Paper short abstract:

This presentation draws on recently completed research which ethnographically explores the Universal Periodic Review, a new human rights monitoring mechanism at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, as a public audit ritual, constituted through specific encounters, institutional codes, norms and knowledge practices, and documentary processes.

Paper long abstract:

Prompted by the Human Rights Commission's alleged "politicization", the UN human rights system underwent a major institutional reform and was replaced by the new Human Rights Council in 2006. The new system includes an innovative new mechanism, launched in 2008: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a state-led peer scrutiny of the "human rights performance" of each of the United Nation's 192 member states. UPR is envisaged as a "cooperative process" where each state is reviewed in "an objective, transparent, non-selective, constructive, non-confrontational and non-politicized manner" that guarantees "universal coverage and equal treatment of all states". This presentation draws on recently completed research which ethnographically explores UPR as a public audit ritual, constituted through specific encounters, institutional codes, norms and knowledge practices, and documentary processes. Specifically, the focus will be upon the terms through which the UPR describes itself (i.e., the terms used by the architects of UPR and agreed by state parties) and which are being actively promulgated as new norms of international practice. These terms are familiar from myriad national and international institutional contexts which have been subjected to processes of "New Public Management". The purpose will be to explore the multifarious effects of these new norms upon the practices surrounding UPR as multiple actors bring their diverse, and often antithetical, goals and projects to this UN process, attempting variously to make it work and to limit or subvert it. In this way, I shall begin to unpack its complex politics, etiquette, civilities, affects and ethics.

Paper short abstract:

Based on interviews in the Congo and in Western Headquarters as well as an analysis of organizational strategies this paper investigates the relationship between plural norms and reigning rationalities among intervention in the Congo. It contributes to debates on post-liberal governance and the humanitarianizaton of politics

Paper long abstract:

Maroding hordes, a rape epidemic, a failed state with a dictatorial leader. Western intervention on the Congo nurtures and requires these facile stereotypes. Intervention in the Congo, however, is not a monolith. Several so-called sectors like international humanitarian, development and peacekeeping organizations are at pains to distinguish themselves from each other. Their activities differ, they are governed by a plurality of norms. Protecting 'bare life', promoting economic growth and contributing to a 'liberal peace' are the guiding motifs among them.

Recent scholarship in social anthropology and International Relations has made strong claims on reigning rationalities of intervention. 'Post-liberal governance', the humanitarianization, biopoliticization or medicalization of politics, for example, are proposed to capture the conceptual heart of intervention today. Yet, some of these proposals do not clarify the relationship between that non-monolithic plurality of norms and the unity of the rationality they propose. I will attempt to do so.

To investigate the relationship between plural norms and reigning rationalities among intervention in the Congo, based on interviews, I identify some of the norms prevalent in reflections among humanitarians and peacekeepers in Goma, New York, Paris and Geneva. In addition, I briefly scrutinize the norms permeating three core organizations working in and on the Congo: The UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Médecins sans Frontières.

This combination of sources will show the difficulty of a nuanced critique of intervention norms and rationalities which does not oversimplify but still manages to get at its paternalistic heart.

Paper short abstract:

International democracy makers travel as experts for change and transition to remote locations to implement and observe electoral processes. This paper explores the norms embedded in electoral support mechanisms as well as the dynamics and frictions in conjuncture with local agencies in Timor-Leste.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last two decades, electoral support activities have become core to external democracy promotion agendas, although their central status as democratization strategy is also contested. International organizations (in particular the UN EAD, UNDP, the EU, and some smaller agencies) have developed more and more refined techniques of election observation and technical electoral assistance. Their implementation follows written, binding and non-binding norms and commitments as well as unwritten best practices that change in always new local contexts where flexibility is required. This paper aims to explore the norms that carry the policy of electoral support, and which are embedded in its practices, in the context of their translation in interaction with local agencies in Timor-Leste. There, electoral politics constitute the base of the country's independence and young history as a nation state, and serve as arena for identity conflicts and political contestation.

