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Market-based and Rights-based Approaches to the Informal Economy : A comparative analysis of the policy implications

Upphovsperson: Vainio, Antti
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Urban Dynamics | Uppsala, Sweden
År: 2012
Ämnesord: Informal sector, Hidden economy, Government policy, Development research, Research methods, SOCIAL SCIENCES, SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP
This Policy Dialogue compares two very different conceptions of the informal economy that are prominent internationally: a market-based approach and a rights-based approach. It reflects upon the policy implications of adopting one perspective or the other, and argues that the terms ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘worker’ are often ideologically charged rather than a reflection of the structural positions of the ‘informals’. The paper is critical of a market-based perspective and of the related notion of informal entrepreneurs, as these may lead to policy recommendations that undermine the already fragile livelihoods of many people. The ideas presented in this paper are part of a work in progress and are intended to promote further debate about sustainable policy-making aimed at enhancing the economic and social standing of vulnerable people in the informal economy.

Bearing the pain: Changing views of the meaning and morality of suffering

Upphovsperson: Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Stockholm : Sida
År: 2009
Ämnesord: the politics of female circumcision, gender, agency, suffering
This paper is concerned with the significance of ordeals as connected to constructions of female gender identity and morality among the popular classes of Muslim women of Cairo. The text is structured around pain and suffering as social experience, but also concerns pain as individual and embodied. The thrust of this paper is how the lived experiences of pain and suffering, as narrated by women in Cairo, are shaped and challenged by the social and political changes that impinge on these women’s lives. Thus, how the subject is constructed through the intricate interplay of the global hegemonic structures of power, where the most intimate sphere has been exposed in the international arena, and the lived experience of female circumcision, defloration and childbirth.

'Legal Empowerment of the Poor' versus 'Right to the City' : Implications for access to housing in urban Africa

Upphovsperson: Vogiazides, Louisa
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Urban Dynamics | Uppsala, Sweden
År: 2012
Ämnesord: Towns, Urban areas, Urbanization, Urban housing, poverty, Low income groups, Property rights, Empowerment Legislation, Research methods, comparative analysis, Africa, SOCIAL SCIENCES, SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP
The challenge of urban deprivation and exclusion in the urban South has given rise to varied and shifting policies and ideas. Two sets of ideas have gained great currency in recent years in international policy and academic circles. The Legal Empowerment of the Poor approach, rooted in neoliberal thinking, focuses on the legal rights of the urban poor as the means to secure access to basic services and needs. The Right to the City perspective, on the other hand, stresses issues of citizenship and the appropriation and uses of urban space. This Policy Dialogue analyses the different ideological and normative foundations of the two perspectives and discusses how they lead to different policy formulations. It then takes a closer look at how the two perspectives find expression in contemporary discussions on and approaches to access to housing in urban Africa. To this end, it compares what each approach identifies as the source of the problem and recommends as the policy solution.

Between Militarism and Technocratic Governance : State Formation in Contemporary Uganda

Upphovsperson: Sjögren, Anders
Utgivare: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Conflict, Displacement and Transformation | Kampala : Fountain Publishers in cooperation with Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
År: 2013
Ämnesord:
Anders Sjögren is a researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala and in the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. He has researched and published extensively on Ugandan and Kenyan politics over the last decade. This book is a revised version of his doctoral thesis. State-civil society relations in Africa have during recent decades been transformed in the context of economic liberalisation and state reform. This study explores state-civil society relations in contemporary Uganda, from 1986 to the present, in order to illustrate and explain the scope for and capacity of different social forces to create access to and democratise the state. The study interrogates state-civil society relations under the incumbent National Resistance Movement government as these are expressed through forms of interest representation and conflict regulation in different political arenas. It analyses this problem through an empirical study of the health sector at both national and local levels. Changes in the health regime – the rules and practices that regulate health politics – are analysed by a historical reconstruction of how different health regimes evolved from demands from social forces on the colonial and postcolonial state, in relation to broader patterns of political change. The ruling political coalition from 1986 has promoted a model for capitalist development based on donor-driven economic growth, institutional reform and political monopoly – what is referred to in the study as technocratic governance. Throughout, however, the technocratic tendency has been shaped in relation to the political economy of militarism as a more openly repressive form of authoritarian rule. The study argues that limits to democratisation of state society relations within the health sector and of Ugandan politics at large are best explained by relations of domination in society, within the state and among external political forces. The main conclusion is that democratisation of the state has been resisted by ruling groups, and therefore restricted.

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