3 results
8 - Knowledge for Social Innovation
- Edited by Stijn Oosterlynck, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium, Andreas Novy, Yuri Kazepov
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- Book:
- Local Social Innovation to Combat Poverty and Exclusion
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 02 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 27 November 2019, pp 161-188
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter zooms in on the processes of developing and using different types of knowledge to value, upscale and diffuse social innovation (SI) in the field of poverty and social exclusion. This interest can be motivated by the wish of practitioners or academics to take stock and learn from a broad range of projects or by the policy ambition to upscale or diffuse ‘best practices’ to other contexts and develop ‘evidence-based policies’ in order to increase social impact. However, coming to a clear stock of knowledge with regard to SI's social impact and potential for social change is particularly challenging. Identifying and transferring ‘best practices’, for instance, is fraught with difficulties. Socially innovative projects are difficult to assess and compare in unequivocal terms because they have multiple goals, which are often hard to quantify and are tied up with specific local conditions and contingencies. Crucial elements of what makes a social innovation a success in one city or country may not be transferable at all (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Evers et al, 2014). Policy makers and practitioners often struggle with questions about which type of knowledge is needed to change their policies and practices for the better. Do they need more objective evidence and numbers about social impact or should they attribute more attention to context-specific experiences and stories of the people involved to gain a deeper understanding of the social problems and how they can be solved in particular cases? If the answer is ‘both’, what constitutes a good balance between these approaches and how could it be achieved?
The issue of knowledge for SI only recently became a topic of interest (see Antadze and Westley, 2012; Marée and Mertens, 2012; Moulaert and Van Dyck, 2013; Novy et al, 2013; Stigendal and Alwall, 2015; Phillips et al, 2015). Most contributions focus on specific concerns like impact measurement, the ontological and epistemological foundations of SI research, the state of SI literature in the field of social entrepreneurship or bridging academic and practitioner knowledge in practice.
7 - Negotiating Diversity and Equality
- Edited by Stijn Oosterlynck, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium, Andreas Novy, Yuri Kazepov
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- Book:
- Local Social Innovation to Combat Poverty and Exclusion
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 02 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 27 November 2019, pp 137-160
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Europe is a melting pot, characterised by a rich cultural heritage and currently becoming increasingly diverse through immigration. At the same time, it is divided by deep socioeconomic inequalities. Increasing diversity and rising inequality seem to go hand in hand. This chapter tries to disentangle the complex relationship of diversity and inequality and how they play out in local social innovation initiatives. On the one hand, reducing inequality in its multiple dimensions is seen as a key structural factor for reducing poverty, on the other hand, recognising the increasing diversity of needs is perceived as crucial for combating poverty in its multidimensionality, covering material and cultural aspects (see Chapter 1 and Ghys, 2018). We start from a broad understanding of culture (Eagleton, 2000; Sum and Jessop, 2013) and problematise the narrow definitions of inequality and diversity in policy making. The challenge consists in exploring whether social innovation initiatives are able to reduce inequality while respecting diversity.
The second section of this chapter exposes cultural hierarchies as a key cause of poverty. A historical overview will identify various policies that have aimed at negotiating diversity and equality in Europe. The terms diversity and equality are often used to deal with different realities. While policies to foster diversity are in general reduced to non-economic issues like age and gender and in the field of combating poverty increasingly to ethnicity, policies to promote equality tend to focus on socioeconomic dimensions, be it equal opportunities in the labour market or access to money and social services.
The third section will use empirical insights from the ImPRovE case studies to problematise how the cultural and socioeconomic dimensions of poverty and social exclusion are addressed. What is the role of culture in social innovation initiatives? How is ethnic diversity dealt with in the initiatives? How do actors in socially innovative initiatives make sense of the complex articulations of inequality and diversity? How can intercultural learning and other cultural policies be related to attempts to effectively combat poverty? We will not propose a one-size-fits-all frame to understand how to negotiate cultural diversity and socioeconomic equality, but make a plea for context-sensitive solutions that take cultural and socioeconomic hierarchies seriously. Special attention will be paid to ImPRovE case study initiatives that have the Roma population as the target group.
6 - Contradictory Dynamics of Empowerment in Social Innovation Initiatives
- Edited by Stijn Oosterlynck, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium, Andreas Novy, Yuri Kazepov
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- Book:
- Local Social Innovation to Combat Poverty and Exclusion
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 02 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 27 November 2019, pp 113-136
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
The notions of social innovation and empowerment have a rather similar history, at least over the past half a century. Whereas the first regular use of the notion of social innovation can be traced back to the period of utopian socialism in the late nineteenth century (Godin, 2012), interest in social innovation experienced a revival in the 1960s and 1970s (see Chapter 2), nurtured by the same leftlibertarian new social movements that also put issues of power at centre stage. Opposing oppression, exploitation and domination, the civil rights, feminist and the black power movement all aimed at – in the words of John Lennon ‒ ‘giving power to the people’. Its heyday, the 1960s and 1970s, was a period of severe social upheaval, challenging existing power structures of colonialism, racism and sexism as well as the excessive power of large corporations and state bureaucracies. ‘Black power’ was even the name for the radical wing of the civil rights movement. New social movements did not concentrate their activities on policy reforms, but on systemic change in favour of the disempowered. Different from revolutionary approaches, empowerment, however, was never only about reforms from above. It always required that oppressed and marginal populations ‘gain mastery over their affairs’ (Rappaport, 1981: 3). It was in this historical context of the 1960s that empowerment was first conceptualised as neither merely an individual nor only a collective endeavour. It integrated an ‘agent centric’ and a structural understanding of power (Hayward and Lukes, 2008: 17) aiming at increasing agential power to shape one's destiny as well as changing uneven and asymmetrical social relations. In opposition to authoritarian and homogenising left-wing civil society organisations, parties and trade unions, the key innovation of this new type of grassroots activism resided in assuming that the personal is political, linking self-empowerment and societal change in an innovative way. It inspired social innovations in such diverse fields as psychology, education, community development and social work, as it offered innovative practices to transform deep-rooted forms of domination.