The ‘intersectionality’ approach in feminist theory postulates that differences between women, such as age, ethnicity, class, nationality, sexuality, etc. do intersect. However, intersectionality starts to get blurred when examined concretely because the list of differences is always endless. There is frequently silence about concrete questions such as: who defines when, where and which of these differences are rendered important in particular conceptions, and which are not? This article examines how categories of difference and identity interplay and intersect by analysing a narrative life-interview with a female migrant to Vienna. It aims to make visible some of her specific identifications and differentiations and how these are located in time and space, by focusing on her self-presentation and the categories of difference such as gender, class and ethnicity that she introduces. Through this the article aims to contribute to discussions of the dynamism of subjectivities and power relations
Commonly owned forests and common property regimes are types of forest ownership that exist in many European countries in various forms: they include traditional commons with a more or less unbroken history of 500 years or more, typically to be found in Austria, France, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland (Živojinović et al., 2015). As an outcome of land reforms in the 18th and 19th centuries, community-owned or-managed forests were established for instance in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Sweden, and also very recently in the UK (Weiss et al., 2017a). Especially in such recent developments in the UK, third sector ownership is the principal type: it is social enterprises, environmental or other non-profit distributing 1 organisations that increasingly acquire forest for special management objectives that often are also in the public interest. "Social enterprises", also called "social business" (European Union, 2014, 67f.) or "social economy" (European Union, 2014, 37f.) all include not-for profit enterprises who can be promising drivers of social innovations in structurally weak rural regions. Such enterprises strive to tackle social problems and to stabilise and improve the living conditions in these regions. One important factor for their functioning is volunteering. Volunteers are important for social connectedness, social inclusion and enhancement of wellbeing within communities (Brodie et al., 2009). The definition of social innovation (SI) developed within the SIMRA-project 2 is "the reconfiguring of social practices, in response to societal challenges, which seeks to enhance outcomes on societal well-being and necessarily includes the volunteer engagement of civil society actors" (Polman et al., 2017). From this definition it becomes clear that SI is not limited to being associated
In the urbanizing society faced with the climate change challenge, wood has major potential as a lowcarbon and renewable construction material. Yet, Wooden Multi-storey Construction (WMC) remains a niche even in countries with rich forest resources. This paper compares the institutional and policy setting and assesses the WMC growth prospects in Austria and Finland, based on expert interviews, Delphi surveys, and the review of secondary materials. Clear differences were detected in the policy frameworks and institutional settings between the two countries. The Austrian fairly informal and largely private sector driven approaches to promote the growth of the WMC sector seem to have had a rather similar effect on the markets, as the formal policy measures, typically driven by the public sector in Finland. In both countries, the interviewed experts suggested additional, but partly different, policy measures and institutional changes to accelerate WMC market diffusion. In spite of the increase in WMC activity within the past ten years, the WMC market share is likely to remain rather low by 2030 in both countries, as the institutional frameworks are not expected to change abruptly. However, the future market prospects appear to be somewhat more positive in Finland compared with Austria.
Political frameworks and policies have a strong influence on the institutional ecosystem and on governance patterns, which in turn shape the operational space of civil society initiatives. This article aims to explore the social and institutional conditions and policy initiatives that foster or hinder social innovation and the pathways leading from social innovation to institutional change through to actual impacts on policies and political frameworks, in order to understand how policymakers can encourage and enable social innovation. The article builds on an extensive empirical background to develop a heuristic model to facilitate decision making for a policy environment propitious for the emergence of social innovation. The resulting model sets up a triadic configuration of (i) a committed core of key actors, (ii) the benevolent shadow of hierarchy represented by public actors, and (iii) multifunctional and malleable intermediary support structures for a successful development of social innovation initiatives. The model is discussed and validated by reference to three in-depth case studies from differing institutional settings. We conclude that policy should recognize that social innovation will achieve most when the triadic relationships between the state, intermediary organizations, and local actors are working together synergistically.
Responding to a number of longstanding challenges such as poverty, wide-ranging inequalities, environmental problems, and migration, requires new and creative responses that are often not provided by traditional governments. Social innovations can offer socio-ecological and economic solutions by introducing new practices that reduce social inequalities, disproportionate resource use and foster sustainable development. Understanding the role of social innovations is especially complicated in unstable institutional environments, e.g. in developing countries and countries in transition. This paper analyses nine social innovations in rural areas in Serbia, based on in-depth interviews and document analysis. This analysis reveals factors that facilitate or constrain social innovations whilst simultaneously identifying related formal and informal institutional voids, for example, poor law enforcement, a lack of adequate infrastructure, lack of trust, as well as norms and values that bolster patriarchal systems. The results that emerged from this research show that social innovations are operating in spite of these challenges and are facilitating improvements in a number of the aforementioned challenging areas. Some innovators engage in social entrepreneurship activities because of subsistence-oriented goals, while others follow idealistic or life-style oriented goals, thus creating new social values. Moving beyond these observations, this paper also identifies means to overcome institutional voids, such as creation of context-specific organisational structures, improved legal frameworks, and innovative financial mechanisms.
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