Browsing by study line "Global Development Studies"
Now showing items 21-30 of 30
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(2024)Respecting cultural diversity is crucial in multicultural societies, especially given rising xenophobia and racism in Finland. This growing anti-immigrant sentiment emphasizes the importance of this research, highlighting the need for politically and academically inclusive discussions on multiculturalism and racism. This research addresses Eurocentric narratives supporting a Western-centric view, often reinforcing biases, and marginalizing other perspectives. Correcting these one-sided stories in an educational context can foster a more inclusive understanding of global history. This dissertation aims to evaluate how fifth- and sixth-grade history textbooks in Finland represent Global South regions and countries, focusing on development-related themes. The study examines Eurocentrism in these textbooks by analysing language and discourse through cultural and decolonial studies, using the World System History approach for a broader context. The aim is to offer suggestions for improving the representation of Global South countries, promoting a more inclusive and balanced historical narrative. The methodological framework combines historical inquiry, cultural studies, and decolonial studies with content and discourse analysis to examine how Global South countries are portrayed and how historical roots and power dynamics influence these narratives. The study finds that Finnish history textbooks for fifth and sixth grades include references to the Global South, covering regions like China, India, the Middle East, and South America. This inclusion provides a broader perspective on world history, challenging some Eurocentric narratives. The textbooks suggest that early civilizations were interconnected by focusing on ancient trade routes and cultural exchanges, illustrating that different parts of the world have been connected throughout history, culminating in the Modern Ages and unprecedented globalization. This promotes a more inclusive understanding of historical development, even though some Eurocentric elements remain, as the focus still tends to highlight Western perspectives and achievements. However, a significant gap exists in the representation of African history, with textbooks primarily focusing on ancient Egypt and the transatlantic slave trade, overlooking other crucial aspects of Africa's past. This lack of representation has implications for understanding global history and can reinforce Eurocentric perspectives. By omitting critical parts of African history, these textbooks miss an opportunity to present a more balanced view, contributing to broader issues like racism in Finland. To address these shortcomings, more inclusive approaches that decolonize the mind from Eurocentric biases are needed. This involves integrating a wider range of historical narratives and emphasizing the contributions of diverse cultures, allowing for a more equitable and comprehensive portrayal of global history.
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(2022)Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on tarkastella monikansallisen tietekniikka-alan konsultointi- ja palve-luyrityksen kehityskumppanuusohjelmaan osallistuvien työntekijöiden motivoitumiseen ja identifioitumiseen vaikuttavia tekijöitä sosiaalisen identiteetin teorian näkökulmasta. Kehitys-kumppanuusohjelma on osa tutkimuksen kohteena olevan yrityksen yhteiskuntavastuukäytän-töjä, ja työntekijät voivat hakeutua ohjelmaan vapaaehtoisesti. Kehityskumppanuusohjelmaan piiriin kuuluvien työtehtävien ajalta työntekijät luopuvat puolesta palkastaan. Tämän tutki-muksen kiinnostuksen kohteena on erityisesti se, mikä motivoi työntekijöitä osallistumaan va-paaehtoisluontoiseen kehityskumppanuustyöhön, ja mitkä tekijät vahvistavat ja mitkä tekijät heikentävät kehityskumppanuusohjelmaan osallistuvien identifioitumista työnantajayrityk-seensä. Tutkimuksen toteutuksessa käytetään laadullista, tulkitsevaa tutkimusotetta. Tutkimusmene-telmänä on teemahaastattelu. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostuu kymmenestä haastattelusta. Pieni ja taustaltaan heterogeeninen haastateltavien ryhmä jakautuu luontevasti kahteen ryhmään, vanhempiin ja nuorempiin työntekijöihin, mikä heijastuu myös haastatteluaineiston analyysiin. Haastatteluaineiston perusteella jo pelkkä mahdollisuus osallistua kehityskumppanuusohjel-maan lujittaa ohjelmaan hakeutuneen työntekijän identifioitumista työnantajaansa. Kehitys-kumppanuusohjelmaan osallistumisen motiiveista nousevat tärkeimmiksi mahdollisuus käyttää omaa ammattitaitoa kehityskumppanuusohjelman ja siihen toisena osapuolena osallistuvan kansalaisjärjestön hyväksi sekä mahdollisuus kehittää omaa ammatillista osaamista ja samalla kehittyä ihmisenä. Samalla työntekijät kokevat, että vastuu osaamisen syventämisestä ja sen laajentamista on lopulta heillä itsellään. Erityisesti nuoremmat työntekijät osoittavat identifioi-tumista ammattiinsa ja ammatilliseen osaamiseensa työnantajayrityksen sijaan. Yrityksessä pi-dempään työskennelleet työntekijät puolestaan identifioituvat työnantajaorganisaatioonsa myös kehityskumppanuusohjelman kontekstissa. Disidentifikaatio työnantajaa tai nykyisiä työtehtäviä kohtaan ilmenee tyytymättömyytenä työn merkityksellisyyteen tai puutteellisina koettuihin mahdollisuuksiin vaikuttaa omaan työnkuvaan.
