Local Grassroots Research Articles

The grassroots and citymaking in the Middle East: The agency of tactical participation in Amman, Jordan

ABSTRACT In Middle Eastern contexts, like Jordan, the public participation spaces referred to as “invited spaces” for state-led participation are heavily controlled by the state and its representatives. This paper explores the various ways in which grassroots and civic organizations navigate and sometimes manipulate the state apparatus’ planning rules and grids to create alternative modes of meaningful participation in the production of the city. Following the Arab Spring in 2011, local grassroots organizations started adopting “new languages and taktikat” (تَكتِيكَات,’ tactics in English, words used by the grassroots to describe their practices) that allowed them to move beyond direct confrontation with the state in the so-called “invented” spaces of participation led by civil society. Building on de Certeau’s notion of “tactics,” this paper looks at these approaches as tactics used by grassroots to negotiate power and participation within neoliberal top-down authorities. Ultimately, it argues against viewing grassroots initiatives solely in terms of a binary lens of legality/informality or “invited”/“invented” dichotomies, as they neither function as insurgents nor remain passive.

Resisting Post‐Political Adaptation to Climate Change: How a Small Community Stood Up to Big Development

AbstractRecent critical scholarship has brought attention to local resistance in the spaces of adaptation, with reported instances of local communities rejecting planned adaptation interventions around the world. As adaptation funding is only expected to grow, so should our understanding of this resistance. In this article, I investigate one such dispute where residents of a small village in São Tomé and Príncipe refused to participate in an adaptation project implemented by the national government and the United Nations Development Programme. I ground my analysis in the literature on post‐politics and discuss the community's resistance as a Rancièrian “political interruption” of the post‐political adaptation configuration in the country. I also investigate the factors that arguably led to local resistance, including the residents’ disillusion with what I term Big Development, and their political subjectivation through a local grassroots initiative. The paper concludes with reflections on countering the post‐politics of adaptation as a prerequisite for more democratic and equitable local climate governance.

Building Global Momentum Towards Managing Marine Plastic Pollution Through SDG 14

Target 1 of SDG 14 on marine pollution has been instrumental in building momentum towards a coordinated response to the plastic pollution crisis facing the world’s ocean. The 2017 UN Ocean Conference saw a record number of registered voluntary commitments related to stemming plastic pollution, from local grassroots action to scientific research, as well as government initiatives limiting single-use plastics. By the time of the second UN Ocean Conference in June 2022, the UN Environment Assembly had, in March 2022, already adopted a resolution to develop by 2025 an international legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution. This international instrument is currently under negotiation and is facing contentious discussions influenced by petroleum interests. However, the very existence of these negotiations is owed to a large degree to the grassroots momentum built through SDG 14 Target 1 and a growing public concern about linkages between plastic pollution and human health and nascent national blue economies. This article will trace the pathway through which SDG 14 voluntary commitments, from local to global, have led by example while building a global sense of urgency to address the plastic pollution crisis. The article will also provide examples of how local communities and governments have experienced and responded to the crisis. Lessons learned from these local examples will be provided to link local measures and priorities to the global level in a way that can inform how the plastic pollution treaty is both negotiated and implemented.

‘Grass, rice, and aubergine’: a case study of an Islamic eco-pesantren in Indonesia

ABSTRACT Twenty-first-century environmental movements and education have been criticised as predominantly secular, middle-class and Western-originated. As such, their ability to generate momentum and increase uptake can be limited to individuals and groups who identify with these traits. In order to widen the scope of environmental education (EE), this study considers the ways in which an Indonesian ecological pesantren (traditional boarding school) may complement the dominant Western-originated approaches by offering a religious and grassroot take. The site for this research is Ath-Thaariq eco-pesantren in Indonesia, which hosts students aged 12–17. Qualitative data were generated, including interviews with the founder of the pesantren and two alumni, a site visit and document analysis of the pesantren’s official weblog, alongside existing media outputs. In contrast to the dominant secular, middle-class and Western-originated versions of environmental education, our findings demonstrate how environmental education praxis can be closely connected to local grassroot struggles, grounded in culturally relevant discursive resources, and based on Islamic spirituality. Including approaches to EE such as this one may offer valuable opportunities to upscale the benefits of EE to broader sections of the population in non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) contexts.

