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Abordamos en este artículo el camino recorrido por la Comisión Nacional en Defensa del Agua y la Vida (CNDAV) de Uruguay como movimiento social que ha tenido una experiencia enriquecedora, con un conjunto de logros frente al avance privatizador de los sistemas de provisión de agua y saneamiento en el país. Entre estos logros se destacan: la organización de acciones con estrategias participativas y con integración de conocimientos para proponer una reforma constitucional, el desarrollo de una campaña nacional y el logro del apoyo del 65% de los votantes en el año 2004, así como la aprobación por el Parlamento uruguayo por unanimidad de una Ley de Política Nacional de Agua en noviembre del 2009. Estos logros incluyen no solamente la definición de un conjunto de principios que deberán regir las políticas de agua y saneamiento, sino también la estrategia de constituirse en un movimiento propositivo que fomenta iniciativas que surgen de poblaciones locales comprometidas con sus cuencas hidrográficas.

The insufficient access to housing and the commercialization of public space are most problematic aspects of urban development in Poland. As we witness the effects of neoliberalization in the urban policy sector – with an increased presence of private corporate actors combined with a withdrawal of the earlier so dominant public authorities – there is still no long-term policy in place to counteract the negative social as well as economic effects on the citizens. To the contrary, existing political order in many cities supports market solutions, while scaling down investments in public space, municipal housing or building for rent. To better explain the dynamics of urban policy, the paper uses a field theory approach (Martin, 2003), to analyse the role of developers and urban grassroots movements in planning and building of Polish cities. Data from formal and informal interviews with developers, urban activists and public authorities are used, supplemented by results of participatory observations at national conferences, government workshops and activists’ gatherings. Paper describes the ongoing ‘game of the city’ (Domaradzka and Wijkstrom, 2016) in which incumbents defend their dominant position and control over space, while a set of challengers seek to introduce new values and behaviours. It presents the wider context of Polish urban policy field and organizational practices of developers and urban activists to illustrate the field dynamics and actors’ changing strategies. The analysis also shows how the dominant narratives are shaped through re-defining the ‘right to the city’ frame and incorporating it into the developers’ agenda.

This paper explores grassroots historiographical writing from Congo in the context of globalization. The authors are both sub-elite writers, producing text for First-World readers, and they spend enormous efforts at producing a generically regimented text, based on borrowed models of text and textuality that are seen to offer spaces for identity-construction. Performing such models of text and textuality is a construction of Self vis-à-vis history. But in order to understand such moves into identity-constructing spaces, we need to take account of different economies of meanings and signs. The identity construction only works in one particular economy of meanings and signs, but loses ‘meaning’ as soon as it is being inserted into other economies. The shift from one frame into another involves relocations of referential and indexical meanings attached to signs, a phenomenon of semiotic mobility that needs to be addressed sociolinguistically. Detached from their local semiotic environment, such texts become ‘orthopractic’: Performances of shape detached from locally valid indexicalities.

To survive, nascent grassroots organizations—and their respective causes—must earn the trust of various audiences that can impact credibility advancement. However, it can be quite difficult for grassroots organizations to access suitable settings, times, and collocated audiences. One context that can yield this type of access is an event as it constitutes a rare opportunity for organizations to engage in practices that impact credibility advancement. We investigate how a volunteer-based grassroots organization orchestrates a high-profile event at the United Nations to promote African diaspora entrepreneurs as a valuable force in the mitigation of development challenges in their home countries. We employ qualitative data collected from ethnographic observations, interviews, and secondary sources and apply grounded theory approaches to demonstrate how organizational credibility can be advanced through performative strategizing within event settings. Drawing from heuristics used in theatrical performances, we found that the grassroots organization mobilized specific audience groups in participative role-playing across two acts, thereby producing and consecrating a temporary simulacrum of a cause-related community it claimed to represent. Our findings demonstrate how an unproven organization can strategically use audience mobilization to convert event settings into performative spaces for simulacrum creation and credibility advancement.

The relational processes and practices that create and sustain grassroots associations have received limited attention from researchers. This article addresses this gap, exploring collective leadership of grassroots associations through a ‘leadership-as-practice’ lens (Raelin, 2016a; 2016b). It adopts the concept of ‘bundles’ of leadership practice (Schatzki, 2005) to analyse data from a single ethnographic case study. Adopting this conceptual lens, we identify a set of ‘bundles’ of related practices – organising, engaging and accounting – that constitute the enduring reality of the grassroots association’s collective leadership.

