ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of civil society as a political actor at a micro-scale. The political dynamics between community-based associations and traditional/customary authorities are examined. Specifically, taking a historic view, the chapter explores how women have collectively responded across time, place and scale to a range of gendered injustices, discriminations and inequalities, interacting with traditional authorities within a complex hybridised fabric of local polities. It is argued that, while community associations can serve as important sites where critical skills in deliberation, bargaining, networking and alliance-building can be developed and honed and where gendered identities and discourses can be challenged and transformed, they can also serve as sites of exclusion and discrimination, serving members’ interests alone and reinforcing existing inequalities and divisions. This can happen where they become captured by and compliant to specific discourses and exigencies of traditional authorities and/or local NGOs and their donors. A case study of the political activism of a women’s association in the resource-rich province of Ituri in the DRC presented towards the end of the chapter, exemplifies these multiple dynamics. It also highlights the impact of the global political economy on local women’s circumstances and political action as well as providing some concrete lessons on how political participation might be engendered within local polities.
