Third World Quarterly - Journal of Emerging Areas

Amidst the industrial decline in South America in the 1980s, and the failure of economic development projects, perspectives have shifted from industrialisation towards a focus on human development ‘by design’ and the empowerment of craftsmanship. In Chile, interactions between design and craft have increased significantly since the 1990s due to new national and international cultural policies. Efforts have been made to safeguard tradition or induce innovation through professional design to promote craft products and mediate between local and global values. This study examines the tensions in design-craft interactions, unpacking the hegemonic and paternalistic design approaches that often overshadow artisans’ innovations. Using historical and ethnographic analysis, this study focuses on Pomaire, a village renowned for its pottery tradition and cultural significance that has faced criticism from the Chilean cultural establishment for a perceived loss of tradition, with institutions favouring specific cultural expressions and modern design over artisans’ strategies. This research highlights the frictions between design and crafts in pursuing innovation and development, showing how institutional frameworks influence the recognition, valuation and commercialisation of artisanal production. It also contributes to our understanding of the power dynamics between designers and artisans, emphasising artisans’ agency in shaping their traditions amidst socioeconomic changes.

ABSTRACT Counter-terrorism is increasingly being used to shrink the space for civil society. In October 2021, six Palestinian civil society organisations (CSOs) were proscribed by the Israeli Minister of Defense as ‘terrorist organisations’ based on the 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law. If fully implemented, in conjunction with the 1945 Defense (Emergency) Regulations, the CSOs’ offices would be closed and their staff arrested. However, the designation’s primary audience has reportedly been the donors of these organisations. This article explores whether the designation added another layer to the long-ongoing process of criminalising the CSOs, curtailing their capabilities to operate, and delegitimising them as partners for the donors and global civil society. The analysis draws on a combination of the shrinking space concept and securitisation theory. It broadens the latter to include the power of the referent subject, an aspect often neglected in the literature. Even though both audiences did not approve of the Israeli government’s securitising move and the CSOs were able to develop coping mechanisms, it deepened chilling effects. Continued attacks against the organisations contributed to further limiting their activism space. The case study builds upon a content analysis of legal documents, public statements, and data gathered through semi-structured interviews.

This article demonstrates an important case of transnational activist influence from the Global South to both Global North and other Global South contexts. While protests, slogans, strategies and demands are expressions of a specific context-bound protest culture, they have the potential to resonate globally. In this way, specific protests become a model for other social movements, although not without tension or reconfigurations of activism. In this article, we explore the transnational flow of the ideas around ‘Must Fall’, developed initially by the South African student movement. From 2015, several university-based pro- tests in South Africa coalesced under the slogan ‘Must Fall’, most prom- inently #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall. This ‘Must Fall’ idea resonated transnationally in multiple contexts. However, protests using ‘Must Fall’ also drew from other resources and held different meanings across the different contexts, creating a complex transnational flow of partially connected protests across Africa, Europe, and the US. Nevertheless, the ‘Must Fall’ protests were similar in expressing a need for a radical change to rupture and overcome structures of oppression, especially those shaped by colonialism. This article analyses the Global South genesis and meaning of the ‘Must Fall’ protests and how they travelled, resonating differently in both Southern and Northern contexts.

The aim of this article is to discuss the neoliberal project as a colonial determinant of the environmental policy in Brazil since 1972. The 1972 Stockholm Conference is used as a milestone for analysis. The results show that, since the military regime in the 1970s and through successive elected governments, whether right- or left-wing, federal policies have consistently aimed to boost the country’s economic growth. Even the few socio-environmental advances identified during the first administrations of the Labour Party (2003–2010) resulted from processes focused on the ‘deterritorialisation’ of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities. The ultra-liberal project adopted by the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022) accelerated these processes and promoted an aggressive denialist, anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous agenda. Given the current political scenario (Lula administration 2023–2026), this study makes the following main contributions: it offers a new orientation for the environmental and Indigenous agendas developed by the progressive sector in Brazil and advocates for a science orientated towards contributing to a new environmental and Indigenous agenda in the country.

In a manner almost reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire’s frantic search (late 19th to early 20th century) for müstemlekat (colonies) in Africa, modern Turkey seems to have revived its imperialist dreams in contemporary Africa. Following the elaboration of a proactive African foreign policy strategy, Turkey declared 2005, the Year of Africa, and established diplomatic relations with a raft of Muslim Majority African Countries (MMAC). While Ghana is not a MMAC, Turkey re-stablished diplomatic ties with Accra in 2010 heralding a burgeoning relationship. Drawing on the theory of sub-imperialism in tandem with the Diplomacy of Architecture (DoA) framework (Amoah 2022), this work will argue that Turkey has cleverly utilized the symbolism and siting of the Ghana National Mosque Complex (GNMC) to make the most visible and audacious broadcast yet of its imperial intentions in Africa and in record time. In unpacking the argument my primary interest will be to canvass the view that architectural imprints have become a powerful cultural weapon in the geostrategic soft power arsenal of recent rising powers.

