Lone Riisgaard
Biographic Data
| ID | 83394 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lone Riisgaard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lone |
| FAMILY NAME | Riisgaard |
| SIGNATURE | RIISGAARD L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Roskilde University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8827-3227 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 129 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Toward a More Globally Attuned Degrowth: Linking Non-Growth Approaches to Direct Democracy and Ecological Sustainability Across Global Divides
This article contributes to the ongoing efforts to develop a more globally attuned degrowth perspective by placing it in dialogue with post-development scholarship. Together, these two critical frameworks challenge dominant growth-oriented paradigms in distinct geopolitical and epistemological contexts. While degrowth, rooted in the Global North, critiques capitalist expansion and advocates for democratically led downscaling, post-development eme…
Invisible Hands: Understanding the Working Conditions and Agency of Apparel Waste-Handling Workers in Bangladesh as Part of the Global Apparel Production Network
Existing research on global apparel production networks (GPNs) has focused almost exclusively on the formal sectors of such networks when discussing labour conditions and workers’ agency. Despite being part of the same network, informal post-production apparel waste-handling sectors and their workers remain largely invisible in academic discussions. Drawing on insights from the literature on GPNs and global recycling networks (GRNs), this article…
Degrowth and (un)sustainable lifestyles in two Danish ecovillages
Based on an extensive qualitative study, this paper explores sustainability in two Danish ecovillages and discusses the findings (meta)theoretically. Linked to the degrowth literature, it takes its point of departure in critical realism by identifying mechanisms related to (un)sustainability in these ecovillages. The most important mechanism generating their sustainable practices is identified as a subsistence political economy, a mechanism roote…
Flower of Transformation: A Reflexive Method for Change in Alternative Organizing
The Flower of Transformation is a community-based tool originating from grassroots alternative organizing in India. This article discusses the potential of the Flower as an innovative co-creative research method, reflecting on its emancipatory potential on the ground as well as its decolonial, reflexive possibilities for researchers. Drawing on literature on participatory, co-creative, and decolonial research methods and the original goals of the…
Challenging the formality bias: The organization of informal work, working relations, and collective agency in Kenya and Tanzania
Understanding inactive membership in voluntary contributory schemes: A case study of micro‐traders in Kenya
Informal workers and Kenya’s National Hospital Insurance Fund: Identifying barriers to voluntary participation
This article investigates the barriers to informal workers’ voluntary participation in Kenya’s national health insurance scheme – the National Hospital Insurance Fund. Based on primary data from both qualitative and quantitative methods, we find that the key determinants of enrolment include social factors, such as marital status, which create demand for insurance, and the role of informal workers’ associations that promote the voluntary uptake o…
Social protection 'from below: Micro traders and their collective associations in Tanzania
This article explores the social protection coverage, needs, and preferences of informal micro traders in Tanzania. In particular, it examines the social protection models implemented ‘from below’ by traders’ own collective associations. Using original survey and interview data, the paper shows how social protection offered by public channels often suffers from a narrow scope and fails to correspond with the key challenges experienced by informal…
What is a Worker? Framing People in the Informal Economy as Part of the Trade Union Constituency in Kenya and Tanzania
This article investigates the ongoing efforts of trade unions in Kenya and Tanzania to enlarge their constituency by reconceptualising the notion of workers to include people in the informal economy. How this process plays out is of immense importance as it challenges established understandings of who a worker is; this in turn poses very difficult questions about rights, representation and the distribution of power both internally in the union mo…
Compliance and cooperation in global value chains: The effects of the better cotton initiative in Pakistan and India
The Better Cotton Imitative (BCI), the world's largest multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) for sustainable cotton production, is a prime example of a hybrid “cooperation-compliance” model used by some MSIs to engage farmers and on-farm workers in the global South. Using a mixed methods approach, we investigate the impacts of this hybrid model on economic, environmental, and labor conditions of farmers and on-farm workers on irrigated cotton farms …
Global Value Chains and Intermediaries in Multi-stakeholder Initiatives in Pakistan and India
In this article, we analyse the role of regulatory intermediaries of the Better Cotton Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) in the global cotton value chain, with a regional focus on India and Pakistan. We conceptualize how the key roles of regulatory intermediaries - translating and verifying compliance with abstract rules in ways that make these rules practical and intelligible for target audiences (in this case, cotton farmers) - m…
Multistakeholder initiatives in global production networks: Naturalizing specific understandings of sustainability through the Better Cotton Initiative
