Sylvia Bawa
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 637753 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Sylvia Bawa |
| NOMBRES | Sylvia |
| APELLIDO | Bawa |
| FIRMA | BAWA S |
| AFILIACIONES | York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0907-4204 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 21 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 36 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 21 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2012 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Whose field? Decolonizing social science research Praxis
African Decolonial Theory
Antipode has become a key platform for engaging with decolonial and anticolonial scholarship, as well as adjacent fields such as Black geographies, Indigenous studies, Latin American feminism, and work on settler‐colonialism. African reference points in this literature, however, have been far less common, both in the journal and more broadly in radical geography. Recognizing that there are several loci of enunciation for decolonial and anticoloni…
Disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on socially vulnerable communities
Objective This work aims to study the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Jane and Finch community, one of the socially vulnerable neighborhoods in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, Canada, in terms of morbidity, mortality, and healthcare services. Methodology A dataset provided by the Black Creek Community Health Centre (BCCHC), gathered from different health-related portals, covering various health statistics during C…
From negotiated to covert
This article examines married women’s agency in marketing and income use for staple crops grown on jointly held fields in four African countries: cowpea in Ghana, maize in South Africa and Kenya, and matooke banana in Uganda. The article is based on a series of workshops in each country in which small-scale farmers participated in focus group discussions and a participatory mapping of value chains. Our results show that in Ghana and South Africa,…
The gendered value chain of matooke banana and its implications for tissue culture adoption in Uganda
Tissue culture banana is promoted as a form of micro-propagation that can aid farmers in managing pests and disease in Uganda, the country with the largest per capita consumption of banana in the world. But uptake amongst smallholder farmers remains low. This study recruited 71 farmers from five banana-growing districts in Uganda to assess how gender dynamics of matooke production impact the adoption and sustained use of tissue culture. We collab…
Canada–AU human rights engagements
Despite the problematique of Global North/South relationships, human rights require transnational collaboration to successfully protect vulnerable people in the world. In particular, human rights engagements between Africa and the West are cemented in legacies of colonialism and mediated by development discourses that portray the continent as a paragon of poverty, corruption and backwardness. Within this context, we explore how an African Union (…
Culture, Rights, and African Women’s Futures
The Socialization of Human Rights and the African Human Rights Action Plan
This article critically analyzes human rights socialization in Africa through the lens of the draft African Human Rights Action Plan ( AHRAP ). It argues that the AHRAP presents a framework for human rights socialization, and it speaks to human rights socialization in distinctive ways. The article demonstrates that the AHRAP relies on African and international influences and seeks to propagate norms inspired by these influences. It analyzes three…
Women’s Empowerment in Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Culture, Rights, and African Women’s Futures
Assessing the African Union's 2016–19 Human Rights Action Planning Process
This article assesses the African Union's planning process regarding the development of the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) against the dominant or conventional “ideal” or model of human rights action planning. It examines the extent to which the AU's process followed or departed from the conventional model, the strengths and weaknesses of the AU human rights action planning process, and the lessons scholars and policymakers have learned…
Presence through absence? Understanding the role of capital in the African Human Rights Action Plan
This study examines the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) through the lens of Upendra Baxi's germinal theory on the emergence in our time of a 'trade-related, market-friendly human rights' (TREMF) thesis that is challenging the specific understandings of 'people-centric' human rights that are predicated in the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDH). Baxi contends, instead, that the dominant strands of the cont…
Christianity, tradition, and gender inequality in postcolonial Ghana
In postcolonial societies, emancipation and empowerment are often dialectically situated within colonial discourses of oppression and disempowerment. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the potential of religious institutions to contribute positively to women’s liberation is highly debatable. In particular, women’s ability to interpret Christian religious doctrine to advance their desire for equal rights depends largely on other leveraging factors such as edu…
People come and go but we don’t see anything”
In different fields of study, scholars interested in making a positive difference in the lives of their research communities insist on engaging policy makers and activists in their work. Paulo Freire, one of the most widely known public intellectuals, asserts that praxis enables critical thought, awareness and collaborative action for emancipation for oppressed groups. Within this framework, our contribution aims to provoke thinking on the need f…
Agency, Social Status and Performing Marriage in Postcolonial Societies
This article examines contextually-grounded perspectives on the socio-political significance of marriage in contemporary Ghanaian society. Drawing on qualitative interviews among men and women in northwestern Ghana, this article argues that, beyond historicizing the institution of monogamous marriage, women's agency in desiring, and navigating marriages are performatively agentic and tied to attaining a myriad of socio-cultural, economic and poli…
“Feminists make too much noise!”