There are long-standing disagreements across the humanities and social sciences regarding the relevance and necessity of using the concept of ‘universality’. The debate is often framed as a competition between acknowledging particularities of social struggles and identities, against universalising tendencies or interests across the world-system. Within these debates, universality may be conceptualised as an abstract totality that fails to apply under select con­ditions, or a banner that supersedes or squashes identities and particulars. This article reorients the debate, suggesting social theorists view universality from a fresh perspective. It acknowledges the totalising nature of global capitalism, and the unique struggles of different oppressed and exploited groups, suggesting the tensions between them are constitutive of universality itself. Critical, dialectical theories of universality emanating from interdisciplinary terrains of Africana studies, global political economy, and psychoanalysis guide us in new directions for theorising universality. I illustrate these points with a case study of struggles for justice waged by the Indigenous San of Botswana. The details of this case allow us to identify the concrete struggles of the San as an embodiment of the universal struggle for freedom within a world-system founded upon hyper-exploitation and widespread violence, often targeting African and Indigenous peoples.

This article critically examines the shifting dynamics of foreign aid politics within the Gulf states. Historically rooted in cultural factors and solidarity with Arab and Muslim nations, foreign aid from prominent donors such as the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait has undergone a profound transformation. Their aid has evolved from solidarity aid into an effective instrument of foreign policy, used strategically to project power and expand regional influence. This shift has not only redefined the role of Gulf countries in international and regional politics but has also catalysed the transformation of states in the broader Middle East. This article, therefore, seeks to answer the following two questions: (1) How do we explain the evolution of the politicisation of Gulf foreign aid? and (2) To what extent has the provision of Gulf foreign aid been a crucial determinant of changing regional dynamics in the Middle East, particularly since the Arab uprisings in 2011? It argues that Gulf donors have become crucial power brokers, shaping the politics and trajectories of key states such as Egypt post 2011. Their substantial financial assistance has proven instrumental in steering political and socio-economic transformations, highlighting the pivotal role of Gulf aid in shaping regional affairs.

Human-induced climate change will likely cause more intense and frequent cyclones and typhoons, as noted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Within the Asia-Pacific region, regional security discussions at the leadership level focus on the imminent threats to states and societies of more frequent and intense extreme weather events and sea-level rise as it is the world’s most exposed region. This article examines recent developments and discourse regarding climate change in the Asia-Pacific security architecture using the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a case study. It finds increasing recognition of climate change and its implications for peace and security within the regional security architecture. Debates over how best to address it to overcome an atomised approach to climate change impacts on peace and security in the region remain unresolved, but recent pronouncements at the leadership level signal an emerging mindset shift in understanding climate change within the regional security discourse. However, the substantive discussions largely take place in hybrid forums, albeit with official recognition in more traditional platforms, which may undermine efforts for an inclusive regional discourse on the climate change impacts on peace and security in ASEAN.

Are bureaucratic institutions simply hollowed-out instruments of autocratisation, meaning they merely execute the orders of populist-authoritarian actors? If not, how do they deal with the destabilisations of autocratisation? Drawing on a study of street-level bureaucracies in contemporary Turkey, this article contributes to ongoing debates on the (un)makings of autocratisation and its limits through its focus on the role played by documents in everyday bureaucratic praxis. The findings highlight that bureaucracies do not simply operate in a top down manner with bureaucrats having little to no space for manoeuvre. On the contrary, documents generate ambiguities and anxieties that civil servants strategically deploy through their incessant translations, negotiations, subversion, countercurrents, contestations and resistances to constrain and rebuke autocratisation. In doing so, the article demonstrates the limits of autocratisation in Turkey, and traces how such large-scale transformations are experienced from within state institutions, and how they unlock the agentive potential for the stakeholders, such as bureaucrats. The article challenges conventional discussions across political science through its attendance to the countercurrents and resistance from within the state, rendering the state not as a coherent, homogeneous entity but more as an incessantly rearticulated relationality.

