Grassroots
Volume 2, number 2 | December 2013
national as well as the non-governmental organisations. Seed conservation, maintenance and access has important repercussions on agro-biodiversity and traditional knowledge associated with them. Thus, issues of access and sharing of seeds ultimately has implications for farmers and on innovations. In this regard the practices adopted by a NGO for conserving rice germplasm was studied. Here we tried to find out how they create and co-create their collective being in the neo-liberal world and their contestations against the state and the market. The paper highlights on how differing circumstances created social relations based on self-determination as pointed out by John Holloway a tuned with the local needs in the local context for maintaining and transforming the commons beneficial for the actors in the NGOs.
Abstract id# 66292 Housing and Civil Society Organisations in Indonesia: New Challenges and Opportunities Sonia ROITMAN, School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, Australia Abstract Text: Civil society organisations, and grassroots organisations in particular, have become a significant stakeholder in the provision of housing and services, contributing to tackle poverty. Grassroots organisations provide marginalised groups with new opportunities to make their voices heard and to become visible in the policy debate. Several organisations have proliferated worldwide in the last two decades, especially in the countries of the South. This paper analyses the role of civil society organisations working on housing in Indonesia. The government has failed to cater for the housing needs of all citizens and there are currently more than 7 million people in the country in need of housing. In a historically top-down approach, the decentralisation reform of 1999 provided civil society new opportunities to participate in decisionmaking. This paper examines to what extend this has happened during the last decade and to what extend civil society organisations are able to influence policy-making in the housing sector.
Abstract id# 46958 Lateral Networks of Homeowner Associations and Civil Society Building in Urban China Xiaoyi SUN, Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Abstract Text: Civil society organizations are crucial for the development of civil society, because these organizations teach citizens democratic practices on the one hand, and constrain the power of the state on the other. Recently, lateral networks of homeowner associations are being formed in many Chinese cities. While not being recognized by the authoritarian state or even faced with potential political risks, these networks are playing an ever more important role in facilitating homeowners’ collective actions to defend their private property rights. Existing literature tends to understand homeowners’ collective action as a reactive response to counteract the powerful real estate developers and their management agencies in a yet mature housing market. But based on interviews, participant observations, and online discussions of the lateral networks of homeowner associations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, this study argues that these networks are proactively adopted as important infrastructures for the
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