Starting from the local: avoiding, accommodating and/or overcoming global visions for science and development

Convener: Eren Zink, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology/Forum for Africa Studies, Uppsala University.

Contact: eren.zink@antro.uu.se

The framing of new global crises, be they environmental, socio-economic, and/or medical, inevitably leads to new global visions for the mitigation of their impact. Global plans are negotiated, funding mobilized, and new programmes and projects are coined. As global visions are rolled out from the institutional headquarters that are their points of origin, their promoters stand ready to document their dispersion, implementation and translation at specific sites across the globe. 

The papers in this panel offer an alternative viewpoint and perspective. Rather than privileging the position and efficacy of global visions, these papers foreground the local and interrogate the agency of local scientists and development practitioners to define and materialize forms of knowledge production and/or development in their local contexts. The papers will address questions of  how, why, and to what degrees of success do local actors proceed in their engagements despite global projects, policies and discourses that are only partly relevant, if not contradictory, to their own priorities and context. To what extent are local actors able to avoid, incorporate or overcome the determinacy of global visions? How do local actors create space to author local visions.

Papers may engage this topic from diverse localities, including communities, civil society organizations, research institutions, private enterprises, and government offices. The localities can be situated in developed or developing countries. Empirically grounded papers are welcome from a diversity of fields that engage the theme from contemporary and/or historical perspectives.

Session A: 22 Aug., 16:00–17:30, De Geer Lecture Hall

• International science partners and local scientific ambitions: A comparative study of scientists in Vietnam, Uganda and Ghana. Eren Zink, Uppsala University.
• How to be modern? The social negotiation of ‘good food’ in contemporary China. Joy Zhang, University of Kent.
• Will Adapting Universal Solutions To Local Context Fill The Bottle? Insights from Female Genital Modification Patterns in Uganda. Chris C. Opesen, Makerere University.
• Exploring grounded architectural practice to support transitions toward sustainable urbanism in Cape Town. Rudolf Perold, Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

Session B: 23 Aug., 11:00–12:30, De Geer Lecture Hall

• Brokers, smallholders’ weapons to bridge the gap between local reality and the national and the global: the impact of bureaucracy and the role of brokers in a community based forest management project in the Brazilian Amazon. Örjan Bartholdson, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
• Transformation of Small-scale Fisheries – Critical Transdisciplinary Challenges and Possibilities. Gloria  L. Gallardo Fernández, Uppsala University and Fred Saunders, Södertörn University.
• Illegal livelihoods in African borderlands. Eria Olowo Onyango, Makerere University.
• Harmonizing the governance of food security and biodiversity: a multi-level stakeholder network analysis in Ethiopia. Tolera Senbeto Jiren, Ine Dorresteijn, Julia Leventon, Arvid Bergsten and Joern Fischer, Leuphana University. 

Abstracts

International science partners and local scientific ambitions: A comparative study of scientists in Vietnam, Uganda and Ghana. Eren Zink, Uppsala University.

Scientific research priorities in developing countries are strongly influenced by international collaborations and foreign funding organizations. Despite the spread of a partnership discourse that presumes the formation of balanced and relevant collaborations in science for development, scientists in developing countries are quick to point out that “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” In short, local priorities must still bend to those of foreign actors. This paper identifies key material and social relationships that constitute the power of foreign and international research priorities in developing country contexts. It offers a comparison of how scientists from three different countries (Vietnam, Uganda and Ghana) seek to engage, negotiate and (to different degrees) deflect those same priorities in their local context. The data for this research was collected through ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and questionnaire surveys amongst developing country scientists whose scientific work in fields related to agriculture, environment or health is largely funded by foreign donors. The paper concludes with some reflections upon how more egalitarian and relevant partnerships might be achieved within future scientific collaborations involving actors from developed and developing countries.

How to be modern? The social negotiation of ‘good food’ in contemporary China. Joy Zhang, University of Kent.

