Regional thickening as game-changing: examining transnational activities of gender and women-focused civil society actors for region-building in Southern Africa

Nedziwe, Cecilia Lwiindi

Title: Regional thickening as game-changing: examining transnational activities of gender and women-focused civil society actors for region-building in Southern Africa
Creator: Nedziwe, Cecilia Lwiindi
Subject: International relations
Subject: Southern Africa Development Community
Subject: Regionalism -- Africa, Southern
Subject: Africa, Southern -- Foreign relations -- 1994-
Subject: Women in development -- Africa, Southern
Subject: Women -- Social conditions -- Africa, Southern
Subject: Women -- Political activity -- Africa, Southern
Subject: Women in public life -- Africa, Southern
Subject: Civil society -- Africa, Southern
Date Issued: 2019
Date: 2019
Type: text
Type: Thesis
Type: Doctoral
Type: PhD
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/95420
Identifier: vital:31154
Description: This thesis argues that norms, in general, have proliferated in a neo-liberalising context since the 1990s, in particular norms on gender, and how they have changed to indicate new agency and influence, amounts to game change. Despite growing transnational activities, regionalisation and the increasing interface between state and non-state regionalism in a transnational context since the advent of liberalisation and democratisation, analyses in regional International Relations (IR) studies, so far, largely maintain linear logic. The increasing non-state processes, and their connection to state processes in norm creation, norm adaptation, norm diffusion and implementation around broad questions of security including in the area of gender, amount to regional thickening. Regional thickening revealed in terms of increasing regionalisation, regionalism, and region-ness whose effect is game-changing challenges mainstream linear approaches in regional IR studies. Game-changing here, refers to, processes promoting the development of norms mentioned above in the interest of contributing to improved security across a region. This study is focused on Southern Africa, defined here, as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. This study’s analytical approach is informed by alternatives to mainstream approaches, emphasising processes, rather than linearity inherent in regional IR studies. By privileging the actual game-changing processes, interactions, and agency around the norm development cycle, this study examines how regional thickening in a transnational context promotes game-changing activities, promoting the development of the norm cycle, seeking to have improved security. A mixed method approach involving gathering of information from multiple primary and secondary sources are used. The study found transnational activities and regionalisation of gender and women-focused civil society actors, game-changing. These civil society actors organised in two ways. First, by way of advocacy and in seeking representation within intergovernmental policymaking structures at a regional level. Second, by way of organising around transnational communities in a transnational context in the interest of addressing gendered insecurities at localised levels. Regional thickening as game-changing here pointed to a growing recognition and participation of civil society actors in intergovernmental policymaking spaces as having created a groundswell for game change at localised levels. This led to policy development, adaptation, diffusion, and implementation by both state and non-state actors contributing to norm changes, improved social policies, and to greater security. The actual changes emerging from these actors’ activities on the ground are in terms of unlearning patriarchal behaviours, opening up development for women, and increasing their living standards, education, health, and their freedom. In assessing the transnational environment on gendered insecurity in Southern Africa, this thesis developed an innovative framework of regional thickening as game-changing. This framework plots how game-changing developed, evolved, and its importance in addressing gendered insecurity. The thesis has proposed that game-changing transnational activities and regionalisation that change, and diffuse norms to break learnt behaviour, have helped disrupt rigid institutionalisation, and are aiding to bring non-linear discourses to the fore.
Format: 223 pages
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Political and International Studies
Language: English
Rights: Nedziwe, Cecilia Lwiindi

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