Exploring Civic Innovation for Social and Economic Transformation

Kees Biekart, Wendy Harcourt, Peter Knorringa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780367874049
• eBook ISBN: 9781317386599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This edited collection examines the globally rising phenomenon of civic innovation. Combining nuanced theory with rich empirical examples, this book defines the dynamic and complex process of civic innovation as the multiple economic, political and social processes where peoples, organizations, movements and ideas are shaping struggles for global justice on the interface of capitalism.

Exploring Civic Innovation for Social and Economic Transformation reflects the increasingly holistic approach to development in terms of both teaching and research, and illustrates how civic innovation happens everywhere; at the global and institutional level as well as in communities and for individuals. Through conceptual debate and narrative accounts, this book explores the new practices emerging from varying economies, transformative empowerment strategies in global value chains, local politics of social movements and the struggles for rights in regards to race, gender and sexuality.

Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, this book would be of interest to post-graduate students of development studies, with an interest in social research.

1 Introduction

Giving meaning to civic innovation

Kees Biekart, Wendy Harcourt and Peter Knorringa

DOI: 10.4324/9781315676913-1

Introduction

What is the link between mainstreaming the Fair Trade movement, mobilizing solidarity around gender-based violence at Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011, and experimenting with new forms of decision-making at one of the Occupy camps in the Global South? We think all three examples are interdisciplinary, multi-level and interconnected social change processes that can be defined as civic innovations. Recognizing civic innovation when one sees it is one thing, but developing a clear definition and demarcation is quite something else.

This introductory chapter describes and reflects upon the search for the meaning of civic innovation. It is written by three academic colleagues coming from different fields of interest, disciplines and backgrounds. The process of writing has been an experiment in how to generate knowledge by taking into account our diverse histories and stories, the methodology we use, reflecting on the questions we ask and the language we employ. We have tried to keep it an open, respectful collaboration, producing knowledge that is not locked into particular methodologies as we cross the boundaries of our different disciplines.

In the process we have tried, as much as possible, to call attention to the differences, similarities and also tensions among the different ways we approach civic innovation. Indeed, we see those tensions or what we have called ‘frictions’ as productive ways to open up possibilities for new forms of analysis and research.

For example, viewing civic innovation from an economics perspective, mainstreaming of the Fair Trade movement is a useful case study as it can illustrate the importance of analytical tools that will help us to interpret the changing characteristics of civic innovations over time. From an intersectional embodiment perspective we would zoom in on which type of gendered bodies are engaged in the process. What difference does class, race, ethnicity, age and gender make in terms of the people engaged in growing, buying and selling? What tastes and desires are being defined by which cultures and histories? Who does the buying in the supermarkets, who does the marketing for which consumers? What are the gendered, racialized and sexualized imaginaries created around Fair Trade? From a politics perspective it would be important to analyse the ways in which farmers managed to organize in such a way to influence power relations favourably with their international partners.

An example from the intersectional embodiment perspective is solidarity around gender-based violence in Tahrir Square. What Tahrir Square 2011 reveals for understanding civic innovation is the mobilizations that link local actions with global arenas across cultures around the issue of gender based violence. When the calls for democracy in Tahrir Square protests failed to include women’s rights to protest in safety and security there was a global outcry. The global connections forged by women’s rights movements to end gender based violence were immediately called on to provide solidarity with the women on the streets who were attacked and raped, not only by police but also by fellow protestors. Women’s rights were defended via social media and exposed the discrimination against women protestors. Tahrir Square is one example of body politics that is linked via feminist histories and actions to other civic innovations defending women’s rights to security and integrity through on the ground politics and via Internet. These struggles demand an end to embodied and structural gender based violence that are embedded in patriarchal economic, social and political power.

Questions to be raised here are about whether global interventions are interfering in local cultures and customs. How does solidarity support in the long term generate social change? We hope that research in this area of civic innovation consolidates and supports the actions of women’s rights movements working to end gender based violence aware of the fragilities and difficulties of looking into issues of body politics.

Our third example is another important imaginary as we give meaning to civic innovation. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) moved spectacularly into the public realm in September 2011, and became one of the widest global responses to the recent financial crisis, rapidly expanding to all the major squares of the world, and then suddenly ending a few months later. What it demonstrated was its rapid expansion as a form of protest combining social media and the square, creating a hybrid from of action between the offline and online world in thousands of physical locations. On these squares a new form of decision-making was practised, countering the top-down methods of the financial system that had negatively affected 99 % of the world population. From a politics perspective the movement demonstrated a sense of empowerment of those mostly affected by the greed of the few. From an economics perspective Occupy Wall Street was an uncomfortable signal to the financial sector that had lost much of its legitimate role of a professional class preaching ‘confidence’ and ‘calm’ in order to maximize profits. Here the frictions were around: how was the financial sector going to regain its prestige, if ever? Was its legitimacy not more damaged than it was after the downfall of the 1929 crisis?

