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Neoliberalism, Development, and Aid Volunteering
Abstract
This work comes at an important time of global crisis and change, where the world is ravaged by natural disasters, wars and poverty. This has increased the pressure on governments and other organisations, such as volunteer sending agencies, which provide aid, and we have seen an upward trend in the number of people volunteering abroad. Within this volatile environment, neoliberal ideology on how aid should be provided and implemented has become embedded in how policy is formulated. A market-driven model of aid provision has become the norm, and governments are increasingly focused on international development volunteering as a form of 'soft diplomacy'. This is the first qualitative empirical study of international development volunteering. The book contributes theoretical knowledge on International Volunteering Sending Agencies (IVSAs) and examines practitioner experience in development volunteering in the context of emerging policy developments. Critical analysis highlights the impact of global and social changes and provides a nuanced understanding of development volunteer motivation, and the relationship between volunteers and sending agencies. The book also puts forward an agenda and model for volunteer sending that addresses the complexities and diversity of the volunteer experience.
... These changes include greater accountability on IVCOs to demonstrate the domestic "upstream" benefits of the volunteer program to the donor state via outcomes like public diplomacy, positive international relations, or enhancing the human capital of volunteers. These modifications have introduced tensions for many IVCOs, which appear wary of their development objectives being diluted by the, in their view, self-serving "neoliberal" agendas of funding bodies (Georgeou, 2012;Lough & Allum, 2013). ...
... That is, IVCOs appear uncomfortable acknowledging or embracing domestic benefits from their development activities. Instead, such demands are perceived as a distraction from and impediment to their core purpose of global development (Georgeou, 2012). In the next section, we seek to explain IVCOs' response to this discomfort by drawing on institutional legitimacy theory. ...
... This was fortified by widely shared ideological attitudes compounded by the strong association (at that time) of voluntary service with notions of sacrifice, selflessness and altruism which, while simplistic, tended to suppress recognition of personal or donor benefit. As a result, acknowledging nation-building outcomes, such as volunteers' own professional development, can be seen as directly conflicting with the humanitarian values that underpin IVCOs' self-appointed raison d'être (Georgeou, 2012;Lough & Allum, 2013). ...
The article explores tensions for international volunteer cooperation organizations (IVCOs) created by a changing funding landscape, including demands from governmental donor agencies to demonstrate both domestic and international impacts. It draws upon institutional legitimacy theory to explain IVCOs' (perceived) constraints to conform with powerful institutional fields circumscribed within the development sector's historical legacies, and to propose a model that outlines alternative strategic responses for IVCOs seeking to reconcile these competing demands. We conclude by suggesting IVCOs' viability may hinge on their ability to (re-)structure their practices to capitalize on the mutuality inherent in the distinctive value proposition of development volunteering.
ORCDID iD: 0002-8106-9207, www.linkedin.com/in/bjlough
... The second component of the GAC-Crossroads-La Colombe case that is substantially different from the DFID-Gender Links case is the role of volunteering in its development approach. However, development volunteers are not easily defined due to the diversity of where volunteering takes place, the temporal scale, the purpose of volunteering and who benefits from it (Smith, Ellis and Brewis, 2005;Georgeou, 2012;Schech, Mundkur and Skelton, 2015). I encountered two types of volunteers in Togo: ...
... Many concepts of volunteering are informed by an ethic of community service, and doing good for the sake of the greater whole rather than material or individual benefit (Georgeou, 2012). In practice, volunteers, CSOs and donors frequently have ulterior motives for engaging with volunteering. ...
... Similarly, Schech et al. (2015) and Georgeou (2012) identified that volunteers undergo an adaptation process whilst building relationships and carrying out their mandates. Volunteers have ideas about their role and mandate prior to entering the field, but upon arrival, they become disoriented, as they begin to adapt and renegotiate their roles and relationships in context, with many unable to give up control of their pre-conceived notions (Georgeou, 2012). ...
This thesis explores learning and accountability processes within and between bilateral donors and civil society organisations (CSOs). Its purpose is to examine how and why Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) contribute to learning and accountability processes. The research examines ICT practice in two case studies of development aid relationships. The methodology allows a holistic and critical examination of the intentions and reflections of various actors, namely donor and CSO staff, within development aid relationships, an approach which is relatively rare in research in this field. These investigations were conducted using a participatory and critical ethnographic approach combined with process modelling interviews. Case study participants were donors and CSOs based in Canada, Southern Africa, Togo and the United Kingdom.