Paper short abstract:

This ethnographic paper extends anthropological attention to "audit cultures" as technologies of governance. I consider how local staff members of international development programs in Angola become agents of international power in their work, and consider their potential to resist this power.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I argue that the internal monitoring and evaluation activities of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) should be analyzed as "audit cultures": technologies of governance that, while acting under the guise of institutional self-evaluation, effectively discipline local staff members as governing agents. These staff members go on to further the goals of the international community in their interactions with local populations. I analyze social dynamics within an international good governance project to demonstrate how Angolan staff members are trained to become "governing agents" through their own efforts to professionalize. This work extends recent considerations of audit cultures to examine how they produce not only the governed, but also the governors, highlighting the experience of auditors as agents groomed to reproduce, but potentially positioned to resist, international structures of power. Data for the essay come from field work conducted inside an international good governance intervention in Angola (2008-9), focusing intensively on the experience of local Angolan staff engaged in the monitoring and evaluation of the democratization program.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines norms of engagement amongst the World Health Organization, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector, focussing on issues of ‘control’ and ‘power-knowledge’ in these interactions and how they influence WHO policy-making processes.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines norms of engagement amongst the World Health Organization, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector. It constructs a narrative of how the notion of 'partnership' - typically in the form of public-private partnerships - has become normalised in global public health. It focuses on the creation of two WHO policy documents, the International Code of Marketing of Breast milk Substitutes (1981) and the Set of Recommendations on the Marketing of Food and non-Alcoholic Beverages to Children (2010) and examines relationships and partnerships amongst the key actors in both case studies. As the two documents were written thirty years apart, they allow perspective for how engagement amongst various sectors has changed over time.

The paper draws from wider ethnographic research on the WHO, including a year of participant observation within the Organization as well as in-depth interviews with actors in both case studies. It posits that interactions amongst these key actors hinge around perceived and "real" control, with different actors negotiating various levels of control and influence over the policy-making process and outcomes - in the form of these two WHO policy documents. It also addresses control from Foucault's power-knowledge perspective by examining differences in the production, dissemination and use of public health evidence by NGOs, the private sector and the WHO - and how these differences influence policy-making at the WHO.

Paper short abstract:

A partir d’une ethnographie de la politique internationale de la participation des personnes vivant avec le VIH dans la réponse à l’épidémie au Cambodge, je propose une réflexion sur les jeux d’acteurs et les régulations sociales qui se produisent en réponse à l’introduction de cette norme globale. Cette étude montre le pouvoir relatif de la norme sur les acteurs locaux et met en lumière la marge de manœuvre de ces derniers par rapport aux politiques internationales.

Paper long abstract:

Depuis le milieu des années 1990, la participation des usagers fait partie des principes incontournables des organisations internationales de lutte contre le sida. Cette dynamique n'est pas spécifique au VIH, elle fait partie des nouvelles « bonnes pratiques » des institutions occidentales marquées par des principes et valeurs démocratiques (partage des savoirs, répartition du pouvoir, valorisation des usagers). La participation est devenue une norme dans les sociétés occidentales mais également dans la majeure partie des pays du Sud insérés dans des complexes réseaux d'acteurs interdépendants liant le local et l'international. Au Cambodge, cette nouvelle norme de santé a eu un écho considérable. Des personnes séropositives sont recrutées à tous les niveaux du parcours de soins.

Entre 2005 à 2008, mes recherches anthropologiques ont consisté à étudier les significations locales de cette norme globale au niveau des différents acteurs concernés par la participation. L'objectif était de mettre en lumière les jeux d'acteurs et les régulations sociales qui se produisent en réponse à l'introduction de cette norme globale dans le contexte cambodgien qui n'est pas à l'origine de son expansion.

Il en résulte que la norme de la participation s'insère dans les moindres détails de l'itinéraire de soins des personnes vivant avec le VIH sans pour autant que les acteurs locaux adhèrent à celle-ci. Ces derniers la reformulent en fonction de leurs représentations et de leurs intérêts, contournant ainsi son but initial. La norme est à ce jour synonyme de conflits de pouvoir et de valeurs et de reproduction des rapports sociaux.

