Resilience Archives

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

By ISS Blog Bliss 18 October 20224 January 2025 1889 views

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

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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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“Nothing about us, without us!”: Disability inclusion in community-based climate resilient programs. A case study of Indonesia

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 February 20224 January 2025 4091 views

In design of climate-resilient programs for community development, there is growing awareness of the benefits of gender assessments, but it is far less common that disability is considered. The meaningful inclusion of people with disabilities can reveal their knowledge and capacities to contribute, and result in more contextualised and socially-just responses to climate change.

Caption: Plan Indonesia and PERSANI staff in hybrid workshop to provide recommendations for the Guidance on assessments for climate-resilient inclusive WASH. Photo credit: Silvia Landa, Plan Indonesia (2020)

Climate change poses huge challenges for the wellbeing of individuals and communities, especially those reliant on their local environments for subsistence. As the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021 report demonstrates, we are experiencing changes to our climate at an unprecedented scale and intensity. There is growing awareness that the impacts of climate change are not merely biophysical, but embedded in social processes. To varying degrees of success, non-governmental organisations and local governments are mainstreaming climate resilience in their community development programs. In designing programs, it is important to involve diverse community members in assessing climate change impacts and finding solutions, including those who are often marginalised.

The catch-cry of disability rights organisations of “nothing about us, without us” draws attention that all people have the right to self-determination and to have a say in development outcomes and policy that affects them. This blog provides three arguments for inclusion of people with disabilities in community-based climate-resilient programs, with a case example from Indonesia.

Improving community sanitation in Manggarai district, Indonesia

Together with Yayasan Plan International Indonesia (Plan Indonesia), Institute for Sustainable Futures – University of Technology Sydney (ISF-UTS) conducted a research-practice project to collaboratively inform how Plan Indonesia addresses the impacts of climate change on their inclusive sanitation program. In 2019, ISF-UTS and Plan Indonesia co-designed and trialled seven participatory methods/activities to assess how climate change affects water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, and gender and social inclusion outcomes.

All activities considered inclusion of marginalised groups and people with disabilities, but the assessment of climate impacts on sanitation accessibility was most specific in addressing disability inclusion. Adapted from the WaterAid “How to conduct a WASH accessibility and safety audit” guide, this activity identifies: barriers that currently affect sanitation accessibility; how climate extremes can potentially worsen and create new barriers; and how the community and local government can help people overcome barriers.

The activity was piloted in Manggarai district in the central part of Flores Island, Indonesia. In recent times there has been increasing intensity of rainfall, causing landslides, floods, and soil erosion. Increasing seasonal variability, longer dry spells, and more extreme weather events were also noticed by villagers, and have been in line with climate change projections for the region. The case shared below shows three benefits of inclusion of people with disabilities in climate change assessment for inclusive WASH programming.

First, people with disabilities are likely to experience climate change impacts most severely. Their vulnerability to climate change is linked to multiple disadvantages they experience. For example, people with disabilities globally are disproportionately represented among the poor, have higher levels of unmet health needs, and are twice as likely to be unemployed. Due to these differentiated impacts, their voices are critical for identifying the issues so they can be addressed. For example, in Manggarai, we met with a young woman, with a physical disability, who told us about accessibility issues with the lack of ramp and handrails at the public toilet. To access the toilet, people needed to step across a drain, which fills and overflows during heavy rain.

Second, people with disabilities are routinely excluded from education, jobs, leadership roles, and often denied the opportunity to contribute to public forums. Through including people living with disabilities in community decision-making on climate-resilient programs, they have an experience of being treated with dignity and respect. Through meaningful participation, there may be growing awareness of the actual capacities and contributions of people with disabilities to their community. This helps to shift their position and perception from being an aid beneficiary, to an agent driving their own development, with perspectives worthy of inclusion.

As a result of the inclusive design of the participatory activities, people with disabilities in Manggarai joined the assessments, and other participants created space for them to voice their concerns. In one village forum, an elderly man with disabilities was vocal in requesting assistance from government. A Plan Indonesia team member reported, “we talked about how people with disabilities can have a voice and be heard, using Pertuni (disability people’s organisation) as an example. We want to try changing thinking about people with disabilities as charity recipients, so they can also be empowered and involved in the community”.