North America continues to witness escalating rates of opioid overdose deaths. Scale-up of existing and innovative life-saving services – such as overdose prevention sites (OPS) as well as sanctioned and unsanctioned supervised consumption sites – is urgently needed. Is there a place for critical theory-informed studies of harm reduction during times of drug policy failures and overdose crisis? There are different approaches to consider from the critical literature, such as those that, for example, interrogate the basic principles of harm reduction or those that critique the lack of pleasure in the discourses surrounding drug use. Influenced by such work, we examine the development of OPS in Canada, with a focus on recent experiences from the province of Ontario, as an important example of the impacts associated with moving from grassroots harm reduction to institutionalised policy and practice. Services appear to be most innovative, dynamic, and inclusive when people with lived experience, allies, and service providers are directly responding to fast-changing drug use patterns and crises on the ground, before services become formally bureaucratised. We suggest a continuing need to both critically theorise harm reduction and to build strong community relationships in harm reduction work, in efforts to overcome political moves that impede collaboration with and inclusiveness of people who use drugs.

This literature review assesses the current status of Indigenous and racialized newcomer relations in Canada and provides recommendations for future research, government policy, and grassroots organizing. In Canada, as is other “white settler-societies”, there is a strict separation between two intersecting debates surrounding identity, citizenship, and belonging—one revolves around the immigrant experience and the other around Indigenous peoples. To break down the barriers separating these two debates, this paper will explore what the nature of the relationship is between immigrants and Indigenous peoples through a review of the literature using postcolonial and decolonized anti-racist frameworks. This literature review attempts to contribute to the unsettling of insider/outsider, minority/majority, Indigenous/settler, and black/white binaries, which are pervasive within the racialized and colonized Canadian society, and build dialogue and cross-cultural collaboration in anti-racist activism and scholarship.

Much research has focused on explaining the very high rate of radicalization among a small number of Caribbean island nations. This paper instead investigates the history and current status of countering violent extremism policies in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on government, international partners, and local NGO programming in the field. Through an analysis of extended interviews with grassroots organizations, politicians, and members of the security administration alongside a desk review of existing literature and evaluations of CVE programming, we seek to illuminate gaps between official policies and actual, on the ground practices. While authorities in Trinidad and Tobago have recognized the power of non-state actor centered, bottom up policies, the majority of visible operations continue to rely on top down, state centric ones. This paper brings with it concrete recommendations for law enforcement, community builders, and local residents alike.

Violent conflicts are frequently associated with detrimental or neutral effects on economic, social, and environmental development; by extension, one might expect similar effects on agrobiodiversity. However, as this study suggests, the impacts of conflicts are not necessarily all negative or neutral. Indeed, conflicts may also create favorable political conditions for the implementation of community-driven agrobiodiversity management. Drawing on ethnographic research in the indigenous central region of Chiapas, Mexico, where the insurgent Zapatista movement (EZLN) has a strong influence, we examine the impact of the agrarian conflict between this indigenous movement and the Mexican government on the development of agrobiodiversity conservation initiatives. Two research questions guide this paper: (1) What has been the impact of the conflict on communities’ subsistence agriculture and seed sovereignty? and (2) To what extent has the local seed sovereignty movement—an outgrowth of the Zapatista conflict—influenced agrobiodiversity conservation? Our findings suggest that the conflict has led to the implementation of grassroots agroecology and food and seed sovereignty projects that could ultimately strengthen agrobiodiversity in the communities under the influence of the Zapatista movement. We suggest that these projects highlight two elements essential for long-term agrobiodiversity conservation: first, the strategic relationship between agrobiodiversity conservation and these communities’ food security and seed sovereignty, particularly in the context of conflict; and second, the central role that peasant communities play in the preservation, reproduction, and evolution of agrobiodiversity. We conclude that the overall long-term impact of the Zapatista conflict on local agrobiodiversity has in fact been positive.

Introduction: The “sanctuary city” movement is a grassroots, human rights-based response to increased numbers of non-status migrants living and working in global cities (Faraday 2012; Sawchuk & Kempf 2008; Bhuyan 2012; OCASI 2012). Nonstatus migrants live in situations of extreme precariousness — they are subject to detention and deportation if identified by federal authorities; often work in poor conditions; are socially isolated; face poverty, abuse, and exploitation; and are unable to safely access essential social services, including those related to healthcare, education, labour, shelters, food banks, and police services (Gibney 2000; De Giorgi 2010; Noll 2010). In February 2013, Toronto became the first “sanctuary city” in Canada, which is currently styled “Access T.O.” Hamilton and Vancouver followed suit in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The primary objective of Access T.O. is to ensure that all residents are able to access municipal and police services, regardless of immigration status. The policy directs city officials not to: 1) inquire into immigration status when providing select services, 2) deny non-status residents access to services to which they are entitled, and 3) share personal or identifying information with federal authorities, unless required to do so by federal or provincial law (City of Toronto 2013).