The violence towards the Rohingya people in Myanmar has been well documented, with Facebook serving as a key site for the proliferation of anti-Muslim hate speech in the country. There are differing explanations as to the extent and significance of its role in contributing to this conflict. Some analyses have cited Myanmar’s internal deficiencies, framing the country as a bad adopter of technologies. These depictions rarely consider the broader conditions of technological adoption that extend beyond Myanmar’s borders. In this paper, we connect science, technology, and innovation (STI) work and decolonial analysis to highlight how Facebook’s activities in Myanmar are better understood as inextricably linked to the utopian and ‘techno-solutionist’ narratives mobilised by companies, particularly when deploying their technology in lower-income countries. The case study of Facebook’s role in Myanmar exemplifies how developing states can become understood as scapegoats when the promises behind new technologies are not realised. These practices obscure the role that Big Tech proponents of technology can play in generating internal crises in the Global South. They illustrate how certain ways of thinking about and promoting technology can play a role in reinscribing hegemonic colonial dynamics, something that is not unique to Myanmar and can produce broader material harm.

In Europe, increased precarity characterises the lives of many people, making crisis-talk especially appealing as a framing mechanism to naturalise anti-migration policies within the EU. In 2020–2021, the EU and the Spanish government proclaimed a migration crisis and immobilised in dehumanising conditions a few thousand African migrants who had just arrived in the Canary Islands. This action was facilitated by narratives of migrant invasion and the view of Europe as a space of formality. This article asks what kinds of speculation the proclamation of a migration crises creates and who is doing the speculating. We stress that the term ‘speculation’ is based strongly on temporalities involving the creation of value by future predictions in uncertain circumstances. Using the Canary Islands as an example, we use this future-oriented understanding of speculation to emphasise that different actors, and not only financial ones, also imagine and act on the future as a sort of infraspeculation. While not losing sight of how the latter differs from financial speculation, it is important to highlight the diverse forms of agency in relation to migration within a quite complex changing policy and ­crisis-management environment.

The Gaza Strip is dependent on external aid to deliver basic services, including water and sanitation. Such services are not sustainable due to the Israeli occupation and the limited financial and technical capacities of service providers and the state. This paper examines the incentives of stakeholders in delivering sanitation services in the Gaza Strip through a qualitative institutional economics analysis of literature supplemented with qualitative key informant interviews. External aid is crucial to deliver basic services in the Gaza Strip. However, this has created a dependency that undermines the sustainability of sanitation services. Donor agencies often prioritise capital expenditure on visible infrastructure, such as wastewater treatment, without addressing its long and short-term operational needs; hence the Gaza Strip’s needs are continually addressed as an emergency response. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas de facto governments lack sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and Palestine. Therefore, they also lack the capacity and incentives to create an enabling environment for delivering safely managed sanitation. This paper contributes to development policy literature, the politics of infrastructure and wider politics of settler colonialism and siege basic services such as water and sanitation.

Attempting to reduce America's dependence on foreign-sourced rubber, Firestone established in 1926 the world's largest industrial plantation in Liberia under a controversial 99-year-lease agreement. Nearly a century later, backlash against the exploitative nature of corporate hegemony and economic globalisation crystallised in a transnational campaign, Stop Firestone, and class action suit to hold the multinational accountable. I argue in this article that Liberia's unequal incorporation into global capitalism has configured and reconfigured the set of relations between government and citizens through parallel, albeit interrelated, processes-the globalisation of capital (via trade and investments) and the globalisation of rights (via universalised notions of citizenship as a human right). While the pursuit of foreign direct investment (FDI) in particular placed the interests of investors like Firestone 'above' the state thus undermining government-citizen relations, it simultaneously created a politicised workforce and network of Liberian activists thus strengthening citizen-citizen relations. Based on careful review of concession agreements and court proceedings as well as interviews conducted with government officials, activists and legal advocates based in Liberia and the United States, this article is the first to meld historical and contemporary developments, underscoring the twenty-first century implications of Firestone's enduring exploitation of Liberian land and labour.

Recently, scholars of the Pacific region have discussed the concept of Oceanic diplomacy. Oceanic diplomacy focuses on diplomatic practices or principles that belong to Pacific cultures and are distinct from but sometimes work in concert with Western diplomatic practices. The goal of exploring Oceanic diplomacy is examining the current value of these practices and principles, whether within a single country, among Pacific nations, or at the global level. Here, I apply Oceanic diplomacy in ana-lysing Tuvalu’s 2020 Foreign Policy: Te Sikulagi (The Horizon). I first exam-ine the main cultural concepts highlighted in Te Sikulagi – falepili (being a good neighbour) and kaitasi (shared ownership) – and how they function within traditional Tuvaluan diplomacy. I next examine how, after the publication of Te Sikulagi, these concepts were earmarked for use in bolstering relations with other Pacific nations as part of Western or ‘conventional’ diplomatic practices (i.e. signing diplomatic relations). Finally, I outline how these concepts are utilised at the global level in Tuvalu’s activism on climate change. To conclude, I discuss not only how Oceanic diplomacy demonstrates the existence of diplomacies outside the Western diplomatic paradigm but also how these culturally distinctive and antecedent diplomacies are increasingly influencing global diplomatic trends.