Third, drawing on information gathered from a diverse range of community members of different ages, genders, ability levels, and occupations can inform new pathways forward for surviving well in the face of climate change, and possibly positive transformation. This approach pays attention to contextualised and place-based knowledge on the changing environment. Inclusive programs are more likely to be effective, sustainable, and align better with the values of communities.

The community assessment revealed the difficulty of accessing sanitation facilities in challenging weather conditions, such as heavy rain and drought. Learning about experiences of people with disabilities and their carers could then be used to help identify solutions that could be implemented by the community or the government. For example, in all villages, community members suggested using collective funds and labour to build toilets, and provide support to facilitate equal access to water and sanitation for people with disabilities.

Benefits of disability inclusion

Through this case study of a WASH program in Indonesia, we can see the benefits of people with disabilities participating in climate-resilient development programming. Representation of people with disabilities can contribute to a breakdown in negative stereotypes and misconceptions of their capacities. The meaningful inclusion of diverse perspectives ensures a nuanced and contextualised program that benefits all community members with an inclusive outcome.

Although the empowerment and leadership of people living with disabilities is critical in responding to climate change, external assistance is also needed. With the perspectives and needs of people with disabilities in mind, development actors can work alongside disabled people’s organisations, and provide more targeted support for climate change resilience and adaptation.

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

About the authors:

Tamara Megaw is an ISS alumnus who graduated in 2015 from the MA program in Social Policy for Development. After graduating, she worked in global education at Nuffic NESO Indonesia and then consulted for Transnational Institute. Since late 2017, she has worked at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University for Technology Sydney (ISF-UTS) on research related to development effectiveness, gender equality and social inclusion.

Anna Gero is a Research Principal at ISF-UTS. Anna is a climate change and disaster resilience leader and specialist with over 13 years’ experience in the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Jeremy Kohlitz is a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) researcher at ISF-UTS with interests in climate change impacts on equitable WASH service delivery in the Asia-Pacific region.

Between resilience and vulnerability: the dilemma of refugee resettlement by Mahardhika Sjamsoe’oed Sadjad

By ISS Blog Bliss 25 February 201918 May 2020 3507 views

Many of the 25.4 million refugees worldwide are living a life in limbo, forced to face a grave dilemma due to the uncertainty of resettlement: while living a life in transit seems to make them more resilient, this could undermine their chances of being resettled. Based on observations while doing research and working with refugees in Cisarua, Indonesia, this article argues that vulnerability and resilience are actually two sides of the same coin.

When we entered the new year of 2019, many of us gave meaning to this annual change in our Gregorian calendars through new resolutions, resolved disappointments, and exciting future plans. For many of the 25.4 million refugees worldwide, however, the passing of a new year marked more time waiting in limbo. This is certainly the case for most of the estimated 13,840 foreign refugees (UNHCR 2017) currently living in Indonesia, the majority of which come from Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Somalia.

This article wishes to highlight the dilemma many refugees are forced to face due to the increasing uncertainty of resettlement. Many refugees I spoke to felt that their resilience to survive a life of indefinite transit, could undermine their chances of getting resettled. I became aware of this dilemma while spending some months in 2018, working with and doing ethnographic research on the reception of refugees in both Cisarua and Jakarta, Indonesia. While my study focuses on the reactions and responses of Indonesian host communities, it also involved volunteering at the Refugee Learning Centre (RLC) in Cisarua. This article is written based on some of my conversations and observations during this experience.

Not-so-temporary refuge in Indonesia

For most refugees I spoke to, life in Indonesia is often described with a sense of temporariness, a point of transit before being resettled. “If no one comes any more to Indonesia and the number of places for resettlement remain the same, UNHCR will need up to 25 years to resettle everyone,” said a staff member of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at an information session on 27 April 2018, at RLC in Cisarua. She emphasised again: “If no one else comes, but people are still coming”. Refugees were informed that resettlement opportunities to a third country have become increasingly unavailable and that it is not a right every refugee is entitled to. However, when both voluntary repatriation and local integration are not available options for most refugees living in Indonesia, many still see resettlement as their only means to a life of peace.

During this information session, the UNHCR staff member also explained that they will need to prioritise resettlement for refugees deemed most vulnerable. While all refugees are vulnerable, if only by virtue of the traumas they carry and their precarious legal status in host countries like Indonesia, resettlement opportunities prioritise the most vulnerable among the vulnerable[1]. Unaccompanied minors, people with disabilities and health concerns, survivors of torture and violence, and other groups at risk are meant to get to the top of the ‘priority list’ for resettlement. Considering how countries around the world are increasingly closing their borders to refugees, this need to prioritise is understandable.