Sustainable conservation, development, and utilization of natural and human resources is necessary for accelerated economic growth and fast-paced socio-economic transformation of Nepal. Asta-Ja Framework, which is a theoretically grounded grassroots based peaceful and self-reliant planning and development approach, offers practical strategies for sustainable conservation and development of natural and human resources enhancing food, water, climate, and environmental security, accelerated economic growth, and socio-economic transformation of Nepal. Asta-Ja includes interconnected eight resources in Nepali letter, Ja, – Jal (water), Jamin (land), Jungle (forest), Jadibuti (medicinal and aromatic plants), Janashakti (manpower), Janawar (animal), Jarajuri (crop plants) and Jalabayu (climate). Asta-Ja Framework is a unifying framework for planning and resources development and has a strong footing on science, business, and eastern philosophy. While providing practical guidelines for achieving food, water, climate and environmental security, this article presents Nepal Vision 2040, which is developed considering challenges that Nepal is currently facing and its available Asta-Ja resources, envisioning that Nepal’s economic development reaching at the par of developed nations by 2040. Key strategic sectors identified in Nepal Vision 2040 include smallholder mixed-farming system, agro-jadibuti industrialization, protection of drinking water sources, climate change adaptation, environmental pollution control, conservation of natural resources, infrastructure, tourism, renewable energy, alleviation of inequalities, and good governance. This article demonstrates strategies for addressing social discrimination and inequalities through the process of Asta-Ja community capacity-building and self-reliant development. Ecological balance of Asta-Ja resources is necessary for sustainable natural resources, economic development, and community resiliency. The Government of Nepal is suggested to adopt Asta-Ja Framework as its national planning and development framework for sustainable economic growth and fast-paced socio-economic transformation of the country.

This chapter builds on Chapters 2 and 4 and describes more advanced concepts, representations, procedures and graphical diagrams related to the analysis and design of heat recovery systems for both grassroots and retrofit situations. The grassroots case is extended to add more industrial realism, and to bring investment costs into the discussion. Key elements of the grassroots component are Multiple Utilities, Heat Transfer Area considerations, additional design tools beyond the Pinch Design Method, forbidden matches and an introduction to the use of optimisation for heat exchanger network design. Key elements of the retrofit part are procedures for Targeting, Design and Optimisation, where in all these stages focus is on maximum utilisation of existing equipment, making the task very different from the grassroots case. The Network Pinch concept will also be described, which as the name indicates is a feature of the Heat Exchanger Network (HEN), while the Heat Recovery Pinch is a feature of the stream data.

Confronted by answering a complex question such as ‘What are the Limit(s) of Compromise?’ when ‘unpacking State-Society Relations in the Urban Space’, some problematising thoughts are offered to further elaborate urban studies by resorting to systems thinking and its leverage points concept. Both social and ecological issues are addressed, and specific references to Venice, Italy, are offered, including recent grassroot experiences. The dissertation includes some epistemological dilemmas and some initial projections to start to measure ourselves with a new epoch, able to interact with all of the above: social, ecological, urban, and power/governance dimensions.

The National Liberation Zapatista Army (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional, EZLN) was formed in 1983 from the National Liberation Forces (Fuerzas de Liberacion Nacional, FLN), a subversive organization formed in the late 1960s in northern Mexico, inspired by the Cuban revolution. FLN set up a guerrilla movement whose aim was the spread of socialism in Mexico. However, FLN was virtually wiped out by the federal Government in the early 1970s. Former members of the FLN managed to regroup and settle in the southeastern state of Chiapas in 1983, mainly along the hilly region of Los Altos, in the northern area of the state in the Lacandon jungle, where they pursued similar goals to those of the late FLN and created EZLN, a grassroots-based organization. With this organizational base, EZLN was able to expand its ranks and lead the 1994 armed rebellion. Keywords: ethnicity and culture; political sociology; community; conflict; cultural diversity; Mexico; Mesoamerica

When looking at journalism from a social movement perspective, there are two possible viewpoints. On the one side, the journalistic field, its rules and values, routines and practices, is external to the social movement milieu. On the other side, the very notion of journalism has always intertwined with grassroots communities of activists that rethink and reshape journalistic practices from a bottom-up perspective. In the first case, scholars investigate the interactions between social movements and journalism at large, where journalism denotes mainstream journalistic practices. In the second case, conversely, scholars research the development of so-called alternative and grassroots journalistic practices within activist communities and networks. Keywords: culture; internet and new media; political media content

