All Papers

Wendy Sims‐Schouten, Sarah Riley, Carla Willig

In critical realism, language is understood as constructing our social realities. However, these constructions are theorized as being shaped by the possibilities and constraints inherent in the material world. For critical realists, material practices are given an ontological status that is independent of, but in relation with, discursive practices. The advantage in taking a critical realist, rather than relativist, approach is that analysis can include relationships between people's material conditions and discursive practices. Despite calls to develop a critical realist discourse analysis there has been little empirical critical realist work, possibly because few have addressed the critique that critical realists have no systematic method of distinguishing between discursive and non-discursive. In this article we outline a three-stage procedure that enables a systematic critical realist discourse analysis using women's talk of motherhood, childcare and female employment as an example.

Muhammad Faisol Chowdhury

The purpose of this paper is to critically discuss the extent of interpretivism to understand the contemporary social world. This paper firstly highlights the roots of interpretivism which can be traced back in the ancient history of philosophy. It then discusses the concept of interpretivism and gives a critical commentary on the Weber’s construction of ideal types to help explore the contemporary social world. The paper then further discusses the concept of “verstehen” and explains how it can add to our understanding of the social world phenomena. Following this analysis and tackling some philosophical debate, finally, this theoretical paper confirms that interpretivism has influenced the development of the social science and has helped our understanding of the contemporary social world to a great extent.

Hanne Svarstad, Ragnhild Overå, Tor A. Benjaminsen

Power plays a key role in definitions of political ecology. Likewise, empirical studies within this field tend to provide detailed presentations of various uses of power, involving corporate and conservation interventions influencing access to land and natural resources. The results include struggle and conflict. Yet, there is a lack of theoretical elaboration showing how power may be understood in political ecology. In this article, we start to fill this gap by reviewing the different theoretical perspectives on power that have dominated this field. There are combinations of influences, two of them being actor-oriented and neo-Marxist approaches used from the 1980s. Typically, case studies are presented of environmental interventions by a broad range of actors at various scales from the local to the global. The focus has been on processes involving actors behind these interventions, as well as the outcomes for different social groups. Over the last two decades, in political ecology we have increasingly seen a move in power perspectives towards poststructuralist thinking about "discursive power", inspired by Foucault. Today, the three approaches (actor-oriented, neo-Marxist and Foucauldian) and their combinations form a synergy of power perspectives that provide a set of rich and nuanced insights into how power is manifested in environmental conflicts and governance. We argue that combining power perspectives is one of political ecology's strengths, which should be nurtured through a continuous examination of a broad spectrum of social science theories on power.

David Lewis

In common with most countries of South Asia and indeed the rest of the world, discussion of the concept of ‘civil society™ has emerged recently in Bangladesh among academics and activists. Much of it has been generated by the international aid agencies and their ‘good governance™ policy agenda of the 1990s, and is concerned primarily with the increasingly high profile community of local and national development non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which have emerged in Bangladesh since 1971. But there are also local meanings to the term derived from the independence struggle and the construction of a Bangladesh state, from local traditions of urban and rural voluntarism and from the organisation of religious life. The concept of civil society in contemporary Bangladesh is therefore best understood as both a ‘system™ and an ‘idea™, consisting of both ‘old™ and ‘new™ civil society traditions, resisting tendencies to privilege only one (external, policy-focused) definition of the term. By recognising these different understandings, the concept of ‘civil society™ can help illuminate aspects of the changing relationships between citizens and the state, the formulation and implementation of public policy, and the shifting dimensions of the institutional landscape. But it would be wrong to overestimate the contribution of ‘civil society™ as currently configured in the building of democratic processes, since there is a weak state and pervasive patron-clientelism. There is little sign of the more optimistic accounts of Putnam and others concerning the relationship between civil society and democracy.

Serene J. Khader

Abstract Development ethicists increasingly define women’s empowerment as the expansion of women’s agency. This chapter argues that this definition ignores the fact that women can increase their ability to achieve welfare by internalizing and discharging subordinate roles. This means that anti-poverty interventions may not only fail to reduce women’s acceptance of their subordination; they may increase it. Interventions that attach new material rewards to self-subordination can generate new incentives to engage in self-subordinating behavior. The chapter illustrates this by calling for a critical interrogation of Naila Kabeer’s assessment of microcredit in Bangladesh. Microcredit has, in some cases, offered women new reasons to form adaptive preferences toward the norms surrounding purdah (seclusion) and dowry.

