Changing market culture in the Pacific: Assembling a conceptual framework from diverse knowledge and experiences

Abstract

Addressing the multiple dimensions of gender inequality requires commitments by policy-makers, practitioners and scholars to transformative practices. One challenge is to assemble a coherent conceptual framework from diverse knowledges and experiences. In this paper, we present a framework that emerged from our involvement in changing market culture in the Pacific, which we name a radical empowerment of women approach. We draw on detailed narratives from women market vendors and women-led new initiatives in marketplaces to explain this approach. We argue that the primary focus of recently developed projects for marketplaces in the Pacific is technical and infrastructural, which is insufficient for addressing gendered political and economic causes of poor market management and oppressive conditions for women vendors. By exploring the complex array of motives and effects of the desire to transform or improve marketplaces in the Pacific, we caution against simplistic technical or infrastructural solutions. This paper also introduces the practice of working as a cooperative, hybrid research collaboration. The knowledges and analyses that we bring to this issue demonstrate that substantive analysis generated from diverse and shifting 'locations' and roles, but underpinned by a shared vision of, and commitment to, gender justice, can provide distinctive policy and research insights.

Trading places: Inclusive cities and market vending in the Pacific Islands

“…Social and customary arrangements often facilitate access to fishing grounds or agricultural land, transportation of goods, and finances for market retailing or business expansion. These diverse social and economic relationships underpin marketing activities, strengthen rural and urban economies, and contribute to economic inclusion and food security (James, ; Underhill‐Sem et al, ; Kopel et al, ; Georgeou et al, ). Social networks also contribute to market security.…”

Critical gender studies and international development studies: interdisciplinarity, intellectual agility and inclusion

“…Inclusive research, policy and practice require the agile intellectual engagements with paradoxical issues (Underhill-Sem et al, 2014) and this requires partnering. This practice can be developed in university courses but I argue not without theory and not without a particular kind of ethics.…”

“…One argumentative situation arose because the attribution of ideas was contested between those who make their living as writers and those who do not so that in the end authorship was acronymized. One compromised situation was where despite a commitment to a collective feminist hybrid writing style, the emotive expression when describing empirical material was constantly kerbed (Underhill-Sem et al, 2014).…”

The importance of feminist audacity: Learning from the Pacific and the Caribbean. A commentary on Yvonne Underhill‐Sem’s ‘The audacity of the ocean: Gendered politics of positionality in the Pacific’

“…She has held many positions and directorship roles in relation to institutions within or connected to the Pacific and is currently Co‐Chair of the Research Advisory Group for Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development. Yvonne's research circulates around maternities, mobilities and markets and she publishes in the broad areas of gender and development, Pacific development and feminist political ecology (Underhill‐Sem, 2003, 2012; Underhill‐Sem et al ., 2014; Underhill‐Sem et al ., 2016; Lacey & Underhill‐Sem, 2018). Underhill‐Sem's plenary was at a conference which had the overall theme of Creative Conversations, Constructive Connections.…”