Paper short abstract:

Over the past few years, pandemic influenza has become a crucial category at the heart of an emerging form of biopolitical intervention. This form of intervention increasingly relies on the official pronouncement of a “public health emergency of international concern” under the rule of public health law as defined by the World Health Organization. According to the WHO, pandemic influenza constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern” and thus represents a serious threat to human health that requires a coordinated international response. In the context of the most recent outbreak of infectious disease caused by the global spread of the swine flu virus, pandemic influenza has increasingly become a disputed and contested category in public debates. These debates, however, have almost exclusively focused on the question whether the most recent outbreak of infectious disease in 2009 represented a real pandemic or not and whether conflicts of interest may have influenced key decisions made by public health officials at the World Health Organization. The aim of this paper is to turn the perspective around. The paper asks not what the WHO can tell us about pandemic influenza, but what pandemic influenza can tell us about the WHO. The focus, in other words, is not on what the category means, but on what it does.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past few years, pandemic influenza has become a crucial category at the heart of an emerging form of biopolitical intervention. This form of intervention increasingly relies on the official pronouncement of a "public health emergency of international concern" under the rule of public health law as defined by the World Health Organization. According to the WHO, pandemic influenza constitutes a "public health emergency of international concern" and thus represents a serious threat to human health that requires a coordinated international response. In the context of the most recent outbreak of infectious disease caused by the global spread of the swine flu virus, pandemic influenza has increasingly become a disputed and contested category in public debates. These debates, however, have almost exclusively focused on the question whether the most recent outbreak of infectious disease in 2009 represented a real pandemic or not and whether conflicts of interest may have influenced key decisions made by public health officials at the World Health Organization. The aim of this paper is to turn the perspective around. The paper asks not what the WHO can tell us about pandemic influenza, but what pandemic influenza can tell us about the WHO. The focus, in other words, is not on what the category means, but on what it does.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork in the US and Freetown my presentation explores the different dimensions of international counternarcotics law enforcement in West Africa focusing on the technologies developed to enforce international treaties and agreements.

Paper long abstract:

The US Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S), which combines intelligence services, law enforcement agencies and the armed forces, is one of the most important organisations in the field of international crime control. JIATF-S played an important role in the interception of a large drugs shipment in Sierra Leone. The shipment and the arrest of several suspects led to the so-called Cocaine Trial before the High Court in Freetown, the first trial of this scale in Sierra Leone. Drawing on interviews conducted at the JIATF-S headquarters on Key West and fieldwork in Sierra Leone my presentation will examine the various technologies employed by JIATF-S and the authorities in Sierra Leone to deal with the smuggling of narcotics through Africa. My presentation tracks how the conceptions of a specific problem and field of intervention are shaped by the new technologies of crime control.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to stress out methodological questions we encounter while doing multi-sited and multi-level ethnography trying to capture together production and domestication of globalized norms, on the basis of empirical data collected in the capital city of the North of Madagascar.

Paper long abstract:

I wish to initiate a discussion on methodological frameworks and toolboxes available for investigating the processes of production and appropriation of globalized norms. This will be based on my anthropological doctoral research on the extraverted dimension of municipal government or, more precisely, on the co-production -at a local/global interface- of a municipal scale of government. I am currently carrying out a case study in Diego-Suarez (Madagascar).

Using empirical data related to local policies and international programs of urban water supply, I will stress out a few methodological challenges I encounter and results we could both discuss. How can we deal with data of different nature and quality while doing a multi-sited ethnography aiming at seriously ethnographying connections between local/national and global levels, aiming also at precisely describing the links between production and domestication of globalized norms processes? Which is the interest of choosing as main field a local governmental institution partly shaped by external forces (rather than for example an international institution or program)? How can we take into account the historicity and the sedimentation of these extraverted processes of producing governementalities? What are the respective benefits of individual life-trajectories and organizational analyses? To what extent do they enable firstly, to take into account generational, political or social conflicts and solidarities in understanding how globalized norms are locally embedded or rejected, secondly, to describe how the anti-politics machine, institutional learning or unlearning dynamics (in the "southern" political and administrative organizations) are really functioning, and how do brokerage and translation work?

Paper short abstract:

Working with microfinance institutions, donors and investors, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) plays a central role in shaping microfinance into a viable financial sector. But their policies and recommendations have not always worked well due to local contexts and infrastructure.