Many theorists of the information society argue that ICTs are immanently poised to transform power structures and to expand opportunities for participation and collaboration in development processes. Instead of pointing to the potential positive impact of ICTs, my research shows a tendency for ICTs (or a lack thereof) to reinforce existing power hierarchies and organisational structures. Key debates within learning and accountability literatures focus on the need to make development processes inclusive and self-governing. This thesis contributes to these debates by generating insight into the socio-technical interactions between learning, accountability and ICT, and suggests future areas of research and practice in this area.
... Believing that the primary obstacle for the prosperity of the global South was a lack of skilled people, IVCOs often operated as if the input of skilled volunteers was sufficient to achieve meaningful change (Allum, 2017). In response to the absence of impact evaluation, international development and IVD underwent a wave of reform in the 1990s as donors demanded proof of return on investment (Allum, 2017;Georgeou, 2012;Uvin, 2002). ...
... IVD has increasingly been treated as if it is just another tool of foreign policy or service delivery, as illustrated by the prioritisation of donor and sending country's concerns in measurement (Allum, 2017). With the "professionalisation" that accompanied neoliberal reforms, volunteers increasingly resemble the specialist development practitioners they were intended to differ from (Baillie Smith & Laurie, 2011;Georgeou, 2012;Hoffman, 1998). When IVCOs try to assess unique peacebuilding outcomes, they often lack the theoretical and practical knowledge necessary to do so. ...
International volunteering for development is neglected as a peacebuilding model, despite its origins in the early 20th-century pacifist movement. In part, this is due to pressures from donor- and sponsor-state agendas, which emphasise neoliberal and securitisation dynamics, similar to those experienced by the wider peacebuilding and development field. Research in peace studies has overlooked the field, making it unclear what unique impacts these activities might have upon peacebuilding and conflict. This not only leaves us blind to its potential as an underused peacebuilding modality, but it also makes it difficult to mitigate potential harms. To prepare the foundation for future research and programme evaluation, I propose a levels of analysis model for mapping the potential peacebuilding impacts of international volunteering and service. This will be grounded in a reconstruction of the peacebuilding paradigms espoused by early theorists and practitioners.
... Such criticisms about the underlying unequal power dynamics of volunteerism (i.e. Georgeou, 2012;Illich, 1968) have mobilized paradigm shift within volunteerism. ...
... Service learning pioneered this movement; Recognizing the valuable contribution of service-recipients, the service learning model emphasized the balance between service and learning goals for the volunteering group (Furco, 1996). More recent emphasis of 'mutually equitable partnerships' furthered this model and promotes the reciprocal contribution and recipient of both parties (Georgeou, 2012). However, the processes of such volunteering experiences are under-investigated and call for further investigation in understanding the processes underlying contact in volunteerism. ...
Contact facilitates a reduction in prejudice and negative stereotypes between the social groups. The effect of such contact is optimized when there is equal status between groups, which in volunteerism is manifested through as mutually equitable partnership. This qualitative study examines the processes of contact through an intervention youth group that connects Chinese and refugee/asylum seeker youths in Hong Kong. Interviews were conducted with 5 participants (60% females; mean age = 24) in 2016. Results indicated the youth group facilitated contact within its members, where the more they engage, in frequency and intentionality, the more they find a sense of belonging with each other. Moreover, Chinese participants demonstrated a shift in seeing refugee participants as collaborators and friends instead of service-recipient. The findings shed light on the processes of contact within volunteerism and offers potential contribution of collaborative environment in similar integration intervention.
... Some scholars document the utility, contributions, and positive attributes of volunteers who go abroad to share their skills and talents to less-privileged communities (Devereux 2008;Howard and Burns 2015). Other scholars raise questions about the theoretical and structural value of international volunteeringchallenging assumptions about its overt value (Georgeou 2012;Heron 2007;Perold et al. 2013;Simpson 2004). While conceptual arguments advanced by these studies are valid and based on observational research, they do not always distinguish between different types of international volunteer programs and the volunteers who participate in these programs. ...
... When asking about development outcomes, host organizations have consistently asserted a preference for more experienced volunteers that can serve for longer durations (Lough 2012;Perold et al. 2013). Likewise, a number of studies point to potential asymmetries and problems associated with shorter-term placements, particularly because tourism (cultural, educational, and\or adventure) has been increasingly conflated with volunteering abroad (Georgeou 2012;Perold et al. 2013;Power 2007;Simpson 2004;Tiessen . On the other hand, among volunteer programs with an intensive skills-sharing mission, short-term volunteers have been found to be quite effective (Lough 2016a). ...
