Home Hivos Knowledge Programme
Welcome to the website of the Hivos Knowledge Programme. The platform for knowledge development on issues imperative to the global development sector. How to understand and innovate support for civil society building, how to promote pluralism in times of growing intolerance, how to adapt to rapid changes such as the globalisation of markets? The development sector needs new knowledge, and more specifically, appropriate knowledge to tackle specific knowledge gaps. This programme aims at developing knowledge on issues central to the work of civil society organisations and for the development sector at large. The main themes are: Civil Society Building, Promoting Pluralism, Civil Society in West Asia, Small Producer Agency in the Globalized Market and Digital Natives with a Cause?
The Uncertain Future of Democracy Promotion, by Steven Heydemann
30/08/2010 Democracy promotion has had a tough decade, nowhere more so than in the Middle East. Ten years ago, the democratic optimism that followed the end of the Cold War was in relatively good health. Today, after a decade of authoritarian reversals, a sustained “backlash against democracy promotion,”[1] and authoritarian resurgence from Russia to Africa to Latin America, post-Cold War optimism has given way to a darker, more sober assessment of democratization’s limits. The Middle East in particula...Markets, value chains and development
We herewith invite you to an exiting day; with a program centering on the question what do we actually know about how value chains and markets work for development. In the morning, bilateral dialogues of businesses, NGOs, and governments with researchers aim to make intervention theories explicit and to seek bridges between frameworks of different actors. In the afternoon, small-scale farmers’ agency in setting the development agenda is the focal point of a combination of provocations from L...
Mobilising Social Justice in South Africa - perspectives from Researchers and Practitioners
How do civic actors in South Africa deal with contemporary developmental challenges such as socio-economic inequality, limited access to basic services, xenofobic tensions and governance constraints. At a time of rising social tensions, the country’s institutions are in danger of losing the legitimacy they gained in the wake of democratic dispensations of the 1990s.
Challenges in Trans-disciplinary and Value Critical Research on Social Movements
ISS MA-student in Human Rights and Development Cyprianus Jehan Paju Dale (read profile here) is currently in Papua to conduct research on key actors of social movements in Papua. He explores the leading discourse of indigenous people of Papua on development and human rights. Cypri’s is grappling with the ‘western’ concept of ‘social movement’ in the Papuan context. How is it understood in Papua and by whome? And what about the ethics of research: how to analyze your research findings and cri...
The Private Media in Syria
Working Paper 11 is about the private media in Syria. A new publishing law was passed in 2001, which allowed the private sector to re-enter the media industry, having been banned from it since 1963. The relatively high number of approved publications since 2001 provides the Ministry of Information with an argument in its favour, which it uses every time the media situation in Syria is discussed. However, even though the new law does not impose censorship as a prerequisite, it does remain...
A Matter of Religion? Really?
ISS-student Rima Irmayani is currently blogging from Indonesia about her fieldwork that she’s undertaking for her MA research on understanding community participation in post-conflict reconstruction programmes. (see profile here). As farming is one of the main livelihood strategies in Poso-Central Sulawesi local government and NGOs put considerable effort into helping farmers to rebuild their agricultural practices after the violence ended in 2001. By interviewing the farmers in Sintuwulemba...
Twitter #digitalnative and Blog
Want to follow and contribute to our Twitter conversation going on in the Taipei workshop. Follow #digitalnative! Read our blog here.
Talking Back Workshop
‘Talking Back’ is the first workshop for the Digital Natives with a Cause? knowledge programme, for which 20 digital natives from 16 Asian countries have been selected to come to Taipei and discus, document and reflect on their online activities. This workshop is organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Hivos, the Frontier Foundation and Academia Sinica and will take place from the 16th till the 18th of August.
Comedy of errors
'Having gone through secular Makerere University in Uganda, I thought that all universities were more or less like that. I was grossly wrong.' As part of 2010's Yogya Summer School, Adrian Jjuuko blogs about his visit to a Quran University in local Central Java.
Beyond the Digital: Understanding Digital Natives with a Cause
Digital natives with a cause: the future of activism or slacktivism? Maesy Angelina argues that the debate is premature given the obscured understanding on youth digital activism and contends that an effort to understand this from the contextualized perspectives of the digital natives themselves is a crucial first step to make. This is the first out of a series of posts on her journey to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism through a research with The Blank Noise Project...