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  • Publication
    Democratic Values ​​in Nagari: An Analysis on Electoral System Shifts in One Province of Indonesia
    (2024-12-15) Yarni, Meri; Adeb Davega, Prasna; Yetniwati, Yetniwati; Saputra, Beny; Department of Legal Studies
    The Nagari system, a traditional form of regional government in Minangkabau, has historically employed a direct election method that empowers community members to elect their leaders. This model of participation aligns with the democratic values enshrined stated in the 1945 Constitution and the principles of human rights. However, a 2018 regulation altered this process, transitioning the selection of Nagari leaders from direct community engagement to an indirect election facilitated by the Nagari Traditional Council (KAN). This change was justified as a means to prevent the election of leaders who do not reflect the community’s values. This article seeks to identify the most effective democratic framework for village communities, particularly Nagari societies. The primary issue at hand is the shift from direct democracy to representative democracy in the election of Nagari leaders, instigated by Regional Regulation Number 7 of 2018. Utilizing normative legal research methods, this study emphasizes that the new regulation risks undermining democratic values ​​by restricting direct voter engagement. The findings suggest that these modifications to the electoral process weaken the foundational principles of democracy in Nagari by curtailing direct community participation, a vital aspect of local governance and social cohesion. Therefore, it is essential to reevaluate these regulations to safeguard the democratic rights and participatory traditions of the Nagari community, ensuring alignment with constitutional principles of direct democracy and comprehensive citizen involvement.
  • Publication
    Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU. Vol. 29, 2023
    (Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies, 2023) Ivanišević, Dora
  • Publication
    A “Special Category of Women” in Austria and Internationally: Migrant Women Workers, Trade Union Activists, and the Textile Industry, 1960s to 1980s
    (Brill, 2024-05-04) Helfert, Veronika; Hoerder, Dirk; Neissl, Lukas; Department of Gender Studies
    At the beginning of the 1960s, Austria joined Western and Northern European states in recruiting temporary migrant workers. While the European “guestworker” and migrant labour regimes have been subject to multiple studies in the last 40 years, migrant women have rarely been at the centre of these investigations, although their specific issues have comprised a facet of the international labour movement since the 1970s. Female migrant workers faced a double marginalization in the labour movement, both as migrants and as women. By analysing printed source material, archival documents, and interviews with women trade unionists, this chapter examines this specific double marginalization; how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped the labour activism of domestic and migrant working women; and how the international, national, and local levels interacted in the context of the deindustrialization of the Austrian textile industry.
  • Publication
    Renegotiating Skills, Wages, and the Right to Work: On the Gender of Labor Activism around Rationalization in the Bulgarian Tobacco Industry in the Early 1930s
    (Cambridge University Press, 2024-02-19) Masheva, Ivelina Lyubenova; Department of Gender Studies
    Starting from the early 1930s, structural changes in the Bulgarian tobacco industry, prompted by the advent of the world economic crisis and German economic expansionism into Southeastern Europe, led to a deep restructuring of the labor processes, known in the terminology of the time as rationalization, in the Bulgarian tobacco industry. The introduction of the tonga rationalization technology had a deskilling and deeply gendered effect on the industry, making a significant number of skilled male workers redundant, disproportionately decreasing average male wages and leading, in turn, to a further feminization of an already majority-female workforce. The introduction of the new system provoked a strong response from the organized labor movement, which used a variety of tactics to fight against the new technology: from strikes to petitions to tripartite negotiations. Organized labor's reaction was deeply gendered, an aspect that only becomes truly visible if, in addition to gender and skill, we employ the analytical lens of scale. By following trade union policies on the local, national, and international levels, the article goes beyond the carefully crafted gender-neutral language in official documents to reveal tensions between the conservative attitudes of rank-and-file activists and the official trade union agenda. This is especially evident in communist labor politics, where Bulgarian trade union policies on the local and national levels provoked an intervention on the part of the Profintern between 1930 and 1931. The movement's internal contradictions resulted in a polyvalent, ambiguous, and non-linear trade union policy formed through the clash of and negotiations between local activists’ conservative notions of gendered work and family roles and the radical gender program of international communism.
  • Publication
    Radical and Utopian or Partnership between Men und Women? Austrian Trade Union Women, Autonomous Feminists and Labour Related Concerns, 1970s-1980s
    (2024-04-01) Helfert, Veronika; Department of Gender Studies
    This contribution explores the interplay between labour and feminist activism in Austria during the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on the often overlooked nexus of the women’s liberation movement and the trade union movement, the analysis looks into the forms of organisation and protest used by women activists from various political affiliations on the left, including social democrats, communists and emerging alternative and green groups. These protests included the struggle for reproductive rights, conflicting ideas on the inclusion of domestic labour into labour activism, the significance of partnership as an activist concept, and the challenges of joint actions. The material is analysed using a combined source-critical and theory-driven approach, employing hermeneutic methods to reveal specific debates and the complex dynamics of cooperation and distinction in both labour and feminist activism. The study thus shows that the activism of women organised in communist, alternative (radical) left and socialist trade union contexts was part of the activist cycle of feminist movements in the 1970s and 1980s.

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