Action research in critical scholarship: Negotiating multiple imperatives

Critical scholars sometimes accuse action researchers of not being radical enough in their approach, while action researchers often see the work of critical scholars as elitist and not grounded in people’s everyday experiences. This article draws on an action research project with residents in urban informal settlements in Malawi and their partner organizations in the period 2013-2017 to discuss how research can negotiate and achieve its multiple imperatives of being critical and rooted, explanatory and actionable. It shows how the action research approach with its collaborative elements helped the research project avoid what Louis McNay (2014:4) calls “social weightlessness” in political theorizing – “an abstract way of thinking that is so far removed from the actual practices and dynamics of everyday life that, ultimately, its own analytical relevance and normative validity are thrown into question”. The article reflects on the possibilities and limitations of the integrated approach developed in the project and suggests that action research in critical scholarship is a way to avoid ‘social weightlessness’ in theorizing while at the same time responding to some of the critique made against action research for not engaging with structural inequality and systemic change at scale.publishedVersionCopyright the authors. Published with Creative Commons license: Attribution–Noncommercial–No Derivatives

IDPs redefined – Participatory ActionResearch with urban IDPs in Uganda

This dissertation investigates the discourse on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Uganda and how IDPs in urban areas fit in to the discourse on both the theoretical and practical level. The dissertation reveals that although IDPs in urban areas by definition are included in both international and national IDP definitions, urban IDPs are seen as either economic migrants, or as former IDPs who have now reached a durable solution. The consequences of such exclusion from the IDP label are that IDPs outside camps are not considered for assistance or included in the return and resettlement frameworks or information activities. The formation of the IDP label in Uganda has been influenced by the government’s approach of control and military presence aimed at keeping people in camps in the north. Consequently, IDPs are perceived entirely as people residing in camps. The humanitarian community has been complicit with the government’s policy of keeping people in camps by limiting assistance to IDPs registered and residing within them. The obvious lack of resources dedicated to protecting IDPs also influences the way the label is shaped. It is challenging to identify IDPs in an urban setting because of lack of registration and information. It is also difficult to determine who are forced migrants, and which of them have reached a durable solution. Consequently, IDPs in Uganda has in practice been redefined to those staying in camps. Upon acknowledging how the voices of urban IDPs are marginalized within the dominant discourse, phase two of the fieldwork progressed towards influencing this discourse by revealing the political and bureaucratic agency in the processes of labelling creating greater awareness of the processes that serve to exclude urban IDPs from return and resettlement frameworks. By facilitating the mobilization of an urban IDP interest group I together with the community outreach organization Refugee Law Project worked together with urban IDP communities advocating for their rights

Digestibility in selected rainbow trout families and modelling of growth from the specific intake of digestible protein

The experiments aimed to clarify variations in digestibility of dietary nutrients in rainbow trout. Furthermore, the objective was to study how differences in digestibility might be related to growth and feed utilisation at various growth rates. When comparing the results from the experiments it appeared that particularly protein digestibility was closely related to specific growth rate and feed conversion ratio at high growth rates. As a tool to visualise the relationship between protein digestibility and growth of rainbow trout a growth model was developed based on the specific intake of digestible protein, and general assumptions on protein content and protein retention efficiency in rainbow trout. The model indicated that increased protein digestibility only partly explained growth increase and that additional factors were important for growth increment

Production of highly inbred salmonids by gynogenesis

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Unsettling humanitarian binaries: Civic humanitarianism and relational aid among South Sudanese refugees in Uganda

The work of ‘local responders’, including crisis-affected populations and civic humanitarians have gained more attention in humanitarian practice following the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit’s call for localising humanitarian aid. In this article, we draw on research conducted among South Sudanese refugees in Uganda to examine how crisis-affected people and their neighbours support themselves and each other in situations of protracted displacement. Through the lens of ‘critical localism’, we present narratives of how individuals and groups of refugees engage in and are shaped by different aid practices over time, unsettling conventional humanitarian binaries such as the international-local, principled-non-principled, professional-non-professional, and formal-informal. The discussion concludes by reflecting on the implications unsettled binaries have for both the understanding of humanitarianism, and the development of more inclusive practices that encompass crisis-affected people and civic humanitarians, not only as recipients, conduits, or facilitators of aid, but also as active agents who shape humanitarian policy and practice.publishedVersio

Does Participatory Planning Promise Too Much? Global Discourses and the Glass Ceiling of Participation in Urban Malawi

This article discusses how global ideas on co-production and citizenship built from below are translated into community mobilization and participatory planning practices in urban Malawi. It shows how limited national and local resources, disconnections from national and urban policies of redistribution, and a local politics shaped by both clientelism and democratic reforms create a glass ceiling for what global models of community mobilization and participation are able to achieve. It calls for a more systematic and empirically diverse research agenda to better understand how participatory discourses and practices embedded in grassroots organizing are transferred and mediated in place.acceptedVersio

Effect of diets containing a purified soybean trypsin inhibitor on growth performance, digestive proteases and intestinal histology in juvenile sea bream (Sparus aurata L.)

