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Market institutions:  Discomfort is evident in terms of the amoral way that markets are understood on the one hand and excessively monetized in their treatment of performance and utility.  Often with an actor focus, this theme explores:  inclusion and justice in value chains, especially the rights of workers and of primary producers at the bottom of the chain; the blending of corporate economic behaviour towards leadership, social values, ‘shared value’ and the development relevance of social entrepreneurship and social responsibility; exploring the ‘demonetization’ of economic transactions; and a concern for decent livelihood

Contact Person: Peter Knorringa

Governance institutions:  Here discomfort stems from the failure of the prevailing tri-sector institutional model to analysis governance and socio-political change, particularly in the limits of civil society discourse and governance thinking.  The theme includes regionalism in governing; takes on board drivers and emergent processes of political agency, such as extra-parliamentary democracy, with a concern for reconfiguration of power.  It challenges the concept and practice of state-bound citizenship; interrogates policy determinants of decision-making in urbanization processes; interrogates the notion of rights when associated with multiple meanings of identity; and unpacks the role(s) of (poly-)centric governance in the dynamics of state-society relations.

 Contact Person: Kees Biekart

Sexuality institutions:  Discomfort arises from conventional treatment of feminism, social movements and gender as analytic categories that are both predominantly Western/Caucasian in origin and can too easily ‘abstract’ from the lived realities, emotions and experiences of sexuality across the world in diverse cultural positioning. Breaking out of these boundaries calls for new methods, such as inter cultural dialogues. The theme and notion of embodiment as ‘body politics’ is an exploration in re-conceptualisation of the sexuality in relation to global problems reflecting paternal, religious and other forms of domination across cultures, economies and institutionalised configurations of power.  This strand is actively engaged with a Global health Initiative, the Sexual Rights and Reproductive Health platform of the Dutch Ministry.

Contact Person: Wendy Harcourt