Suchergebnisse

Books reviewed in this article:Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod, Democracy By Decree: What Happens When Courts Run Government

Abstract
This intervention consists in a conversation between an activist-scholar engaging in research questioning the conditions facing refugees and asylum seekers in Greece and an activist leading an ngo supporting displaced people. We reflect on our own positionality working in this area and on the role of academia and the humanitarian sector more generally. We explore different approaches to knowledge production that challenge the exploitative practices associated with both academic research and humanitarianism.

In March 2019, I had the pleasure of giving a talk at Peter Green College at the University of British Columbia that I called "The Politics and Possibilities of Girl-led and Youth-led Arts-based Activism to Address Gender Violence." I wanted to highlight in particular the activist work of numerous groups of Indigenous girls and young women in a current project and the youth AIDS activist work of the Fire and Hope project in South Africa but I also wanted to place this work in the context of girls' activism and youth activism more broadly. To do this I started out with a short activity called "Know your Girl Activist" during which I showed PowerPoint photos of some key girl and young women activists of the last few years, and asked the audience if they could identify them. The activists included two Nobel Prize Peace Prize winners, Malala Yousafzai (2014) and Nadia Murad (2018) along with Autumn Pelletier, the young Indigenous woman from Northern Ontario, Canada, well known for her work on water activism, and, of course, Greta Thunberg, now a household name but then, in 2019, already well known for her work on climate change activism. To my surprise only some of these activists were recognized, so, during the Q and A session, when I was asked if there is a history of girls as activists I could see that this question indicated clearly the urgent need for this special issue of Girlhood Studies which was only just in process then. Now, thanks to the dedication of the two guest editors of this special issue, Catherine Vanner and Anuradha Dugal and the wide range of superb contributors, I can point confidently to girls' activism as a burgeoning area of study in contemporary feminism rooted in feminist history.

There is growing interest in how activist bureaucrats change policies; however, it remains unclear how bureaucrats become activists. This article develops a framework for the emergence of bureaucratic activism using the case of Brazilian prosecutors in the Belo Monte dam, a project that drew attention due to its social and environmental impacts. I show that two different types of prosecutors were involved in this case: activist prosecutors, who were committed to the proactive defense of affected communities, and conventional prosecutors, neutral agents that resorted to traditional tactics. Based on 82 interviews, document analysis, and participant observation, I argue that rather than being self-selected, prosecutors within conducive settings engaged in activism after they joined the state by developing long-term ties with local groups. By discovering the problems faced by affected communities and mediating their struggles with other policy actors, prosecutors internalized the grievances of these groups, building commitments to defend their causes.

There is growing interest in how activist bureaucrats change policies; however, it remains unclear how bureaucrats become activists. This article develops a framework for the emergence of bureaucratic activism using the case of Brazilian prosecutors in the Belo Monte dam, a project that drew attention due to its social and environmental impacts. I show that two different types of prosecutors were involved in this case: activist prosecutors, who were committed to the proactive defense of affected communities, and conventional prosecutors, neutral agents that resorted to traditional tactics. Based on 82 interviews, document analysis, and participant observation, I argue that rather than being self-selected, prosecutors within conducive settings engaged in activism after they joined the state by developing long-term ties with local groups. By discovering the problems faced by affected communities and mediating their struggles with other policy actors, prosecutors internalized the grievances of these groups, building commitments to defend their causes.