Jennifer Thompson

A cornerstone of feminist scholarship, intersectionality theory and method explore how gender intersects with other forms of social difference such as race and class. However, in light of the entangled relationships between nature and society, this article argues that human experience cannot be understood through social analysis alone, as offered by intersectionality. This article interrogates how materialities in the physical world might be incorporated within intersectionality. Drawing on gender and water research, the article explores how intersectionality complicates the social dimensions of water access, use, and control. Yet, applying intersectional thinking to water, scholars show how ecological processes of differentiation are also at play. Case studies from Sudan and Bangladesh exemplify how spatial and temporal aspects of water distribution intersect with the social complexities of water access. The article then returns to examine how intersectionality works to explore a framework for including these spatial and temporal dimensions. Four mechanisms – simultaneity, situated specificity, relationality, and fluidity – are elaborated for facilitating the study of eco-social relations within intersectionality theory. The article concludes that the materiality of water offers theoretical insight for developing intersectionality theory, with implications for gender and water research.

David Lewis, Abul Hossain

This article discusses a set of qualitative data collected in 2004 on changes in formal and informal aspects of local institutions and power in Bangladesh, drawn from three contrasting villages of Greater Faridpur district. It explores the idea that the rural power structure, previously conceived as relatively rigid ‘net’, is in certain ways becoming more open and less constraining to poor people. This loosening of the net takes different forms across the three contexts depending on locality. Each of the three villages is seen to experience a common set of wider institutional pressures from outside, such as increased levels of party politicisation within decentralising politics, different forms of intervention by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and the attempted reform of mechanisms for local dispute settlement. However, the local trajectories of change in each village arising from such interventions is found to vary depending on local circumstances and conditions, as do the implications of change for addressing rural poverty.

Ann Larson

Journal Article THE SOCIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY OF AFRICA'S AIDS EPIDEMIC Get access ANN LARSON ANN LARSON Ann Larson researched and wrote this article as a postdoctorial fellow at the Health Transition Centre, Australian National University, and was supported by a Rockefeller Foundation grant to that Centre. She is currently working for USAID in Bangladesh. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 89, Issue 354, January 1990, Pages 5–25, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a098279 Published: 01 January 1990

JIM WILCE

This article presents an understanding of how Bangladeshis cope with madness in relation to two assumptions: that systems of knowledge and of power are coterminous, and that actors in medical encounters draw on incompatible and unequal bodies of knowledge-power I first offer a perspective on psychiatry, emotion, and discourse in Bangladesh as a society increasingly caught up in globalizing modernity. Then I present two types of data to illumine tensions between various attempts to control the fears associated with schizophrenia. The first is a set of exchanges in the advice column of a new popular psychiatry magazine in Bangladesh that inculcate new perspectives on self Those who write to the editors signal their fears of what might, in the end, be impossible to control. Answers from the psychiatrists who edit the magazine reflect discourses circulating on the web, at international conferences, and at the institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States where one of them received his training. The second data set consists of video recordings of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia interacting with families and/or psychiatrists. In part because of knowledge-power asymmetries, attempts at controlling fears surrounding schizophrenia in these four cases fail to address the depths, tacitness, embodiment, and narrative embedding of anxieties experienced by all parties. I close with an argument about the implications for theories of culture and of medical pluralism that arise from cases in which the local Self is experienced from the perspective of powerful Others.

Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay

Feminist Subversion and Complicity brings together contributions from women in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India, who, while working at diverse kinds of institutions, are all closely involved in the intersection of development policy and gender. They offer critical feminist perspectives on governmental education and health projects, as well as legal reforms in these regions. As a whole, the essays reveal that, in general, feminist politics are not merely assimilated into governmental projects, but as part of the process of assimilation, they often serve as a subversive interruption, destabilizing and contesting orthodox meanings and assumptions.

Benjamin J. Brown, M. Cousins

Abstract It is argued that the concept of discursive formation presented by Foucault provides the means whereby conventional treatments of ‘discourse’ can be criticized. These would include historical, linguistic and epistemological forms of investigation. But it is also argued that Foucault does not sufficiently displace linguistic categories. As a result his account of the theoretical problems of ‘conditions of existence’ of discourses cannot be sustained.

Simon N. Foley

One of the perennial political/philosophical questions concerns whether it is ever justifiable for a third party to paternalistically restrict an adult’s freedom to ensure their own, or society’s, best interests are protected. Wherever one stands on this debate it remains the case that, unlike their non-impaired contemporaries, many intellectually disabled adults are subjected to a paternalistic regime of care. This is particularly the case regarding members of this population exercising more control of their sexuality. Utilizing rare empirical data, Foucault's theory of power and Kristeva’s concept of abjection, this work shows that many non-disabled people – including family members – hold ambivalent attitudes towards people with visible disabilities expressing their sexuality. Through a careful examination of the autonomy/paternalism debate this is the first book to provide an original, provocative and philosophically compelling analysis to argue that where necessary, facilitated sex with prostitutes should be included as part of a new regime of care to ensure that sexual needs are met. Intellectual Disability and the Right to a Sexual Life is essential reading for scholars, students and policy-makers with an interest in philosophy, sociology, political theory, social work, disability studies and sex studies. It will also be of interest to anybody who is a parent or a sibling of an adult with an intellectual disability and those with an interest in human rights and disability more generally.