The cycling boom in German cities. The role of grassroots movements in institutionalizing cycling

Cycling rates have grown consistently over recent years in cities across the globe. Nevertheless, the lack of policies to promote cycling results in dissatisfaction among cyclists in many cities. In response to this situation, local grassroots initiatives have emerged to pursue more ambitious cycling policies in German cities. However, there is limited knowledge of how grassroots movements influence the cycling policy agenda. Against this background, our article explores the relevance of the grassroots movement “Radentscheid” in four major German cities (Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, and Hamburg) regarding institutionalizing cycling policymaking. By combining exploratory document analysis, expert interviews, and an analysis of secondary data, we show that the development of cycling over the last two decades in these cities follows three stages: (i) Commitment, when cycling is put on the political agenda; (ii) Imbalanced growth, characterized by a strong increase in cycling but little progress in cycling policies and a decrease in cycling satisfaction; and (iii) Institutional adaptation, when cycling becomes a key issue for local governments due to the pressure from the grassroots movement “Radentscheid”. This paper closes with a discussion of the main results and policy recommendations.

Establishing a protocol to increase racial/ethnic minority enrollment on an active radiation oncology randomized clinical trial.

TPS1638 Background: In the United States (US), underrepresented racial/ethnic groups lack ample enrollment in clinical trials, yielding ungeneralizable trial results. Barriers to increasing minority enrollment include decreased awareness of clinical trials, lack of access, financial burden and toxicity, medical system mistrust, and discordant physician-patient demographics. The ongoing Spine Patient Optimal Radiosurgery Treatment for Symptomatic Metastatic Neoplasms (SPORTSMEN) clinical trial (NCT05617716) has a study design to actively accrue minority patients. We present our protocol addressing key targets to increase minority enrollment on this randomized, phase II clinical trial. Methods: Adults with evidence of symptomatic spine metastases are eligible. Baseline demographics (including race/ethnicity) are reported for statistical analysis. Our protocol seeks to minimize barriers to minority enrollment and targets four key areas. Access to care: SPORTSMEN involves institutions located in zip codes with diverse ethnic populations, presently located in regions 46% and 70% African American. Clinical trial design: SPORTSMEN has a prespecified goal of accruing patients to mirror US census representation. The rate of minority enrollment will be reviewed periodically at the discretion of the Data Safety and Monitoring Board. Community outreach and engagement: The trial team will engage with local health care systems to create an alliance within different oncology specialties to provide the basis and benefit for SPORTSMEN and patient-centered education on eligibility criteria, rationale, and intended outcomes. Our principal focus will be providers in prostate, breast, and lung cancers as minorities with these primary site malignancies have a higher propensity to be trial-eligible. Furthermore, we understand the historical mistrust of minorities for the medical community. Therefore, we will engage local grassroot organizations such as churches, community outreach centers, and social clubs to increase awareness of clinical trials and to help foster trust. Financial burden and toxicity: SPORTSMEN does not have direct enrollment costs. A short-course treatment regimen is used to minimize the number of treatment visits required allowing for decreased resources for travel, time lost at work, and additional childcare or eldercare needs. Financial toxicity will be objectively quantified using the validated COST-Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy survey. Increasing clinical trial diversity is a challenge that must be addressed with meaningful intent to present robust Level 1 data that broadens the understanding of treatment response in all demographics. Our protocol takes a patient-centered approach to achieve the objective of concordant racial/ethnic representation in a randomized clinical trial. Clinical trial information: NCT05617716 .

