Provided that prioritisation of programmes is a key concern in Local Agenda 21 processes, the aim of this paper is to explore how the Analytic Network Process (ANP) can provide greater consistency and legitimacy to prioritisation of local action plans. Through the analysis of an experience in the municipality of Benetusser in Spain, the study shows how ANP, by modelling reality as a network of multiple and mutual interrelations, embraces complexity and translates it into a set of operational questionnaires that help participants to reflect on their preferences and deeply think on real implications of programmes. That way, the ANP procedure not only allows dealing with prioritisation in an organized and systematic way, but also enables reflective thinking on sustainable development and the role of Local Agenda 21 itself.
This article explores how three different learning spaces could be appropriate for developing a sense of global citizenship among university students. We draw on an interview study conducted at the Universitat Politècnica of Valencia (UPV) between 2010 and 2012. The spaces analyzed were two electives devoted to international cooperation, a mobility program that took place mainly in Latin American countries and a student-led university group. We examined the three spaces in terms of expansion of capabilities and agency related to global citizenship and cosmopolitanism using a conceptual framework that synthesizes Nussbaum's and Sen's capability approach with Delanty's critical cosmopolitanism to explore the limits and potentialities of those three spaces. Although the exploratory character of our study cannot allow us to generalize our findings, what we can affirm is each of these areas has the potentiality to enhance global citizenship but with nuances, differences, and complementarities. The electives appear to be good spaces for the critical learning capability, while international mobility is a strong enabler for narrative imagination capabilities. Students belonging to Mueve showed elements of these capabilities plus a very strong emphasis on agency, which does not occur in the other two learning spaces. Critical cosmopolitan process happened both in Mueve and Meridies. In the student-led group, this cosmopolitan process begins with the local, while in the internships was the global encounter that initiates a cosmopolitan reflection.
At Universitat Politècnica de València, Meridies, an internship programme that places engineering students in countries of Latin America, is one of the few opportunities the students have to explore the implications of being a professional in society in a different cultural and social context. This programme was analyzed using the capabilities approach as a frame of reference for examining the effects of the programme on eight student participants. The eight pro-public-good capabilities proposed by Melanie Walker were investigated through semi-structured interviews. The internship is an environment in which students can put into practice the knowledge they have acquired in undergraduate studies and to find practical relevance in what they studied. Occasionally, this also entails a critical questioning of what they have learned, a greater awareness of the limits of the contents of their studies and of the way things were taught, and interest in less explored issues that are closely linked to social justice. However, tensions can arise between the pro-public-good oriented perspectives of this programme, and a more instrumental vision. One way to overcome these tensions is to foster consideration of reflexivity, that is, the dynamic relationship between technology and society. To do so, the programme must create space before and during the internship, and upon the return of the students, to discuss and collectively reflect upon their lived experience. Additionally, it ought to engage supervisors in this educational journey, both at the university and in the host institutions, and also involve socially committed organisations in this task.
The approval of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has generated intense debates in the aid sector at the global, national and subnational levels. A key question in these debates is whether these measures can address structural problems in development aid policies and practices, such as the lack of accountability and coherence, unequal power relations, or depoliticisation.It seems that this will depend on how the agenda is adopted in the various territories as well as on the different interests at play. We will address this question by studying the case of the Valencian Autonomous region. This is the region in Spain where institutions have been the most active in establishing the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs at the core of the political discourses and priorities.We follow a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured interviews with key respondents from the public, civil society and university sectors, participant observation, and the analysis of secondary information. Inspired by critical discourse analysis, we explore the varying and conflicting discourses regarding the potential of SDGs to address the problems that aid policies and practices have, and on the impacts that the adoption of SDGs are producing. We illustrate that the introduction of SDGs in aid policies is a conflictive process modelled by the power dynamics at play.
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