However, it also has unintended consequences. When the vulnerable become the deserving, many refugees are forced to face a dilemma between resilience and vulnerability.

Between resilience and vulnerability

Refugees I’ve talked to have expressed concerns that displaying an ‘active’ life in Indonesia might be interpreted as a display of resilience, which might push them down the ‘priority list’ for resettlement. “We need to be active to survive this period of waiting in Indonesia. But if we’re active we aren’t seen as vulnerable, and if we aren’t vulnerable, we can’t get resettled,” said a refugee I spoke to in Cisarua. A manager at RLC in Cisarua where I volunteered told me that some parents even blame the success of refugee-run learning centres for the decrease of resettlement opportunities.

Utas (2005, 408) criticises the portrayal of agency and victimhood as oppositional, and instead uses victimcy to discuss Liberian women’s self-representation as victims of war as means for the social navigation of war zones. Similarly, for refugees, vulnerability can become a tool to navigate resettlement opportunities. Since so much depends on refugees’ narratives of insecurity, the ability to assert one’s vulnerability becomes a means to create space for negotiation (Jansen 2008, 584). However, as the waiting period for resettlement is extended indefinitely, refugees must simultaneously navigate a life of seemingly endless ‘transit’.

One evening, I was invited to dinner by a friend who is also a refugee in Cisarua. His mother showed me with pride her homemade yoghurt and bread – two foods not common in an Indonesian kitchen. According to my friend, refugee women in Cisarua had learned of a local Indonesian blacksmith that could build a similar oven as they used back home to bake bread. In the case of refugees in Cisarua, there is agency in the building of communities with learning centres, networks of shops with spices and foods, and religious holiday rituals that remind them of where they came from.

If refugees’ families are slowly adjusting to life in transit despite the lack of access to formal education and livelihood, will they still be considered for resettlement? The UNHCR has responded to questions such as these by saying that the two are unrelated. When I mentioned this to several refugees at RLC, those I spoke to were unconvinced. One argued it would be impossible to really know why one family gets resettled while another doesn’t, since these decisions are made behind closed doors. When those who don’t get to the top of the priority list may never get resettled and are at risk of being stranded indefinitely, it is easy to empathise with refugees feeling discouraged.

Two sides of the same coin

How refugees are portrayed also influence the reception they receive from local host communities. “Is it true that refugees don’t have to work and still get money?” an angkot[2] driver asked me. A seller at a food stall in Cisarua once commented, “The refugees here aren’t like the ones I see in the news. They are better off than us.”

Most Indonesians I talked to are not aware that many refugees live independently, trying to make the funds they have last as long as possible during their time in transit. While some groups of refugees have escaped structural oppressions that prevented them from obtaining any education and employment, others who escaped conflicts and persecution may have lost their degrees and certificates along the way. Framing refugees’ lives through one-dimensional narratives of vulnerability and victimhood easily leads to misunderstandings, unwarranted suspicions, and prejudices.

Waiting for resettlement is not a passive endeavour. One needs to stay consistently motivated to fill the days and not fall into the depths of depression. RLC is constantly buzzing with activities that refugees organise for themselves: futsal practice and tournaments, GED preparation courses for young people, teaching workshops for teachers, language courses for adults. If there is one lesson to learn from friends at RLC, it is that vulnerability and resilience are not two opposite sides of a spectrum. Instead, they are two sides of the same coin. Demonstrating resilience doesn’t suggest an absence of vulnerability, and surviving a life of vulnerabilities can only be done with a great dose of resilience.

[1] The conversations and presentations I observed during my fieldwork presented refugee resettlement to third countries on the basis of vulnerability. However, it is necessary to acknowledge that countries have different resettlement preferences and resettlement can be granted on the basis of vulnerability and on the basis of merit (Hilhorst and Jansen 2010, 1126-1127).

[2] Local public transportation in the form of small minivans

References:

Hilhorst, Dorothea and Bram J. Jansen (2010) “Humanitarian Space as Arena: A Perspective on the Everyday Politics of Aid,” Development and Change, 41(6): 1117–1139.

Jansen, B. J. (2008) “Between Vulnerability and Assertiveness : Negotiating Resettlement in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya,” African Affairs, 107(429), pp. 569–588.

