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Asia is the world's largest continent, encompassing a large number of countries with a long history and a vibrant, rich culture. Countries are marked by very diverse societies in terms of e.g. religion, ethnicity and language, but also by different political systems and how thesse evolved. Consequently, the configuration of civil society, its dynamics, the way civil society organisations relate to their constituencies and design strategies, and how they are embedded in their social-political environment, varies from country to country.
The Knowledge Programme on Promoting Pluralism and the Knowledge Programme on West Asia are the two programmes with activities in this continent. Focal countries for Promoting Pluralism are Indonesia in South-East Asia, and India in South Asia. Starting from the different contexts in these countries, Hivos and its (academic) partners seek to generate knowledge on core issues related to pluralism and fundamentalism. The programme on West Asia concentrates on civil society dynamics in Syria and Iran and how civil society organisations contribute to opening up democracies.
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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.
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...
Behind the Veil of Discourse
A few weeks into their field assignments, the ISS researchers have started to unpack their questions and issues, venturing into complexity beyond the veil of discourse.
Southern Perspectives on Civil Society Building
Civil Society Building continues to figure prominently in the development policy realm and so too does its northern bias, especially with regard to processes in Africa. Through the MA-research facility, the Hivos/ISS Civil Society Knowledge programme enables researchers and civil society organizations from the South to develop and share their views on key issues in the Civil Society Debate.
Talking Back Workshop
The Digital Natives with a Cause Knowledge programme aims to build a knowledge network of young people, practitioners and academia. The Talking Back workshop is the first of three international workshops in 2010 that aim to give visibility and a voice to the Digital Natives and to document and reflect upon their online initiatives for change. This first workshop will take place in Taipei from the 16th till the 18th of August.
Package Politics: Antagonism, Resistance, and Peace in Syrian Political Discourse
Working Paper 8 examines ways in which regional conflicts, especially the relationship with Israel, have an influence on the resilience of the Syrian regime. It does so based upon the analytical notion of discourse, which examines the role of discursive assumptions and norms in framing social practices. The norms and mechanisms inbuilt within discourse contribute to the shaping of the choices and practices of political actors in many ways: by determining the range of possible action, by legi...
Package Politics: Antagonism, Resistance, and Peace in Syrian Political Discourse
Working Paper 8 examines ways in which regional conflicts, especially the relationship with Israel, have an influence on the resilience of the Syrian regime. It does so based upon the analytical notion of discourse, which examines the role of discursive assumptions and norms in framing social practices. The norms and mechanisms inbuilt within discourse contribute to the shaping of the choices and practices of political actors in many ways: by determining the range of possible action, by legi...
Package Politics: Antagonism, Resistance, and Peace in Syrian Political Discourse
Working Paper 8 examines ways in which regional conflicts, especially the relationship with Israel, have an influence on the resilience of the Syrian regime. It does so based upon the analytical notion of discourse, which examines the role of discursive assumptions and norms in framing social practices. The norms and mechanisms inbuilt within discourse contribute to the shaping of the choices and practices of political actors in many ways: by determining the range of possible action, by legi...
Report Seminar ‘Perspectives on and Prospects for Civic Engagement through Internet in Syria’
14/06/2010 With the events surrounding the ‘Twitter revolution’ in Iran last year, attention has shifted towards the meaning of new media in activist networks in authoritarian settings. The Web has become a new space for analysis and researchers are starting to map issue networks of digital activism. In the Middle East and North Africa, broadband connections are growing faster than anywhere else in the world and this development is bringing challenges and opportunities to both governments and activists...