Making the COVID-19 pandemic visible: Grass-roots mapping initiates in Rio de Janeiro

During this past year, digital maps have been used around the world to spatially display COVID-19 cases and deaths. Some of these maps aggregate official government data, and others are built with user-generated content. Particularly in low-income communities, where residents do not have proper access to tests, user-generated maps help people understand the scope of the pandemic. Two examples of grass-roots initiatives that use maps to make the pandemic visible are Conexão Saúde and Painel Unificador de Favelas. Both emerged in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), one of the countries mostly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper describes the implementation of these initiatives, considering how networked grass-roots approaches can be effective in locally mapping a pandemic. The findings reveal that the interconnection among mobile platforms, community leaders and NGOs are critical socio-technical assemblages that help visualize a public health crisis that would otherwise remain invisible to the world.

Youth waves in transboundary water diplomacy

Young people, aged between 18 and 29, have an untapped potential to generate effective transboundary water diplomacy. Two thirds of the 263 transboundary water bodies around the world have no cooperative agreement, and climate change is expected to exacerbate pre-existing challenges. There are three key rationales for involving youth in transboundary governance: doing so is a form of climate justice; youth have a recognised ability to aid peacebuilding and conflict resolution; and there are a number of positive multiplier effects of youth empowerment as reflected by the Sustainable Development Goals. Case studies are presented to highlight these points. In the Nile Basin, youth have been involved in grass-roots initiatives, including a workshop on transboundary diplomacy by the Water Youth Network, and the Nile Project, where cultural connection across borders is achieved through music and a university scholars’ programme.

Social Justice and Converging Theories: Library Service for Those with Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD)

While libraries have sought to advance diversity in their services, they have yet to engage a specific population which tests the limits of the profession’s capabilities and the scope of its mission. Those with Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD) combine the categories of learning and physical disabilities and demand the highest level of support. But the impediments to reading imposed by their cognitive condition make it difficult for them to access the library’s materials. Beset by funding shortages and systemic change, what are libraries to do? This study examines how convergent trends in educational theory and practice as well as grass-roots initiatives have created new possibilities for library services to this population. The study reviews these trends as well as a case study to suggest that libraries have much of what they need in their traditional programming and training when combined with a deeper understanding of the dynamics of social justice.

Nudging the narrative: heading in the 'right direction'

Lack of engagement with rangelands by the general public, politicians and some practitioners has led to policy failure and unsustainable practice. We argue that thinking in terms of cultural reciprocity with land will lead to greater sustainability of rangeland uses. Many grass-roots initiatives are already showing the way by working at the boundary of science, society and decision makers, involving everyone with a stake in the outcome and developing genuine collaboration and acceptance of diverse value systems.

Rozwój i stan krajobrazu językowego – przypadek języka wilamowskiego

The development and current state of the linguistic landscape – the case of the Wymysorys languageWymysorys is a micro-language with Germanic roots spoken by the residents of Wilamowice, a small Silesian town located between Oświęcim and Bielsko-Biała, where it was brought by settlers from Western Europe in the thirteenth century. It has been the subject of scholarly interest among specialists in a number of fields, not only linguistics and ethnology, since the early twentieth century. Following a ban issued by local authorities in 1945, the use of Wymysorys was prohibited and public manifestations of local culture were severely punished. This policy resulted in a drastic decline of the number of its users. The recent interest of researchers is focused not only on the documentation of Wymysorys or its sociolinguistic situation in the past and today, but also on the effects of its revitalization in the last decade. Despite the lack of institutional support, the users’ community has been engaged in grass-roots initiatives leading to the emergence of Wymysorys in the cultural landscape. Recent activity of its users indicates that the language has already spread beyond the circles of local activists and, after years of persecution, functions again in society, evolving and taking new forms. Rozwój i stan krajobrazu językowego – przypadek języka wilamowskiegoJęzyk wilamowski, którym posługują się mieszkańcy Wilamowic (wym. Wymysoü), od początku XX wieku interesuje naukowców wielu dziedzin – nie tylko lingwistów i etnologów. Został on przywieziony przez osadników z Europy Zachodniej w XIII wieku na teren obecnych Wilamowic – małego miasteczka na Śląsku leżącego między Oświęcimiem a Bielskiem-Białą. Na skutek zakazu wydanego przez władze lokalne w 1945 roku używanie wilamowskiego było zabronione, a wszelkie publiczne przejawy odmiennej kultury ostro karane, w związku z czym liczba użytkowników wilamowskiego zaczęła drastycznie maleć. Zainteresowanie badaczy ostatnimi czasy wzbudza nie tylko kwestia dokumentacji tego mikrojęzyka o germańskich korzeniach czy stan etnolingwistyczny. Obserwacji podlegają również obecne efekty zaaplikowanych w ostatniej dekadzie procesów rewitalizacji językowej i zmiany lokalnej, a także państwowej polityki językowej. Mimo braku instytucjonalnego wsparcia, społeczeństwo użytkowników oddolnie podejmuje inicjatywy, których efektem jest między innymi pojawianie się wilamowskiego w krajobrazie kulturowym. Ostatnie działania użytkowników języka świadczą o tym, że opuścił już kręgi lokalnych aktywistów i ponownie, po latach zakazu, funkcjonuje samodzielnie w społeczeństwie, ewoluując i przybierając nowe formy.