UNHCR (2017) “2017 Year-end Report: Operation: Indonesia’ (A webpage of UNHCR). Accessed 14 January 2019 http://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/pdfsummaries/GR2017-Indonesia-eng.pdf

Utas, M. (2005) “Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering: Tactic Agency in a Young Woman’s Social Navigation of the Liberian War Zone,” Anthropological Quarterly, 78(2), pp. 403–430.

About the author:

Mahardhika Sjamsoe’oed Sadjad is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies. Her research analyses identity discourses in refugee reception in Indonesia. This article was inspired by conversations she had with Abdullah Sarwari, the Principal of the Refugee Learning Centre and a refugee currently living in Cisarua.

The positive effects of systemic collapse — lessons for Cape Town by Lize Swartz

By ISS Blog Bliss 22 January 201818 May 2020 3184 views

About the author:

Lize Swartz is a PhD Researcher at the ISS and blog manager of the ISS Blog. Her research focuses on the link between civic action and change in social-ecological systems, and she has conducted fieldwork in three South African towns to closely study citizen responses to the collapse of local water supply systems.

Across the world, newsreaders recently started catching on to arguably one of the most pressing challenges in South Africa: The looming collapse of Cape Town’s water supply system. The Cape Town government and residents over the past few years have taken numerous steps to slow the gradual emptying of dams supplying this city, but ‘Day Zero’ is now a real possibility¹. While news media show the uncertainty and fear surrounding Day Zero, ongoing research about similar ‘water crises’ in South Africa shows that systemic collapse can also beget positive outcomes.

The dreaded ‘Day Zero’

Long before the issue of water scarcity is now reaching its peak, water restrictions were imposed in Cape Town, South Africa in an attempt to save water in dry summer periods until the next rains would come. The Western Cape, one of South Africa’s nine provinces situated in the south west of the country, had experienced below-normal rainfall for years, to an extent that residents could witness the difference in the matter of a decade. Moreover, Cape Town’s population increased by 1 million people in just a decade, increasing the demand for water².

It hence should not have come as a surprise that this African city that houses over 4 million people would eventually face water scarcity. Over recent years, however, the dry period started stretching into the winter and beyond, and predictions for dry future decades became a present reality. The inability to balance decreasing water supply with an ever-increasing demand has resulted therein that dams supplying the city have now reached such a low level that policy-makers have become cognisant of the very real possibility of municipal water supplies running out. The city has taken extensive measures to halt the sysem’s collapse, but current efforts seem to have been in vain³. Much uncertainty surrounds ‘Day Zero’, and what happens after this moment cannot be predicted. However, ongoing research of similar systemic collapse in three other South African towns can potentially provide some lessons – and hope.

Crises: An opportunity for change

Over the last two years, I have been studying civic action in three South African towns following the collapse of their municipal water supply systems. The processes of collapse and restoration were studied from a systems perspective. Systems theory sees the world as comprising countless social-ecological systems that are closely linked to their environments in which change occurs. Hence, I talk about Cape Town’s water in terms of a local water supply system.

From a systems perspective, static water management paradigms may lead to systemic collapse and eventual reorganization. The good news is that this collapse can force necessary change need for the system to function better in the future. The theory describes moments in the adaptive cycles of ecological systems where opportunity for novelty and innovation can emerge. This usually follows after systemic collapse. Hence, while one of the possible outcomes of systemic collapse is the failure of a system to return to ‘normal’, through this it can change to something new altogether, possibly becoming an enhanced version of its former self. A new normal may be created, and both the state and citizens can play a part in achieving this.

Systemic collapse: Not all bad news

My research shows that in each of the towns the municipal water supply had run out after dams and rivers were drained. None of the municipalities had a plan in place for after ‘Day Zero’. But each town found their own way of dealing with the crisis. One town set up functional water collection points. Others resorted to ‘water shedding’⁴. Throughout, citizens led the process of restoring the water system, also adapting their water use practices or securing their own water supply in whichever means available to them. All three towns somehow managed the collapse and carried on until water could be restored to the taps.

