeing the farms: the devastating effect of conflict on youth involvement in small-scale agriculture in Pakistan by Hassan Turi

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[Ελληνική έκδοση παρακάτω]

Rural youth unemployment is a serious crisis facing countries of the Global South. Small-scale agriculture, which has long been the single biggest employer of the developing world, has the potential to be ecologically rational, socially just, and capable of absorbing unemployed youth. However, contemporary agrarian research has increasingly found that young people are not attracted to agricultural work. While a global urbanization trend is leading to exodus from rural areas, Hassan Turi shows the devastating impact of protracted regional and local conflicts on agricultural practices in Kurram District in Pakistan that further diminish the youth’s willingness to engage in small-scale agriculture.

With a global land rush triggered by rising food prices, the consolidation of large-scale industrial agriculture is not only dispossessing people from their lands, but also bringing energy-intensive and climate-warming practices. Small-scale agriculture, which has long been the single biggest employer of the developing world, has the potential to be ecologically rational, socially just, and capable of absorbing unemployed youth. However, contemporary agrarian research has increasingly found that young people are not attracted to agricultural work. Understanding the causes behind youth flight and unemployment is a key priority for developing a long-term youth policy and strengthening the agricultural economy.

According to a 2018 UNDP report, Pakistan currently has the largest youth population in the world, with 64% of the population less than 30 years of age. While there is a labour shortage in Pakistan and elsewhere, small-scale agriculture is no longer en vogue as youths leave their families to pursue careers in cities. But unlike the rest of Pakistan, where rural labour is migrating to cities, the rural youth from Kurram is increasingly migrating outside of Pakistan and becoming vulnerable to wider geopolitical conflicts. The conflict in the region has played a significant role in shaping Pakistan’s agricultural landscape, driving youths away from farms and changing agriculture in a way that makes it unattractive.

Conflict on the frontier

The village of Bilayamin, where I conducted my fieldwork, is located in the Kurram District of Khyber Pakthunkhwa Province that borders Afghanistan. This region has been affected by severe violence for decades. An ugly proxy war with the US lasting for years and a wider regional war have had a profound impact on people’s livelihoods, especially on agriculture, which had been the primary source of income for decades.

Before, most households employed family labour for agriculture, except during peak stages of farming. These patterns changed after the arrival of Afghan refugees in the 1980s (from the first Afghan war) to refugee camps in Kurram. With the launch of the War on Terror in 2001 and subsequent conflict in Kurram, farming practices took another hit. Land remained uncultivated during the war, and many people died, suffered injuries, or were displaced. Farmers could not bring their products to markets or buy new farming inputs. The conflict also forced many people, especially the youth, to flee from the villages in search of safety and better livelihoods. Those remaining behind were less interested in farming, seeking jobs related to their education, but without much success. Despite the sharp need for agricultural labour, young people were massively un- or underemployed and preferred to leave the country as migrant workers abroad.

Effects on farming practices

This labour shortage pushed farmers to change cropping patterns. Many have stopped growing rice. More farmers are planting plums and apricot orchards or rearing livestock. The proliferation of wild boars has stopped the cultivation of groundnuts and crops like rice or beans near the riverbanks and mountains. Young farmers are now tasked by their families with guarding their crops, often staying awake all night for the last two months of the harvest. In addition, there is an emerging trend of wage labour hired daily from villages with smaller landholdings. Remittances have also acquired increasing importance. Households with income from remittances are successfully reproducing themselves by spending money on better farming inputs and hiring labour on time. Families without remittance incomes are either decreasing the cultivation of labour-intensive crops or involving more household members to bring prices down.

Changing preferences

Farming in Kurram, as in many places in the world, used to be a familial responsibility, but preferences have changed. Children traditionally would be involved in farming practices from an early age. Accompanying the adults to farms, children would fetch water, tea, food, and farming tools when the elders are busy. They would graze cattle and cut firewood or complete tasks reserved for children, such as weeding onions. Research suggests that exposure from an early age is crucial to engage interest in farming. But rural children who go to school are not exposed to these practices and consequently begin to lose interest in farming.

