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Global civil society, depending on definition, consists of hundreds of thousands of private civic actors including NGOs and private individuals. Many conceptions of “ civil society ” distinguish between private, nonprofit organizations (such as NGOs) and private, for-profit organizations (such as national and multinational corporations), with the former being principled organizations, and therefore, part of civil society; and the latter being self-interested, and therefore, not a civil society actor. 1 This chapter is devoted to exploring NGO human
Allwood 06 24/2/10 6 10:31 Page 152 Refugee women and NGOs This chapter begins from the hypothesis that refugee women, politically active in their countries of origin, will be motivated to participate in their country of destination, but that their opportunities to participate may be constrained by institutional/organisational, social and cultural barriers. It highlights refugee women’s agency, countering the perception that they are passive victims, and describes their individual motivation and resources, and their experiences of NGO participation. As
humanitarian organisations to shift from working on the periphery of conflicts to the heart of them. Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Rwanda and the entire Great Lakes region of Africa became particularly high-risk areas for aid workers. It was during the intervention in Somalia in 1992 that the interface between security, operational procedures and humanitarian principles became central for MdM. The political and security climate at the time confined NGOs to urban centres across
( Swidler, 2013 ; Burchardt, 2013 ). In these interactions, LFAs imbibe the logic and rationality of international humanitarianism and, as Swidler writes, ‘learn not to pursue their own goals, but to feign an interest in whatever donors are offering, in hopes that, however unpredictably, some resources will come their way’ (2013: 685). Alongside this, we reflect upon the ways in which the processes of NGO-isation and professionalisation that accompany the
According to Pamela S. Chasek, David L. Downie and Janet Welsh Brown, non-governmental organization (NGO) influence on global environmental politics stems from three principal factors: First, NGOs often possess expert knowledge and innovative thinking about global environmental issues acquired from years of focused specialization on the issues under negotiation. Second, NGOs are acknowledged to be dedicated to goals that transcend narrow national or sectional interests. Third
through the jungles and across the arid deserts of Africa captivated the metropolitan reading public throughout the nineteenth century’. Over time, public perceptions of Africa have changed, although they remain significantly influenced by the colonial narrative of Britain as a global power following a missionary purpose to ‘civilise’ Africa. In the contemporary era, one of the biggest influences on the UK public’s perceptions of Africa has come from development non-governmental organisations (NGOs), particularly through the medium of their
Through an ethnographic study of the Barefoot College, an internationally renowned non-governmental development organisation (NGO) situated in Rajasthan, India, this book investigates the methods and practices by which a development organisation materialises and manages a construction of success. Paying particular attention to the material processes by which success is achieved and the different meanings that they act to perform, this book offers a timely and novel approach to how the world of development NGOs works. It further touches upon the general discrediting of certain kinds of expertise, moving the book beyond an anthropology of development to raise wider questions of general interest.
The author argues that the College, as a heterotopia and a prolific producer of various forms of development media, achieves its success through materially mediated heterotopic spectacles: enacted and imperfect utopias that constitute the desires, imaginings and Otherness of its society.
Founded by the charismatic figure of Bunker Roy, the Barefoot College has become a national and global icon of grassroots sustainable development. With a particular focus on the Barefoot College’s community-managed, solar photovoltaic development programme, this book considers the largely overlooked question of how it is that an NGO achieves a reputation for success.
incentives rather than direct coercion. The only ‘punishment’ which suffices in inducing changes in behaviour is the denial of access to the flow of opportunities, as the risk of → exclusion triggers basic → fear . So even if, at a first glance, the term ‘grant art’ looks like a theoretical pun, it aims at uncovering the systemic underbelly of artistic circulation, which is anything but funny. Sowa discusses grant art as part of the process of ‘NGO-isation’. It is a particular form of self-institutionalisation that has far-reaching consequences
This book provides a historical account of the NGO Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) as one of the largest humanitarian NGOs worldwide from 1945 to 1980. Readers interested in international relations and humanitarian hunger prevention are provided with fascinating insights into the economic and business related aspects of Western non-governmental politics, fundraising and philanthropic giving in this field. The book also offers rich empirical material on the political implications of private and governmental international aid in a world marked by the order of the Cold War, and decolonialization processes. It elaborates the struggle of so called "Third World Countries" to catch up with modern Western consumer societies. In order to do justice to CARE's growing dimensions and to try to make sense of the various challenges arising from international operations, the book contains five main chapters on CARE's organizational development, with three case studies. It tells CARE's story on two different yet connected levels. First, it tells the story as a history of individuals and their interactions, conflicts, initiatives, and alliances within CARE and second as an organizational history focusing on institutional networks, CARE's role in international diplomacy. By the start of the 1960s CARE's strategically planned transformation into a development-oriented agency was in full swing. With United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Food for Peace, and the Peace Corps, several new government agencies in the development assistance sector were founded that offered potential junctions and opportunities for cooperation for CARE and the voluntary agencies in general.
This article details the remarkable involvement of the Vietnamese population in finding and naming half a million Vietnamese missing-in-action (MIAs). The secrecy that characterised Vietnam’s military operations during wartime, and the overlapping claims and therefore control of the MIAs by the army and civil administrations in the aftermath of the wars, are the reasons behind unsolvable quagmires in Vietnam’s current war-accounting effort. The myriad of state actors involved who often work at cross purposes raises the public’s awareness of the incompetence of the state and calls for the participation of non-state actors. The latest potential avenue to solve the MIA problem, DNA forensics, is facing all kinds of challenges, such as the quality of the bone samples and the scale of the effort. War accounting has therefore become an open arena of public engagement and popular dissent, while significantly transforming the cult of the dead in Vietnam.