Paper long abstract:

During the last fifteen years or so, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) has played a crucial role in consolidating microfinance worldwide into a viable financial sector serving the so-called unbankable "working poor". Housed in the World Bank, supported by over thirty multilateral and bilateral donors and foundations focusing on international development, and employing experts with long careers in the microfinance sector, it has the legitimacy to carry out research, develop standards, innovate, and to make recommendations to governments, microfinance organizations, donors and investors. During the last decade, CGAP has promoted policies to separate microfinance institutions from their NGO and humanitarian origins and turn them into fast-growing, efficient, sustainable and profitable financial organizations capable of attracting both commercial and social investors. However, these policies have not been uniformly successful. The lack of adequate microfinance legislation, regulation and supervision as well as infrastructure including credit bureaus in many countries has led to problems when NGOs apply CGAP philosophy and 'best practices'. Fast growth has not infrequently led to overindebted clients and debt crises, and to a backlash against microfinance organizations. High profits can conflict with the humanitarian values of many practitioners. Thus CGAP policies have led to some unexpected outcomes - their 'ideal' is not equally ideal in every local context. This paper departs from interviews with microfinance clients and staff in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where microfinance was implemented through the World Bank as part of the postwar reconstruction effort.

Paper short abstract:

To deal with the uncertainties caused by their country’s financial crisis, young Greeks try to improve their CVs by participating extensively in market-oriented educational school programs, promoted by the European Union and the UN.

Paper long abstract:

The financial crisis in Greece has caused a lot of uncertainty among young people of all ages. One of their responses to it has been to try to enhance their CVs by adopting the so-called "lifelong learning strategies", which provide for future vocational skills and promote a managerial ethos. To accomplish this goal, they participate in a plethora of educational, yet entertaining, programs ("edutainment"), made available, since the late 1990s, to member states by the European Union and affiliated organizations (UN, World Bank, OECD). I will present two cases of "edutaining" projects in which thousands of Greek pupils participate enthusiastically. First, the intra-European electronic school twinnings (e-Twinning), where e-Twinners are asked to become competent users of ICTs; to cultivate their "creativity" by (re-)combining all sorts of knowledge and information (related to school curricula); to learn how to work both in teams and individually in order to develop "cooperativeness" and "flexibility", "self-management" and "self-esteem". Second, the international role-playing game known as "Model UN" (MUN), where pupils play, face-to-face, the part of the UN-member states' diplomats. MUNers are asked to become competent in argumentation, negotiation, lobbying, and flexibility, akin to those of "salespersons" and "politicians". I explore pupils' interpretations of the projects' promising goals: the preparation of productive and flexible citizens, who learn fast and can cope with, and adapt to, vocational changes. I also investigate the extent to which pupils are aware of the uncertainties inherent to these market-oriented programs: is it job finding that they promise or mere "employability"?

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the role of the local staff employed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan in articulating intelligibility and in negotiating the legitimacy of the organisation’s norms in the country.

Paper long abstract:

Combining expatriates and local agents having complementary positioning towards the local contexts is crucial for the functioning of the UNHCR's apparatus and allows the organization to intervene in a variety of geographical, cultural, and political contexts. In Afghanistan, local staff accounts for the vast majority of its personnel. Local agents bridge between, on the one hand, the norms, the modes of actions, and the way of conceiving rule of the UNHCR, and, on the other hand, the Afghan context. They ensure most of the interactions with the Afghan interlocutors of the organisation (state authorities, village leaders, media, etc.). Receptors of international norms within the agency, they bear in turn these norms in Afghanistan, for instance when they explain UNHCR's criteria of resource allocation. Conversely, they influence the way expatriates perceive and comprehend the local reality. The temporary stay of the expatriate employees and the severe restrictions of movement they are subject to amplify the intermediary role of their local colleagues. Based on a fieldwork carried out in Kabul between 2007 and 2008, the paper examines the role of UNHCR's Afghan agents in articulating intelligibility and in negotiating the legitimacy of the implementation of the organisation's norms. In Afghanistan, being a local agent of the United Nations entails particularly delicate issues, not only because historically most Afghans have remained largely unfamiliar with international norms, but also because of the controversial nature of external interventions in this conflict-affected country.