After the conflict in Kurram, households foisted more farming responsibilities onto those youths who remained in the region to compensate for labour shortages due to the war. For instance, before the conflict, children were not involved in difficult labour. However, this changed after the conflict, which seems to create an aversion for farming as the youth feels overworked. Most who are still engaged in farming see it as a transitory phase before securing a future in the cities. Yet some continue to wait and never make it to the cities, wondering if this temporary phase will ever end and despising the growing burden placed on them.

The effects of the multiple conflicts facing the Kurram District in Pakistan have been profound, exacerbating a global move away from small-scale agriculture towards cities or towards industrial agriculture. Small-scale agriculture, which can address the growing youth unemployment problem, needs to be made more attractive for the youth, who should see it as a viable enterprise instead of as a familial responsibility.

This is a shortened and edited version of an article that was originally published by Jamhoor.

About the author:

Sibth ul Hassan Turi is an Orange Knowledge Programme Fellow who studies at the ISS in 2016/2017. He comes from the Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is a member of the Awami Workers Party Islamabad/Rawalpindi.

Εγκαταλείποντας τη γη: οι καταστροφικές συνέπειες του πολέμου στην συμμετοχή των νέων στην καλλιέργεια γης στο Πακιστάν του άρθρου τoυ Hassan Turi 

Τα υψηλά ποσοστά ανεργίας των νέων που ζουν στην περιφέρεια, αποτελούν ένα από τα ουσιαστικότερα προβλήματα που αντιμετωπίζουν οι χώρες του Παγκόσμιου Νότου. Η καλλιέργεια μικρών εκτάσεων γης, η οποία αποτελούσα και συνεχίζει να αποτελεί τον μεγαλύτερο παροχέας εργασίας των αναπτυσσόμενων χωρών , έχει μια δυναμική προοπτική στο να παράγει με οικολογικό τρόπο, κοινωνικά μη-άδικο και ικανό να απορροφά μεγάλο πληθυσμό αναξιοποίητου, νέου σε ηλικία, ανθρωπίνου δυναμικού που αντιμετωπίζει την ανεργία στην περιφέρεια. Παρόλο, που η σύγχρονη έρευνα στον τομέα της γεωργίας και της αναπτυξιακής οικονομικής υποδεικνύει την ολοένα και μειούμενη τάση των νέων να ασχολούνται με την καλλιέργεια γης. Την ίδια ώρα που ένα παγκόσμια -κινούμενο από τις δυνάμεις του καπιταλισμού- κύμα αστικοποίησής προωθεί την ‘’μεγάλη έξοδο’’ από την περιφέρεια στα αστικά κέντρα , Ο Hassan Turi μνημονεύει σε αυτό το άρθρο το καταστροφικό πλήγμα των παρατεταμένων περιφερειακών και τοπικών συγκρούσεων στις γεωργικές εργασίες στην περιοχή Kurram του Πακιστάν. Αυτές οι συγκρούσεις ασκούν περαιτέρω πιέσεις και  μειώνουν την προθυμία των νέων να ασχοληθούν με τη μικρής-κλίμακας γεωργία.

Με μια παγκόσμια τάση προσφυγής στην καλλιέργεια γης, που έχει προκληθεί  από την άνοδο των τιμών των τροφίμων και την ενοποίηση της βιομηχανικής γεωργίας μεγάλης κλίμακας , που όχι μόνο εκτοπίζει τους ανθρώπους από τη γη τους, αλλά οδηγεί  επίσης στην υιοθέτηση πρακτικών αυξημένης εντάσεως-ενέργειας και πρακτικών, που οδηγούν στην περεταίρω επιδείνωση του φαινομένου της υπερθέρμανσης του πλανήτη. Η γεωργία μικρής κλίμακας, που εδώ και πολλά χρόνια είναι ο μοναδικός και ο  μεγαλύτερος εργοδότης του αναπτυσσόμενου κόσμου, έχει τη δυνατότητα να παρέχει μια ορθολογικά οικολογική παραγωγή αγαθών, κοινωνικά δίκαιη και ικανή να απορροφήσει άνεργους -νέους που ζουν στην περιφέρεια- και είναι δύσκολο να βρούνε εργασία σε άλλους τομείς. Ωστόσο, η σύγχρονες έρευνες έχουν διαπιστώσει  ότι όλο και περισσότερο ότι οι νέοι δεν θεωρούν τη γεωργική εργασία ως μια   προτιμητέα εναλλακτική μορφή απασχόλησης. Η κατανόηση των αιτίων πίσω από τη ‘’φυγή των νέων’’ και την  ‘νεανική’ ανεργία αποτελεί βασική προτεραιότητα για την ανάπτυξη μιας μακροπρόθεσμης πολιτικής για τη νεολαία και την ενίσχυση της γεωργικής οικονομίας.

