Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed an upsurge in mobilization and collective action in states of the global South, which has continued to this day. While this mobilization in its early phases comprised part of either ongoing anti-colonial struggles for national in dependence or struggles against despotic rule (especially in Latin America), the forms of social movement to which this has given rise have mutated over the years and they now reflect a broad array of social, political and economic concerns differentially expressed at local, national and global levels.

Democracy is considered the common ‘currency’ of state and civil society interaction in middle-economic-power states such as India, Brazil and South Africa. In fact the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) link, as it is understood in international relations, is premised upon certain political and economic similarities between these three states in the South, not least their democratic political foundations.1 In this paper we are looking at the IBSA states from a citizen-centric point of view, embarking upon a comparative analysis of how states deal with citizens’ demands from within...

Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.

The debate about civil society within development has been largely influenced by a liberal theoretical tradition which views it as an autonomous collective space between the state and individuals where citizens can come together to debate the public good. It is thus seen as a key element of the democratic society. More recently, with the rise of neo-liberal thinking within the development community, civil society organisations have been identified as a preferred private alternative to state service provision in contexts where markets are missing or imperfect. There is however an alternative radical tradition which sees civil society as a product of the same structures of power that permeate underlie state society relations. Within this tradition, civil society organisations can be seen as holding conflicting views about states, markets and citizenship and engaging in actions which can challenge or uphold the status quo.

This two-page document summarises research on the Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa's most influential AIDS advocacy group.

The main area of investigation in the article is the link between poverty alleviation and the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). The fieldwork-based research focuses on the ways in which the achievement of targets on water service delivery help to improve the quality of life of poor communities in the township setting of Khayelitsha, Western Cape. The authors argue that, based on qualitative and quantitative survey research conducted in Khayelitsha between 2005 and 2007, it is clear that the achievement of MDG goals in South Africa in the area of water service delivery have not led to de facto satisfactory service delivery in the eyes of many communities. In many instances communities have negative perceptions of government water service provision policies and their participatory role in service delivery generally. The authors conclude that the MDG goals may obscure aspects of chronic poverty relating to services by hiding the realities of ill-conceived and implemented water and sanitation policies on the ground behind a front of deceptively packaged water and sanitation provision statistics.

This paper examines the participatory processes which led to the building of the Berg River Dam in South Africa's Western Cape province. The government-led formal participatory processes stand in contrast to the mobilisation of environmental activists against the building of the dam. In this case, the creation of formal participatory forums both subverted and neutralised resistance of the environmental movement and civil society against the building of the dam, largely through the mobilisation of policy discourses on water scarcity.

This paper reflects comparatively on a series of case studies of citizen mobilisation in both north and south, arguing that the politics of knowldge are now central. The cases focus on issues ranging from genetically -modified crops, vaccines, HIV and AIDS and occupational health, to struggles around water, housing, labour rights and the environment. The paper offers a synthesis of some major theoretical perspectives, lines of argument and issues emerging from case studies responses to these querstions.

In recent years, and particularly perhaps since the ‘battle of Seattle’ in 1999, the issue of civil society participation in trade policy has attracted increasing policy and academic attention. Much of this attention has been drawn to the question of institutional access and channels of participation and representation within the WTO. The challenge is one that has faced other global institutions such as the World Bank and IMF for a number of years (O’Brien et al 2000). Improving the transparency of and access to decision-making in the context of up-scaling civil society participation is not exclusively a global challenge, however. There has been a great deal of activity at the regional level around trade negotiations and increasingly in Latin America with the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) following in the wake of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur). Few institutional reforms have been brought about without significant pressure from civil society, however. Some challenges are common to all movements attempting to participate and make their voice heard in the sensitive and traditionally closed arena of trade negotiations. But others are unique, and reflect distinct regional political histories, previous experiences of mobilisation and prevailing social and material realities. Given this, it becomes important to understand what can be learned from the experience of a globally significant region like Latin America about the possibilities and limitations of civil society participation in trade policy.

In this article, I investigate how the moral politics of HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa is contributing toward new forms of citizenship that are concerned with both rights-based struggles and with creating collectively shared meanings of the extreme experiences of illness and stigmatization of individual HIV/AIDS sufferers. I argue that it is precisely the extremity of the “near death” experiences of full-blown AIDS, and the profound stigma and “social death” associated with the later stages of the disease, that produce the conditions for HIV/AIDS survivors’ commitment to “new life” and social activism. It is the activist mediation and retelling of these traumatic experiences that facilitates HIV/AIDS activist commitment and grassroots mobilization. It is also the profound negativity of stigma and social death that animates the activist’s construction of a new positive HIV-positive identity and understanding of what it means to be a citizen–activist and member of a social movement

This 47-page research paper on water resource management focuses on the attempt by some countries to neutralise criticism of their water management policies by creating formal spaces for public consultation and participation. This study looks at the participatory processes (specifically, how local people were consulted and involved) in the building of the Berg River Dam, Berg Water Project (BWP), in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The author analyses the consultations that led to the approval of the dam and concludes that the creation of formal participatory spaces both subverted and neutralised resistance, on the part of the environmental movement, as well as civil society, to the building of the dam.

Since the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights over 50 years ago, there has been a proliferation of international conventions on rights. Currently, the international legal framework encompasses an astounding variety, stretching from women’s rights to rights of indigenous peoples to knowledge rights. But despite the burgeoning number of formal rights at the international and national level, substantive rights in practice remain elusive for most. At the same time, there is increasing evidence that innovative approaches that integrate rights into development practice can have real impact on entrenched problems of poverty and injustice. Using rights in development to address marginalisation and exclusion requires new thinking about understanding how rights can be made substantive.

This paper focuses on why poor and marginalised people still lack access to economic, social and cultural rights (also known as positive rights), despite a fairly mainstream support to positive rights in mainstream development debates. In part this is due to the problematic division between so-called first and second generation of rights. This is particularly true in the water debate where dominant narratives more often see water as an economic good rather than as a human right. Rights also fail to be realised due to sins of omission where poor states may lack the institutional capacity or financial resources to provide rights. Similarly, citizens may not be aware of rights and may not have the capacity to mobilise around them. Lack of rights may also be due to sins of commission. Thus states or non-state actors such as the World Bank may knowingly put vulnerable people’s rights at risk or even violate them with impunity. Economic globalisation also leads to policies that violate basic rights where diffuse and unclear rules of accountability exist for global and local players. The paper focuses on the right to water in South Africa to examine sins of omission and looks at forced displacement caused by the Narmada dams in India to examine sins of commission.