Paper short abstract:

NGOization is argued as a key process to the expansion of neoliberalized development and feminist movements. This paper offers to view NGOization as a productive form of power which in its engagement may bring new class formation and reworking the state’s form of governance.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary discussion on social justice activism and development initiative in the nongovernmental organization (NGO) form centers on the analysis of NGOization. Understood as the professionalization of activism and depoliticization, NGOization is argued as a key process to the expansion of neoliberalized development and feminist movements. Despite the liberal-pluralist view that NGOs are a grassroots alternative to the state, the organized form of social movements, closer to the people, and tend to be democratic, anthropologists have challenged neoliberal assumptions behind NGOization, revealing its impact on the changing relations of NGOs to the simultaneously changing nature of the state and some form of politics. This raises a question of how NGOization brings tension and contests the terrain of engagement between the state, foreign powers, and the society. Anthropologists have asserted that NGOization is systematically undermining the state’s regulatory power, rendering development discourse on neoliberal logic and legitimizing the state downsized. Drawing from an ethnographic study of an NGO’s work and local politics in West Timor, Indonesia, I argue that NGOization is enabling neoliberal governmentality which bequeathed to the increased state’s surveillance and power over the population. I offer to view NGOization as a productive form of power which in its engagement the NGOization may bring new class formation and reworking the state’s form of governance. Equipped by this framework, this article thus provides a potential anthropological contribution to the study of governmentality and activism.