Σύμφωνα με μια έκθεση του UNDP του 2018, το Πακιστάν έχει τον μεγαλύτερο πληθυσμό νέων στον κόσμο, με το 64% του πληθυσμού να σε έχει ηλικία μικρότερη των 30 ετών. Ενώ υπάρχει έλλειψη εργατικού δυναμικού στο Πακιστάν και αλλού, η γεωργία μικρής κλίμακας δεν αξιοποιείται πλέον, καθώς οι νέοι αφήνουν τις οικογένειές τους για να αναζητήσουν δουλειά στα κέντρα των πόλεων. Αλλά σε αντίθεση με το υπόλοιπο Πακιστάν, όπου η αγροτιά μεταναστεύει σε πόλεις, οι νέοι που είναι υποψήφιοι εργάτες γης από το Kurram, μεταναστεύουν όλο και περισσότερο έξω από το Πακιστάν και γίνονται ευάλωτοι σε ευρύτερες γεωπολιτικές συγκρούσεις. Η σύγκρουση στην περιοχή έχει διαδραματίσει σημαντικό ρόλο στη διαμόρφωση του γεωργικού τοπίου και της αγοράς γεωργικής εργασίας του Πακιστάν, στην απομάκρυνση των νέων από τα αγροκτήματα και στην αλλαγή της γεωργίας με τρόπο που την καθιστά πλέον μη ελκυστική εργασία.

Σύγκρουση στα σύνορα

Το χωριό Bilayamin, όπου διεξήγαγα την έρευνα μου για την πτυχιακή εργασία, βρίσκεται στην περιοχή Kurram της επαρχίας Khyber Pakthhwa που συνορεύει με το Αφγανιστάν. Αυτή η περιοχή έχει πληγεί από σοβαρά φαινόμενα βίας και συγκρούσεις εδώ και δεκαετίες. Ένας άσχημος  πόλεμος «δι’ αντιπροσώπων»  με τις ΗΠΑ που διήρκησε για χρόνια και ένας ευρύτερος περιφερειακός πόλεμος είχε σοβαρό αντίκτυπο στην επιβίωση των ανθρώπων, ειδικά στη γεωργία, η οποία ήταν η κύρια πηγή εισοδήματος εδώ και δεκαετίες.

Αρχικά, τα περισσότερα νοικοκυριά απασχολούσαν μέλη της οικογένειας στη γεωργία, εκτός από τις  θαλερές γεωργικές περιόδους. Αυτά τα μοτίβα συνηθειών άλλαξαν σταδιακά μετά την άφιξη των Αφγανών προσφύγων τη δεκαετία του 1980 (από τον πρώτο Αφγανικό πόλεμο) σε στρατόπεδα προσφύγων στο Kurram. Με την έναρξη του Πολέμου κατά της Τρομοκρατίας το 2001 και την επακόλουθη σύγκρουση στο Kurram, οι γεωργικές πρακτικές δέχτηκαν ένα ακόμη πλήγμα. Η γη παρέμεινε ακαλλιέργητη κατά τη διάρκεια του πολέμου και πολλοί άνθρωποι πέθαναν, υπέστησαν τραυματισμούς ή εκτοπίστηκαν. Οι αγρότες δεν μπορούσαν να διοχετεύσουν τα προϊόντα τους στις αγορές ή να αγοράσουν νέες γεωργικές εισροές. Η  πολεμική σύγκρουση ανάγκασε επίσης πολλούς ανθρώπους, ιδίως τους νέους, να εγκαταλείψουν τα χωριά αναζητώντας ασφάλεια και μια καλύτερη μοίρα. Όσοι έμειναν πίσω ενδιαφέρονταν λιγότερο για τη γεωργία, αναζητούσαν θέσεις εργασίας που σχετίζονται με την εκπαίδευσή τους, αλλά χωρίς μεγάλη επιτυχία. Παρά την αυξημένη  ζήτηση για γεωργική εργασία, η ανεργία των νέων ήταν υψηλή σε ποσοστιαίους όρους  ή οι νέοι υποαπασχολούνταν και προτιμούσαν να εγκαταλείψουν τη χώρα ως μετανάστες εργαζόμενοι στο εξωτερικό.