Seeking technological solutions to social problems has been central to the ‘Modernisation Project’ in China. This is especially true in China’s effort to develop safe and sustainable food production for its population. Yet my recent fieldwork in 3 Chinese cities suggests that there are two conflicting views on what a ‘modern’ agriculture should look like. For the government, modernisation implies a rational calculation of scale and a mirroring of global trends. Thus, good food production necessitates catching up with the global intellectual property race on GM technologies and the industrialisation of regulated and subsidised farming. But at the social level, it is an alternative interpretation of modernity promoted by grassroots NGOs that has been gaining ground. For this camp, modernisation is about putting the individual back into the centre of food production. Consequently, they prioritise innovations in biological husbandry, focus on reinstalling sociability in the food supply chain and on improving individual rights, such as the right to information and the right to choose. Based on 8 focus groups and 15 interviews with relevant Chinese stakeholders, this paper demonstrates that while both camps subscribe to the modernity rhetoric and emphasise the role of scientific advancement, they hold very different ideas of what ‘good’ food is. Subsequently they differ on what technologies are appropriate. I argue that as grassroots NGOs expand their influences in major Chinese cities, the intensified socio-political contention over safe and sustainable food production sheds light on the nature of modernity and progress in the global age.

Will Adapting Universal Solutions To Local Context Fill The Bottle? Insights from Female Genital Modification Patterns in Uganda. Chris C. Opesen, Makerere University.

Introduction: Global and macro visions have overtime been implemented to eliminate reductive forms of Female Genital Modification (FGM). Unfortunately, without adapting designs to local context, this goal has never been achieved. The tradition has also not only expanded into the Western world but also anticlined in some traditional FGM communities. Objectives: Coming from a realist model, this paper explores (a) the need for adaptation of global and macro visions to contexts using the failure and experiences of/with the past and present universal designs (b) insights on how these visions can be adapted to local contexts for better outcomes. Methodology: The paper is extracted from the findings of a larger ethnographic PhD study in the Pokot Amudat district Kenya-Uganda border between February-2015 to January-2016. Data were collected using three (3) life stories, three (3) informant and two (2) group interviews, analysed inductively by theme and interpreted meaningfully. Findings: Global and macro visions for FGM elimination are (a) ineffective (b) not locally owned/supported (c) controversial and trigger undercover clandestine approaches to FGM (d) organically dysfunctional and (e) unsustainable when not adapted to target contexts. Fronting localised FGM understanding and implications for non-conformity into vision designs (b) conducting formative studies with stakeholder analysis to make designs context aware/generate best locally driven options (c) working with local actors (d) supporting local initiative and (e) using evaluation evidence innovatively will help adapt visions to local contexts. Conclusion: Global and macro visions adapted to local context will deliver their goals

Exploring grounded architectural practice to support transitions toward sustainable urbanism in Cape Town. Rudolf Perold, Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

This paper will explore architectural practice ‘grounded in reality, able to overcome the separation between abstract processes (or indeed, global visions) and everyday life’ (Goonewardena, 2008). It will do so by drawing on the author’s experience as participant-observer in an informal settlement upgrading project of the organisation VPUU (Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading) at Lotus Park, Cape Town. Murray (2008) characterises informal settlements as ‘incubators for inventive survival strategies where inhabitants have begun to develop their own specific forms of collaboration and cooperation’. Given these opportunities for developing more sustainable forms of urbanism, Combrinck (2015) laments the sustained marginal position which the architectural profession maintains towards the in situ upgrading of informal settlements. In order to address this marginality, this paper will reflect on architectural practice in the context of the continually changing, complex and dynamic systems of informal urbanism, drawing on the everyday practices of the urban majority. The aid and development federation Oxfam International has developed a single visual framework which combines the concept of environmental limits with social needs and economic opportunity. According to this framework, sustainable development occurs when all people have the resources required to fulfil their human rights, without placing undue stress on the natural environment. In Southern cities such as Cape Town, where there is strong neoliberal economic resistance to the presence and upgrading of informal settlements, such an understanding of sustainable development is not without contestation. This paper will conclude by discussing the role of grounded architectural practice in ameliorating this dispute.