For our special issue, ‘Radical Democratic Citizenship: From Practice to Theory’, we examine different forms of radical theorising and politics at the grassroots. Radical democratic citizenship entails forms of struggle against gross social, economic and political miseries and injustices. This special issue explores the implications of a renewed wave of revolutionary grassroots action. ‘Radical’ indicates firstly the potential for sustained fundamental change of the economic and political landscape that, secondly, is pursued from the grassroots, and, thirdly, through an egalitarian, democratic process that are transformative in rethinking and reshaping the parameters of what democracy can and should be. We raise the question of how localised alternatives -– which have been the most fertile terrain for such generation of different worlds–might be able to address wider questions of global inequality on our finite planet.

This article explores how grassroots administrators interact with various other actors in the process of forming international partnerships. A top-down and a bottom-up case of building international partnerships for masters and PhD programmes were selected from my fieldwork in a Danish university. The cases were elaborated and analysed using Tatiana Fumasoli’s organisational approach to multi-level governance in higher education. This article concludes that with their personal networks and knowledge about the normative frameworks of certain powerful actors, grassroots administrators could help academic staff who might not know the regulations involved in the internationalisation process, to balance their own interests with their intention of complying with the normative frameworks, and thus enhance their capacities of forming and participating in a successful international partnership.

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake increased the need for disaster relief and reconstruction projects in China. This disaster created an upsurge of Chinese grant-making foundations, which then increased funding expectations. Many grassroots social organizations (SOs) in China believed that going forward, this level of funding would continue. However, the majority of grassroots SOs in China are currently facing an existential crisis. Their survival is being threatened by a shortage of funding from both local and foreign grant-making foundations. This research uses an empirical analysis of grant-making foundations and in-depth interviews, as well as observational evidence accumulated over a 10-year period, to explore the distribution of funding from foundations to grassroots SOs in China. The findings show that there are a limited number of Chinese grant-making foundations and that the foundations that exist do not include grassroots SOs in their funding scheme.

Grassroots innovation is an activity that uses multiple resources or indigenous technology to create an innovation more creatively. The innovations are often utilised to improvise the community and environment. The invented product or process is created at the bottom of the pyramid due to necessities, difficulties, and challenges. Malaysia thrives to become a high income developed nation through several initiatives, such as lifelong learning and innovation. Malaysians are encouraged to undertake education programmes to enhance knowledge and skills. These grassroots activities need to be discovered as they affect income and social values. The local grassroots innovators have difficulty commercialising the innovations due to a lack of skills, knowledge, and technology. This study aimed to identify the grassroots innovations, the process in developing innovation, and complement the innovation towards commercialisation. Local innovators adapt to the new product development process as a mutual understanding and for grassroots sustainable development.

The existing critical literature on NGOs operating in the context of European migration has interrogated their involvement in systems of state surveillance and neoliberal governmentality. We supplement this with a critical political economy perspective which reveals the implication of the humanitarian sector in broader systems of capital accumulation. We draw on two related critical literatures, on Racial Capitalism and Relative Surplus Populations (RSPs), to explore the complex role that NGOs, both large and grassroots, serve in managing displaced populations at the borders of Europe. By introducing the concepts of the ‘migration fix’, secondary exploitation and racialisation, we show how NGOs are implicated, often unwittingly, in the production and management of displaced people as surplus populations, through their dequalification, categorisation and containment. We conclude by exploring the political dilemmas generated by this situation with regard to the practice of NGOs, as well as the possibility for alternative forms of solidarity.

This article elaborates on two important elements of women's leadership. First, it explores how leadership theory has abandoned its masculine perspective in favour of a "more feminine" one. The COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that crippled the socio-political structure, has contributed to this shift. Second, the experiences of grassroots leaders who are active in the domestic sphere have begun to be considered, as has their increased activeness in the public sphere during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, studies of women's leadership are highly elitist; such a paradigm is problematic, as it prioritises formal power structures and ignores the grassroots leaders who play a central role in maintaining the social order. This research finds that the pandemic has provided a valuable impetus not only for studies of formal elites but also women at the grassroots. Women have become highly powerful agents in the domestic sphere during the pandemic, and even expanded their agency into the public sphere. Women leaders have facilitated the implementation of government and community crisis response measures at the grassroots level.