Human capital of grassroots leaders and vulnerability to poverty: Evidence from rural China

This study examines the impact of the educational level of grassroots leaders on the vulnerability to poverty among villagers in China, using panel data from the National Fixed-Point Survey (NFS) from 2003 to 2015. Our findings indicate that a higher proportion of village cadres with a high school education or above significantly reduces the vulnerability to poverty among rural households in China. We identify two main mechanisms underlying this effect: (1) highly educated village cadres possess greater capabilities in assisting eligible poor households to understand and access government assistance programs, thereby increasing household transfer incomes; and (2) highly educated village cadres can alleviate household vulnerability to poverty by promoting local infrastructure development in the village. These results offer an alternative perspective on targeted poverty alleviation, suggesting that efforts should be directed toward enhancing the human capital level of local grassroots leaders or appointing highly educated leaders in underdeveloped villages.

Wage Theft and Technology in the Home Care Context

Home care workers (HCWs) are professionals who provide care to older adults and people with disabilities at home. However, HCWs are vulnerable and especially susceptible to wage theft, or not being paid their legally-entitled wages in full by their employers. Prior work has examined other low-wage work settings to show how technology is designed and deployed has the potential to both cause and address wage theft. We extend this work by examining the relationship between technology and wage theft in the home care context. We collaborated closely with a local grassroots organization to conduct interviews with workers and labor, legal, and payroll experts. We uncovered how the complex, volatile, and diverse nature of home care complicates the errors in time-tracking systems. Through design provocations and focus groups with workers and experts, we also investigated the potential of technology as a part of broader efforts to curb wage theft through educating and empowering isolated HCWs. While we found that approachable design could reduce errors in existing systems, make employer processes more transparent, and help workers exchange knowledge to build collective power, we also discuss concerns around burden, privacy, and accountability when designing technologies for HCWs and other low-wage workers.

Challenging the ‘reticent’ state? Grassroots organizations, COVID-19 and the local government

As pointed out by some scholars, the public response to homelessness and poverty changed dramatically with the pandemic (Parsell et al., 2020) as public stakeholders decided to spend additional fundings for homelessness and poverty policies. However, these interventions were often thought of as a means to reduce the threat to the health of the non-homeless population (Parsell et al., 2020) and were led by local governments which remain reluctant to provide the necessary resources for ending homelessness (Evans et al., 2021). As these public interventions were insufficient and took a long time to be implemented, grassroots organizations were often at the forefront of the crisis for providing resources to the most marginalized people. Drawing on this basis, this paper aims at understanding the role taken by a grassroots organization in Rennes (a medium-sized city in France) during the pandemic. I focus on a local grassroots organization which worked independently of the state and developed informal practices to deliver food to people experiencing homelessness and food insecure households. In this perspective, they managed to compete with professional and state-funded service providers and the pandemic shed light on the efficiency of their practices, based on unconditionality and empowerment. Through observant participation and interviews with the grassroots organization's managers, volunteers and public stakeholders, I argue that, during the pandemic, this grassroots organization was not only a “buffer to state absence and neglect” (De Verteuil, 2017, p.1518), but it also managed to put forward some of their claims, hence challenging the “reticent state” (Evans et al., 2021) and steering public policies into more compassionate ways to address food insecurity.

Space of Belonging: Engaging the State in Borneo

The Penan argue that their rights and attachment to the land are more than the mere felling of trees to open up land areas for cultivation to create native customary rights land. Their relationship with the landscape have turned hilltops and depressions between two connecting hills into campsites, thus giving these spaces a sense of residence. Their relationship with their rivers and streams is reflected through the naming of these tributary systems, names that are imbued with rooted histories and events narrated over generations. This paper provides an overview on how the Penan constantly navigate the values governing their ever-changing landscapes brought by external forces. In doing so, it charts the history of Penan struggles with state policies, logging activities, and how they assert their rights to their landscape by engaging with not only the state but also environmental and human rights activists, international non-governmental organisations, and other local grassroots organisations. Engagements with these state and non-state institutions and organisations have enabled the Penan to articulate their identities and rights to their resources. Based on these engagements, this paper argues that the Penan rights and way of life is closely related to particular spaces in the landscape, their space of belonging.