From an intersectional embodiment perspective questions to the Occupy movement would be, for example: What are the bodily experiences played out in Occupy camps? What were the different gendered relations? Were there racial tensions? And what about generational issues? Were there conscious efforts to have women and men as leaders and facilitators? Were there tensions around leadership (in terms of gender, race, age)? In designing the actions were there specifically ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ roles that were challenged of the 1% and played out in the different actions? Were there discussions around traditionally ‘feminine’ issues around care and cleaning? How were sexual violations and bodily integrity taken into account among the camp dwellers? How were people of different ages, genders, race, ethnicities and sexual orientation treated by police and by the media?

This introductory chapter uses the above examples to engage further with key concepts that underpin civic innovation. We look first at how we move beyond the crisis narrative in order to set the scene of how a civic innovation research agenda allows us to creatively use the inevitable frictions arising from trying to develop alternatives at the edges of global capitalism. We then introduce the state of play on the concepts that constitute civic innovation, followed by an experiment with the usefulness of these concepts when we elaborate our three examples: Tahrir Square, Fair Trade, and the Occupy Movement. We follow this with a discussion of the methodology of doing civic innovation research, and conclude by setting out possible research agendas for civic innovation to be explored by the Civic Innovation Research Initiative (CIRI).

Moving beyond the crisis narrative

Civic innovation is about focusing on what is positive, creative and imaginative in the face of a world that seems beset by crisis narratives, whether financial, economic, ecological, social or cultural. As development researchers we see the mainstream development community responding with difficulty to this crisis narrative – awkwardly speaking of the failure of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) while setting up a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (and a new acronym – the SDGs – currently being decided mostly by expert groups and officials in the United Nations bureaucracy). Underlining these discussions are deep concerns about the viability of the development project in the new conditions of today. In exploring the term civic innovation we suggest this helps us to give a useful alternative to overwhelming crisis narratives. We are not looking for a new theory and practice that will lead to a ‘grand transformation’ of neoliberal capitalism but rather at how to build a mosaic of responses by looking at what is happening ‘on the ground’ where people are living the contradictions of development. We argue that we need to question pre-determined ideas of what measures to take and go beyond universal policy solutions, in order to look with openness at the actions on the ground. This also means going beyond the strictures of development aid and its logics. Civic innovation acknowledges the contradictions and failures but also looks at what is possible in how people live their everyday lives in twenty-first-century neoliberal capitalism.

As our three opening examples show, we are interested in exploring the shifts and possibilities in politics, local economics and in gender and sexuality emancipatory movements (Fraser 2013) that move us away from dominant capitalist narratives that predominate in development discourse. We are interested in how innovative practices of community and solidarity economies, sometimes in alliances with transformative empowerment strategies in global value chains, local politics of social movements and rights movements around the body, gender and sexuality are allowing new imaginaries of well-being and possibility to flourish. These alternative discourses connect in interesting ways: the private and public, the domestic and national, local and the global, the emotional with the technical. They try hard and sometimes selectively succeed to create inroads into the mainstream development discourse. Most importantly, they contain the potential for social change that needs to be understood and acted upon, instead of just talking about crisis.

In that spirit, our chapter aims to contribute to progressive and creative thinking that offers the possibility to understand better (and imagine more confidently) alternatives to oppressive doom and gloom scenarios. While still acknowledging the fears, doubt and uncertainties, we aim to build connections and openings for social change. In this search, we need to confront the many frictions that are coming to the fore in depressing and ugly ways. We do not dispute the depth of inequalities, the dysfunction in our societies, nor the destructive pressure on our environments and the level of social despair about the future. Our sense of hope is that there are many people, in various institutions, cultures and societies who are eager to address these issues. The diversity of how to approach multiple levels of dysfunction is at the same time part of the messiness as well as part of the possibility for change. If we move away from a search for one overarching approach or solution, such as the SDGs, and instead look at how to bridge and forge connections among the different approaches, we can learn from a wealth of innovative ideas and practices. In looking at the productive interfaces we can step away from tired ideologies that drag us down with their inability to explain what is happening today. Working with the frictions we can understand how development can engage with what is going on today as people work through the systemic contradictions, the pain, the everyday difficulties in their lives. CIRI works with inter-disciplinarity in order to go beyond the confines of single disciplines challenging Western universalism and social science that relies too much on the principles of logical positivism. CIRI looks at the real-life intersections between these and other paradigms as sources of friction that energize civic innovation in domains of action with institutional effects ¹ .