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(2023)Despite active Indigenous movement in the country, Ecuadorian governments have continued to exploit natural resources with increasing speed legitimising extractivism as a means to social development. Indigenous women are gradually taking leadership positions in the predominantly male-dominant Indigenous movement in Ecuador, and Amazonian Indigenous women have strengthened ties with other groups as well. The research questions of this thesis participate in the post-developmentalist discussion on extractivism and alternatives, resistance and finding solidarities to fight against subordination and destruction of territories, knowledge, culture, bodies and life. Drawing from feminist political ecology’s critical decolonial and intersectional feminist perspective, the thesis analyses, what “truths” the Ecuadorian state is creating about development, Indigenous peoples and their territories, and what the possible implications to Amazonian Indigenous women are. It is also interested in what strategies Indigenous women use to resist the extractive policies justified with those “truths”, and what kind of spaces of resistance they are creating. By doing this, the thesis tries to answer, how Ecuador’s extractive policies affect eco-cultural pluralism in Ecuadorian Amazonia. The main method for analysis is a Foucauldian strand of critical discourse analysis, complemented with elements of qualitative content analysis. The primary data collected for this thesis consists of government development plans and official communication, as well as of a report, statements and social media publications by Indigenous organisations and collectives. In Ecuadorian governmental discourses further expansion of extractivism(s) is still justified with economic and social development, especially in the areas of impact. What is new in the governmental discourses is the wide dismissal of Indigenous peoples’ existence and conceptualisations of “good living”. Dismissing topics, such as Indigenous peoples’ rights to their territories, and discrediting Indigenous knowledge suggests that citizen participation and eco-cultural pluralism are supported only as far as they do not threaten the development of strategic sectors of the state. Amazonian Indigenous women resist extractivism with multiple strategies. They are building solidarities by establishing alliances with ecofeminist groups, international environmental NGOs and human rights organisations. By tying their ethno-territorial demands into global climate and social justice discourses Indigenous women are opening a shared space able to mobilise larger crowds for their cause. Thus, while making visible the embodied impacts of patriarchal extractivism, Indigenous women are also simultaneously decolonising feminism. Although hegemonic government discourses embrace nationalist imaginaries and identities related to extractivisms, the resistance of Amazonian Indigenous women may cultivate common ground of understanding with the rest of the Ecuadorian society and international community.
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(2022)Violence against women is a deep-rooted global injustice, yet it is less often scrutinized as a category of political economy. In this research relating to human rights advocacy in Pakistan, I seek to do so. I study the ways in which local women's rights organizations attempt to hold state to account for eliminating the malice and removing its structural causes. In particular, I examine how feminist constructions of VAW and advocacy practices towards curbing it take part in the politics of development. The research is based on fieldwork which I conducted in the mid-2010's in urban Pakistan. Interviews with 17 informants representing 12 women's rights groups, NGOs and government agencies constitute the primary data. I use ethnographic lens in mapping the organizational field, yet my main deconstructive method is critical discourse analysis. The research is underpinned by post-development theory, postcolonial feminist critique, anthropology of modernity and feminist violence research. The findings consist of three discourses and two developmental logics. Each discourse explains VAW as an issue of individual infringement of rights and a question of state structures with a distinct orientation – those of gender equity, legal protection and political reform. The discourses are rooted in 'human rights developmentalism' and neoliberalism, yet they are still locally contingent in varied ways. The developmental logics of 'saviorism in solidarity' and 'commonsense hope' render visible ways in which the organizations deploy civilisation narrative and an unquestioned hope in aid's capacity to deliver 'development' as political resources. I argue that the discourses construct VAW by reference to apolitical notions of 'backwardness' not only to justify organizational advocacy practices that center upon delivering "higher awareness and morals" to the "ignorant masses". Instead, such notions contribute to building a counter discourse to the misogynous state ideology as well as an alternative political space that enables women's rights organizations persevere in Pakistan. While the discourses fail the 'beneficiaries' of aid by upholding empty developmentalist promises, they nevertheless do not exacerbate VAW. The research suggests that development ideologies, albeit contributing to global inequalities, may serve as meaningful political tools for undoing local adversities.