Mapping the invisible: Bridging and trusting networks in sustaining the urban food system

This article makes visible the social network infrastructure of people sustaining the urban food system in the post-industrial city of Buffalo, NY. It does so by probing how networks are launched and sustained over time, who is responsible for the networks, and to what end. The authors employ a survey to collect data on social networks among actors within the city's food system. The findings suggest that Buffalo's urban food system is a constellation of close-knit networks comprised primarily of local grassroots organizations having ‘small world’ effects— that is, short chains of actors within the network link all actors. These central actors rely on their high levels of trust and shared beliefs and vision to socially reproduce, sustain, and strengthen their urban food system through advocacy and information sharing. In sum, we find that Buffalo's food system story is one of local self-reliance, co-production, and co-dependency among urban growers and other grassroots actors whose day-to-day practices and lived experiences are largely excluded from the municipal government's policies and decisions.

“We are Rosas”: a case study on how identity matters in local food groups

Sustainability transformations involve processes of social change that are carried by people. In the area of food systems, researchers have studied local food groups as an emerging phenomenon driving collective action toward systems change. A central question in this regard is how agency develops in a dynamic alignment between individual actors and collective action. Identity dynamics, as a result of social interactions at the individual and collective levels, help to understand processes vital to the functioning of local grassroots initiatives. This study provides an empirical examination of the interplay between individual and collective level identity in the formation, operation, and impact of local food groups. Using a case study of a food cooperative in northern Germany, we apply a conceptual framework around identification, verification, and formation dynamics. Results show that identity dynamics are well developed and important for the functioning of the food cooperative. Trust is central to the group, as it enables the various activities of the collective, which in turn is facilitated by the interaction and identity dynamics. Understanding initiatives not just as niches for individual political action or as alternative sources of sustainable products, but as social spaces of self-expression and community building, contributes to the discussion of how local initiatives can help to advance sustainability transformation.

Humanitarian response by grassroots associations during a military conflict

Purpose Conflict and violence are the main drivers of globally escalating humanitarian needs. Local grassroots initiatives are pivotal in distributing humanitarian supplies in the acute response phase until more established humanitarian aid organizations can enter. Nevertheless, scant research exists regarding the role of grassroots associations in providing humanitarian assistance during a military conflict. The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of grassroots associations and identify important themes for effective operations. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts a case-study approach of three Ukrainian grassroots associations that began operating in the immediate days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The findings are based on analyzing primary sources, including interviews with Ukrainian volunteers, and are supported by secondary sources. Findings Grassroots associations have local contacts and a contextual understanding of population needs and can respond more rapidly and effectively than large intergovernmental agencies. Four critical themes regarding the operations of grassroots associations emerged: information management, inventory management, coordination and performance measurement. Grassroots humanitarian response operations during conflict are challenged by personal security risks, the unpredictability of unsolicited supplies, emerging volunteer roles, dynamic transportation routes and shifting demands. Originality/value Grassroots responses are central to humanitarian responses during the acute phase of a military conflict. By examining the operations of grassroots associations in the early months of the 2022 war in Ukraine, the authors provide a unique perspective on humanitarian logistics. Nonetheless, more inclusive models of humanitarian responses are needed to harness the capacities and resilience of grassroots operations in practice.

