Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the implication of morality (among which is responsibility) and virtue in development ethics and their relevance to development practice, by comparing three major development ethics approaches and zoning them into the two ethical concepts.

Paper long abstract:

Responsibility is fundamental in development, framing the realm of duty and thus priority in development practice. It is part of morality and supplemented with a broad concept of virtue to compose development ethics. Morality is rule-/act-based (following right/wrong reasoning) and pertains to process, while virtue is merit-/agent-based (following good/bad reasoning) and pertains to the resulting state of affairs. Most typically, the former requires more universal components and more urgency than the latter, but the contrast is not clear-cut and rather lies in the relative importance. As much as morality and virtue are connected closely to each other, these two ethical concepts tend to be used loosely without acknowledging particular features of each, ending up preventing the systematic understanding of development ethics and limiting the effective implementation of development practice. To investigate such problems, this paper draws on philosophical argument on morality and virtue and explores their implication in development ethics and their relevance to development practice, by comparing three major development ethics approaches: basic needs, human security and human development, and zoning them in relation to the two ethical concepts. This exercise highlights the similarity and difference of each approach and illustrates that morality and virtue are closely related but distinct and equally fundamental in the field of development.

Paper short abstract:

The global agenda of “leave no one behind” guides expectations of “good” inclusive participation in development. Because inclusion is translated into techniques that are legible to donors, organisations are labelled as successful while the participation of the most marginalized remains unchanged.

Paper long abstract:

While participation of “the poor” has been a dominant approach in development for decades, current participatory approaches to aid center around including the most marginalized. This inclusivity agenda is referred to as “leave no one behind” under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The “leave no one behind” agenda frames participation in increasingly stringent moral terms where participation of “the poor” is insufficient, as the “right” kind of participation will reach “the most” marginalized. Based on ethnographic research with national Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that are implementing the SDGs in Ghana, I ask: how are NGOs fulfilling, navigating, and negotiating increasing expectations for “good inclusivity”? I argue that the top-down governance of NGOs through technical audit mechanisms results in a performativity of “good” inclusion for donors that is often exclusionary in practice and can hinder the systemic participation of the most vulnerable. The successful demonstration of the moral imperative that NGOs have “good” inclusion entails meeting the technical auditing processes of inviting women, people with disabilities, and youth to events and having disaggregated data to enumerate their involvement. This technical focus occludes a more bottom-up attention to the needs and voices of those deemed “marginalized.” Because NGOs are deemed successful at implementing inclusion if they meet the technical requirements, there is very little incentive to go further than reports, spreadsheets, and lists in order to transform development practice to be more accessible and create platforms for meaningful participation of these groups. The donor-centered performance of inclusivity by NGOs is, therefore, often exclusionary.

Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes the notion of a ‘good life’ as an anchor for bringing together the focus on an individual ability to choose moral personhood with the political and socio-historical conditions that structure, shape, and affect this ability.

Paper long abstract:

This paper proposes the notion of a ‘good life’ as an anchor for bringing together the focus on an individual ability to choose moral personhood (which has been at the centre of the anthropology of morality and ethics) with the political and socio-historical conditions that structure, shape, and affect this ability. It explores how the process of crafting oneself into a moral person took place within the context of structural inequality of the refugee camp Konik camp that housed 1200 Kosovo Roma refugees in Podgorica, Montenegro, for 18 years (2000-2018). More specifically, the paper ethnographically looks at how the Red Cross humanitarians who managed the camp and the camp residents morally reasoned in different ways. The paper demonstrates that, although both the humanitarians and the camp residents had some leeway to choose what kind of a moral person to become, this leeway was structured in very different ways due to their unequal socio-legal positions within the Montenegrin society and the Konik refugee camp landscape. The moral reasoning of the humanitarians affected the refugees’ possibilities to lead a good life, while the refugees had no such ability. These kinds of differences become indiscernible when the focus is placed solely on individual moral reasoning. The paper argues that ethics in the context of structural inequality of a refugee camp includes an unequally shared ability to engage in deliberation and to make decisions on what kind of a life to lead (rather than just what kind of a person to become).

Paper short abstract:

Reflections on a journey through 'how does it work' / 'how could it be made to work better' conundrums as anthropologist consultant, finding light in the contrasting methodological approaches of Elinor Ostrom and Mary Douglas, seeking to avoid the despondency of inaction.

Paper long abstract:

'Anthropology at the Margins of Other People's Earnestness'; my alternative title. The need for radical change toward sustainable practices in states, corporations, banks et al is now a given. Anthropology can best contribute, I suspect, in the many places where powerholders, in their interactions, confront ideational gaps and contradictions. I expect no grand theory, but find hope in anthropology's grounded but engaged, empathetic but critical methods, like; 'being there', expecting plural agency, acknowledging 'other' values and understandings, within a holistic perspective.

My paper draws upon a career as an academy-based consultant in Third World 'development'. In this field [as others] responsibility entails morally obliged thinking and action within complex inter-state as well as inter and intra agency institutions. Such institutions, of course, have codes and constructs constituted for purposive social action that become fields of interest politics and power play. It is a field of contradictions - I proffer examples - in which a consultant's interstitial position can provide alternate insights and room for manoeuvre.

Third world development has had an implicit, if not explicit modernisation agenda, in which moral goals [such as MDGs] are set and constrained within a neo-liberal framework that gives priority to capital, market forces and constant growth, with the elusive alure of 'high mass consumption'. It is a failed formula that perpetuates unsustainability. The environmental crisis now puts all peoples and nations 'in the same boat', opening the potential for more equitable visions and strategies but also for blame games and conflicts.