Antisystemic movements have been used as a key concept in world-­systems analysis to explain emancipatory struggles against the dominant structure of the capitalist world-economy. This study attempts to develop a more inclusive concept of antisystemic movements by focusing on the primary themes of emancipatory struggles – exploitation and exclusion – in the Global South. Struggles against exploitation are movements that mobilise people to demand an end to their absolute or relative poverty, austerities, economic grievances and dispossession. Struggles against exclusion are movements that contest processes of exclusion from local, domestic and international communities and polities. Nationalist mobilisations and ethnic conflicts have been the primary issues in these struggles. Struggles against exclusion could extend to mobilisations for democracy and the expansion of citizenship rights. Furthermore, an empirical analysis of popular protests conducted by compiling protest events in the Global South reported in The New York Times from 1870 to 2016 demonstrates that the most widely shared theme was the struggle against exclusion. Over time, the struggles against exclusion as emancipatory movements have remained a central issue in antisystemic activities in the Global South.

The discipline of sociology digs out the empirical reality of societies based on affirmed epistemological frameworks. Sociological theory, methodology and research in Nigeria are deeply encapsulated in dominant Western-oriented epistemes and objectivity designs aimed at value-free assumptions, yet they are non-universally applicable to ascertaining nuanced realities with impacting outcomes. Guided by Justin Labinjoh’s 1982 Metaphor of Change to engage the objectivity versus subjectivity debates in the sociological practice, this paper argues that sociology is a colonising epistemology that requires a decolonising strategy through popular culture-music research to unearth the nuanced and subterranean reality of the subaltern classes in Nigeria’s liberal democratisation process. The paper also uncovers the taken-for-granted nuances of everyday life in the areas of power and governance, poverty and development in Nigeria’s democratisation process. Data were sourced from popular music of Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu (Burna Boy) and Folarin Falana (Falz), which highlighted power, politics and development contradictions in Nigeria’s liberal democracy. Keywords: Hegemonic universalismdecolonial theorysubjective approachpopular culture-music

Forest cover loss in the DPRK is intrinsically related to food insecurity and energy insufficiency. This study used qualitative research methods to understand the deforestation and afforestation history of DPRK. Forest cover in the DPRK decreased during the period of Japanese ­colonisation, increased slightly after liberation, decreased again during the Korean War, increased because of socialist economic progress, and decreased, when Eastern European socialism collapsed after 1990. Between 1990 and 2010, the decrease amounted to 2.2 million ha, while the volume of growing stock continued to decrease by approximately 3% per year. This was due to the copious amounts of fuel wood harvested from forests. Slash-and-burn cultivation of food crops also increased during that time. The decline in forest quantity and quality required comprehensive measures, including favourable international relations, political and institutional reforms, the decentralisation of forest management, and proper technical support for local communities. The forestry issue in DPRK is complex and, therefore, is no longer solely the prerogative of the forestry sector, but is embodied in political, social, cultural, economic, environmental, and other broad development challenges to country faces. Solving the forestry crisis in DPRK requires addressing challenges related to international political engagement and domestic multi-sector coordination and collaboration.

Cuerpo-territorio (the body-territory) is a concept used by Indigenous feminist activists from Iximulew (Guatemala) to frame their struggles for justice, an end to gendered violence and against extraction in their territories. This paper draws on this concept to explore the legacy of colonial and conflict-related woundings in Guatemala, particularly sexualised and racialised violence. I focus on the primarily Ladinx, urban, largely middle-class population who work and study at the Centre for Training, Healing and Transpersonal Transformation – Q’anil, Guatemala. By centring my enquiry on the reflections of staff and participants from Guatemala and Latin America, through observations and interviews completed as part of my PhD, research this paper explores how attending to the racialised and sexualised wounds of the cuerpo supports individual and collective healing. I argue that Q’anil’s processes, which focus on interrogating desire, reconnecting with the body and recovering the erotic as creative life force, can contribute to healing our broken relationship with the territorio. I ­situate this work within the turn towards a vitalist politics and ask how we might expand our understanding of justice in territories wounded by conflict and (neo)colonialism beyond legal frameworks to envision justice from the cuerpo-territorio?