Despite the crucial role feminist movements play in securing progressive development policies, legislation and socio-legal protections for women, labeling women’s rights issues as feminist has contradictory, mostly negative, effects on the women’s movement in Africa. This paper discusses research findings that show that older women (activists) are more likely to self-identify as feminists than younger women in Ghana. I argue that, while resistanc…
(Un)African women
The concrete and abstract geographies of difference on the African continent not only arise from environmental, socio-cultural and religious factors but also from the historical and differential impacts and experiences of colonization and its legacies. In this paper, we use the web series, An African City, as a reference point, to examine the troubling nature of binary depictions of a colonial/traditional Africa and a new/modern/global Africa. Re…
Paradoxes of (dis)empowerment in the postcolony
Women’s empowerment discourses in Africa involve contradictory desires from women on one hand and society at large on the other. This article argues that the traditional validation mechanisms for women’s identities are crucial avenues for analysing both the conceptions and experiences of empowerment. Drawing on primary ethnographic data, I analyse paradoxes in women’s empowerment discourses in postcolonial Ghanaian societies, where neoliberal dis…
A Post-development Hoax? (Re)-examining the Past, Present and Future of Development Studies
Because of the absence of evidence to show for its utility, the notion of ‘development’ has been fraught with many debates over the years. This paper is concerned with re-examining the future of development studies, based on its past and present trajectories. The argument here is that development may be useful if its norms and practices become context-specific and are made to benefit its purported beneficiaries. The chronology spans the period af…
Autonomy and policy independence in Africa
Drawing on empirical data gathered from discussions with executive directors of NGOs in Ghana, this paper critically analyses the complex multi-tier relationships between NGOs and their donor partners and how these affect outcomes of their development projects in Ghana. The paper discusses how experiences with funding agencies inform crucial shifts in NGO programming for poverty alleviation. This paper argues that, given their (NGOs') peculiar po…
Women's rights and culture in Africa
Drawing on findings from field research in Ghana, analyses of the 2003 Maputo Protocol on women's rights in Africa and other human rights instruments, this article discusses the challenges of advocating for individual women's rights in African states. The article examines the strategies women's rights advocates employ in navigating cultural hindrances to women's rights and negotiating women's individual rights within Ghana's socio-cultural and po…
Paradoxes of (dis)empowerment in the postcolony
Women’s empowerment discourses in Africa involve contradictory desires from women on one hand and society at large on the other. This article argues that the traditional validation mechanisms for women’s identities are crucial avenues for analysing both the conceptions and experiences of empowerment. Drawing on primary ethnographic data, I analyse paradoxes in women’s empowerment discourses in postcolonial Ghanaian societies, where neoliberal dis…
A Post-development Hoax? (Re)-examining the Past, Present and Future of Development Studies
Because of the absence of evidence to show for its utility, the notion of ‘development’ has been fraught with many debates over the years. This paper is concerned with re-examining the future of development studies, based on its past and present trajectories. The argument here is that development may be useful if its norms and practices become context-specific and are made to benefit its purported beneficiaries. The chronology spans the period af…
Agency, Social Status and Performing Marriage in Postcolonial Societies
This article examines contextually-grounded perspectives on the socio-political significance of marriage in contemporary Ghanaian society. Drawing on qualitative interviews among men and women in northwestern Ghana, this article argues that, beyond historicizing the institution of monogamous marriage, women's agency in desiring, and navigating marriages are performatively agentic and tied to attaining a myriad of socio-cultural, economic and poli…