Επιδράσεις στις γεωργικές πρακτικές

Η έλλειψη εργασίας ώθησε τους αγρότες να αλλάξουν τα πρότυπα καλλιέργειας και τις ποικιλίες που καλλιεργούν. Πολλοί έχουν σταματήσει να καλλιεργούν ρύζι. Περισσότεροι αγρότες πλέον φυτεύουν δαμάσκηνα και οπωρώνες βερίκοκων ή εκτρέφουν ζώα. Ο πολλαπλασιασμός των αγριόχοιρων έχει εμποδίσει την καλλιέργεια αραχίδων και καλλιεργειών όπως ρύζι ή φασόλια κοντά στις όχθες του ποταμού και στα βουνά. Οι νέοι αγρότες έχουν τώρα επιφορτιστεί από τις οικογένειές τους με τη φύλαξη των καλλιεργειών τους, και συχνά μένουν ξύπνιοι όλη τη νύχτα τους τελευταίους δύο μήνες της συγκομιδής. Επιπλέον, υπάρχει μια αναδυόμενη τάση μισθωτής εργασίας με άτομα που προσλαμβάνονται καθημερινά από χωριά με μικρότερες εκτάσεις γης. Τα εμβάσματα έχουν αποκτήσει επίσης αυξανόμενη σημασία. Τα νοικοκυριά με εισόδημα από εμβάσματα αναπαράγονται επιτυχώς ξοδεύοντας χρήματα για καλύτερες γεωργικές εισροές και προσλαμβάνοντας εργασία την κατάλληλη περίοδο. Οι οικογένειες χωρίς εισόδημα από εμβάσματα, μειώνουν είτε την καλλιέργεια καλλιεργειών υψηλής έντασης εργασίας είτε εμπλέκουν περισσότερα μέλη του νοικοκυριού για μείωση των τιμών.

Αλλαγή προτιμήσεων

Η καλλιέργεια στο Kurram, όπως σε πολλά μέρη του κόσμου, αποτελούσε οικογενειακή ευθύνη, αλλά οι προτιμήσεις έχουν αλλάξει. Τα παιδιά παραδοσιακά εμπλέκονταν σε γεωργικές πρακτικές από μικρή ηλικία. Συνοδεύοντας τους ενήλικες σε αγροκτήματα, τα παιδιά συνήθιζαν να μαζεύουν νερό, τσάι, φαγητό και εργαλεία καλλιέργειας όταν οι ενήλικες ήταν απασχολημένοι. Επίσης, συνήθως θα έβοσκαν βοοειδή και θα ‘έκοβαν καυσόξυλα ή θα ολοκλήρωναν εργασίες που προορίζονται για παιδιά, όπως το ξεχορτάριασμα κρεμμυδιών. Οι έρευνες υποδεικνύουν, ότι η έκθεση των παιδιών  από μικρή ηλικία σε αγροτικές δραστηριότητες είναι εξαιρετικής  σημασίας παράγοντας που καθορίζει την ενασχόληση τους με τη γεωργία. Όμως τα παιδιά της υπαίθρου που πηγαίνουν στο σχολείο δεν εκτίθενται σε αυτές τις πρακτικές και κατά συνέπεια αρχίζουν να χάνουν το ενδιαφέρον τους για την αγροτική καλλιέργεια.

Μετά τη σύγκρουση στο Kurram, τα νοικοκυριά επιφορτίστηκαν με περισσότερες γεωργικές ευθύνες, εκείνους τους νέους που παρέμειναν στην περιοχή για να αντισταθμίσουν τις ελλείψεις εργατικού δυναμικού, λόγω του πολέμου. Για παράδειγμα, πριν από τη σύρραξη, τα παιδιά δεν συμμετείχαν σε επίμοχθη εργασία. Ωστόσο, αυτό άλλαξε μετά την  σύγκρουση, η οποία φαίνεται να δημιούργησε μια αποστροφή για τη γεωργία καθώς η νεολαία άρχισε να αισθάνεται ότι έχει δουλέψει υπερβολικά πολύ. Οι περισσότεροι που εξακολουθούν να ασχολούνται με τη γεωργία το βλέπουν ως μεταβατική φάση πριν ένα εξασφαλισμένο μέλλον  στις πόλεις. Ωστόσο, ορισμένοι συνεχίζουν να περιμένουν και να μην φτάνουν ποτέ στην ‘’γη της επαγγελίας’’ που γι’ αυτούς είναι η πόλη, και  αναρωτιούνται εάν αυτή η προσωρινή φάση θα τελειώσει ποτέ έχοντας  απαυδήσει από το αυξανόμενο βάρος που έχουν φορτωθεί στις πλάτες τους.