Throughout its 40-year history, the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest) has established itself as an important player within the Belgian party system, albeit with significant electoral fluctuations. In 2019, it became the second largest party in Flanders. The party developed and maintained a mass-party organisation by investing significantly in local party branches and in a rigid vertically articulated structure. It relies heavily on social media, particularly Facebook, to communicate to supporters beyond the more limited group of party members. Using both modern and traditional tools, VB representatives aim to create communities of supporters bonded to the party, facilitating dissemination of the party’s messages. Despite this investment in a grassroots organisation, the VB’s decision-making remains highly centralised. Social media and local branches allow informal consideration of members’ views, but the party has not created significant mechanisms for internal democracy. While it is often claimed that political parties have moved away from the “mass-party” model, this article demonstrates that the VB still maintains characteristics of the mass party, albeit with a modern twist. New social media tools facilitate attempts to foster communities and disseminate party messages among a wider group of supporters, both formal members and more informal sympathisers.

This article examines the effectiveness of grassroots lobbying at the regional level in Poland. For the purpose of the article, “loyalty to the citizens versus party theory” was formulated. It distinguishes two stages of the policy-making process within which the councilors react differently to grassroots lobbying. The first stage refers to the preparation of the law by the region’s board. The theory assumes that the more people pressure the legislator to persuade the board to their initiative, the more inclined he is to endorse it. This way he proves loyalty to the citizens and secures his reelection. The second stage concerns the legislators’ voting behavior. In this case, grassroots lobbying has a neutral impact on them. The councilors remain loyal to the party leaders and vote accordingly so that their position on the party list is guaranteed in the next election. In order to verify the theory, a study consisting of anonymous interviews with sixty legislators from the Opole and Subcarpathian Assembly was conducted. The outcome of the research indicates that (1) a considerable majority of legislators were positively influenced by grassroots lobbying to pressure the region’s board; (2) the voting behavior of the majority of legislators was not impacted by grassroots lobbying; (3) grassroots lobbying is the most effective at the first stage of the policy-making process; (4) the structure of government does not determine the legislators’ reaction to grassroots lobbying; (5) the party’s status (in power or in opposition) impacts the legislator’s voting behavior.

The emergency legal and policy responses to COVID-19 attempt to avoid discrimination against disabled people. But they do not address deeper ableist and disableist narratives and practices embedded in emergency health policy. Adopting a disability ethics approach to the guidelines that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that they rest on dubious ethical grounds. However, emergency legal and policy responses to COVID-19 can be improved by adopting an approach based on disability ethics principles that emerge from grassroots level.

The current nativist and ethnocentric policies and rhetoric put forward in the United States have compromised the safety of undocumented Hispanic/Latinx Americans. Many in these communities abstain from overt action toward change. Nonetheless, there are examples of community members who embrace the narrative "undocumented and unafraid." Through in-depth individual interviews and focus groups, we qualitatively examined how undocumented Mexican community coalition members (N = 10), focused on enacting socio-political change on behalf of their predominantly Mexican southwestern community, understood the role of their group as a venue for bridging resources and social action. Findings centered on three specific broad themes: (1) Meeting Community Needs: A Disconnection from Resources; (2) Community Coalition as a Space for Bridging Resources; and (3) Community Coalition as a Space for Activism and Social Change.

This article studies French grassroots volunteer organizations, their governance and their accountability. The sample is composed of French major GVOs, in terms of reputation and resources. Their r...

PRIDA is an Australian based network of medical and scientific specialists, combining expertise in microbiology laboratory development, infection control, management of infectious diseases and antimicrobial stewardship. PRIDA focuses on grassroots support for Pacific and Southeast Asian sites through the establishment of long-term mentoring relationships with front line health care workers. With an emphasis on bench level training for scientists and bedside development for clinicians, PRIDA has advanced testing capacity, infection control and antimicrobial stewardship in the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, and PNG. Understanding the need to upskill HCWs in the Pacific, PRIDA has expanded into areas of formal education opportunities with development of online microbiology diplomas, for pathologists, physicians, and scientists. Concurrent design of multidisciplinary virtual video conferenced microbiology rounds provides teaching opportunities in real time and improvement in daily patient care. From its origin of volunteerism, PRIDA has attracted funding through partnership with larger organisations and are currently involved in sponsored AMR projects in the Pacific.

With the current momentum around menstruation, it is increasingly framed as a human rights issue. We see such language in UN documents and many organizations adopt the framing of human rights. Scholars have argued that “framing the issue as being about the right to safe, healthy and dignified menstruation moves it from being a negative problem to be solved” to “an affirmative principle through which the facts of women and girls’ lives are acknowledged and validated.” This paper seeks to briefly unpack what it means to approach menstruation through the lens of human rights. First, I will discuss the predominant way in which human rights framing is presently used and how it is at risk of instrumentalization, tokenism, and reductionism. However, I will also provide a more optimistic view and discuss what the human rights framework has to offer, building on grassroots perspectives as well as normative arguments.