In recent years, various academics, consultants, companies and NGOs have advocated a move towards more cooperative approaches to private sustainability standards to address the widely identified shortcomings of the compliance paradigm. However, is it possible to address these limitations by moving towards stakeholder inclusion and capacity building while at the same time catering to the demands of lead firms supplying the mainstream market? In th…
Powers of the Mask: Political Subjectivation and Rites of Participation in Local-Global Protest
Mask-wearing political protests have been global front page news for several years now; yet, almost no literature exists which attempts to engage the symbolic density and ritual role played by such mask-wearing acts. We argue that mask-wearing has political potentiality which relates to deeper-lying anthropological features of mask-wearing. The powers of the mask reside in the transformative ability of masks to unify and transcend key oppositiona…
Introduction to the symposium: The exercise of power through multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainable agriculture and its inclusion and exclusion outcomes
Labour Management on Contemporary Kenyan Cut Flower Farms: Foundations of an Industrial-Civic Compromise
This paper describes the labour management system applied since around 2005 on farms accounting for the bulk of the output of the Kenyan cut flower sector, and provides an analysis of the foundations of this system. Using categories drawn from convention theory, this system is characterized in terms of specific approaches to hiring, training and promotion; labour retention; work organization and worker deployment; payment systems and supervision,…
A New System of Labour Management in African Large-Scale Agriculture
This paper applies a convention theory (CT) approach to the analysis of labour management systems in African large-scale farming. The reconstruction of previous analyses of high-value crop production on large-scale farms in Africa in terms of CT suggests that, since 1980-95, labour management has moved from a 'domestic' to a 'market' system. However, data collected by the authors from a sample of 11 large-scale rose farms in Kenya in 2011 (coveri…
Challenges of Agro-Food Standards Conformity: Lessons from East Africa and Policy Implications
Towards more stringent sustainability standards? Trends in the cut flower industry
Sustainability initiatives have proliferated in many industries in recent years. This has led to an increasing number of standards that exist in parallel seeking to address more or less the same social and environmental issues. In this paper I explore whether parallelism has spurred a race to the bottom in flower standards seeking to regulate social conditions in the production of cut flowers aimed at the European Union market. The analysis sugge…
Integrating Poverty and Environmental Concerns into Value‐Chain Analysis: A Conceptual Framework
Many policy prescriptions emphasise poverty reduction through closer integration of poor people or areas with global markets. Global value chain (GVC) studies reveal how firms and farms in developing countries are upgraded by being integrated in global markets, but few explicitly document the impact on poverty, gender and the environment, or conversely, how value chain restructuring is in turn mediated by local history, social relations and envir…
Integrating Poverty and Environmental Concerns into Value‐Chain Analysis: A Strategic Framework and Practical Guide
This article aims to guide the design and implementation of action‐research projects in value‐chain analysis by presenting a strategic framework focused on small producers and trading and processing firms in developing countries. Its stepwise approach – building on the conceptual framework set out in a companion article – covers in detail what to do, questions to be asked and issues to be considered, and integrates poverty, gender, labour and env…
Global Value Chains, Labor Organization and Private Social Standards: Lessons from East African Cut Flower Industries
Global Value Chains, Labor Organization and Private Social Standards: Lessons from East African Cut Flower Industries
Introduction to the symposium: The exercise of power through multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainable agriculture and its inclusion and exclusion outcomes
Towards more stringent sustainability standards? Trends in the cut flower industry
Sustainability initiatives have proliferated in many industries in recent years. This has led to an increasing number of standards that exist in parallel seeking to address more or less the same social and environmental issues. In this paper I explore whether parallelism has spurred a race to the bottom in flower standards seeking to regulate social conditions in the production of cut flowers aimed at the European Union market. The analysis sugge…
Powers of the Mask: Political Subjectivation and Rites of Participation in Local-Global Protest
Mask-wearing political protests have been global front page news for several years now; yet, almost no literature exists which attempts to engage the symbolic density and ritual role played by such mask-wearing acts. We argue that mask-wearing has political potentiality which relates to deeper-lying anthropological features of mask-wearing. The powers of the mask reside in the transformative ability of masks to unify and transcend key oppositiona…
Labour Management on Contemporary Kenyan Cut Flower Farms: Foundations of an Industrial-Civic Compromise
This paper describes the labour management system applied since around 2005 on farms accounting for the bulk of the output of the Kenyan cut flower sector, and provides an analysis of the foundations of this system. Using categories drawn from convention theory, this system is characterized in terms of specific approaches to hiring, training and promotion; labour retention; work organization and worker deployment; payment systems and supervision,…
A New System of Labour Management in African Large-Scale Agriculture