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(2024)This master's thesis is an empirical case study of Mahahual, Quintana Roo. With tourism ranking as the second-largest contributor to Mexico's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), this research seeks to unravel the nuanced dynamics surrounding the sector's substantial water consumption, tourism governance, and water governance. The study argues that by not acknowledging the tourist sector's dependency on and the massive use of water resources in water governance, Mexico creates and supports water extractivism. In this sense, water is used as a natural resource to create economic benefits from tourism. At the same time, tourism-related harms, both social and environmental, are seen as unintended consequences of tourism as an economic activity, causing unequal access to water as a resource and heightening local resistance.
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(2023)This thesis studies the relationship between resistance and transportation infrastructure. The aim is to explore the links between the material and cultural contexts around strategically important transportation infrastructure and social movements with strategies to disrupt the flows of infrastructural networks. These issues are studied through the case of the civic strike of Buenaventura and related social mobilisation during the period of 2017-2022, in which the operations of one of Colombia’s most strategic ports have been brought to a halt for weeks at a time. The study examines the context of the strike through the theoretical frameworks of extractivist capital, infrastructure related grievances, racism, and structural unemployment caused by dispossession. The thesis discusses the themes of ethno-territorial conflict and colonialism using various theorists from the field of development studies and political sciences. This thesis portrays how the mobilisation in Buenaventura stems from the historical process in which the Afro-Colombian communities have created and defended an alternative model for development that highlights the collective rights of local communities. This thesis was conducted as a qualitative case study that uses content analysis as a method of analysis. This ethnographically oriented research was conducted as participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and integrative literary research. The data consists of NGO reports and interviews with local activists, social leaders, academics, and government officials, alongside an in-depth theoretical review. This study shows that traditional ways of understanding capital and labour resistance offer useful information but are not adequate for explaining the context behind social movements targeting infrastructural networks. Rather than resorting to traditional means of labour suppression, the division between local communities and infrastructural actors has been created through processes of exclusion, leading to a situation in which local communities have little access to the port and the wealth generated by its activities. The analysis led to the conclusion that issues of land rights, colonialism, infrastructural development, violence, and corruption are all embedded in the dynamics of state neglect towards the communities around the port of Buenaventura.
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(2021)South Africa as a country has been portrayed as an exception when it comes to protecting LGBT rights in Africa. In previous research on South Africa, sexuality, gender and race have been found to be crucial components of oppressive structures. However, the discursive practices and sedimented orders governing queerness, a substructure of normative sexuality and gender, have not been thoroughly examined. In this thesis it was questioned, how queerness has been made governable in South Africa through time. An additional centre of interest was to examine, how an influential non-profit organisation Gender DynamiX has recently tried to these orders. The thesis contributes to the efforts of queering development. Informed by intersectional feminism, Africana womanism, queer theory, post-colonialism, as well as Critical Discourse Analysis and Qualitative Content Analysis, the orders of discourse governing South queerness, as well as Gender DynamiX’s dominant discursive practices to change these orders, were analysed. The material analysed in the thesis consisted mainly of academic literature, and publications that the organisation has produced independently or in co-operation with other actors It was found that the historically moulded orders of discourse governing the field of South African queerness, a discursive substructure addressing deviance from the hegemonic South African system of normative sexuality and gender, is being produced and reproduced in contemporary South African society. These discriminatory orders of discourse have been made to support the colonial enterprise, the white apartheid state, and more recently black and religious identity politics. Thus, various actors have discriminatorily used queerness in a utilitarian manner to demarcate a line between us and them, between natural and unnatural, godly and ungodly, and more contemporarily the ones who tolerate and ones to be tolerated. However, it was found that these orders of discourse have been under transformation since the end of apartheid and the birth of the democratic nation. The discursive practices of gay and lesbian activists were crucial in changing these orders of queerness, and there has been some success in institutionalising and popularising the rights of sexual minorities. However, the issue of trans and gender non-conforming rights remains largely neglected in these moderately changed orders of queerness. Additionally, in the case study it was found that Gender DynamiX has pursued to affect these orders of discourse with an attuned and innovative discursive practice. More concretely, it has pursued to present especially racialised queers as active knowing subjects in different ways. This innovative discursive practice has the potential in dismantling the racialised hierarchical system of orders of normative sexuality and gender and the utilitarian orders that govern queerness in South Africa. More research on the development of Gender Dynamix’s discursive practice and the orders of queerness in South Africa would be beneficial to conduct.