This study examines how different types of international volunteering influence common program outcomes such as building organizational capacity, developing international relationships, and performing manual labor. Survey responses were collected from 288 development-oriented volunteer partner organizations operating in 68 countries. Data on the duration of volunteer service, the volunteers’ skill levels, and other variables were used to develop a rough typology of international volunteering. Binary logistic regression models then assessed differences in outcomes across five volunteering types. Findings suggest that future research needs to be more precise about how the nuances and complexity of diverse forms of international volunteering influence outcomes.
... Concluding that if architects want to volunteer their architecture skills abroad they should also be aware that this could be at the detriment of the local and global profession. As Georgeou (2012) emphasises, just because 'volunteers are value-driven [this] should not be viewed through the lens of altruism: rather their activity should be understood in terms of individual acts of political expression. New models must politicise volunteers so that they understand the context of their action' (p192). ...
... This is all despite the very fact that the RIBA in 2009 warned architects not to offer services for free (Hurst, 2009), a growing criticism of aid (Bolton, 2007;Moyo, 2009;Foreman, 2012;Ramalingam, 2013) and in particular the efficacy of overseas assistance via volunteering abroad (Lewis, 2006;Georgeou, 2012 Regardless of these concerns, it seems the current humanitarian architecture zeitgeist is to continue to focus on developing countries architecture markets, rather than the professions wider structural challenges (arguably evident by the very need for architectural charity in the first place (Crawford, 1991)). However the question arrises, does this form of architectural ser vice expor t, abide by the relevant jurisdictions competition laws? ...
With the apparent neo-liberalisations and major global restructure towards privatisation, disillusioned architects have been in search for a new form of public value. In giving the profession agency once again, the most common solution to-date has been volunteering architectural services, leveraging professional time and skills for free (or at a large subsidy), so that those who would not usually be able to afford design services can. But is this pro-bono model an appropriate and efficient mechanism to allow architects to re-gain its public role?
Instead, via analysing the breaches in existing competition and trade policies that service volunteering encourages, an initial conclusion could be made that, accidentally, this model has not so much been working against the power inequalities produced by late capitalism, but paradoxically only going to extend the arm of architectural corporate control, not reduce it. In fact, by understanding and acknowledging these mistakes, a move away from accidental monopolies and towards a more ethically considered form of architectural trade may be possible. Encouraging not ‘exchange’ but a ‘user’ value based architectural economy, positive alternative ways of sharing architecture may become apparent. Ones that emancipate the profession from the limits of capitalism, not restrict it further.
... Therefore, the different intra-psychological and relational processes described above are intertwined with more extensive processes in terms of society and cultural processes. Concepts such as motivation, identity, emotion, cooperationcommunity participation, and proactive behaviour can assume various features according to a) the meaning of volunteerism as a social construct in one specific area (von Essen, 2016), b) crosscultural differences in volunteering motivation (Georgeou, 2012), and values (Grönlund, 2013), and c) how volunteerism is hindered or facilitated by public discourses and ideologies (Ganesh & McCallum, 2009). Moreover, psychological investigations on the social added value by Mannarini and colleagues (2018; suggested that psychological processes can be considered as entities acting in one society in parallel to culture and social dynamics. ...
The present paper articulates a vision of community psychology of volunteerism drawing upon existing and developing research on volunteerism. It identifies the changing nature of volunteerism and the gap in research of a unifying framework of the different forms of volunteerism (e.g., online vs. offline, continuous vs. episodic, informal vs. formal). In doing so, the paper presents both traditional forms of in-presence volunteerism and the emerging new forms of volunteerism and builds upon their dimensions (i.e., institutional, spatial, and temporal) to gather the disparate and different forms of volunteerism into a unique integrated framework. The Three-Dimensional Framework is used to move on with a multilevel research agenda for community psychology to situate the variability of the new forms of volunteerism. Notably, the paper shows how the Three-Dimensional Framework can provide a thorough basis for understanding volunteerism in community psychology and enable community psychology to operate in modern communities and contexts of volunteerism, properly addressing their peculiarities. The paper concludes with new theoretical and practical implications for community psychologists.
... This was fortified by widely shared ideological attitudes compounded by the strong association (at that time) of voluntary service with notions of sacrifice, selflessness, and altruism which, while simplistic, tended to suppress recognition of personal or donor benefit. As a result, acknowledging nation-building outcomes, such as volunteers' own professional development, could be seen as directly conflicting with the humanitarian values that underpin these programs' self-appointed raison d'être (Georgeou 2012;Lough and Allum 2013). ...