Bottom-up visions for future of food growing in cities

We report on community food growing as an instance of practice-based sustainability research focused on the design of interactive systems for food growing in future cities. We present a case study with a series of workshops using speculative and participatory design approaches focused on creatively exploring futures of urban food growing with a local neighbourhood community. Working with local grassroots communities is often perceived as more egalitarian for promoting viable long-term and embedded change in cities, yet little work has studied this approach for urban food growing. To explore how we might better articulate and conceptualize collaborative food growing futures, we discuss the creation of bottom-up visions as contestations to hegemonic narratives of power and control in cities. These are affected by, limitations of present resources and infrastructures, inability to work at scale due to lack of buy-in of stakeholders, and erroneous promises of future technologies. Through these reflections on grassroots futures as complex assemblages of social and material realities, we provoke researchers and practitioners to look at envisioning future possibilities with participants, as a web of practices and stakeholders. We further suggest that researchers and practitioners explore these interconnections through assemblages of socio-material realities and visions of high- and low-tech futures. This work is important because it provides a new approach to looking at the design of future technologies for cities and addressing systemic issues of hegemonic food systems through bottom-up actionable futures.

Know Justice, Know Peace: Reflections from a community-based, action research collective

This article provides an overview of the community-based, action research project called Know Justice, Know Peace: A Transformation & Justice Community Collective, which took place with six local grassroots justice-oriented organizations in Southern California’s Inland Empire region. Together we explored if, how, and where, wellness, healing and trauma-informed practices and transformative organizing exist in the daily operations and strategic vision of these organizations. Through interviews, focus groups, and healing circles, as well as an 8-month, bi-weekly training program, we identified individual and organizational needs, barriers, and facilitators of actualizing healing, wellbeing, and justice values in daily operation and organizational culture. Overall, the findings of this collective echoed what our review of literature in the field found from a diverse range of interdisciplinary scholars and activists; that to thrive individually and organizationally we must transform the relationships and structures we operate in to actualize values to stay grounded and connected while advancing effective strategies that resist toxic and violent structures and replace them with transformative and sustaining ones. This article summarizes community participants’ internal and organizational struggles as well as the assets they build upon. It explores theoretical frameworks deriving from healing justice, transformative movement organizing, trauma-informed and healing-centered methodologies, and emergent strategy that propose critical analysis and applied tools to advance individual and community wellness and healing as well as restorative organizing models and alternative organizational structures for values alignment in the daily operations of social justice-oriented community organizations. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2023 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

Common Dyadic Coping Mediates the Associations Between We-Disease Appraisal and Relationship Satisfaction and Quality of Life in HIV Serodiscordant Couples: The Common Fate Mediation Model.

Since HIV has evolved into a lifelong but manageable condition, improving the quality of life (QoL) of persons living with HIV (PLWHs) has become increasingly important. Living with HIV is life-altering and poses substantial challenges for both PLWHs and their partners, so identifying how HIV serodiscordant couples cope with HIV together is crucial. Here, Bodenmann's Systemic Transaction Model highlights common dyadic coping (CDC), which refers to both partners working together to alleviate the negative effects of stress. We examined the mediating role of CDC in linking we-disease appraisal with relationship satisfaction and QoL. We recruited a convenience sample of 231 HIV serodiscordant couples via local grassroots organizations between June and October 2022. Participants completed measures of we-disease appraisal, CDC, relationship satisfaction, and QoL. We examined the mediation effect of CDC on the association between we-disease appraisal and outcomes using the common fate mediation model. The mean age of PLWHs was 32.18 years (standard deviation = 8.61 years), and that of their partners was 32.55 years (standard deviation = 9.24 years). The average time since HIV diagnosis was 4.18 years. Most couples were same-sex male couples. We found that CDC mediated the effect of we-disease appraisal on relationship satisfaction. Moreover, CDC significantly mediated the effect of we-disease appraisal on the QoL of PLWHs and their partners. Our findings highlight the importance of CDC in dyadic illness management among Chinese HIV serodiscordant couples.