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(2024)This thesis is a spatiovisual photographic investigation of Singapore. It links to the discussion of human ecology. The thematic object of the thesis is that of human-nature relationship. Its primary produce is the empirical data collected which is described and analysed. Foundations and possibilities of such an endeavour are discussed and affirmed when the positionality of the researcher is contemplated. The complexities and details of those cities that are seen as examples need to be studied, a vision shouldn’t be simply moved from a context to another.
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(2024)This thesis is a spatiovisual photographic investigation of Singapore. It links to the discussion of human ecology. The thematic object of the thesis is that of human-nature relationship. Its primary produce is the empirical data collected which is described and analysed. Foundations and possibilities of such an endeavour are discussed and affirmed when the positionality of the researcher is contemplated. The complexities and details of those cities that are seen as examples need to be studied, a vision shouldn’t be simply moved from a context to another.
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(2024)This master’s thesis aims to examine the structural barriers that hinder women's participation in peacebuilding processes in Mozambique. The research falls under an umbrella theme of Women, Peace, and Security. The main research question of the study is: “What are the main structural barriers for women’s participation in peacebuilding processes in Mozambique?” The research is based on qualitative methodology, the research data includes an analysis of the expert interviews and the National Action Plan of Mozambique for Women, Peace, and Security. The study uses semi-structured theme-oriented expert interviews to gather data from various entities, including international organization representatives, policy officers, and civil society organizations. The theoretical framework is based on theories of critical feminist peace research and structural intersectionality. The particular purpose is to recognize the societal structures that function as barriers by generating inequalities and power relations between genders and thereby hindering women’s participation in peacebuilding processes. Furthermore, the purpose is to recognize the interconnections of these societal structures and how they affect women’s participation. The focus is on socio-cultural, educational, political, economic, and implementational factors. The study reveals that patriarchal structures, gender-based violence, and dominant gender roles limit women's agency and contribute to their limited participation. Lack of education negatively impacts women's confidence to participate in public initiatives and decision-making and their access to information and rights. Economic barriers, such as limited access to resources and loss of livelihoods, further marginalize women in peacebuilding efforts through the effects of survival priorities and double burden. Political dimensions highlight persistent obstacles women face in decision-making processes, highlighting the need for inclusive governance institutions and addressing recognition of women’s agency. Women are emphasized as agents of change, working in the informal sector of society and focusing on community-level peacebuilding. However, these actions are not transferred to formal activities, in which women remain excluded. The National Action Plan for Women, Peace, and Security (NAP-WPS) is a vital framework, but its’ implementation faces challenges such as lack of political will, transparency, resource allocation, and inclusivity. In Mozambique, women are often overlooked or undervalued in peacebuilding processes. Gender-sensitive methods are crucial to addressing structural barriers to women's participation. Intersecting dimensions of socio-cultural norms, educational and economic inequalities, political obstacles, and implementing issues must be addressed to create an environment that allows women to fully participate, contribute, and take the lead in establishing a peaceful and inclusive society. The research has important implications for Mozambique and globally, emphasizing the importance of grassroots initiatives and rethinking established systems. The topic is important for better understanding the links between peacebuilding and women's participation and related social problems and to allow for a broader discussion on the complex roots of issues such as poverty, patriarchal norms, and power relations.
Now showing items 21-30 of 30