Τα αποτελέσματα των πολλαπλών συγκρούσεων που αντιμετωπίζει η περιοχή Kurram στο Πακιστάν είχαν ισχυρό αντίκτυπο στις ζωές αυτών των ανθρώπων, επιδεινώνοντας μια παγκόσμια απομάκρυνση από τη γεωργία μικρής κλίμακας προς τις πόλεις ή προς τη βιομηχανική γεωργία. Η γεωργία μικρής κλίμακας, η οποία μπορεί να αντιμετωπίσει το αυξανόμενο πρόβλημα της ανεργίας των νέων στις περιφέρειες, είναι  αναγκαίο να καταστεί πιο ελκυστική για τους νέους, οι οποίοι θα πρέπει να την αντιμετωπίσουν ως μια βιώσιμη επιχειρηματική δραστηριότητα ή εργασία, ως βιώσιμο τρόπο ζωής και όχι ως οικογενειακή ευθύνη.

 Το άρθρο αποτελεί συντομευμένη και τροποποιημένη έκδοση ενός άρθρου που δημοσιεύθηκε αρχικά στο Jamhoor.

Λίγα λόγια για το συγγραφέα του άρθρου:

Ο Sibth ul Hassan Turi είναι  υπότροφος του προγράμματος: Orange Knowledge Programme,  σπούδασε στο ISS το έτος 2016/2017. Κατάγεται από την περιφέρεια Kurram της Khyber Pakhtunkhwa και είναι μέλος του εργατικού κόμματος του Ισλαμαμπάντ (Awani Workers Party Islamabad/Rawalpindi).

Το άρθρο μεταφράστηκε από τη Χρυσάνθη Κούτρη, μεταπτυχιακή φοιτήτρια στο International Institute of Social Studies, με εξειδίκευση στα οικονομικά  της ανάπτυξης και ερευνητικά ενδιαφέροντα στο πεδίο: Children and Youth in Development.

 

 

EADI/ISS Series | The Battle is on: Civic Space & Land Rights by Barbara Oosters and Saskia van Veen

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Defenders of land rights all over the world struggle with shrinking civic space. The more that space for people to peacefully claim their land rights is restricted, the more intense land disputes become. In 2017, Global witness recorded that globally an unprecedented number of 197 land rights defenders were killed. A recent Oxfam Novib learning lab identified strategies for associations working in the area of land rights to deal with an environment of shifting and shrinking civic space.

My (Barbara)’s fascination and interest for the issue of civic space started in Indonesia. Local organisations struggled with the introduction of a vaguely framed law for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), warning them not to work on issues going against ‘’Indonesian’’ values. A few years later I found myself supporting initiatives in more than 15 countries spread across the globe, struggling with shifting and shrinking civic space. Although this is just a fraction of countries facing a reduced space to assemble, associate and speak up freely, it enabled me to learn from a variety of contexts on how people resist, adapt and reclaim civic space. To me the key to win this battle is exactly this: learn from and connect those who face similar challenges fast and on a wide scale. Our opponents are doing exactly the same. We need to become faster and smarter in connecting and learning.

The civic space you have as an individual or organization depends very much on the issue you want to address. Some battle grounds are fiercer than others. Land rights are such a hot potato, touching on the interests of many. Small farmers or indigenous communities who defend their century-old reliance on forests find themselves in front of large agriculture or extractive investment projects. Concerned that land disputes can fuel social disorder, local and national governments limit the space for civil society to assist affected communities. The more that space for people to peacefully claim their land rights is restricted, the more intense land disputes become.  In 2017, Global witness recorded that globally an unprecedented number of 197 land rights defenders were killed.

