Posts Tagged ‘participation’
Children’s life world as a perspective on their citizenship
The latest childhood studies present children’s citizenship as a process of engaging in matters related to children themselves in their everyday lives. However, only a few studies have been conducted on what those issues are and what they actually tell about children’s citizenship. This study explores the nature of children’s participation and citizenship by adopting a life world perspective. The aim is to examine what kind of issues children want to participate in and influence. The data are drawn from an online discussion in the Finnish Children’s Parliament. Altogether 61 children participated in the discussion, with 566 postings. The analysis of the children’s online discussion shows that children comment mainly on issues that directly impact their lives, such as school. However, they also want to engage in issues that are global in nature, such as children’s general well-being.
Tanzânia – Nova Constituição com Participação Direta do Povo
Desde ano passado, grupos distritais, organizações da sociedade e ex-governantes opinam sobre como devem ser legislação, estrutura da gestão e políticas públicas do país africano.
No forno da Tanzânia, uma nova constituição começa a ser cozinhada e, para sua elaboração, o país está empregando um modelo inovador – a participação direta do povo. A proposta é a criação de um documento preparado literalmente com a voz de todos. E, para isso, um extenso trabalho deu-se início em julho de 2012. Espalhados pelas ruas, vales e vilas, diferentes comitês de pesquisa estão recolhendo nos quatro cantos do país sugestões, ideias e reclamações para a formação das novas leis do país. Todos devem ser ouvidos, tudo deve ser considerado. A nova constituição traz a democracia aplicada no sentido literal da palavra.
Making sense of Edgeryders experiences: Where do we go from here?
This is the last of the series of research papers based on the community’s experiences of transition. And I have to say it is the one that resonated for me the most. I’ve been quite sceptical of mainstream politics for as long as I can remember. I found especially the analysis of the Occupy, Los indignados and Anti Acta movement very interesting and a few important things have fallen into place for me. Below I have not tried to summarise it, but to make sense of my own thoughts using Magnus’s research. And to map out a way for us to maybe move forward as individuals and as a collective.
There is a widespread notion that life for youth today is radically different than it was for previous generations fueled by information technologies, media and markets. Another dominating theme is the notion of crisis and uncertainty- cuts in education affect who is able to access higher studies when the job market for young and educated is poor with result that more young people become part of group of youth hardest hit by crisis. You could even go so far as to state that people are being excluded from being able to afford access to jobs. This is connected to education as a sorting machine & it’s function having morphed from ticket to social mobility to minimum requirement to access labour market (recommendations include open school to world). Another dominant theme is the idea of “new opportunities and possibilities” supposedly offered to young people in our “knowledge societies”.
Read also: Political Participation Among Youth in the Edgeryders Project
Political Participation Among Youth in the Edgeryders Project
This text will examine how edgeryders take political action and participate in political processes. It will also see how the kinds of participation that edgeryders are involved in differ from how European youth policy imagine political participation and if it is possible to bridge these differences.
That the Edgeryders project want to examine political participation seems natural. One of the major ideas behind Edgeryders is that the citizens are experts when it comes to their own lives and as experts they should be involved in the policy process. Edgeryders explicitly wants to define itself against a passive presentation of youth as a problem category that policymakers and experts have to figure out and come up with policies for. Therefor, Edgeryders itself is an experiment in policy making that is based on a new kind of political participation.
COMMUNEcation: a rhizomatic tale of participatory technology, post-coloniality and professional community
This article explores the authors’ experiences in creating and participating with(in) a virtual conference organized as an experimental virtual network. These experiences demonstrate how physically co-located and virtual conferencing practices acting in tandem provide a greater opportunity for the inclusion of both diverse perspectives and participants in professional communities. Using insights from post-colonial theory, the article examines how the architecture of participation found in the technologies of Web 2.0 accentuates the potential for reclaiming some diversity of perspective and participation, facilitating a form of molecular community through conferencing practices. Finally, it provides theoretical and empirical insights and reflections on the social dynamics of conferencing in both online and offline spaces to demonstrate how online conferencing can expand the directions taken in pursuit of new collective knowledge.
A New Weave of Power, People & Politics: An Action Guide
A New Weave of Power, People & Politics provides a well-tested approach for building people’s participation and collective power that goes beyond influencing policy and politics to transforming public decision-making altogether. Based on 25 years of participatory research, community development, neighborhood organizing, legal rights education, and large-scale campaign advocacy experiences worldwide, A New Weave combines concrete and practical action “steps” with a sound theoretical foundation to help users understand the process of people-centered politics from planning to action. The guide is unique in its emphasis on power and constituency-building discussed through the lens of gender/race/class and based on the concrete experiences of social change in dozens of countries worldwide.
Movimentos Sociais – Participação social como política de Estado
Em seminário inédito sobre presença da sociedade na construção de políticas públicas, Secretaria Geral da Presidência colhe propostas para elaborar projeto de lei sobre Política Nacional de Participação Social. Militantes cobram influência na política econômica e orçamento mais participativo. Objetivo é que parlamentares aprovem lei até o fim do governo Dilma.
A Secretaria Geral da Presidência pretende transformar em política de Estado até 2014, último ano do governo Dilma Rousseff, o processo de participação social na construção de políticas públicas. Para isso, vai elaborar projeto de lei com uma proposta de Política Nacional de Participação Social para ser operado por um Sistema Nacional de Participação Social, rede que interligaria órgãos federais, estaduais e municipais.
The Iceland Constitutional Council on a Participatory Constitution
The bill starts with a prologue and contains a total of 114 articles in 9 chapters. The bill’s prologue starts with the following words: „We, who inhabit Iceland, want to create a fair society, where everyone is equal. Our different origins enriches all of us as a whole and together we have the responsibility for the legacy of the generations, land and history, nature, language and culture.“
The main themes which the Constitutional Council has observed during its work have been these three: Distribution of power, transparency and responsibility. The Council has strived to increase the distribution of power with a clearer division between the three branches of power. Furthermore it provides for an increased public participation in decision-making, also leading to further distribution of power. The Council put much emphasis on a clear and intelligible presentation of the constitution, regarding the wording and overall structure, as well as making it clear who has power according to the constitution and as a consquence responsibility.
Read also: Mob rule: Iceland crowdsources its next constitution
How Peer to Peer Communities will Change the World
In reality, the term P2P refers, since a long time now, to the range of solutions, paradigms and approaches focusing on co-design (collaborative design) and co-creation, openness and freedom: that is, each decentralized, shared, distributed, equal mean to provide free and open solutions to common problems.
The long-term goal is to facilitate the emergence and consolidation of peer made communities to play a new role, a role that is traditionally a prerogative of companies and industries, according to the model of capitalistic production of goods and services.
The peer production model stands quite in opposition to neoliberalism. Open, equal and participatory platforms and paradigms, able to put people in direct contact with each other, shown tremendous potential during recent years: with the mission to help other p2p alternatives to emerge and consolidate, the “Foundation for P2P alternatives” was founded by Michel Bauwens years ago.
