Vernacularization on the ground: local uses of global women's rights in Peru, China, India and the United States

Abstract

The articles published in this special journal issue examine how global ideas about women's rights actually get used in four contexts

Mobility and health sector development in China and India

“…The literature on knowledge circulation emphasizes the need for international ideas and practices to mesh with local knowledge if they are to be successfully integrated into local institutions (Acharay, 2004;Rodrik, 2008;Levitt and Merry, 2009). But despite the importance that institutions placed on recruiting returnees, very few processes were in place in either country to enable a systematic, considered absorption and adaption of the global knowledge they bring.…”

“…This work considers the challenges involved in attempts to import global norms, policies, institutional forms and mechanisms that are regarded as effective in improving the functionality of institutions or represent various types of "best practice." It has also become more critical over time, moving away from discussions of wholesale "transfer" or "borrowing" toward exploring the ways in which ideas and institutional forms mutate, interacting and melding with local knowledge and practices (Pritchett et al, 2012;Rodrik, 2008) to form "localized" (Acharay, 2004) or "vernacularized" (Levitt and Merry, 2009) versions. Many of these accounts acknowledge the difficulty of specifying exactly what such "capacity building" or "capacity strengthening" actually entails, but they recognize that it can and usually needs to take place on individual, institutional, and societal levels, and that it can involve a number of components ranging from the mastery of specific individual competencies and organizational reforms that improve overall functional capacity to shifts in perspective or attitude that are needed to change priorities or modes of work (Mark and Jones, 2013).…”

Gender equality in German universities: vernacularising the battle for the best brains

“…The concept of vernacularisation offers a theoretical tool for connecting broad normative regimes to practical feminist advocacy (Levitt and Merry 2009). It proposes that international reform does not just diffuse from global to local, but is actively translated to fit the needs of local actors and the specific systems they seek to change (see also Gal 2014).…”

“…Vernacularisation is the term used for the translation of transnational concerns into forms that are meaningful and usable by local actors in national institutions (Levitt and Merry 2009). Because feminist challenges to the workings of academic institutions have always been simultaneously transnational and national, academia is a good site to study gender equality's vernacularisation.…”

On reproductive justice: ‘domestic violence’, rights and the law in India

“…It is only following legal counselling when the woman still wants to proceed with bringing a legal case against her husband and his family, that SEVA lawyers get involved in pursuing the legal case in the law courts and in actively interpreting and translating the women's situation into the language of the law. Here is an excerpted interview with two SEVA lawyers which explains the process through which rights get translated or even 'vernacularised' (Merry 2009 VS: No, not really. These women who come to us just want their minimum needs taken care of (ki mera gujara chal jaye) so that they can survive.…”