This paper applies a convention theory (CT) approach to the analysis of labour management systems in African large-scale farming. The reconstruction of previous analyses of high-value crop production on large-scale farms in Africa in terms of CT suggests that, since 1980-95, labour management has moved from a 'domestic' to a 'market' system. However, data collected by the authors from a sample of 11 large-scale rose farms in Kenya in 2011 (coveri…
Challenges of Agro-Food Standards Conformity: Lessons from East Africa and Policy Implications
Multistakeholder initiatives in global production networks: Naturalizing specific understandings of sustainability through the Better Cotton Initiative
In recent years, various academics, consultants, companies and NGOs have advocated a move towards more cooperative approaches to private sustainability standards to address the widely identified shortcomings of the compliance paradigm. However, is it possible to address these limitations by moving towards stakeholder inclusion and capacity building while at the same time catering to the demands of lead firms supplying the mainstream market? In th…
Compliance and cooperation in global value chains: The effects of the better cotton initiative in Pakistan and India
The Better Cotton Imitative (BCI), the world's largest multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) for sustainable cotton production, is a prime example of a hybrid “cooperation-compliance” model used by some MSIs to engage farmers and on-farm workers in the global South. Using a mixed methods approach, we investigate the impacts of this hybrid model on economic, environmental, and labor conditions of farmers and on-farm workers on irrigated cotton farms …
Global Value Chains and Intermediaries in Multi-stakeholder Initiatives in Pakistan and India
In this article, we analyse the role of regulatory intermediaries of the Better Cotton Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) in the global cotton value chain, with a regional focus on India and Pakistan. We conceptualize how the key roles of regulatory intermediaries - translating and verifying compliance with abstract rules in ways that make these rules practical and intelligible for target audiences (in this case, cotton farmers) - m…
Global Value Chains, Labor Organization and Private Social Standards: Lessons from East African Cut Flower Industries
Integrating Poverty and Environmental Concerns into Value‐Chain Analysis: A Conceptual Framework
Many policy prescriptions emphasise poverty reduction through closer integration of poor people or areas with global markets. Global value chain (GVC) studies reveal how firms and farms in developing countries are upgraded by being integrated in global markets, but few explicitly document the impact on poverty, gender and the environment, or conversely, how value chain restructuring is in turn mediated by local history, social relations and envir…
Integrating Poverty and Environmental Concerns into Value‐Chain Analysis: A Strategic Framework and Practical Guide
This article aims to guide the design and implementation of action‐research projects in value‐chain analysis by presenting a strategic framework focused on small producers and trading and processing firms in developing countries. Its stepwise approach – building on the conceptual framework set out in a companion article – covers in detail what to do, questions to be asked and issues to be considered, and integrates poverty, gender, labour and env…
Towards more stringent sustainability standards? Trends in the cut flower industry
Sustainability initiatives have proliferated in many industries in recent years. This has led to an increasing number of standards that exist in parallel seeking to address more or less the same social and environmental issues. In this paper I explore whether parallelism has spurred a race to the bottom in flower standards seeking to regulate social conditions in the production of cut flowers aimed at the European Union market. The analysis sugge…
Challenges of Agro-Food Standards Conformity: Lessons from East Africa and Policy Implications
Introduction to the symposium: The exercise of power through multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainable agriculture and its inclusion and exclusion outcomes
Labour Management on Contemporary Kenyan Cut Flower Farms: Foundations of an Industrial-Civic Compromise
This paper describes the labour management system applied since around 2005 on farms accounting for the bulk of the output of the Kenyan cut flower sector, and provides an analysis of the foundations of this system. Using categories drawn from convention theory, this system is characterized in terms of specific approaches to hiring, training and promotion; labour retention; work organization and worker deployment; payment systems and supervision,…
A New System of Labour Management in African Large-Scale Agriculture
This paper applies a convention theory (CT) approach to the analysis of labour management systems in African large-scale farming. The reconstruction of previous analyses of high-value crop production on large-scale farms in Africa in terms of CT suggests that, since 1980-95, labour management has moved from a 'domestic' to a 'market' system. However, data collected by the authors from a sample of 11 large-scale rose farms in Kenya in 2011 (coveri…
Powers of the Mask: Political Subjectivation and Rites of Participation in Local-Global Protest
Mask-wearing political protests have been global front page news for several years now; yet, almost no literature exists which attempts to engage the symbolic density and ritual role played by such mask-wearing acts. We argue that mask-wearing has political potentiality which relates to deeper-lying anthropological features of mask-wearing. The powers of the mask reside in the transformative ability of masks to unify and transcend key oppositiona…
Multistakeholder initiatives in global production networks: Naturalizing specific understandings of sustainability through the Better Cotton Initiative
