Table 11: To Show the Two Empirical Phases of the Research Phase NGOs Material Analysis First Two case studies of publicly accessible NGOs: 100 based in West Bengal 100 London based. Text of vision and mission statements extracted from NGOs’ websites. Text-mining application was used to analyse corpora comprising vision and mission statements from each case study. Analysis methodology was based on Second Two case studies each drawn from a subset of NGOs from the first phase. 30 transcripts of interviews with activists. 2 emailed responses and interview transcripts with interview and a further two emailed responses only. Coded transcripts using a qualitative data analysis computer software package. The analysis methodology was based on grounded theory. This section has provided a summary of the research question and the next section of this chapter will flesh out these themes in more detail by situating them in terms of key tensions in four current scholarly conversations. The Research Question in Relation to Key Theoretical and Substantive Literature This project is a sociological study which explores how activists in two NGO case studies represented their ability to engage with human rights and women’s human rights frameworks. This thesis is situated in the intersection between the sociology of human rights and discourses on gender inequalities. It contributes to the understanding of activists’ and beneficiaries’ agency within this intersection. It does so from a sociological perspective. The thesis therefore engages with substantive issues related to a theoretical understanding of what Dflam and Chicoine suggest is the “newly emerging speciality of the sociology of human rights” (2011: 102). The thesis provides evidence of how the human rights and women’s human rights framework are operationalised on the ground by NGOs. The empirical work was initially inspired by and then drew upon conversations within the scholarly literature
Table 12: Summary of the Taxonomy of the Deployment of Human Rights Component Activists’ Perception of Local Socio-Economic Contexts Represented NGO Activity and Function of Human Rights Component One Local infrastructure too deprived to enable human rights to gain purchase. Social Welfare Provision or Charitable Activities / Human rights deployed as a recourse to rhetoric in the most marginalised contexts. Component Two Socio-economic contexts challenge the operationalisation of human rights. The Deployment of Human Rights to Support NGO “Power To” Empowerment Strategies. Component Three Socio-economic contexts challenge the operationalisation of human rights. The Deployment of Human Rights to Support NGO “Power Over” Empowerment Strategies. Component Four Activists portrayed the ability to engage in large scale social improvement and growth projects. They felt empowered to operate in local contexts. NGOs are connected to global social justice and progress projects. They are engaged in maximising individual potential. Table 13: Summary of the Taxonomy of the Deployment of Women’s Human Rights Component Activists’ Perception of Local Socio-Economic Contexts Represented NGO Activity and Function of Human Rights and Women’s Human Rights Component One Government’s failure in its duty to protect women against violations of basic human rights. Rescuing women beneficiaries by removing them from coercive and threatening environments. Component Two Private sphere infrastructure perceived as coercive and threatening. Empowering women beneficiaries to take action to remove themselves from coercion, for example, from domestic violence. Human rights as a potential political tool which underpins a policy community which reaffirms universal values. Component Three Distortion between gender responsibilities and wellbeing. Distortion between gender responsibilities and rights: focus on economic empowerment. Component Four Activists felt empowered to operate in local contexts. Maximising individual potential. Hybridisation with global progress projects.
the framework. This conceptionalisation is in the same vein as Haugaard’s (2010) perspective of power. He suggests that “[p]ower constitutes a ‘family resemblance concept’, with family members forming complex relationships within overlapping language games” (2010: 419). The next section focuses on the scholarly conversations which inform and are informed by the taxonomy. These debates map onto the components within the taxonomy. Conversations that Map onto Human Rights as a Recourse to Rhetoric This thesis feeds into three key scholarly conversations that are related to the first component in the taxonomy. This component describes the deployment of human rights as a recourse to rhetoric in what were depicted as the most marginalised socio-economic contexts. The theme of the argument draws together themes in activists’ accounts that centred on the nature of what they perceived were basic human universal human rights. Human rights were represented in terms of core values as opposed to a set of clearly defined attributes. Themes in activists’ accounts reflected upon the ability to express violations to these core values and concepts. The thesis, therefore, feeds into conversations about the extent to which human rights can be considered universal, the delocalisation of human rights attributes and finally, forms of epistemic injustice. One of the key tensions expressed in the West Bengal activists’ accounts was that of a disjunction between the Western framework and the grassroots cultural infrastructure in place to support it. The former promotes individual rights whilst the latter was characterised as one where the core primary values reflected placed an emphasis on group rights. This thesis examines the situated experiences of activists who claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) framework was relevant to their work. Human rights principles are predicated upon the idea of the universality. This thesis argues, however, that the ability to engage with the framework was affected by activists’ perceptions of local structural and institutional contexts framed by alternative hegemonic value systems. Activists described the tensions arising from operating within conflicting hegemonic frameworks. This thesis feeds into the universalism debate by arguing that the