Brokers, smallholders’ weapons to bridge the gap between local reality and the national and the global: the impact of bureaucracy and the role of brokers in a community based forest management project in the Brazilian Amazon. Örjan Bartholdson, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

The bureaucracy that regulates land tenure, agriculture and community based forest management (CBFM) in the Brazilian Amazon aims at achieving an impartial administration and process of practices that complies with the intention of laws, regulations and decrees and safeguards the rights of the citizens at large and the vulnerable particularly.  Yet the actual interpretation and implementation of laws, regulations and decrees is to large extent opaque, arbitrary, and contingent on subjective intentions, interests and perspectives. These irregularities and arbitrariness affect poor smallholders hard and hampers their access to resources and formal rights. In order to transcend these difficulties the smallholders utilize their social networks, above all vertical contacts, to attract brokers. This strategy assigns great power and influence to various intermediaries and brokers, and affects how policies are implemented, how resources are distributed or not distributed and how power relations are articulated. The elite domination of economic and political capital and the arbitrariness of interpretation and implementation of laws, policies and decrees greatly affect smallholders’ livelihood options and the sustainability of food production and CBFM forest management, yet these aspects of governance and governmentality are grossly under-theorized in research on preservation and re-generation of ecosystem services.

Transformation of Small-scale Fisheries – Critical Transdisciplinary Challenges and Possibilities. Gloria  L. Gallardo Fernández, Uppsala University and Fred Saunders, Södertörn University.

Illegal livelihoods in African borderlands. Eria Olowo Onyango, Makerere University.

Magendo is a term coined in the early 1970s referring to unofficial trade transactions taking place across the border between Uganda and Kenya; and is unrecorded by customs authorities. It is considered illegal by the states of Uganda and Kenya, because it avoids official procedures resulting in loss of revenue by the state. This paper disentangles the factors responsible for the persistence of magendo at the border while highlighting the reasons that drive the traders to stake their lives for an activity that can, in extreme cases cost them lives. The study used ethnographic methodology to investigate the problem. The findings indicate that cross border ethnicity; socialization of children by elders; and the need for subsistence guided by social networks premised on ethnic, clan and familial ties are the factors facilitating the persistence of magendo to date. These factors point to the fact that the local actors’ transactions with both international and indigenous players are embedded in the peoples culture. This consequently make magendo a normal way of life. Other factors like the quick super normal profits, price differences across the border, coupled with the imaginary border among the otherwise same people are as significant in fuelling magendo for forty years now. In conclusion, it is imperative to note that much as magendo is considered illegal by sovereign states due, it plays a key role in the livelihood security of borderlanders.

Harmonizing the governance of food security and biodiversity: a multi-level stakeholder network analysis in Ethiopia. Tolera Senbeto Jiren, Ine Dorresteijn, Julia Leventon, Arvid Bergsten and Joern Fischer, Leuphana University. 

Ensuring food security in a way that also promotes biodiversity conservation is a central theme in global development discourses. Despite possible synergies in integrating food production and biodiversity conservation at local scales, this potential remains underutilized. Key reasons include weak institutions to harmonize strategies and plans, and foster stakeholder integration within and between sectors, and across local, regional, national and international levels. Furthermore, policy contradictions between scales and sectors, and weak integration during local implementation also pose challenges to harmonizing food security and biodiversity goals. Here, we draw on extensive data obtained from key informant interviews and focus group discussions with 230 stakeholders across multiple levels of governance in Ethiopia. We characterize stakeholders and their level of interaction across levels (administration) and sectors (food security and biodiversity). We also explore how food security and biodiversity are being governed in the Ethiopian context, and analyze the major constraints hampering the successful achievement of harmoniously ensuring food security and conserving biodiversity. Large parts of Ethiopia remain food insecure, and there has been a decline in the biodiversity conditions of the country over time. Our analysis shows that top-down planning, lack of integration between regional goals and local realities, recentralization of decision making power, absence of good governance, and weak institutional capacity all appear as stumbling blocks to harmoniously achieve food security and biodiversity conservation goals in Ethiopia.