In recent years, various academics, consultants, companies and NGOs have advocated a move towards more cooperative approaches to private sustainability standards to address the widely identified shortcomings of the compliance paradigm. However, is it possible to address these limitations by moving towards stakeholder inclusion and capacity building while at the same time catering to the demands of lead firms supplying the mainstream market? In th…
Compliance and cooperation in global value chains: The effects of the better cotton initiative in Pakistan and India
The Better Cotton Imitative (BCI), the world's largest multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) for sustainable cotton production, is a prime example of a hybrid “cooperation-compliance” model used by some MSIs to engage farmers and on-farm workers in the global South. Using a mixed methods approach, we investigate the impacts of this hybrid model on economic, environmental, and labor conditions of farmers and on-farm workers on irrigated cotton farms …
Global Value Chains and Intermediaries in Multi-stakeholder Initiatives in Pakistan and India
In this article, we analyse the role of regulatory intermediaries of the Better Cotton Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) in the global cotton value chain, with a regional focus on India and Pakistan. We conceptualize how the key roles of regulatory intermediaries - translating and verifying compliance with abstract rules in ways that make these rules practical and intelligible for target audiences (in this case, cotton farmers) - m…
What is a Worker? Framing People in the Informal Economy as Part of the Trade Union Constituency in Kenya and Tanzania
This article investigates the ongoing efforts of trade unions in Kenya and Tanzania to enlarge their constituency by reconceptualising the notion of workers to include people in the informal economy. How this process plays out is of immense importance as it challenges established understandings of who a worker is; this in turn poses very difficult questions about rights, representation and the distribution of power both internally in the union mo…
Understanding inactive membership in voluntary contributory schemes: A case study of micro‐traders in Kenya
Informal workers and Kenya’s National Hospital Insurance Fund: Identifying barriers to voluntary participation
This article investigates the barriers to informal workers’ voluntary participation in Kenya’s national health insurance scheme – the National Hospital Insurance Fund. Based on primary data from both qualitative and quantitative methods, we find that the key determinants of enrolment include social factors, such as marital status, which create demand for insurance, and the role of informal workers’ associations that promote the voluntary uptake o…
Social protection 'from below: Micro traders and their collective associations in Tanzania
This article explores the social protection coverage, needs, and preferences of informal micro traders in Tanzania. In particular, it examines the social protection models implemented ‘from below’ by traders’ own collective associations. Using original survey and interview data, the paper shows how social protection offered by public channels often suffers from a narrow scope and fails to correspond with the key challenges experienced by informal…
Challenging the formality bias: The organization of informal work, working relations, and collective agency in Kenya and Tanzania
Toward a More Globally Attuned Degrowth: Linking Non-Growth Approaches to Direct Democracy and Ecological Sustainability Across Global Divides
This article contributes to the ongoing efforts to develop a more globally attuned degrowth perspective by placing it in dialogue with post-development scholarship. Together, these two critical frameworks challenge dominant growth-oriented paradigms in distinct geopolitical and epistemological contexts. While degrowth, rooted in the Global North, critiques capitalist expansion and advocates for democratically led downscaling, post-development eme…
Invisible Hands: Understanding the Working Conditions and Agency of Apparel Waste-Handling Workers in Bangladesh as Part of the Global Apparel Production Network
Existing research on global apparel production networks (GPNs) has focused almost exclusively on the formal sectors of such networks when discussing labour conditions and workers’ agency. Despite being part of the same network, informal post-production apparel waste-handling sectors and their workers remain largely invisible in academic discussions. Drawing on insights from the literature on GPNs and global recycling networks (GRNs), this article…
Degrowth and (un)sustainable lifestyles in two Danish ecovillages
Based on an extensive qualitative study, this paper explores sustainability in two Danish ecovillages and discusses the findings (meta)theoretically. Linked to the degrowth literature, it takes its point of departure in critical realism by identifying mechanisms related to (un)sustainability in these ecovillages. The most important mechanism generating their sustainable practices is identified as a subsistence political economy, a mechanism roote…
Flower of Transformation: A Reflexive Method for Change in Alternative Organizing
The Flower of Transformation is a community-based tool originating from grassroots alternative organizing in India. This article discusses the potential of the Flower as an innovative co-creative research method, reflecting on its emancipatory potential on the ground as well as its decolonial, reflexive possibilities for researchers. Drawing on literature on participatory, co-creative, and decolonial research methods and the original goals of the…
Economics (14 works) · Business (13 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development (6 works) · Organic Food and Agriculture (6 works) · Sustainability (6 works) · Geography (5 works)