Place-based solutions for global social-ecological dilemmas: An analysis of locally grounded, diversified, and cross-scalar initiatives in the Amazon

The Amazon has a diverse array of social and environmental initiatives that adopt forest-based land-use practices to promote rural development and support local livelihoods. However, they are often insufficiently recognized as transformative pathways to sustainability and the factors that explain their success remain understudied. To address this gap, this paper proposes that local initiatives that pursue three particular pathways are more likely to generate improvements in social-ecological outcomes: (1) maintaining close connections with local grassroots, (2) pursuing diversity in productive activities performed and partnership choices, and (3) developing cross-scale collaborations. To test these ideas we collected and analyzed observations of 157 initiatives in Brazil and Peru, applying a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Our results show that initiatives maintaining groundedness in representing the interests and concerns of local actors while partnering with other organizations at multiple scales are more likely to develop joint solutions to social-ecological problems. Partnerships and support from external organizations may strengthen and enhance local capabilities, providing a platform for negotiating interests and finding common ground. Such diversified pathways demonstrate the power of local actors to transcend their own territories and have broader impacts in sustainability objectives. Our findings highlight the need to make governmental and non-governmental support (e.g., financial, technical, political) available according to local needs to enable local initiatives’ own ways of addressing global environmental change.

Decentralisation, Local Governance and Nation Building in Nigeria

The paper examines the logic of decentralization and local governance in Nigeria with a hint on its constitutionality and contributions to nation building. Emerging facts reveals that Nigeria operates a centralized and decentralized system of governance and state administration. This is confirmed by its federal nature, division of state administration into federal, state and local government, state power into exclusive (federal), concurrent (federal and state) and residual powers (local government), and the allocation and distribution of fiscal responsibilities and benefits along vertical and horizontal lines by the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 and the 1999 constitution. Data generated from the Federal Responsibility Act 2007 shows that the federal government gets 52.68%, the 36 state governments get 26.72% and the 774 local government councils get 20.60% fund allocation from the pool of distributive resources domiciled in the Consolidated Federal Revenue Account of Nigeria. Analytical evidences are also drawn from other secondary sources of information to confirm the abuse of the tenets of political and administrative decentralization through the instrumentality of the State-Joint-Local Government Account and the Caretaker Committee System. The dialectics of undue political interference in the management of local government affairs by the state government and the use of the Caretaker Committee system as a governing structure at the local government level reveals the threat it poses to leadership development, liberal democratic growth, local governance and nation building. These conclusively undermine the tenets of true federalism, decentralization, local government autonomy and the statutory powers and authority of elected local government councils to initiate and manage local development visions and initiatives. The need to place a balance between avoidable political control and local government autonomy as pathways to promoting genuine decentralization, participatory local governance and grass root development is strongly advocated.

Seeing peace like a city: local visions and diplomatic proposals for future solutions

ABSTRACT Violently contested cities are at the heart of ethnonational conflicts, and their final status is often a central issue for peace negotiations. These negotiations, typically led by national politicians and diplomats, include little, if any, representation of local voices, which are often fundamentally different from those of state-centric actors. This article integrates the seeing like a city theoretical approach with the literature on urban peacebuilding and asks: How is seeing peace like a city different from seeing peace like a state? and whether the visions of local grassroots leaders are complementary or contradictory to the models that national decision-makers propose for cities. We analyse the case study of Jerusalem using historical analysis, public opinion surveys, and in-depth interviews. Our findings show the distinction between the focus of state-centric processes on ‘rigid’ issues (e.g., security and sovereignty) and the focus of city-centric processes on ‘soft’ issues (e.g., tolerance and daily life).

Enacting Antiracist Pedagogy: An Analysis of LeBron James and Doc Rivers’ Antiracist Discourse

ABSTRACT In the summer of 2020, powerful protests against police brutality took place throughout the United States in response to the unlawful deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the shooting of Jacob Blake. Though the types of protests ranged from local grassroot organizations walking the streets to athletes using their platforms to address the injustices, the protests had one goal in mind—to bring attention, awareness, and hopefully change to an unjust legal system that consistently and disproportionately affects unarmed Black people. The aim of this article is to focus on the responses of both LeBron James and Doc Rivers to the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot seven times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), as informed by Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit), we argue that the dynamic words of these two Black men not only operate as an act of protest and an act of resistance, but also they provide pedagogical enactments for being and becoming antiracist.