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- Convenors:
-
Palash Kamruzzaman
(University of South Wales)
Phoebe Beedell (University of East London/ Independent researcher)
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- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Opening (up) Development Practice
- Location:
- Library, Seminar Room 6
- Sessions:
- Thursday 20 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
'Aid ethnographies' have, so far, largely focused on practitioners from the global north. This panel brings together the latest research on national development professionals and experts, highlighting that without their reflections our understanding of the personnel of development is only partial.
Long Abstract:
International aid employs a myriad of professionals and experts tasked with operationalising development policies in the global south and maximizing value-for-money for donors. Understanding the agency and capacities of this highly diverse workforce has been addressed by a body of literature broadly categorised as 'aid ethnographies', which has revealed the dilemmatic nature of 'Aidland' characterised as it is by complex, often conflicting demands; contradictions; and paradoxes.
This literature has, until recently, been almost entirely focussed upon the experiences of 'international' development practitioners from the global north. The roles of 'national' development professionals and experts, and their relationships with wider society and hegemonic ideologies, remain relatively unexplored in development studies. Without their reflections current ethnographies of aid can resemble the ethnographies of the colonial era.
This panel brings together the latest research on 'in-country' development practitioners of the global south, deepening scholarly knowledge by shedding light on the experiences and interests, extent of agency and capacities of this under-researched community.
While the roles and relationships between 'new' actors and stakeholders in development have been widely discussed, extant development personnel have been largely, and to some extent controversially, characterised as missionaries, mercenaries or misfits. 'Opening up' and de-colonising development research as well as practice, the extent to which national development experts and professionals confirm or disrupt these stereotypes is explored in this panel.
The conveners are already in contact with several potential contributors and we expect multiple submissions following an open call, such that two panel sessions may be justified.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 20 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the motivations, interests, agency and roles and engagement of National Development Experts (NDEs)in Ghana's development landscape.
Paper long abstract:
National Development Experts (NDEs) play a unique role as knowledge brokers between governments, intended beneficiaries and donors by providing insiders' perspectives on national development policies and practices. Due to their local contextual knowledge, they influence national development, democracy and politics through their formulation of policies and engagement with development stakeholders. However, discussion of their motivations, interests and agency for engaging in development work and their roles as knowledge brokering has been particularly limited in the development literature. Drawing on twenty-five semi-structured interviews with national development experts (NGOs, consultants, donor representatives, think tanks, academics and civil servants) in Ghana, this article presents findings on the motivations, interests, roles and the engagement of national development experts in Ghana's development landscape. The article contributes to the emerging literature on the ethnography of aid by providing a more comprehensive perspective of national development experts often ignored in the existing body of knowledge. It finds that foreign development experts rather than national development experts drive Ghana development policies and agenda despite the later having local contextual knowledge. This article further highlights the perspectives of national development experts on their engagements with foreign experts and its implications for national development and future research.
Paper short abstract:
The paper draws on ethnographic research conducted in Kenya that examined stress in the aid sector. It discusses the lived realities of national staff and how these are shaped by organisational policies and practices, and contests dominant western discourses about aid work and its challenges.
Paper long abstract:
Stress, trauma and burnout are terms that have increased recognition in the aid sector. A survey conducted by the Guardian in 2015 found that 79 per cent of staff in the sector had suffered from some form of mental illness. Yet studies into the psychological and emotional landscapes of aid workers largely focus on the expatriate and the specific problems they are likely to face going to the field. This paper seeks to challenge the universalised narrative of the international aid worker and their motivations and challenges, by examining the emotional experiences and difficulties of national staff working for international NGOs and aid agencies in Kenya. Based on a year of ethnographic research in Nairobi and Turkana into stress and wellbeing among staff from a range of humanitarian, human rights and development organisations, I will argue that aid policies, structures and working practices - as well as social and cultural factors - are central to how aid workers, both national and international, conceptualise and manage stress in their lives. The paper shows how institutional assumptions about what constitutes good and efficient aid practice at times silence or dismiss the everyday struggles of national staff. Alternative conceptualisations from my Kenyan research participants of what is stressful and, conversely, what is meaningful in aid work provide insights into how the current localisation agenda in the humanitarian sphere may be reimagined.
Paper short abstract:
We examine the institutions governing NGO-donor relations in Ghana. Informal relations are widely viewed pejoratively as clientelistic, justifying strong formal procedures and professional norms. But we find friendship and other informal relations perform positive functions in funding relationships.
Paper long abstract:
The paper examines the institutions governing relations between grant using national NGOs and grant giving international donors in three regions of Ghana (Upper West, Northern and Greater Accra Region). Formal procedural rules and professional norms can be viewed as necessary to minimise opportunities for informal patronage, rent-seeking and corruption made possible by the unequal access to resources. However, semi-structured interviews, life histories and observation highlight the positive role informal networks, connections, personal contacts and friendship play in enhancing collaboration between donors and national NGOs. Friendships originating in kinship and ethnicity, school links and past collaboration offer opportunities for influencing and resource mobilisation, but can also weaken NGO sustainability. Informal contacts and face-to-face interactions also build trust and strengthen lines of accountability, with non-adherence to shared norms resulting in sanctions and reputation loss. These findings echo Eyben (2010) in affirming the positive role of informal relations, and highlighting how can complement formal rules and professional norms governing NGO-donor relations rather than undermining them. It throws a very different light on the role of informal institutions than that fostered by a discourse of clientelism and provides a more nuanced conceptual foundation for assessing 'formalisation' as a normative strategy.
Paper short abstract:
Transcending the altruism-egotism binary, a psychosocial approach allows for the interrogation of both social relations and the emotional investments at stake. This paper illuminates the 'structures of feeling' at play as development workers negotiate the complexities inherent in their work.
Paper long abstract:
Previous research on the personnel of development has revealed a host of ethical, moral and political dilemmas, contradictions and paradoxes associated with aid work, although the literature has been disproportionately focused on experience of workers from the global North.
My psychosocial, life-history research with 24 English-speaking Bangladeshi development workers, sought to understand how 'national' professionals negotiate the complex demands of working for progressive social change and the resources they draw upon to do so. This psychosocial approach, informed by psychoanalysis, transcends the usual altruism-egotism binary to better understand human actions, impulses and influences; and allows for the interrogation of both social relations and the emotional investments at stake, illuminating the 'structures of feeling' at play.
The study found a stratum of reflexive and highly committed workers and social activists who drew heavily on biographical resources and narratives of personal development to help manage the everyday dilemmas and contradictions, albeit at some cost. In the context of constraining classed and gendered subjective identities and objective structures of governance, the women in particular were struggling for empowerment and opportunity both inside and outside the workplace; operating within an 'affective patriarchal bargain' despite the equalities discourse espoused by their NGO employers.
I argue that the significance of family and kin, and wider identifications, compete with the individualized, rational-choice framings of a neo-liberal development paradigm; and suggest that a social relations-based model of development governed by an 'ethic of care' can serve as an alternative to the dominant three-sector development paradigm.