Juvenile sea bream were fed on diets containing 0.0, 2.0 or 4.0 g/kg of a soybean trypsin inhibitor (SBTI) for 30 days. The growth performance, total protease activity and intestinal histology were studied after 0,15 and 30 days of dietary treatment. No signi¢cant di¡erences were found in the weight gain, speci¢c growth rate (SGR) and feed conversion rate in fish fed on inhibitor-supplemented diets when compared with those fed on an inhibitor-free diet. Only the SGR at day 15 decreased signi¢cantly with protease inhibitor inclusion, although this effect was not observed at day 30. In relation to proteolytic activity at day 15, the total protease activity in the distal intestine decreased in ¢sh fed on inhibitor-supplemented diets. Zymograms of these extracts showed that the SBTI reduced the intensity of some proteolytic fractions in the distal intestine. A noticeable reduction in the protease activity of the intestinal content in fish fed onthe highest level of soybean inhibitor (4.0 g/kg) was also observed. However, at day 30, the inhibition e¡ect on these active bands was not detected, and the total protease activity was similar to that in ¢sh fed on an inhibitor-free diet. Histological examination revealed no perceptible differences in the intestinal structure between any of the diet groups. In addition, all ¢shweremaintained under experimentation for 10 more days and fed on an inhibitor-free diet to determine whether the possible effects caused by the protease inhibitor could be reverted.The administration of SBTI-supplemented diets did not affect sea bream growth performance or intestine histology after 30 days, and only a decrease in the total alkaline protease activity was found at day 15

Handling Compounded Uncertainty in Spatial Planning and Humanitarian Action in Unexpected Floods in Wayanad, Kerala: Towards a Contextualised Contingency Planning Approach

Increasing environmental crises due to climate change calls for bridging the research and operational logics of spatial planning and humanitarian response. This article explores how long-term spatial planning and short-term humanitarian responses relate to three facets of uncertainty that are particularly relevant in developmental contexts, namely epistemic uncertainty, ontic uncertainty, and ambiguity. The authors explore these facets through a case study of uncertainty, that of unexpected monsoon floods in 2018 and 2019 in Wayanad, a peri-urban hill district in Kerala, India. Through the case, they show that compounded uncertainty leads to ambiguity in action, but that this ambiguity can be ameliorated by a contextualised contingency planning approach. The authors conclude the article by outlining the approach in spatial planning that prioritises flexible and adaptable decision-making to enhance iterative organisational learning and action, as well as cross-sectoral dialogue to deal with uncertainty.publishedVersio

"The Citizen" as a Ghost Subject in Co-Producing Smart Sustainable Cities: An Intersectional Approach

The importance and benefits of engaging citizens as co-producers of urban transformation have been increasingly recognised. However, the mere implementation of citizen co-production does not guarantee more legitimate or inclusive policy decisions and outcomes, especially when power inequalities that shape local decision-making remain unaddressed. This article examines the transformative potential of citizen co-production in smart sustainable city initiatives using two successive citizen panels in Trondheim, Norway, as cases. The study aimed to understand the role of citizen co-production in these panels, and the notion of "the citizen" within their frameworks. Three challenges with co-production were identified. Firstly, the ad-hoc nature of citizen engagement emphasised individual participation rather than facilitating collective spaces from which political agency could emerge. Secondly, citizens' viewpoints were perceived as uninformed preferences that could be transformed through professional guidance. This, coupled with the closed nature of the initiatives, raises questions about the transformative potential of the processes, particularly in challenging the underlying premises of citizen co-production shaped by a neoliberal discourse of smart sustainable cities. The article concludes with a call to analyse citizen co-production spaces through an intersectional lens that attends to relational understandings of power dynamics and identities. This analysis should not only consider who participates, but also how "the citizen" as a subject is conceptualised and mobilised, how citizens' interests and knowledge are taken into account, and the political significance of their involvement

Voicing noise: Political agency and the trialectics of participation in urban Malawi

Participation is promoted as the main engine for transformation in urban planning and slum upgrading in Malawi, despite the fact that most projects never get beyond the planning stage. Serious participation fatigue has been identified in many areas, but little is done to change the dominant script. This article comes out of an action research project with groups of urban poor and their organizations in Malawi. It analyses existing spaces in which participatory planning and slum upgrading take place, and reflects on what combinations of participatory spaces that might serve to enable change. The authors define political agency and locate potential transformation in agonistic spaces that open up for rupture and for people’s interest to be accepted as voice rather than noise. At the same time, participants in urban Malawi often wish to be included into existing frameworks rather than challenging them. The article therefore explores a third way between a programme of insurgent radical action and the more pragmatic consensus-based participation model practised in Malawi today. Here, the potential for transformation is to be found not within one group or one type of space, but in the ways in which different spaces of participation connect, overlap and partly constitute each other. To better understand the transformative potential of participation in the context of urban planning in Malawi, we thus propose a ‘trialectics’ of participatory spaces where ‘claimed’, ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ dimensions of participation connect, overlap, and open up for ways in which actors can meet