How to tackle land rights in a complex environment?

In 2019 we at Oxfam Novib scoped the interest of some of our offices and partners working on land rights to document their strategies, successes and brilliant failures to remain influential in a shrinking civic space context. We also looked for Oxfam country offices facing a similar shrinking space while fighting for land rights and looking for inspirational ideas forward. Our vision: bringing them together in a unique participatory learning way in order for all parties to gain from this exchange. As an end-product we envisage a toolbox with actionable tactics that help to resist, adapt and reclaim civic space while working on land rights.

Oxfam country offices, partners and allies from Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar took part in this learning lab on land rights and civic space. Cambodian and Vietnamese Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have had documented some successful outcomes of their land advocacy before, and are having a close look at the adaptive strategies that made these positive gains possible. Over the past number of years, Myanmar has been marked by shifting and shrinking civic space. How to tackle land rights in such a complex/changing environment? Indonesia was added as fourth country because of its exemplary way of bringing a diverse range of civil society together and bridge differences for a common cause.

Avoid naming and shaming

What were some of the successful approaches identified? Monitoring tools for robust land re-allocation and smart collaboration between local and national organisations and their combined strategies enabled change in one country. In another it was more a change of tactics (from confrontational to a more collaborative one) that enabled the participation of hundreds of communities and local CSOs in first ever consultation workshops on a land related law. Naming and shaming tactics were avoided as well as fights in the media. Direct feedback via closed-door meetings proofed more effective.

The need for alliances came out strongly in many aspects. Local organizations fighting for land rights are a fragmented group, with conflicting demands and needs as they all want to defend their rights. Uniting them in solidarity strengthens their common voice for change. It also builds their credibility and highlights their overall size as a force that needs to be acknowledged.  Staying close to one’s constitution is also a key requisite for both success and resilience. Strong solidarity networks to mitigate risks to single organizations proved a successful and necessary tactic throughout.

The Myanmar team, together with partners, is at this moment experimenting with some interesting ways forward, as identified and listed above.  The other participating country representatives are in the process of reflecting on their learnings. On the basis of this experience, we would like to encourage everyone who is struggling with land rights in a shrinking civic space context to join us on this exciting learning road to remain influential on land rights despite all odds. Many have proved that it is possible.

This article is part of a series launched by the EADI (European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes) and the ISS in preparation for the 2020 EADI/ISS General Conference “Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice”. It was also published on the EADI blog.

About the authors:

Barbara Oosters is Policy Advisor civil society space and strengthening at Oxfam Novib – she is supporting the learning lab on land rights and civic space from her expertise on civic space.

Saskia Veen is an Impact Measurement and Knowledge specialist at Oxfam Novib – she is supporting the learning lab in terms of methodology of documentation and learning strategy.

Image Credit: Rainforest Action Network on Flickr

In search of a new social contract in the Middle East and North Africa – what role for social policy? by Mahmood Messkoub

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Social policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is in urgent need of reform. Critiques of current social policy models point out their deficiencies in terms of coverage of population, entitlement to services, fragmentation of support for different groups and inadequacy of services provided, and above all a wasteful generalized/untargeted subsidy structure. The answer to these shortcomings not only lies in the redirection of resources from generalized subsidies towards targeted sectors and populations, but also in a broad rethinking and democratic dialogue on a new social contract and social policy models in order to improve coverage, entitlement, and the quality of services.

In 2019, mass popular protests shook several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as protesters demanded an end to authoritarian rule and corruption and called for democracy and a decent life. The call for a decent life was not just a protest against the failure of states to alleviate poverty and improve living conditions, but was also seen as an opportunity for a change in the social contract. The protests illuminated a desire to move away from patronage and clientelism that eroded post-independence universalist ideals and social policies.

Some of these protests were triggered by a sudden jump in the price of basic goods (e.g. of bread in Sudan or petrol in Iran) that released the pent-up frustration with repression, corruption, a lack of accountability and deep-seated economic and social problems that have simply been cracked over by the ruling elite. People all over the MENA could easily identify with the Sudanese slogan of ‘freedom, peace and justice’ used in the protests, which would eventually topple the dictatorship of President Omar al-Bashir. Freedom, peace and justice are not only important for their own sake, but are also needed for a national debate on social policies that could meet people’s aspirations for better education, health, social protection, etc.