Andréa Cornwall

Across the world, as new democratic experiments meet withand transformolder forms of governance, political space for public engagement in governance appears to be widening. A renewed concern with rights, power and difference in debates about participation in development has focused greater attention on the institutions at the interface between publics, providers and policy makers. Some see in them exciting prospects for the practice of more vibrant and deliberative democracy (Fung and Wright 2003; Gaventa, forthcoming).Others raise concerns about them as forms of co-option, and as absorbing, neutralising and deflecting social energy from other forms of political participation (Taylor 1998). The title of this Bulletin reflects some of their ambiguities as arenas that may be neither new nor democratic, but at the same time appear to hold promise for renewing and deepening democracy. Through a series of case studies from a range of political and cultural contexts – Brazil, India, Bangladesh,Mexico, South Africa, England and the United States of America, contributors to this Bulletin explore the interfaces between different forms of public engagement. Their studies engage with questions about representation, inclusion and voice, about the political efficacy of citizen engagement as well as the viability of these new arenas as political institutions. Read together, they serve to emphasise the historical, cultural and political embeddedness of the institutions and actors that constitute spaces for participation.

S. Ahmed, Jenny Hughes

Dear Jamil,Thank you for agreeing to take part in a dialogue inspired by your research article ‘Wishing for a World Without “Theatre for Development”: Demystifying the Case of Bangladesh’ (Ahmed 20...

Shane O’Neill

This article is a philosophical critique of certain communitarian conceptions of justice. It focuses on the work of Michael Walzer who argues that justice reflects the shared understandings of particular historical communities. In assessing the implications of this view for a divided society such as Northern Ireland I wish to set limits to this pluralist notion of justice. In the later part of the article I turn to Jürgen Habermas's proceduralist, universalist discourse ethics so as to transcend these limits and to argue that justice in Northern Ireland can only be achieved if the participants involved begin to adopt the critically-reflexive stance towards their identities that real discourse requires.

Donald Curtis

Abstract The idea that problems in governance have deep roots in social structure has been revisited by Geof Wood in a recent article in this journal. His article takes a position in relation to an ongoing debate about how to improve public administration and management in Bangladesh, a debate that seems to be almost as ‘imprisoned’ in incompatible values and premises as, he argues, are the various Bangladeshi actors in society. But behind this debate are some very practical issues about how the administration there might be persuaded to work better. Key to his contribution is the idea of ‘room for manoeuvre’ or conditions for ‘escape’. This article argues that embedded institutions and values matter but that behaviour is also responsive to opportunity. ‘Old’ values can be put together into new institutional complexes if given a chance. The key to successful institutional change is effectiveness. ‘Escape’ is not only, or even primarily, a matter of changing values but of responding to circumstances and changing institutions—cutting the bars. A close look at institutional and organizational reform in any country, including the UK, shows that, whatever moral language and posture inform the reform agenda, it is constructive compromise that produces the structure that works. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

SM Musa

Like thousands of other Rohingyas, Aman (pseudonym) had to flee for his life after violence broke out on 25 August, 2017 in the Rakhine (previously Arakan) state in Myanmar. Aman had got married a few months back and had no intention of leaving his home. But there was no other option left. He had to endure a horrific journey from Myanmar to Bangladesh to save his life. Like Aman, most of my informants' traumatic journeys to the camp overshadow many Hollywood fictions. Many of them still sustain traumas from those days, especially those who witnessed the killing of their friends and family and the burning of their homes. After walking for days, they crossed the Naf River that lies between the two countries, and finally they could breathe without fear of fire and bullets. Crossing the border, they saved their lives but handed them over to the mercy of others. They did not know where to go and what to do, or how to make a living. 'It was like the keyamot [the apocalypse]' Aman recalled.

Md. Imran Hossain Bhuiyan, Safiya M. Hassan, K M Baharul Islam

Democratic local governance (DLG) is often regarded as a necessary precondition for transforming lives and livelihoods of people living in the rural areas of developing countries. This article tries to answer how community-based organisations (CBOs) shape the way services are delivered by local government agencies in Bangladesh. Furthermore, the article explores how the community’s, especially women’s, demands and interests are being negotiated at local political institutions. In doing so, the research focuses on Union Parishad (UP) as the core institution of the local power structure and Kachukata Gram Unnayan Parishad (GUP) as the case of a women-led CBO. It has been observed that Kachukata GUP has evolved as a full-fledged CBO over the years and currently mobilises marginalised groups to establish their rights and access to various government and non-government organisations. In addition to ensuring gender-responsive governance, GUP is also creating space for participation and developing interactive relationship between the people and power at the grassroots in Bangladesh.