Women's rights and culture in Africa
Drawing on findings from field research in Ghana, analyses of the 2003 Maputo Protocol on women's rights in Africa and other human rights instruments, this article discusses the challenges of advocating for individual women's rights in African states. The article examines the strategies women's rights advocates employ in navigating cultural hindrances to women's rights and negotiating women's individual rights within Ghana's socio-cultural and po…
Women’s Empowerment in Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
People come and go but we don’t see anything”
In different fields of study, scholars interested in making a positive difference in the lives of their research communities insist on engaging policy makers and activists in their work. Paulo Freire, one of the most widely known public intellectuals, asserts that praxis enables critical thought, awareness and collaborative action for emancipation for oppressed groups. Within this framework, our contribution aims to provoke thinking on the need f…
(Un)African women
The concrete and abstract geographies of difference on the African continent not only arise from environmental, socio-cultural and religious factors but also from the historical and differential impacts and experiences of colonization and its legacies. In this paper, we use the web series, An African City, as a reference point, to examine the troubling nature of binary depictions of a colonial/traditional Africa and a new/modern/global Africa. Re…
Presence through absence? Understanding the role of capital in the African Human Rights Action Plan
This study examines the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) through the lens of Upendra Baxi's germinal theory on the emergence in our time of a 'trade-related, market-friendly human rights' (TREMF) thesis that is challenging the specific understandings of 'people-centric' human rights that are predicated in the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDH). Baxi contends, instead, that the dominant strands of the cont…
Women's rights and culture in Africa
Drawing on findings from field research in Ghana, analyses of the 2003 Maputo Protocol on women's rights in Africa and other human rights instruments, this article discusses the challenges of advocating for individual women's rights in African states. The article examines the strategies women's rights advocates employ in navigating cultural hindrances to women's rights and negotiating women's individual rights within Ghana's socio-cultural and po…
Autonomy and policy independence in Africa
Drawing on empirical data gathered from discussions with executive directors of NGOs in Ghana, this paper critically analyses the complex multi-tier relationships between NGOs and their donor partners and how these affect outcomes of their development projects in Ghana. The paper discusses how experiences with funding agencies inform crucial shifts in NGO programming for poverty alleviation. This paper argues that, given their (NGOs') peculiar po…
A Post-development Hoax? (Re)-examining the Past, Present and Future of Development Studies
Because of the absence of evidence to show for its utility, the notion of ‘development’ has been fraught with many debates over the years. This paper is concerned with re-examining the future of development studies, based on its past and present trajectories. The argument here is that development may be useful if its norms and practices become context-specific and are made to benefit its purported beneficiaries. The chronology spans the period af…
Paradoxes of (dis)empowerment in the postcolony
Women’s empowerment discourses in Africa involve contradictory desires from women on one hand and society at large on the other. This article argues that the traditional validation mechanisms for women’s identities are crucial avenues for analysing both the conceptions and experiences of empowerment. Drawing on primary ethnographic data, I analyse paradoxes in women’s empowerment discourses in postcolonial Ghanaian societies, where neoliberal dis…
“Feminists make too much noise!”