In MENA, social policies have been developed mainly as an integral part of the broad social and economic development agenda in the post-colonial period. Oil income provided resources to pay for healthcare, education, and extensive subsidies for the provision of food, fuel and energy to consumers. Non-oil producers also benefited from the oil income through labour remittances, foreign aid, and investment by the oil-rich countries. But in the 1980s, a low growth rate and the decline in oil revenues put the finances of the MENA countries to test. The region was ill equipped in terms of a skilled labour force and social insurance policies to compete internationally and diversify its economy. The existing social programmes mostly covered formal sector employees including those in the civil service. Large numbers of informal sector workers, rural residents, and agricultural workers had to rely on poor publicly provided services or fall back on meager family resources and charitable handouts of non-state providers in an informal security regime. The formal and informal social provisioning were based on a male-breadwinner household with negative implications for gender equality in law and in relation to entitlement to welfare and social support that was exacerbated by the low labour force participation rate of women.

In addition, state expenditures on social policy programmes are constrained by expenditures on generalized indirect subsidies, inter alia, to fuel, public utilities, water, and staple food sources.  According to one estimate, fuel subsidies account for nearly 75% of the total subsidy spending in MENA (Silva et al 2013). The higher income groups in general benefit most from these indirect subsidies except staple food, since the latter takes a larger share of consumption expenditure of lower income groups.

The existing social policy model of generalized indirect subsidies has failed to provide a solution to increasing poverty and vulnerability in the region, especially in periods of social and economic crisis. The reform of the subsidy structure should not only take note of differential impact of the indirect subsidies, but also has to be part of a broad social policy agenda.

The current debate on social policy in the region is about the reform and reduction of the indirect subsidy structure and moving away from a universal rights-based approach to social provisioning towards targeting poverty and improving social protection. Whilst cuts in indirect subsidies and strengthening of social protection are needed, it is essential that any targeting and social protection do not undermine the broad rights-based social policy agenda of public provisioning of health and education and rules governing the labour market to support employment that will improve the economic foundation of household economy.

There is also the all-important concern with the role of households and families to support themselves. In the absence of adequate family resources, there is a need for social policy measures that would supplement family resources and support the broad developmental agenda and ensure societal and macro-level inter-generational support. In this context, the most basic objective of any state intervention is to maintain and increase the resource base of households. This is particularly important if we take into account the changing demographics of the region: the lowering of fertility and ageing of the population. The MENA societies and families are ill prepared for an ageing population.

The Arab Spring and its counterparts in Turkey and Iran have been much more than a cry for freedom and democracy. It has also been a cry for social justice and against corruption that has aggravated capitalist inequality. The use of and access to public office for private accumulation, lack of accountability, and poor governance have all contributed to a sense of desperation and alienation of the population, especially the young. The region is in need of a new social contract. Social policy should play an important role in the design and implementation of this social contract.

What MENA needs is a return to the universalist social policy ideals of a developmental state but within a democratic political environment that promotes genuine popular engagement and participation, as well as transparency and accountability, in order to arrive at an inclusive and new social contract. The details and boundaries of this new social contract would be country specific and depend on the national political and economic developments.

This blog is based on the author’s recent publications:
Messkoub, M. (2017). ‘Population ageing and inter-generational relation in the MENA: what role for social policy?’ Population Horizons, 14(2): 61-72.
Jawad, R., Jones, N. and Messkoub, M. (eds) (2019) Social policy in the Middle East and North Africa: the new social protection paradigm and universal coverage. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar publishers.
Messkoub, M. (2020) ‘Social Policy in the MENA’ in Hakimian, H. (2020) Routledge Handbook on Middle East Economy. London: Routledge.
References:
Silva, J., Levin, V. and M. Morgandi (2013) ‘Inclusion and Resilience: The Way Forward for Social Safety Nets in the Middle East and North Africa’. Washington DC: World Bank.

About the author:

Mahmoud Meskoub is senior lecturer at the International Institute of Social Studies (Erasmus University of Rotterdam), teaching and researching in areas of social policy and population studies. As an economist he taught for many years in the UK (at the universities of Leeds and London). His current research interests are in the area of economics of social policy and population ageing, migration and universal approach to social provisioning. His recent publications on MENA are related to social policy, the impact of recent financial crisis on the region, poverty and employment policies. He has acted as a consultant to ESCWA, ILO, UNFPA and the World Bank.