Drained to the dregs: In one of the studied towns, the last available water was drained manually from a reserve dam (see pumps on left of photo) before the taps spluttered and ran dry in June 2016. The town then survived without water in taps for around six weeks. Photo: Lize Swartz

While the data analysis phase is in its early stages, my study tentatively shows that some citizens through civic action have played a crucial role in managing the collapse by adapting their own water use practices and by becoming water distributors themselves in the period following collapse. As in Cape Town, in the three towns the government’s lagging response and trial-by-error approach to dealing with the problem also characterised the periods before and after these water supply systems collapsed. The bad news is that governance practices in the three towns do not seem to have been adapted on the long run.

While this is bad news, particularly because drought and climate change discourses allow the state to absolve itself from blame, herein lies the hope: Citizens learned and could apply the lessons to their interactions with the water systems. Much novelty emerged not only in the way people made sense of their relationship with water and in their adaptive practices, but also in social relationships and in their conceptualisation of their identity as citizens and their own power.

While, evidently, governance practices founded on certain beliefs regarding water availability need to change, this new realisation of the role of citizens as water users in contributing to change, and the value of civic action in shaping new futures, is an essential starting point. It can help to address the problematic issue of technocratic ‘fixes’ and the empty discourses on ‘participation’ that I argue led to the increased vulnerability of systems that ultimately resulted in their collapse.

While the extent and type of change brought about may not be enough to protect the water systems from future shocks, particularly due to partial instead of system-wide adaptation, small changes are an essential starting point for better aligning water demand with water supply, to change how systems work without changing their core function, in this case supplying water. Hence, the study shows the importance of citizens in leading change to a new, adaptive water governance paradigm characterised by flexibility.

While some residents of one South African town had to survive from whatever the water they could carry, cooperation instead of conflict seemed to characterise interactions in the town. Photo: Lize Swartz.

Lessons for Cape Town

What exactly can the city learn from smaller towns? Some preliminary insights point to the inevitability of change following systemic collapse, and the ability to shape the type of change that would ensue. The trend in (near-)collapses of water systems across South Africa clearly indicates that something must change. And the space for civic leadership presents itself in this moment of crisis. Such moments of crisis invite reflexivity and create opportunities for novelty of thought and practice – and therefore for change, be it political or systemic. Learn from the collapse and apply the lessons to the water system to improve its resilience and sustainability. Learn to collaborate and to work together – this will be crucial in the period going forward. It is up to Capetonian policy-makers, residents and industries to collectively harness this opportunity to tailor the system to better function in the context of a changing landscape and deteriorating governance. It is also up to Captonian residents to then hold the state accountable across all levels, and to demand its adherence to its self-assigned mandate of ensuring sound water governance and sustainable water use.

¹Day Zero, the day when municipal taps are turned off, is currently expected on 21 April 2018.

²http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1021&id=city-of-cape-town-municipality

³From 1 February 2018, potable water use will be limited to 50 litres per person per day. However, despite increasingly severe water restrictions, only 39% of residents are using less than the specified limit. While the city is in the process of augementing its water resources – something residents feel it should have done years ago – water demand is clearly not being managed well.

⁴While this term, referring to the intermittent provision of water at certain times of the day, may be known in South Africa, it is likely less known outside of the country. The phrase has its origins in the term ‘load shedding’, referring to the intermittent provision of electricity in the country due to an ongoing energy crisis that is comparable to the national water crisis in many aspects.

MAIN PHOTO: In one of the towns, citizens become water suppliers by providing water to the public on a daily basis.

DISCLAIMER: None of the findings in this study are final or binding.

The Age of Democratic Resilience by Mohamed Salih

By ISS Blog Bliss 13 October 201718 May 2020 2052 views

About the author:
Mohamed Salih is PhD in Economics and Social Science, University of Manchester, UK, 1983) is Professor of Politics of Development at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague and the Department of Political Science, University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Regional research interests, fieldwork, academic and policy research interests: Africa and Middle East and shortly in the English-speaking Caribbean.

This posting is an excerpt of the valedictory lecture of Mohamed Salih at the occasion of his retirement from the Institute of Social Studies. The lecture was held on 12 October 2017

Current academic views, media reports and policy and development practitioners often claim that democracy and development are declining or even ending. Mohamed Salih maintains that democracy is not dying but expanding beyond its classic form of representative democracy. What has declined, however, is educated democracy and authentic development that sides with the poor and critically embraces solidarity against want, hunger and fear, resisting tyranny and authoritarianism or confronting discrimination in all its forms.

