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International aid is about much more than money. The UN Millennium Development Goals and major events like Live 8 have focused the world spotlight on issues of poverty relief and aid like never before, but have not concentrated on the quality of relationships that can make aid succeed or fail. This book, authored by an internationally renowned group of aid practitioners, reveals the contradictions and challenges involved in forging these relationships. International development organizations combine the unbridled play of power and arrogant amnesia with serious and innovative efforts to create a more democratic world, to support transformative learning and to strengthen accountability. The book explores recent attempts from within aid agencies to go against the current flow of top-down results based management by learning how to build lasting partnerships that transfer power to those at the receiving end of aid. More than just a critique, the authors offer a practical framework for understanding relationships in the international aid system and look at the relevance of organizational learning theory, which is widely used in business.
Anthropological interest in new subjects of research and contemporary knowledge practices has turned ethnographic attention to a wide ranging variety of professional fields. Among these the encounter with international development has perhaps been longer and more intimate than any of the others. Anthropologists have drawn critical attention to the interfaces and social effects of development’s discursive regimes but, oddly enough, have paid scant attention to knowledge producers themselves, despite anthropologists being among them. This is the focus of this volume. It concerns the construction and transmission of knowledge about global poverty and its reduction but is equally interested in the social life of development professionals, in the capacity of ideas to mediate relationships, in networks of experts and communities of aid workers, and in the dilemmas of maintaining professional identities. Going well beyond obsolete debates about ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ anthropology, the book examines the transformations that occur as social scientific concepts and practices cross and re-cross the boundary between anthropological and policy making knowledge.
How can international aid professionals manage to deal with the daily dilemmas of working for the wellbeing of people in countries other than their own? A scholar-activist and lifelong development practitioner seeks to answer that question in a book that provides a vivid and accessible insight into the world of aid – its people, ideas and values against the backdrop of a broader historical analysis of the contested ideals and politics of aid operations from the 1960s to the present day. Moving between aid-recipient countries, head office and global policy spaces, Rosalind Eyben critically examines her own behaviour to explore what happens when trying to improve people’s lives in far-away...
Through a series of case studies written by women in development organizations this book reflects on the progress of gender mainstreaming. It shows how feminists can build effective strategies to influence development organizations and attempts to foster greater understanding and forge more effective alliances for social change.
The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development critically examines the context and history of the current demands for results-oriented measurement and for evidence of value for money.This book will inspire development professionals and organizations to cultivate their political skills.
'The Power of Labelling illuminates a fundamental and intriguing dimension of social and political life. Striking cases from a range of policy contexts generate eyeopening analyses of labelling's causes and consequences, uses and abuses, and of alternatives in thinking and relating.' DES GASPER, INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES, THE HAGUE The authors convincingly and often vividly explain how the unavoidable framings and labellings of the objects of policy secrete relations of power which can obscure as much as they reveal and often lead, in policy itself, to perverse outcomes. Their detail is riveting, their analyses persuasive, what they suggest realistic and deeply sensible. This immensely rea...
The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development critically examines the context and history of the current demands for results-oriented measurement and for evidence of value for money.This book will inspire development professionals and organizations to cultivate their political skills.
Rapid and profound changes are taking place in international development. The past two decades have promoted the ideals of participation and partnership, yet key decisions affecting people's lives continue to be made without sufficient attention to the socio-political realities of the countries in which they live. Embedded working traditions, vested interests and institutional inertia mean that old habits and cultures persist among the development community. Planning continues as though it were free of unpredictable interactions among stakeholders. This book is about the need to recognise the complex, non-linear nature of development assistance and how bureaucratic procedures and power relat...
The economic and political empowerment of women continues to be a central focus for development agencies worldwide; access to medical care, education and employment, as well as women's reproductive rights remain key factors effecting women's autonomy. Feminisms, Empowerment and Development explores what women are doing to change their own personal circumstances whilst providing an in-depth analysis of collective action and institutionalized mechanisms aimed at changing structural relations. Drawing on unique, original research and approaching empowerment as a complex process of negotiation, rather than a linear sequence of inputs and outcomes, this crucial collection highlights the difficulty of creating common agendas for the advancement of women's power and rights, and argues for a more nuanced, context-based approach to development theory and practice. An indispensible text for anyone interested in gender and development, this book shows that policies and approaches to development that view women as instrumental to other objectives will never promote women's empowerment as they fail to address the structures by which gender inequality is perpetuated over time.
International aid is about much more than money. The UN Millennium Development Goals and major events like Live 8 have focused the world spotlight on issues of poverty relief and aid like never before, but have not concentrated on the quality of relationships that can make aid succeed or fail. This book, authored by an internationally renowned group of aid practitioners, reveals the contradictions and challenges involved in forging these relationships. International development organizations combine the unbridled play of power and arrogant amnesia with serious and innovative efforts to create a more democratic world, to support transformative learning and to strengthen accountability. The book explores recent attempts from within aid agencies to go against the current flow of top-down results based management by learning how to build lasting partnerships that transfer power to those at the receiving end of aid. More than just a critique, the authors offer a practical framework for understanding relationships in the international aid system and look at the relevance of organizational learning theory, which is widely used in business.