Design is the act of transforming an existing situation into a preferred one. Taking this broad definition of design, the paper analyzes the process of grassroots innovations from a design perspect...

Innovation policies are increasingly questioned by researchers and policymakers in the face of the changing economy and with regards to the role played by local grassroots initiatives in driving st...

International student migration/mobility (ISM) has long come under the spotlight in migration and education studies. Previous research has focused primarily on inbound students in Western host countries, with much less attention on sending countries’ policies. Based on evidence from interviews, ethnography, and policy analysis in China, the world’s largest source country of student migrants, I argue that outbound student migration can be integrated into the home country’s broader diaspora politics to serve economic, governmental, and geopolitical policy objectives. These diverse, sometimes-clashing, interests are predicated upon China’s domestic politics and global positioning. To establish a conceptual bridge between ISM and diaspora studies, I depart from the mobility paradigm’s emphases on neoliberalism and de-regulation and, instead, foreground nation-states’ changing, yet-unabating, interests in regulating and strategizing about overseas students. I find that following decades of prioritizing the economic and governmental impacts of student returnees ( haigui, or colloquially “sea turtles”) in boosting the domestic economy and maintaining political stability, China now attaches growing importance to student migrants’ geopolitical value as “grassroots ambassadors” ( minjian dashi) in expanding China’s global influence and enhancing its national image abroad. This geopolitics-focused national reorientation, however, may not be well received by student migrants themselves or fully implemented by street-level migration bureaucrats. By examining tensions between the central Chinese state, student migrants, and frontline local officials, this article sheds new light on ISM as a dynamic policy arena where state ambitions crosscut individual desires and national grand plans are confronted with flexible local improvisation.

With the rapid development of society and economy, grassroots organizations in rural pastoral areas are an important part of party building, shouldering the mission of implementing party policies, and playing an important role in leading herdsmen to fight poverty and realize basic modernization in rural areas. The mission and responsibilities of grassroots party organizations in rural and pastoral areas are undergoing profound changes. Strengthening the construction of grassroots party organizations in rural and pastoral areas will help promote the relationship between the party and the masses, cadres and the masses in rural and pastoral areas, and promote the establishment of party organizations in rural and pastoral areas. At present, grassroots party building in rural pastoral areas is facing new challenges, such as insufficient party organization building, and unclear power boundaries between party organizations and villagers’ autonomous organizations. Only by accelerating the construction of infrastructure and public services in rural pastoral areas and doing a good job in the construction of rural grassroots party organizations can improve the level of party building in rural pastoral areas and promote the basic modernization of rural areas.

Grassroots reform, particularly in the private educational sector, has had a noticeable impact on the Australian middle years of schooling landscape. Middle years’ grassroots reform however, has often been implemented in ad hoc ways, which has meant it has not always resulted in meaningful change that is aligned with middle years’ research and philosophy. This case study examines one school’s efforts to improve education in the middle years through a grassroots reform project, namely the “Year 9 Project”. The study explores how capacity building for meaningful change can be both helped and hindered during grassroots reform. It also examines the experiences and involvement of teachers in grassroots reform, understanding their pivotal role as key implementers of school change. The study reaches two conclusions regarding how capacity building may be enhanced to effectuate meaningful change at the grassroots level.

Based on the background that China is accelerating socialist administrative management reform with Chinese characteristics, this paper selects public participation in public administration as a research object and outlines the existing institutional arrangement of public participation in public administration. By focusing on the institutional advantages and dilemma of Chinese public participation in public administration, the paper analyzes from the national macro level, local government medium level and grassroots micro level and further proposes the suggestions on the ways to promote Chinese public participation in public administration.

In early 2020, Chinese people engaged in several rounds of extraordinary online campaigns in response to the government’s handling of the outbreak of coronavirus. During these campaigns, visual images played a crucial role in facilitating netizens to inform each other, escape official censoring machinery, express anger and frustration, excavate truth, document reality and mobilize online support and protest. In particular, images related with Dr Li Wenliang, one of whistle-blowers of the soon-to-be pandemic who himself died of the virus, and Dr Ai Fen, the first doctor to share information about a possible coronavirus diagnose among her colleagues, became the focal points of the unprecedented online mobilization successively. Millions of netizens participated in the effort to circulate these images (and stories behind them) and invented ingenious ways to continue the endeavour when confronted by the heightened censorship. Various art communities and individuals have done their share to fuel in this momentum of visual mobilization and there was a surge of call for public participation in responding to the pandemic through participatory public artworks. Maskbook, initiated by artist Wen Fang, and One More Day led by MeDoc, are two exemplary cases. Through analysing these images, this article discusses China’s grassroots visual mobilization to claim for freedom of speech and access to truth in the wake of the massive health crisis and articulates its contribution to the formation of a bottom-up visual discourse that challenges the state’s media discourse in interpreting the pandemic as a victory of government leadership.