Our examples show how studies of civic innovation seek to weave together non-hegemonic narratives about how people on the ground are overcoming profound obstacles in their direct challenge to social, political, economic and cultural inequalities. Through exploring these narratives we analyse the obstacles and break through possibilities for social change.

Our use of the term civic innovation acknowledges that social change happens everywhere in society, at the global level as well as in communities, in governments, in markets, in families, as well as for individuals. We see civic innovation as a generic term that is crosscutting but also inspiring.

The ‘civic’ element was developed from the civic-driven change work at the ISS (see Fowler and Biekart 2008). Civic-driven implied a key role for citizens as well as civic agency, something we considered to be present throughout society. This ‘24/7 citizen’ in peace time broke fast as a family member (or tax payer) in the morning, went to work in the household, or as an employee, or entrepreneur in the streets, or to the farms, or to study or legislate and there grew food to sell, cared for the family and community, sold produce as a trader or bought as a consumer, contributed to governance activities and in the evening and holidays participated in family and community activity. This same citizen has the potential of being a change agent in all these realms, thereby emphasizing that ‘civic agency’ is not by definition linked to civil society, markets, or governments. It has at least the potential to be crosscutting as well as bridging and connecting.

The ‘innovation’ concept has an intuitive meaning – as a term used in social and technology sciences to refer to new approaches, tools, as well as policies that are creative and are ‘Making Things Better’ (the slogan of Dutch firm Philips in the 1990s). We are taking innovation in a positive sense, aware that innovation can be negative in both quality and meaning. So, we are using the term innovation to refer to creative forms of cultural political and economic resistance and pathways to social change. We do not mean however ‘social innovation’. Recent years have seen the use of ‘social innovation’ as a flag for social entrepreneurs to explore new ways of contributing to more responsible businesses. Social innovation does not directly take on board the political and rarely gives priority to gender/sexuality and embodiment. As Fowler (2013) warns, high expectations of the concept social innovation are not justified:

The tricky bit is that the current state of social innovation is so plural as to permit multiple uses and users of the term that may be diametrically opposed to one another. In addition, current definitions, formulations and interpretations of the concept are politically under dimensioned, if not naïve.

Learning from engagements at the CIRI Forum, October 2013

In order to explore the ‘real life intersections’ of civic innovation and their frictions at the interface of capitalism, we brought together researchers in three ‘strands’ of research in October 2013 at the CIRI Forum in The Hague on ‘Theories and Practice in Civic Innovation: Building bridges among politics, markets and gender/sexuality’. The first strand of research explores how civic innovation can play a role in making markets more socially responsible and environmentally sustainable with a focus on commercial and civil society actors. The research looks at complementary currency systems, social entrepreneurship, the role of institutions, the rights of workers at the bottom of value chains; and at possibilities to re-politicize business–society relationships. The second strand focuses on how to embody the political economy by discussing the political and economic use of gendered bodies from an intersectional perspective in order to understand the lived bodily experiences in the struggle for democratic power. The research looks at how organizations and individuals mobilize in differe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Other Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: giving meaning to civic innovation
• 2 The institutional foundations of civic innovation
• 3 Change actors and civic innovators: who triggers change? Systematising the role of interlocutors in civic innovation processes
• 4 Can consultants be civic innovators? Exploring their roles as auditors and allies
• 5 Between state, market and civil society: what constitutes the social in social entrepreneurship?
• 6 Civic innovation in value chains: towards workers as agents in non-governmental labour regulation
• 7 Civic innovation by family farmers in the face of global value chain inclusion: between material conditions and imagined futures
• 8 Exploring embodiment and intersectionality in transnational feminist activist research
• 9 Towards new perspectives on labour precarity and decent work for sex workers'
• 10 Resistance and hope: Youth responses to the economic crisis in Southern Europe
• 11 Civic activism and social accountability: a quantitative approach
• 12 Minding the gap between activism and academia – or bridging it? Reflections on how to do civic innovation research
• 13 Conclusion: moving agendas forward
• Index