Despite the crucial role feminist movements play in securing progressive development policies, legislation and socio-legal protections for women, labeling women’s rights issues as feminist has contradictory, mostly negative, effects on the women’s movement in Africa. This paper discusses research findings that show that older women (activists) are more likely to self-identify as feminists than younger women in Ghana. I argue that, while resistanc…
(Un)African women
The concrete and abstract geographies of difference on the African continent not only arise from environmental, socio-cultural and religious factors but also from the historical and differential impacts and experiences of colonization and its legacies. In this paper, we use the web series, An African City, as a reference point, to examine the troubling nature of binary depictions of a colonial/traditional Africa and a new/modern/global Africa. Re…
Christianity, tradition, and gender inequality in postcolonial Ghana
In postcolonial societies, emancipation and empowerment are often dialectically situated within colonial discourses of oppression and disempowerment. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the potential of religious institutions to contribute positively to women’s liberation is highly debatable. In particular, women’s ability to interpret Christian religious doctrine to advance their desire for equal rights depends largely on other leveraging factors such as edu…
People come and go but we don’t see anything”
In different fields of study, scholars interested in making a positive difference in the lives of their research communities insist on engaging policy makers and activists in their work. Paulo Freire, one of the most widely known public intellectuals, asserts that praxis enables critical thought, awareness and collaborative action for emancipation for oppressed groups. Within this framework, our contribution aims to provoke thinking on the need f…
Agency, Social Status and Performing Marriage in Postcolonial Societies
This article examines contextually-grounded perspectives on the socio-political significance of marriage in contemporary Ghanaian society. Drawing on qualitative interviews among men and women in northwestern Ghana, this article argues that, beyond historicizing the institution of monogamous marriage, women's agency in desiring, and navigating marriages are performatively agentic and tied to attaining a myriad of socio-cultural, economic and poli…
Culture, Rights, and African Women’s Futures
Assessing the African Union's 2016–19 Human Rights Action Planning Process
This article assesses the African Union's planning process regarding the development of the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) against the dominant or conventional “ideal” or model of human rights action planning. It examines the extent to which the AU's process followed or departed from the conventional model, the strengths and weaknesses of the AU human rights action planning process, and the lessons scholars and policymakers have learned…
Presence through absence? Understanding the role of capital in the African Human Rights Action Plan
This study examines the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) through the lens of Upendra Baxi's germinal theory on the emergence in our time of a 'trade-related, market-friendly human rights' (TREMF) thesis that is challenging the specific understandings of 'people-centric' human rights that are predicated in the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDH). Baxi contends, instead, that the dominant strands of the cont…
Culture, Rights, and African Women’s Futures
The Socialization of Human Rights and the African Human Rights Action Plan
This article critically analyzes human rights socialization in Africa through the lens of the draft African Human Rights Action Plan ( AHRAP ). It argues that the AHRAP presents a framework for human rights socialization, and it speaks to human rights socialization in distinctive ways. The article demonstrates that the AHRAP relies on African and international influences and seeks to propagate norms inspired by these influences. It analyzes three…
Women’s Empowerment in Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Canada–AU human rights engagements
Despite the problematique of Global North/South relationships, human rights require transnational collaboration to successfully protect vulnerable people in the world. In particular, human rights engagements between Africa and the West are cemented in legacies of colonialism and mediated by development discourses that portray the continent as a paragon of poverty, corruption and backwardness. Within this context, we explore how an African Union (…
The gendered value chain of matooke banana and its implications for tissue culture adoption in Uganda
Tissue culture banana is promoted as a form of micro-propagation that can aid farmers in managing pests and disease in Uganda, the country with the largest per capita consumption of banana in the world. But uptake amongst smallholder farmers remains low. This study recruited 71 farmers from five banana-growing districts in Uganda to assess how gender dynamics of matooke production impact the adoption and sustained use of tissue culture. We collab…
Disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on socially vulnerable communities
Objective This work aims to study the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Jane and Finch community, one of the socially vulnerable neighborhoods in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, Canada, in terms of morbidity, mortality, and healthcare services. Methodology A dataset provided by the Black Creek Community Health Centre (BCCHC), gathered from different health-related portals, covering various health statistics during C…
From negotiated to covert
This article examines married women’s agency in marketing and income use for staple crops grown on jointly held fields in four African countries: cowpea in Ghana, maize in South Africa and Kenya, and matooke banana in Uganda. The article is based on a series of workshops in each country in which small-scale farmers participated in focus group discussions and a participatory mapping of value chains. Our results show that in Ghana and South Africa,…
Whose field? Decolonizing social science research Praxis
African Decolonial Theory
Antipode has become a key platform for engaging with decolonial and anticolonial scholarship, as well as adjacent fields such as Black geographies, Indigenous studies, Latin American feminism, and work on settler‐colonialism. African reference points in this literature, however, have been far less common, both in the journal and more broadly in radical geography. Recognizing that there are several loci of enunciation for decolonial and anticoloni…
Political science (18 obras) · Sociology (16 obras) · Law (10 obras) · Economics (8 obras) · Gender Studies (8 obras) · Politics (8 obras) · Human rights (7 obras) · Economic growth (6 obras) · Empowerment (6 obras) · Geography (6 obras)