Studies of projected agro-climatic variability on the productivity of small-holding farming livelihoods have been evaluated by indirect methods using simulation models on country or regional basis but few have been done at the community level. This study explores direct observation of the impact of soil and climate factors on crop and livestock livelihood systems in the three major agro-ecological zones of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It also analyzed their influence on small farmers’ choices of agrarian livelihood activities and the lessons learned for the suitability of agro-ecologically integrated agriculture as part of agrarian and food security reforms needed among small farming households in rural communities of South Africa. The impact of soil and rainfall on the crop and livestock livelihood choices of small-holders in the three major agro-ecological zones were explored. A cross-sectional survey was carried out among 223 small-holding farming households during the harvesting period of rain-fed farming season. Data on household livelihood activities were processed in monetary terms and subjected to gross margin and cost/benefit analysis. Geographic information system (GIS) mapping and statistical analysis were used to determine the association of small-holder maize revenue with agro-climatic variation. The results indicated that crop-based activities performed better in the Grassland zone, while livestock activities performed better in the Savanna zone. Small farms in the Karoo can only productively engage in livestock production. The results also showed that farming activities that combined more vegetable crops yielded greater profits than other field crops. Furthermore, the results indicate that the mixed cropping method remains one of the strategies for breaking-even and risk-bearing effort used by the small-holder farmers considering its cost-sharing benefits. Geographical information system (GIS) mapping further indicates that small-holders’ farming activity was not only affected by soil-climatic factors but by their management skills as well. We recommend agro-ecologically adapted policies and incentives for agriculture-based livelihood activities and intensified mixing of cropping systems among the small-holder farming households in the study area.

PurposeThis paper provides an analytical account detailing the historical linkages between Chinese on both sides of the Sino-Hong Kong border from 1841 onwards and examining important incidents of collective actions in the colony and Canton.Design/methodology/approachUsing annual reports published by the colonial administration in Hong Kong, especially those focusing on years that witnessed major incidents of anti-colonial agitations, this paper analyzes how British policymakers were confronted by collective actions mounted by Chinese in Canton and Hong Kong. Building on the works of prominent historians and utilizing the theoretical frameworks of analysts such as Charles Tilly (1978), the author examines if a Cantonese regional solidarity served as the foundation for popular movements, which in turn consolidated a rising Chinese nationalism when Canton and Hong Kong were the focal points of mass actions against imperialism.FindingsHong Kong Chinese workers were vanguards of the modern Chinese revolutions that transformed not just their homeland, but their lives, allegiances, and aspirations as Chinese in a domain under foreign jurisdiction on Chinese soil, as their actions were emulated by their compatriots outside of South China, thus starting a chain reaction that culminated in the establishment of the Nanjing regime.Originality/valueThis paper reveals that popular movements of Hong Kong Chinese possessed national and international importance, especially when they were supported by their Cantonese compatriots and the two leading Chinese political parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the perceptions of the grassroots on the impact of combative policy measures, strategies and programs introduced by the government and the civil society to reduce persistent occurrences of bribery practices in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach Multi-stage or cluster sampling was used to acquire the data for this paper via survey questionnaire administered to the grassroots in Abuja, Nigeria. The data set is used to assess the impact of the various policy measures, strategies and programs on the persistence of bribery practices in Nigeria. The multiple linear regression method was used to estimate the data generated from 836 responses in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26. Findings The result of the estimations indicates that the respondents perceived that some of the policy measures, strategies and programs introduced have reduced persistence of bribery practices in Nigeria, whereas others have remained ineffective in reducing the persistence of bribery practices in Nigeria. Originality/value Previous studies on the impact of anti-bribery policy measures, strategies and programs were largely based on the perceptions of international institutions and business executives; this study appears to be the pioneer to focus on the perceptions of the grassroots in Abuja, Nigeria.

Urban South Grassroots Research Collective for Public Education (USGRC) is a New Orleans-based coalition melding research and grassroots organizing for racial-economic equity. Buras examines her in...

