The Rationality of Empowerment: Microcredit, Accumulation by Dispossession, and the Gendered Economy

Keating, Christine; Rasmussen, Claire; Rishi, Pooja

doi:10.1086/652911

Cited by 88 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…More recently, issues such as women's economic empowerment have become dominant, in line with the "business case" approach to gender equality. Such an approach has been widely criticised by feminists, who question the positioning of gender equality principally as a goal for achieving other ends (Keating, Rasmussen, & Rishi, 2010). Increasingly prevalent in contemporary development discourse, this framing of gender is most highly developed in the World Bank's Gender Equality as Smart Economics agenda (see Ferguson, 2010 for a discussion of the World Bank's approach to gender and tourism).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and sustainable tourism: reflections on theory and practice

Ferguson

Alarcón

2014

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

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Despite the rich and diverse tradition of research on the gender dimensions of tourism, such studies have had little impact on transforming unequal gendered power relations in the sector itself. In this paper, we are concerned with why this is the case and what steps might be taken to redress this situation. The paper argues that the challenges inherent in gender mainstreaming processes within public policies worldwide are replicated and À to some extent À exacerbated in the tourism sector. We contend that, despite its substantive insight into the sector, the impact of such literature has been minimal. We further suggest that this is, in part, due to the sustainable tourism paradigm's resistance to incorporating gender equality and gender analysis as core principles. In order to develop these arguments, we reflect on our experiences as specialist consultants in gender and sustainable tourism, drawing out some of the key tensions of integrating gender into sustainable tourism projects. In conclusion, we argue that there is substantive work to be done for gender to be integrated into the theory and practice of sustainable tourism, offering recommendations as to how this process might be improved.

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confidence: 99%

Gender and sustainable tourism: reflections on theory and practice

Ferguson

Alarcón

2014

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

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“…Extending from the good governance agenda of the 1990s to the presentday emphasis on targeted social policies, this meso-scale of neoliberal restructuring ultimately represents 'a kind of pre-emptive, strategic inoculation against a more broadly and socially contested double movement, the kind of political double movement arguably most feared by the agents of a wider liberal project' (Craig and Porter 2006, p. 257). And finally, the neoliberal development regime extends to the micro-scale of individual bodies and subjectivities through development interventions such as micro-credit that seek to augment the ability of the poor to invest in their own human capital and to adopt the aptitudes of entrepreneurial subjects who 'selfmanage according to market principles of discipline, efficiency, and competitiveness' (Ong 2006, p. 7;see also Rankin 2001;Weber 2002;Elyachar 2005;Karim 2011;Keating et al 2010;Roy 2010).…”

Section: The Revolt Against Neoliberal Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power, Resistance and Development in the Global South: Notes Towards a Critical Research Agenda

Nilsen

2016

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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This article engages with radical critiques of the Eurocentric grammar of development discourses. I start from a position of considerable sympathy with their appreciation of the discursive dimensions of power that attach to the idiom of development and their solidarity with the oppositional projects of subaltern groups. However, this sympathy combines with a considerable degree of disagreement in terms of how the discursive power of development is understood and how the dynamics of popular resistance are theorised. As an alternative to the relatively crude postulation of development as a discursive regime that enables the West to exercise power over the Rest, I develop an argument that emphasises the multivalent character of the idiom of development and trace this multivalence to situated contestations that take place between opposing political projects that strive to shape the form and direction of social change in specific ways. Furthermore, I will argue that this contentious dynamic becomes particularly evident in those world-historical conjunctures when subaltern groups mobilize around social movement projects that destabilise hegemonic power relations in the capitalist world-system. To illustrate this point, I will provide a broad-brushed outline of three distinct 'development regimes' that have shaped North-South relations from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century and discuss the ways in which these regimes have been destabilised by the articulation of oppositional meanings of development articulated from below by progressive social movement projects. Finally, I draw on my own fieldwork experiences to reflect on how critical scholars can engage with movement projects that challenge the dominant directions and meanings of development in ways that can contribute to democratic deliberations within social movements.

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“…The leading notion underlying this description, Pia's "philosophy" and ultimately the actual project, is an idea that has become hegemonic in contemporary community development and women's empowerment initiatives worldwide (e.g. Batliwala & Danraj 2004;Keating et al 2010); cf. The Body Shop example, above): it is the belief that giving poor women access to economic resources leads to their social empowerment (Batliwala & Danraj 2004).…”

Section: Handmade Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasingly, however, this causal assumption has been criticised as a powerful gender myth (e.g. Batliwala & Danraj 2004;Keating et al 2010). On the notebook label, the outcomes motivating the employment of the women are presented as real and definite results.…”

Section: Handmade Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

Semiotics of pride and profit: interrogating commodification in indigenous handicraft production

Dlaske

2014

Social Semiotics

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This study investigates the shifting terrain of pride, profit and power relations in minority language communities under contemporary globalisation. While "pride" associates linguistic-cultural heritage with identity and preservation, "profit" views these as sources of economic gain. In contemporary late capitalism, "pride" seems to be increasingly giving way to "profit". Arguing that this transformation needs to be interrogated in terms of complexity and that a detailed, multilayered semiotic analysis can open a privileged window for such an inquiry, this study combines critical multimodal discourse analysis and an ethnographic approach to analyse processes of semiotic commodification in handicraft production in the indigenous minority language community of the Sámi in northern Lapland. The investigation focuses on the activities of an innovative Sámi artist and entrepreneur, and within these a range of paper notebooks, which are, although designed by the Sámi artist and sold in her handicraft shop in Lapland, produced by women living at the border of Thailand and Laos. The investigation illuminates two critical shifts: how the move towards profit can open up space to contest the ownership of pride within an ethnic community. Second, how this move makes way for new, globalised modes of production of 'indigenous handicrafts' and creates global vectors of power, engaged in both empowerment and exploitation, in the production of both pride and profit. The study thereby contributes to the understanding of the increasingly complex power relations and the ambivalence and multiple effects of practices constituting the apparent shift from "pride" to "profit".

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The Rationality of Empowerment: Microcredit, Accumulation by Dispossession, and the Gendered Economy

Cited by 88 publications

References 26 publications

Gender and sustainable tourism: reflections on theory and practice

Gender and sustainable tourism: reflections on theory and practice

Power, Resistance and Development in the Global South: Notes Towards a Critical Research Agenda

Semiotics of pride and profit: interrogating commodification in indigenous handicraft production

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