Post-development and The Third Way Lecture 8

Question 1

Recap

Answer 1

We need to take into account women because development can lead to their marginalsation and dependancy. Critics of the GAD school argue that empowering women can disempower men or can lead to new forms of domination. Gender needs to be understood and and needs to to be inserted into the way we design and audit projects.

Question 2

Why do development agencies love NGO’s?

-They are non-governmental organisations meaning non- political

Answer 2

• Not co-opted, stick to their goals
• Not burdened by internal politics and bureaucracy
• No vested interests (eg. elections)
• Flexible in their programmes, policies and methods
• More likely to welcome professional support including anthropologists
• More likely to be staffed by people not working within existing development paradigms

Question 3

-They are non-governmental organisations meaning non- political
Effect of DA and AoD

Answer 3

• DA approve because because it inserts new players into the field and a new entry point for anthropologists
• AoD approve because they might resist neo-liberal, patriarchal, neo-colonial format big development agencies invariably develop.

Question 4

European NGO’s

Answer 4

We see all alliances developing between EU institutions and NGO’S, they can act as eyes and ears of the UR to check national governments.

Question 5

Why do development agencies love NGO’s?

-They are generally local

Answer 5

• or if they are not, they tend to ally or create local NGO’S
• Represent the community
• Represent vulnerable parts of the community
• Often highly recommended elites familiar with legal and economic processes
• Claim intimate knowledge of local society and culture

Question 6

-They are generally local

AD and AoD

Answer 6

• AD approve because NGO’s can help projects fit better. It also makes less of an imposition because it can be run and managed by people considered to be local. Projects can be cleaned that way and less likely to end up as failures. If included in the design process it gives local communities a stake init.
• AoD approve because it removes the over tones of colonialism, and because locals can supply new understandings of development.

Question 7

Why do development agencies love NGO’s?

-NGO’s reflect development of a healthy society

Answer 7

• Community of citizens with shared interests
• Organisations who represent the communities interests using the legal methods available to them.
• Link between state and society
• Can resist the state
• Democratising society

Question 8

Problems with NGO’s

Answer 8

• What really is an NGO? They vary in size, political aims and issues, funders and ideology, very general.
• Are they all REALLY non governmental some organised by state
• If they are non governmental what are the implications of competing with the state?
• Are they really local? some international and have massive resources and can act colonially, where do they get their power from?
• Can have massively large power structures, which do foster factional policies

Question 9

Why do development agencies love NGO’s?

AD and AoD

Answer 9

• DA approve because they constitute an excellent way to promote or resist projects, and bridging the gap between power and society, which has haunted development.
• AoD approve because working with NGOs is in itself a sign of a healthy society that is developing a language, a voice and a political consciousness about what it is and how it should improve.

Question 10

Problems with NGO’s part 2

Answer 10

• When they are local, do they really represent the community? Or a particular section of the community, while claiming to speak for the whole?
• Can they really not be co-opted? Prominent members employed by states/big organisations, forced to adopt governmental discourse (Foucault)? Used by big organisations to legitimise their projects and use them as first-line of defense? (i.e. interested in fostering their image as pure, good and local)? Conjure the illusion that developing is empowering and incorporating and listening to people?
• Is the refusal to be co-opted actually good?
• Can be very amateur, which might lead to projects failing because of mismanagment or because they tend to reproduce the structures they want to destroy e.g. patronage, gender hierarchy etc. …