The concept of modernity and its association with the West and secularism is being challenged with the rise of religious movements in the age of globalisation. This provides a fertile ground for alternative modernities, disconnected from the West and secularism, to surface. This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the emergence of alternative modernities by drawing on insights from epistemic injustice and recognition theory, through an analysis of Turkish media outlets. Turkey serves as an illustrative case to examine the emergence of alternative modernities due to its long-standing tradition of incorporating Western modernity and its complex liminal identity between the boundaries of the East and the West. This paper argues that the period from 2005 to 2020 presented a window of opportunity for an alternative modernities paradigm to engage in epistemic struggles for recognition, supported by the ideological context of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP) government. This period paved the way for questioning the superiority and uniqueness of Western modernity. However, it also indicates the birth of a new form of epistemic injustice as counter-narratives defending the superiority of Islamic civilisation emerged, seeking to establish epistemic hegemony for Islam and its association with modernity.

The article demonstrates the resistances and barriers of transitional justice to address historical intersecting inequalities and suggests avenues to advance transformative agendas in this framework through an examination of efforts to mainstream intersectionality at the Colombian Truth, Peaceful Coexistence and Non-Repetition Commission (CEV). On-going dialogues and collaboration with feminist activists working as CEV researchers in the Caribbean centrally inform this analysis. The article examines these activists’ understanding of intersectionality as a political project and their strategy of operationalising it as a ‘critical praxis’ to construct counter-hegemonic analyses of the armed conflict that centre the experience of historically marginalised sectors. The operationalisation of intersectionality as a critical praxis in this scenario provides insights for public policy and practice more broadly as it proposes guidelines to decolonise research and public engagement methodologies to produce intersectional knowledge of issues that affect differently situated populations and groups.

In this article, we consider the role that onset patterns play in shaping how acute global events are taken to be, drawing on illustrative cases from the field of global health emergencies. We identify four temporal manifestation patterns that we argue display distinct political dynamics. First, an emergent onset pattern (e.g. the H1N1 health emergency), with political dynamics dominated by novelty-induced uncertainty and lack of information as well as familiar analogies. Second, an anticipatory onset pattern (e.g. the risk of a global avian flu health emergency), with a political dynamic characterised by dread of an as-of-yet unrealised high-consequence risk. Third, a cyclical onset pattern (e.g. Ebola), with a political dynamic characterised by a sense of familiarity and expect-edness, unless eventual 'unexpected' or 'unprecedented' aspects manifest themselves. Lastly, a perpetual onset pattern (e.g. antimicrobial resistance), with political dynamics characterised by incrementalism and low political salience. We argue that acuteness is often associated with a departure from expected manifestation patterns, such as an escalation or other traits that make events appear unfamiliar. Whilst drawing on global health emergences in this paper, the four categories theorised here may also be used on a range of other adversities at the global or local level.

This paper examines the intergenerational effect of child marriage on education. While most of the literature focuses on child marriage generations, the spillover effects on offspring require close attention to terminate the endless loop of child marriage-related issues. By employing coarsened exact matching (CEM), the authors analyse how child marriage impacts the education of the offspring of child-married mothers in marginal areas in Nepal. This study utilises the Nepal Marginal Settlements Survey: Household 2014/15 data set, with a finalised sample size of 2681 children. The authors use ‘overage’ as an outcome variable to reflect the comprehensive education attainment situation. In this paper, ‘overage’ refers to the difference between students’ observed age and the standard schooling age of his or her current grade defined by Nepal’s government. The estimated results show that being born to a mother married before 18 years of age increases female children’s overage by 0.352 years and male children’s overage by 0.498 years. This intergenerational effect of child marriage on education differs distinctly by gender. The effect becomes more severe as the marriage age of the mother decreases.

In March 1999, the people of Paraguay found themselves at an historical crossroads. At the national level and in rural communities, the legacy of the 35-year Stroessner dictatorship continued to limit the ability of democratic actors to make social and political change in the country. The old one-party rule of the Colorados confronted by international and local pressure for transformation, led to a political crisis that challenged both neoliberal development policies and the lingering authoritarian populism of the dictatorship. This essay explores a municipal infrastructure and water project sponsored by the Paraguayan government, the Peace Corps and the Inter-American Development Bank, in which the joint effort revealed tensions between emergent forms of democratisation and the goals of campesinos and their allies in the Catholic Church. Struggles for improved quality of life through infrastructure development intertwined with neoliberal modes of governance and efforts to overcome years of local authoritarian rule. Local communities sought a more active role in governing their affairs, which led to the successful implementation of Juntas de Saneamiento or ‘sanitation councils’.