This blog is now at BarefootLawyers International!

This blog has now been migrated to the blog under BarefootLawyers International (www.barefootlawyers.org).

For those of you who have been following this blog closely (especially my students), you would have heard many announcements of my intention to migrate this DevLawGeek blog to the BarefootLawyers International website and blog. So it has finally happened.

I established BarefootLawyers International as part of my UC Berkeley visitorship and continuing connection. In personal terms, it is basically me growing up and finally establishing a more formal organization that, in 2013, is still essential to appear legitimate to most of society, especially the developing world, so that I can expand innovative activities with more people, and in a more formal manner.

So please do follow me on BarefootLawyers International, where we will hear more voices other than my own. See you there!

UC Berkeley CFP: Is There a New Development? Symposium 5-6 April 2013

UC Berkeley Center for Science Technology Medicine & Society: Call for Papers

The promise and politics of provincializing experts, models, and knowledge in the 21st century

Development, understood as a set of aspirations, an organizational field, sets of expertise, or a guiding imaginary has shifted in response to the post-colonial growth of democracy in the South, the rise of multi-stakeholder partnerships and sustainability discourses, and the frenzied search for innovative models by policy makers worldwide. The North to South transfer of aid and tools, a process in which Northern experts were central, has opened up to the transfer of policies – like impact assessments, ecosystem services, or public health programs – in which Southern experts are increasingly involved. A ‘local’ view of the world has been promoted as more sensitive and appropriate to local, real-world needs and customs for many decades by development scholars and practitioners. However, we are now seeing not only ‘local’ models and policies being developed in situ in democratic countries such as Chile, but we are also seeing the rise of ‘Southern’-led international cooperation agreements, and ‘Southern’ models travelling to the ‘North’. For example, transport policies from Bogota are being implemented in San Francisco, while multiple African nations are receiving development aid from Brazil and technical advice from Bolivia.

New Paper on Global Privatization by David Brown

J. David Brown, US Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Heriot-Watt University - Centre for Economic Reform and Transformation (CERT), John S. Earle, George Mason University - School of Public Policy, Central European University (CEU) - Department of Economics, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and Scott Gehlbach, University of Wisconsin, Madison - Department of Political Science, Harvard University - Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies have a new piece on Privatization.

"We the People" Software is now Open Source

The software that powers "We the People"  https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions  -- the epetition platform for the U.S. Presidency -- has been made free and open source and is now available on GitHub  https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition. Here is background information from Andrew Webster at The Verge:  http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/24/3265491/white-house-we-the-people-open-source  (shortlink:  http://vrge.co/QBgO80  )

New AfricLaw Blog for African Rule of Law Issues

AfricLaw, launched in April 2012, is a blog which provides a platform for discussion for those interested in the rule and role of law in Africa. The AfricLaw blog is a joint venture of the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa (ICLA) and the Centre for Human Rights (CHR) of the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria.

All areas of law applicable to Africa are covered, both international (global and continental) and national. Legal academics and students, researchers, international and national civil servants, legislators and politicians, legal practitioners and judges, as well as those who are not lawyers but have an interest in law are among those who are welcome to participate in the discussions. 

AfricLaw provides a space for the discussion of issues of substance, forming of opinions and information sharing among people living on the continent, those from Africa who are in the diaspora, and anyone else who is interested in participating. AfricLaw will also serve as a vehicle for comments from Africa on legal developments in the rest of the world. 

ABA Event: "Exploring Trends in Promoting the Rule of Law"

The American Bar Association (ABA) is presenting a workshop on "Exploring Trends in Promoting the Rule of Law".
March 28, 2012, 12:30–7:00 p.m.
Venue Georgetown University Hotel and Conference Center
3800 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, D.C.
Register online 

What is most interesting to me is that Technology and Access to Justice is one of the topics of discussion, which is the niche that BarefootLawyers fell into some years ago by accident, and it is so nice to know that the field is expanding and being promoted by the usual suspects such as the ABA. Their topic description:

Technology and Access to Justice

Technology holds significant potential for increasing access to justice. This panel will share examples of the ways in which technology has already contributed in this area, and, if better utilized, how technology can produce further gains. Does the democracy and governance community have realistic expectations about the potential of technology to increase access to justice and, more generally, to propel justice sector reform?

Berkman Series: Unexpected Development: Decolonial Media Aesthetics and Women’s ICT4D Video

Tuesday, April 17, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.


ICT4D (Information Communication Technology for Development) powerfully frames women's grassroots video production in the Global South, much of which is distributed widely through YouTube. Often, these videos reproduce racialized and gendered discourses - legacies of colonialism - in their narratives of economic, social, and technological progress. However, there are also videos by women's groups that defy both the historical linearity and spatial fragmentation of the ICT4D framework. These videos instead remix, reclassify, and globally reconnect women's experiences in the contemporary moment. Culled from hundreds of online videos produced by ICT4D programs, including those in countries classified as having "Low Human Development" according to the Gender Inequality Index of the United Nations Development Program, these media represent powerful instances of a decolonial aesthetics, an altogether unexpected development. These ICT4D videos make compelling claims for other historical narratives and visions for women's future lives, identities, and uses of information communication technologies. 

Dalida María Benfield's research addresses artists' and activists' creative uses of video and other networked digital media towards social justice projects. Her work is focused on the transformational capacities of media art across different scales. As an artist and activist, she has developed production, education, exhibition, and distribution initiatives focused on youth, women, people of color in the U.S., and local and transnational social movements, including co-founding the media collective Video Machete. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of California-Berkeley in Comparative Ethnic Studies with Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. RSVP Required. more information on Berkman's website>