Zieleń w Warszawskim Standardzie Mieszkaniowym

Warsaw Housing Standard version 1.2 (Warszawski Standard Mieszkaniowy - WSM 1.2) developed in 2018 by the City Council of Warsaw lists a nature, and a greenery as one of five priorities in urban investments. That is why it was so important to develop it using principles of the sustainable construction, including the needs of the residents’ community. The aim of the article was to verify the standard’s regulations on the background of processes of dwelling, as well as the changing aesthetic preferences of residents in the field of greenery and popular building and sustainable technology standards. The paper contains extensive quotations of WSM 1.2 and a comparison of indicators and research results. The material aimed characteristics of contemporary directions in landscaping in residential areas and its optimization (including free vegetation and residents’ grass-roots initiatives). The concept of EKOSPOT has also been widely discussed.

Subversive Humanitarianism: Rethinking Refugee Solidarity through Grass-Roots Initiatives

Across Europe, hundreds of thousands of volunteers have brought food, clothes, medicines, and numerous others forms of support to newly arrived refugees. While humanitarian action has always been subversive, I argue that the recent wave of civil actions has pushed its subversive effects one step further. Whereas more modest forms of humanitarian action tend to misrecognise recipients’ social and political subjectivities, their more subversive counterparts can be better understood as enacting a particularistic form of solidarity that emphasises precisely those subjectivities. To explore the potential for political innovation in these civil initiatives, I argue that it can be useful to do so through the lens of “subversive humanitarianism”. More concretely, I suggest the following seven dimensions with which the subversive character of any humanitarian action can be compared across time and space: acts of civil disobedience; the reconstitution of social subjects; contending symbolic spaces; the creation of social spaces and personal bonds; assuming equality; putting minds into motion; and the transformation of individuals’ life-worlds. I support the argument by drawing upon the recent wave of empirical studies on civil initiatives across the continent as well as my own ethnographic data on the Brussels-based Plateforme Citoyenne de Soutien aux Réfugiés.

Grass-Roots Initiatives and Bottom-Up Musealisation Mechanisms in Urban Space: The Case of Heraklion Crete

Heraklion is gradually transforming into the newest tourist destination in Crete, which is one of the most popular island destinations in Greece. The regional statutory and local tourist bodies aim to develop Heraklion as a destination per se, overcoming the “gateway to the rest of the island” identity that the city currently holds. At the same time, grass-roots initiatives are active in the city context, defending public space and urban cultural heritage, in idiosyncratic, bottom-up ways. This paper investigates the role undertaken by three such initiatives, currently active in Heraklion, to better comprehend their possible impact on the urban landscape and cultural heritage, within this gradually developing tourist landscape. The structure, aims and vision of the initiatives were documented through semi-structured interviews. Their actions, despite being diverse, are compared to the wider activity of similar initiatives in Greece, especially against neoliberal politics, culminating in defending public space, activating bottom-up musealisation mechanisms and participating in urban design in their own ways.

The radical turn of Portuguese social work during the democratic transition (1974–76)

The transition to democracy in Portugal in the 1970s provides the socio-historical background for this article. It focuses on the period of 1974–76, known as the revolutionary phase, when a series of progressive political programmes, forms of direct democracy, collective mobilisation and widespread grass-roots initiatives emerged in the aftermath of the dictatorial regime. The experiences of Portuguese social workers in the aforementioned revolutionary vanguards will be compared and interpreted by using the radical social work approaches that sprang up in the UK and US at the time. Ten in-depth interviews with social workers involved in radical intervention during the revolutionary phase will be compared to the key tenets of the radical social work literature of the 1970s.