of the corpus rather than extraneous factors. Words with low frequencies are omitted and the text is further distilled by the use of lemmatisation which reduces the variety of language. Researchers use Alceste when they have grounds to assume that there is a structure within a corpus that this software will expose. The researcher need only prepare the corpus for analysis by the Alceste programme by making some minor editing amendments. Whilst Alceste is a French software package and it produces outputs in that language, it covers a range of different language dictionaries, including English. Researchers have used the package in a variety of areas where the objective is to explore themes within different contexts. Early application of this software was mostly in the fields of psychological investigation and linguistic analysis. Reinert (1993), for example, analysed nightmares reported by French adolescents, Reinert, Bonnon, and Therme (1995) conducted a discourse analysis of a team of physicians who undertook an expedition to Mount Sajama to understand different approaches to the psychological adaptation to extreme environments. Lahlou (1996, 1998) analysed interviews and encyclopaedia entries referring to eating. The use of Alceste has now broadened out to other disciplines such as political science and anthropology. Alceste was selected rather than other text-mining software. One of the reasons for this is based on the use of the package to examine corpora with similar structures and research objectives. This thesis is informed by the ways in which other researchers have applied this software package both in conference presentation papers and peer-reviewed publications. The “Social Science Text-Mining and the Particular Contribution of Alceste” Conference held at the LSE in June 2010 provided a forum for participants to discuss their application of the software package and identify methodological matters for further consideration. Schonhardt-Bailey in her session explained that Alceste identified the thematic priorities in the corpus and helps the researcher to understand the framing of the object of study by mapping text onto paradigms or ideas. In this paper, Schonhardt-Bailey, Yager and Lahlou (2010) explained how they used Alceste to analyse the differences and similarities in the political speech discourses of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
reappeared in some of the interview transcripts and is further explored later in the discussion of activists’ accounts of economic empowerment in Chapter Seven. Further to this, the Alceste analysis identified the NGOs that were most associated with each class identified in the West Bengal and London reports. This enabled the selection of NGOs across the different themes for the second phase of the project. The following two chapters focus on analysing the research materials from both the Alceste reports and the transcripts of interviews with activists. The interview questions were selected to inform the research question and were based on the outcome of the literature review and the analysis of vision and mission statements. Interviewees were asked the following questions and responses were probed according to the specific context: Could you describe what you see as being the main work of (NGO name)? You have a website which has a section describing your vision and mission statement priorities. How did your NGO decide what these should be? Who is your website aimed at? Are any of your interventions particularly targeted at women? Is so, (or if not), why? When you plan your programmes, how much account do you take of the roles that women play, whether this be in the family or in the local community more generally? How much impact do your programmes aim to have on these roles? In your experience, how successful do you think your NGO has been in achieving this impact? How relevant are human rights in the work that you do? You mention the words (I will refer to the terms or concept they use, for example, “empowerment”, “gender equality”, “upliftment”) in your vision/mission statement. What do these mean in the context of the work that your NGO does? What are the main sources of your funding? How much influence do your funders have on the work that you do? The following two chapters flesh out the taxonomy of the deployment of human rights which emerged from the analysis of the research materials. The chapters
activists would be unable to succeed in implementing programmes without the other aspects of capitalist strategies. Activists situated challenges to their agency, and that of their beneficiaries, in the failure of the institutional and political institutional infrastructures rather than class-based struggles. The response to this perspective was to adopt what can be characterised as “power to” strategies rather than “power over” programmes and campaigns. The argument about the deployment of human rights in this category can be developed most fruitfully not by considering whether activists’ expressed political aspirations. Rather, it is suggested here that this thesis feeds into the work on human development by unpacking some aspects of the situated contexts which influence decisions on the ground. Activists’ perceptions of their organisations’ ability to deploy human rights and human rights-based development are central to understanding this influence. This thesis contends that activists adopted “power to” strategies that focused on a pragmatic approach, enhancing local community values, capabilities and freedoms within a framework that emphasised group rights. The situated context of what was articulated as legal and institutional infrastructural failures influenced how the framework was deployed to enhance beneficiaries’ standards of living. Sen (1999) developed the human development paradigm as a critique of the economic growth model. Development economists became increasingly convinced that market forces were failing to provide a trickle-down effect to end poverty. Sen was instrumental in conceiving a human development approach based on practical reasoning in pursuit of identifying the most effective approaches to reducing the most egregious injustices arising from abject poverty. Sen’s (1999) human development approach focused on enhancing human capabilities and freedoms and achieving decent standards of living, rather than pursuing a narrower objective of economic growth. Sen’s work, however, is directed at emancipating people so that they can freely pursue their own choices informed by their own values. It was mentioned earlier in the chapter that it is unclear from this project whether activists in the two case studies were aware of the human development orientation. It is, however, arguably a paradigm that best describes the orientation of activists in this category who focused on their visions to
