Resources

This manual is divided into three parts. Part 1 introduces important concepts about homeworkers and value chains. Part 2 is the heart of the study, which provides the tools needed to carry out a value chain study. In particular it shows how to construct maps to represent a value chain, which make it easier to understand some of the complex aspects within the chain, such as the numerous controls and links that exist. Other techniques explored are: " widening the information net and strengthening the basis for action by learning from buyers, manufacturers, homeworkers, and comparing their perspectives; " working with public agencies, as these actors impact significantly on the lives of homeworkers in terms of regulations and laws impacting on labour, trade policies affecting industry, and forms of harassment of labour; " applying gender analysis to garment chains, which is advocated as a component to be included in all research of homeworkers. Part 3 puts forward suggestions about how to use the research findings from the value chain analysis to improve the conditions and opportunities for homeworkers, and how to promote best practice amongst employers. It deals with how to begin working towards solutions, and how to support collective action and mobilise around codes and standards, in particular the issues of occupational health and safety and child labour. It also looks at how to help workers switch chains.

Across the world, as new democratic experiments meet with and transform older forms of governance, political space for public engagement in governance appears to be widening. A renewed concern with rights, power and difference in debates about participation in development has focused greater attention on the institutions at the interface between publics, providers and policy-makers. Some see in them exciting prospects for the practice of more vibrant and deliberative democracy; others raise concerns about them as forms of co-option, and as absorbing, neutralising and deflecting social energy from other forms of political participation, whether campaigning, organising or protest. The title of this Bulletin reflects some of their ambiguities as arenas that may be neither new nor democratic, but at the same time appear to hold promise for renewing and deepening democracy. Through a series of case studies from a range of political and cultural contexts û Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, South Africa, England and the United States of America, contributors to this Bulletin explore the interfaces between different forms of public engagement. Their studies engage with questions about representation, inclusion and voice, about the political efficacy of citizen engagement as well as the viability of these new arenas as political institutions. Read together, they serve to emphasise the historical, cultural and political embeddedness of the institutions and actors that constitute spaces for participation. The bulletin comprises the following articles: Citizen participation in the health sector in rural Bangladesh: perceptions and reality by Simeen Mahmud; Citizenship, community participation and social change: the case of Area Coordinating Teams in Cape Town, South Africa by John J. Williams; Institutional dynamics and participatory spaces: the making and unmaking of participation in local forest management in India by Ranjita Mohanty; Brazil's health councils: the challenge of building participatory political institutions by Vera Schattan P. Coelho; Civil society representation in the participatory budget and deliberative councils of SÒo Paulo, Brazil by Arnab Acharya et al.; The dynamics of public hearings for environmental licensing: the case of the SÒo Paulo ring road by Angela Alonso and Valeriano Costa; Power, participation and political renewal: issues from a study of public participation in two English cities by Marian Barnes et al.; A sea-change or a swamp? New spaces for voluntary sector engagement in governance in the UK by Marilyn Taylor et al.; AIDS activism and globalisation from below: occupying new spaces of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa by Steven Robins and Bettina von Lieres; Social strategies and public policies in an indigenous zone in Chiapas, Mexico by Carols Cortez Ruiz; Increasing space and influence through community organising and citizen monitoring: experiences from the USA by Andy Mott. The abstracts for each separate article can be found on http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/bookshop/bulletin/bull352.html

This article outlines a method for letting members of disabled associations give their opinions on how well they are being served by their association. The development of the method and its strengths, weaknesses and orientation towards donors are discussed.

Micro-finance programmes are currently promoted as strategies for both alleviating poverty and also empowering women. However, a number of recent academic studies have questioned the benefits of such programmes for women. Given the need to examine their gender impact, this paper proposes an alternative to the traditional costly quantitative and qualitative impact studies. A participatory approach is proposed which integrates empowerment concerns with ongoing programme learning, which in itself contributes to empowerment.