Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Preface
This collection brings together the peer-reviewed work of a deeply engaged
group, whose insight and understanding of the different dimensions of
women’s livelihood, citizenship and development would not normally
be found in one volume. Women’s Livelihood Rights: Recasting Citizenship
for Development reflects an ongoing effort towards a dialogue across different
disciplines and varied development interventions. A common
thread that runs through the contributions is the belief that enhanced
understanding through research improves action on the ground and that
this understanding cannot come from desk studies, but through empathetic
interaction with poor people, including women, and through
learning from their struggles.
Women’s Livelihood Rights takes forward the issues and concerns of
Livelihood and Gender: Equity in Community Resource Management (2004).
In 2003, the informal group of researchers, women and men who had
voluntarily put together Livelihood and Gender formed ‘jivika,’ an
e-discussion group. 1 We had different disciplinary and institutional
affiliations and had been interacting fairly regularly since late 1999; we
hoped jivika, which literally means livelihood, would enable us to continue
to share our interests and concerns regarding gender equity in natural
resource-based livelihoods and anti-poverty initiatives in South Asia and
beyond. By 2005, jivika grew from the initial 20 members to more than
180 fieldworkers, activists, action-researchers, students, teachers, scholars,
resource managers and development practitioners. A somewhat fluid
inner core of active members has kept up a steady exchange of information,
knowledge and experience. Most important is that jivika has
facilitated our association as researchers and practitioners, and provided
opportunities to share and learn, growing into what some have described
as a virtual ‘community of practice’. 2
Women’s rights to political and economic spaces have figured regularly
on jivika. So, in early 2005, when Kumud Sharma, then president of the
Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS), invited me to coordinate
a sub-theme at the IAWS conference on ‘Citizenship, Sovereignty and