Table 61: A Taxonomy of the Deployment of Human Rights and Agency Locus of Agency Activists’ Perception of Contexts Represented NGO Activity Representation of the Function of Human Rights Framework External This form of agency centres on activists’ deployment of human rights. This agency is shaped in response to situated experiences of local socio-economic structures. This overlying orientation represents perceived challenges to the implementation of the human rights framework depicted in activists’ accounts. Component One Local infrastructure too deprived to enable human rights to gain purchase. Social Welfare Provision or Charitable Activities. West Bengal: A recourse to rhetoric to legitimise the claims made by those in the most marginalised communities. London: A recourse to rhetoric to expose how the failure of UK economic system fails some of the most marginalised in society. Component Two Socio-economic contexts provide barriers to the implementation of human rights. The Deployment of Human Rights to Support NGO “Power To” Empowerment Strategies. West Bengal: Provides a language with which to express and construct vision and mission statements with the objective of establishing co-operative projects. Activists perceive they are too powerless to overcome existing power structures. The objective of programmes is to become independent of existing power structures. London: As an ethos which underpins the operation and objectives of community projects. Human rights acts as a vehicle to overcome prejudice or social disadvantage
the thesis feeds into conversations about the future of feminism. It explores those activists’ accounts which include themes associated with the hybridisation between human rights and other global progress projects. The concluding section to this chapter will focus on how the examination of the research materials contributes to and strengthens global discourses existing in the literature about women’s agency, knowledge and human rights language. It does so by building links between them. As in Chapter Six, the analysis is primarily based on the interview transcriptions with the aim of developing and illustrating the elements within the taxonomy. The organisations who claimed to run programmes directed at women beneficiaries formed a subset of the original case studies. Broader categories are drawn within this second taxonomy compared with the first model to reflect these limitations. Activists were asked about their perceptions of women’s human rights and gender equality. Interviewees’ accounts contain their understandings of these principles. The analysis of the research materials led to the construction of a taxonomy of the deployment of human rights comprising four components. The four categories identify different perceptions of agency that were described as influencing the operationalisation of women’s human rights and development principles. The first three positions centre on the relationship between perceptions of external locus of agency and deployment of the women’s human rights framework. The first of these three positions in the taxonomy was based on the analysis of the West Bengal activists’ accounts. The distinctive characteristic of this component is the perception of local contexts as inhibiting the promotion of women’s human rights. The second element of the taxonomy was formed by the analysis of activists’ accounts in the West Bengal and London case studies. These interviewees portrayed the local cultural and institutional infrastructure as constraining the ability to operationalise programmes targeted at supporting victims of domestic violence. The relevance of human rights was perceived as providing the language with which to express injustices in these cases. The third element of the taxonomy identifies the function of women’s rights as emerging from the articulated interplay between empowerment schemes and perceived agency. The final category within the taxonomy is distinguished by an internal locus of agency which focuses on
Table 71: A Taxonomy of the Deployment of Women’s Human Rights Agency Locus of Agency Activists’ Perception of Socio-Economic Contexts Represented NGO Activity Representation of the Function of Human Rights and Women’s Human Rights Frameworks External This form of agency centres on activists’ deployment of human rights. This agency is shaped in response to situated experiences of local socio-economic structures. This overlying orientation represents perceived challenges to the implementation of the human rights and women’s human rights frameworks depicted in activists’ accounts. Component One Government’s failure in its duty or protect women against violations of basic human rights. Rescuing women beneficiaries by removing them from coercive or threatening environments. West Bengal: A yardstick of the failure of the state to fulfil its international obligations in relation to violations of basic universal human rights. Component Two Private sphere perceived as coercive and threatening. Empowering women beneficiaries to take action to remove themselves from coercion, for example, from domestic violence. West Bengal: As a potential political tool to underpin a political community which reaffirms universal values. London: Represented as a core set of values ? in organisations’ work.