Image Credit: AK Rockefeller on Flickr

Creative Development | Moving national narratives: artistic expressions of flight, refuge and belonging by Roy Huijsmans

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National historiography often takes the form of a single story propagated by those in power, thereby muting alternative experiences of ordinary citizens of these celebrated events. In Laos, the country’s National Day coincided with an international dance festival, showing different ways of recounting histories. In this blogpost Roy Huijsmans suggests that in the creative realm and performing arts we may find articulations of the subjugated narratives of the collective memory of the nation.

When visiting the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) late November 2019 for the Fang Maekhong International Dance Festival I found myself also witnessing the preparations for the celebration of the 44th Lao National Day. Government buildings were being adorned with freshly purchased national flags, always flanked by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party flag in bright red and sporting the familiar hammer and sickle in yellow. There were the inevitable banners, too, carrying slogans celebrating the nation and the progress made under the leadership of the communist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party.

In Lao historiography, the establishment of the Lao PDR is presented as the logical endpoint of a long struggle by the Lao peoples against imperial forces – first French colonial rule, then Lao Royalist Governments backed by the United States of America as part of its broader stakes in the Second Indochinese War. Around each national day (2 December), the various Lao newspapers and television stations contribute their bit to the reproduction of the national narrative, with specials about revolutionary heroes, heroic battles, and by detailing the development progress made under revolutionary rule. The same narrative is presented in school text books, musea, and in public speeches by officials.

All this is not particular to the Lao PDR. National historiography often takes the form of a single story told from the vantage point of the victors. Thereby it silences the many different experiences that were generated by these very same historical events (Evans 1998). For example, the narrative of a united revolutionary struggle against foreign powers and influence hides the many internal conflicts and civil war that were also part of the making of the Lao PDR.

A key element missing from the Lao narrative is the fate of the about 10 per cent of the then population that left the country throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. They left because they found themselves on the wrong side of history or simply escaped the impoverishment and repressive political climate characterising the infant years of the Lao PDR.

Virtually everyone in the today’s Lao PDR knows someone who has fled the country. Stories of flight, refuge, and increasingly also about return are told, yet often in private. These are the stories of uncles and aunts now living in France, the USA, or Australia. These stories have found no place in school textbooks or in any of the official commemorations around the Lao national day. Yet these stories matter because these, too, are a part of the collective memory of the nation.

The arts: subtle propositions going beyond the national narrative

Artistic initiatives are turning the tide to make the voices of migrants and refugees heard, however. Parallel to the preparations for the Lao National Day celebration, Vientiane also witnessed the 10th edition of the Fang Mae Khong International Dance Festival. The French-Lao dancer Thô Anothaï was part of the impressive line-up comprising Lao national and international dancers. In his contemporary dance titled Mekong, Thô enacted his personal experience of fleeing Laos at a young age. Through his dance, by means of movements rooted in hip-hop and contemporary dance, he represented memories of his flight, such as a boats man paddling him across the Mekong River in the deep of the night.

As Thô took the stage, the first lines of a Lao traditional song were played. Soon the music gave way to soundbites of women’s voices in French, Lao, and the Vietnamese language that graphically described moments in the experience of flight and refuge. The song accentuated Thô’s personal account as a Lao story; the women’s voices referenced the broader context of the aftermath of the Second Indochinese War in which we must understand Thô’s experience. Through his performance Thô invited the audience to accompany him in his journey across the Mekong River, recalling his childhood experience of flight expressed through the serene and stunning beauty of his dance.

The themes of flight, refuge and identity are also central to Nith Lacroix’s 2007 documentary film titled Pierre & Pierrot. The film focuses on twin brothers of a French father and a Lao mother who were separated at a young age in their flight across the Mekong River into Thailand.

Thô Anothaï and Nith Lacroix’s artistic work are first and foremost works of art. Yet, by staging their work for audiences in the Lao PDR, the art may become more than just that. For more inclusive celebrations of national events, it is important to recognise the suffering and pain that is also part of the collective memory of the nation.

References
Evans, G. (1998). The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.

This article is part of a series on Creative Development. Read more articles of this series here.

Color 2 Roy Huijsmans

About the author:

Roy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.