It is perplexing that the phenomenal expansion of democracy during recent decades has lately been greeted by suggestions in a considerable number of publications that it is in decline or has died. This, in spite of the fact that we live in an age in which democracy has flourished like never before. Democracy, and development, are flourishing in new spaces, institutional forms and practices. These capitalize on new freedoms democracy has unleashed and new technologies that have created millions of globally networked communities of interest, with a direct bearing on politics locally, nationally, regionally and globally.

I have lived over six decades of how development policy intertwines with African politics, living half of my age in the Sudan and the other half in Europe, as well as conducting research, teaching and offering policy advice for the larger part of my life. A pessimist may argue that over five decades, during which fundamental social, economic and environmental problems have preoccupied academia, policy and practice, these problems are not only still lingering, but some have even been exacerbated, and new social problems have been piled upon the old. Moreover, the intensification of old and new threats to human survival and wellbeing such as poverty, persistent hunger and inequality, epitomized by the juxtaposition of foods that kill and famines that kill[1], climate change and biodiversity loss, are common features that unite the first and current decade of development. Rather than considering the glass empty, in my mind there remain reasons to stay optimistic, and find the glass is more than half-full.

Despite negative reporting on Africa’s recent democratic development, led both by the media and academics, data collected from the field show contrary results. In the case of Africa, the development and democracy trends between 1999 and 2016 are moderately positive. More importantly, critics fail to ask whether what is happening is a decline of democracy or the emergence of new spaces and forms of democracy. There are three developments that characterize the past two decades of democratic resurgence. Local and grassroots democracy have expanded in what can also be termed the fourth wave of democratization,[2] cyber democracy and electronic voting.

Firstly, citizens’ withdrawal from state-created political spaces to participate in local and indigenous forms of direct deliberation instead of representation is not new to Africa, but has taken immense proportions over the past decades. Youth, women, farmers, pastoralists, traders, and non-governmental and civil society organizations deliberate on local issues from water to health and from education to forestation. They also discuss soil and water conservation on their own or supported by like-minded transnational organizations. Those who declare the decline of democracy should go beyond national statistics to engage the emergent new forms of local level, community and grassroots deliberations practiced by the majority of the world.

Second, since the late 1990s, the rapid expansion and convergence of information and communication technologies has created new spaces for political engagement, which has expanded citizens’ freedom to exchange information, organize political action and social movements, and rediscover the growth of a new vocabulary of resistance. While democracy’s essential values have persisted, the forms and spaces of democratic practices have multiplied. Consider, for example, e-government, e-political parties, e-parliaments, e-civic networks and associations which have become prominent features of citizens’ vehicle not only for accessing information but also for using information to make government more responsive.

Third, already, during the 1960s, Western democracies started experimenting with electronic voting and achieved mixed results. Despite many disadvantages, e-voting creates huge possibilities for deliberation and influencing politics across the globe.

Democracy and development are the most cherished values defining the aspirations of every human society. Almost all political elites use democracy and development to bestow legitimacy on their system of governance. However, both democratic and authoritarian regimes often use democracy and development as instruments to legitimize their retention of power, which often imposes oppressive pathways for regulating and controlling the totality of citizens’ human affairs. In some developing countries, the state has even demanded that citizens should suspend their democratic rights and freedom in the wake of development until this cherished national project is accomplished. All too often, too, democratic majorities relish what is known in democratic theory as the “tyranny of the majority.” Absolute majority rule usurps political ideologies and practices that are an affront to democracy and human flourishing.

Democracy and development are about inclusion and ensuring that the rights of the minority are not forsaken by regimes that are discriminatory or in the business of widening the wedge between citizens according to their race, religion, sex, creed or region for short-term political gain. What has declined, in my mind, is not democracy but educated democracy; not development but authentic development that sides with the poor and critically addresses the main messages and meaning of development. For, if democracy is allowed to decline and development to die, there would be nothing left for humanity to celebrate by way of embracing solidarity against want, hunger and fear, resisting tyranny and authoritarianism or confronting discrimination in all its forms. In a nutshell, humanity is not complete without the pursuit of authentic democracy and inclusive and empowering development.

[1]I contrasted foods that kill as a metaphor for the rich over consumption of food, which causes obesity vis-a-vis famine that kills as a metaphor of severe food shortages among the poor, which causes hunger and famine (Mohamed Salih 2009).

[2] This characterization follows on Huntington 1990. The Third Wave of Democratization.

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