Informed by different grassroots learning and educational practices engaged in waste management, and drawing from the concepts of insurgent citizenship and environmental stewardship, we examine the role of waste picker organizations and movements in creating new pathways towards more sustainable environmental waste governance. Two case studies (Argentina and Brazil) demonstrate how waste pickers inform and educate the general public and raise the awareness of socio-environmental questions related to waste management. Different educational practices are used as strategies to confront citizens with their waste: to see waste as a consumption problem, resource, and income source. Our paper draws on grassroots learning (social movement learning and insurgent learning) and education (stewardship) aimed at the transformation of waste practices. We argue that waste pickers play an important role in knowledge production promoting recycling, in landfilling less and recovering more resources. We conclude that waste pickers act as insurgent citizens and also are environmental stewards.

The field of engaged engineering encompasses a wide diversity of intervention approaches and ideals that span from Enactus’ social entrepreneurship to grassroots engineering’s liberating co-construction of other possible sociotechnical orders. In common, these initiatives intend to be empowering, even though this concept is hardly thematized in their publications and has never undergone a more systematic analysis. In this paper, departing from an illustration of that lack of reflection (or rigor) concerning empowerment, a general definition for it is first provided to, subsequently, be specified in seven different dimensions related to the assisted community’s empowerment that can be addressed via sociotechnical interventions, from social inclusion to political emancipation. Thus, it analyzes the relationship between empowerment and emancipation, including the risk of disempowering. Next, an analysis of the interventions practiced by Brazilian Enactus’ leading teams and some grassroots engineering initiatives illustrates the provided conceptual framework. The paper concludes by highlighting key issues of empowerment and its relation to emancipation, and addressing some further research themes related to this investigation: refining the presented dimensions of community empowerment, and analyzing empowerment to the broader context of a sociotechnical intervention (e.g., academia, the the state, civil society and economic actors).

Open science hardware (OSH) is a term frequently used to refer to artifacts, but also to a practice, a discipline and a collective of people worldwide pushing for open access to the design of tools to produce scientific knowledge. The Global Open Science Hardware (GOSH) movement gathers actors from academia, education, the private sector and civil society advocating for OSH to be ubiquitous by 2025. This paper examines the GOSH movement’s emergence and main features through the lens of transitions theory and the grassroots innovation movements framework. GOSH is here described embedded in the context of the wider open hardware movement and analyzed in terms of framings that inform it, spaces opened up for action and strategies developed to open them. It is expected that this approach provides insights on niche development in the particular case of transitions towards more plural and democratic sociotechnical systems.

Action research has been enthusiastically promoted in TESOL for almost forty years and has projected hopes for the emancipation of EFL grassroots teachers from reliance on evidence-based SLA research. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with grassroots secondary school teachers, this study attempts to show that the contrast between those difficulties the teachers identify as their most pressing and the action research topics commonly researched in TESOL may explain voices of dissent at the grassroots. Although there is some evidence that action research benefits practitioners in supported grassroots contexts, the voices of dissent would appear to indicate that the hopes that action research would result in a more just form of research, one which addresses the full gamut of teachers’ fundamental difficulties, remain unfulfilled. Furthermore, the study points to evidence that strict adherence to, and mandatory practice of, action research within the pragmatist paradigm can add to teachers’ burdens. In order to address all the predicaments of grassroots teachers’ realities, and facilitate a less coercive approach, a change of paradigms is proposed.

Social accountability is fast being recognised as an important strategy for realisation of sexual and reproductive health rights. However, the predominant approach tends to focus on use of top-down monitoring and accountability tools that do not capture the complexity of politics surrounding this deeply contested terrain. This paper draws on discussions that took place at the Community of Practitioners on Accountability and Social Action in Health (COPASAH) Global Symposium in October 2019 where grassroots practitioners shared their experiences of seeking accountability and reflected on the myriad challenges in this process. The paper calls for greater nuance and awareness of context in the design and implementation of social accountability interventions, which engage with power and politics between the forces that determine people’s access to SRH rights.

The article analyses a new educational development in Poland, that is, free democratic schools, which are grassroots initiatives of parents seeking an alternative to the traditional pedagogies of t...

The ‘gridded management’ system is officially highlighted as playing a key role in China’s combat against COVID-19. Relying largely on the Maoist ideology of the ‘Mass Line,’ this system appears to effectively mobilize the people at the most grassroots level in the ‘war against COVID-19.’ This article, drawing upon a critical examination of this ‘People’s War’ from a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, discusses the violation of human rights and dignity and argues that the violations are inherent in the binary and utilitarian ideology of the ‘Mass Line’ deployed by the mobilizational party. As this methodology is embedded in China’s social management agenda raised by Xi Jinping in 2017, this article sheds crucial light on the ‘Chinese vision of human rights’ and China’s governance model today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Contemporary China is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)