power struggles in relation to patriarchal structures. It is speculated that gender, class, ethnicity, age, and sexuality form intersections that are associated with different risks of becoming victims of violations of human rights. Oppressive contexts, described by groups of activists, contain physical and psychological threats to accessing a range of human rights entitlements, for example. Excerpts from activists’ accounts illustrated these forms of threats, particularly those in the three components of the taxonomy which were different forms of external locus of agency. The third component focused on the representation in activists’ accounts of a growing distortion between gender responsibilities and rights. Women’s human rights in development projects were perceived not have been safeguarded in a consistent way, according to activists’ representations. These themes resonate with Chant’s (2007, 2008) work on the feminisation of poverty. Women beneficiaries in the project were characterised as becoming increasingly responsible for the economic empowerment of families but this empowerment was represented as leading to a greater exploitation of women. This was perceived as being manifested in terms of increased workload burdens in terms of participation in microfinance projects. This thesis feeds into the responsibilisation conversations by describing activists’ accounts of the influence this perceived outcome had on the organisations’ programmes. The thesis speculates that activists’ represented organisations’ responses to the disjunction between economic empowerment and greater exploitation. This thesis argues that future research should be directed at investigating whether building strategic collective coalitions was effective in enhancing women beneficiaries’ wellbeing and empowerment. Women’s human rights in economic empowerment schemes would surely be strengthened by facilitating a hybridisation between economic growth and social democracy. Walby (2011) describes human rights as containing a minimal component of equality and themes in activists’ accounts were in line with this contention. Activists’ accounts contained few references to gender equality. It can be argued that such a hybridisation would promote the enhancement of economic empowerment and also women’s wellbeing by incorporating practices which support the representation of women and minority groups.
concept underlay the tension in West Bengal activists’ accounts between organisations’ practical attempts to achieve gender equality and prioritising economic growth. This reflected activists’ perceptions that missions related to reducing income poverty had been over-emphasised compared with the broader visions of enhancing beneficiaries’ wellbeing. It has been speculated here that policy-makers in the area would benefit from a measure of situated representations of women’s essentialised roles in society by developing multidimensional models of the deployment of human rights and women’s human rights as discussed earlier in the chapter. The findings of this thesis feed into conversations about gender responsibilities and women’s rights. Human rights and women’s human rights were also represented as political tools with which to underpin a political community which reaffirms universal values. This is in line with Phillips’s (2013) view that what is human is political. The thesis develops this idea by combining it with the contention that activists’ gendered framing of these beneficiaries was as much a political representation as it was a cultural one. The thesis has argued that the implication of this argument is that the framing of women’s empowerment within both types of programmes targeted at women beneficiaries will need to reflect this political element. The thesis has argued that the function of human rights will need to address and be influenced by the interaction of the feminist political struggle and the underlying essentialist representations of the role of women in local contexts. The thesis thus provides a foundation for proposing a role for future research aimed at constructing a model which could be used by policy-makers and the scholarly community to assess situated experiences of the operationalisation of human rights and women’s human rights frameworks. It does so by considering the relationships between abstract ideals and codified articles, perceptions and agency and salient features in local contexts. This thesis is positioned within specific discourses in the global literature located in the sociology of human rights and cross-cultural feminism about activists’ deployment of the human rights and women’s human rights frameworks. Moreover, this thesis has made a contribution towards the understanding of the deployment of human rights from a sociological perspective. It has done so by forming a bridge from this discipline to concepts within postcolonial studies, feminist political theory, international relations and development, and feminism. It has also argued that future research is also to be directed at
class 2 Bikash Bharati Welfare Society - Calcutta http://www.vikasbbws.org/index.htm Interview Forum of Communities United in Service http://www.focuskolkata.org/ Interview Khrishnaa Human Initiatives (Moved to since interview.) Interview Smile Foundation http://smilefoundationindia.org/p_asha.htm Interview Amanat Foundation Trust Not Successful Networking Alliance for Voluntary Action, Kolkata http://www.navaindia.in/aboutnava.htm Not Successful Bengal Rural Welfare Service http://www.brws.org/home.html Bharat Sevashram Sangh, Nadia FOSET - Forum of Scientists, Engineers and Technologists Four Corners Initiatives Trust Seva Bharati, Kapgari http://www.sevabharatikvk.org/index.html class 3 Anirban Rural Welfare Society http://www.anirban.org.in/ Interview
World Wide Fund for Nature-India – Calcutta http://www.wwfindia.org/ London NGOs class 1 The Otesha Project http://www.otesha.org.uk/ Interview UK Connect http://www.ukconnect.org/ Interview Daughters of Charity http://www.daughtersofcharity.org.uk/ Interview Age UK http://www.ageuk.org.uk/ Asthma UK http://www.asthma.org.uk/index.html British Heart Foundation http://www.bhf.org.uk/ Centre for Ethnic Minority Voluntary Organisations http://www.cemvo.org.uk/ Diabetes UK http://www.diabetes.org.uk/ Humanity First