The chapter steps back from the operational features of state-supported international voluntary services (SSIVS) to explore challenges to their legitimacy that can arise from sometimes competing demands to achieve both domestic and international impacts. It draws upon institutional legitimacy theory to explain pressures that international development volunteer programs, and in particular SSIVS programs like JOCV, may experience to conform with powerful institutional fields circumscribed within the development sector. It also proposes a model outlining alternative strategic responses to reconcile these competing demands. We conclude by suggesting that a strategic ‘sweet spot’ for programs like JOCV may hinge on their ability to capitalize on the mutuality inherent in the distinctive value proposition of development volunteering.
... And emerging critical research has begun to unpack the power dynamics inherent in north-south ''voluntourism'' and development service work (e.g. Baillie Smith and Laurie 2011;Devereux 2008;Georgeou 2012;Lough et al. 2018;Tiessen et al. 2018) and has questioned the ethics of giving financial stipends for volunteering in contexts where unemployment is rife (Baillie Smith et al. 2020;Hunter and Ross 2013;Kasteng et al. 2016;Lough et al. 2016). Absent from inquiry in this diverse literature, however, is event-based episodic volunteering that occurs during large sport events, cultural and religious gatherings, or national days of service. ...
As scholarship on episodic volunteering expands, researchers question if episodic volunteering is similar to, and/or different from, long-term, membership-based volunteering. This article examines the motivations of Ghanaians, South Africans, and Tanzanians to engage in event-based, episodic volunteering. Based on surveys collected from over 1000 participants in 2018, we use logistic regression models to distinguish differences in motivations between novice, occasional, and regular episodic volunteers. The results show that age and student status are influential in distinguishing novice volunteers from regular volunteers, but more importantly that novices are motivated for primarily social reasons, while regular volunteers are motivated by more altruistic reasons. Our study reinforces established knowledge that people are motivated to volunteer for many reasons that may overlap or occur simultaneously, and that these motivations differ by stage of life.
... Part of this rich experience has been the offer for students to "experience" the place of development through study-abroad programmes or service-learning abroad. Often this has involved courses, six months or two weeks at a time, where students earn credit for travelling abroad, volunteering or visiting field sites (Georgeou 2012;Heron 2007). Sometimes a beach or a safari is involved as a formal part of itineraries and associated expenses. ...
The September 2019 Global Climate Strikes witnessed hundreds of thousands of students express forms of global citizenship through street-level environmental activism. These strikes were led, and motivated, by youth who chose to strike from class in order to send a message to world leaders. It was an enormous occupation of public space and public imagination that encouraged schools to cancel classes for students to go outside to engage in street-level politics. Five months later, everyone was told to stay at home. COVID-19 ordinances effectively made many normal activities suddenly illegal, including the sort of activism that engaged youth around the world only months before. This article explores how the Global Climate Strikes and the COVID-19 pandemic will be important moments to advance the concept of global citizenship education within International Development Studies, and especially around the place of international experiential learning in the discipline. Studying, and volunteering abroad, has been long encouraged in International Development Studies (IDS), but with a global youth movement encouraging less carbon-based travel, more street-level activism and a pandemic demanding more digital learning, how will International Development Studies programmes respond? The author argues that International Development Studies can adapt to these events through “Anthropocene Activism”, a term used to depict global connectedness and consciousness for change-making politics. IDS programmes will need to focus curriculum on inclusive postcolonial pedagogy including land-based pedagogy, foster skills of intercultural communication and encourage change-making politics, even if it means expressing it indoors and online. Climate change and COVID-19 are global problems that will require a global citizenship education that goes far beyond experiential learning through service-learning, and instead recognise that meaning can be made out of our current global challenges, including through Anthropocene Activism.
... There were also further considerations to value volunteer, citizen and individual work by remunerating it in some way (see Bungum/Kvande 2013). And the kinds of payment that were considered were not only monetary, but in the form of tax benefits, access to college placement or state services as well (see Beck 1999;Georgeou 2012). ...
... Volunteering is increasingly celebrated and analysed as a crucial feature of enhancing aid and development in the global South (Devereux 2008;Georgeou 2012;Burns et al. 2015;Baillie Smith, Laurie and Griffiths 2017;United Nations Volunteers 2018). For the purposes of this paper, we explore development in terms of Hart's definition of big 'D' development: the post-Second World War project of intervention in the 'third world' that emerged in the context of decolonisation and the Cold War (2001, p. 650). ...
This paper explores volunteering and inequality in the global South through an analysis of volunteering remuneration. We argue that the growing remuneration of volunteers reflects an increasing financialisation of volunteering by aid and development donors to match labour to project and sectoral objectives. We examine how these remuneration strategies shape volunteering economies and (re)produce hierarchies and inequalities in contexts in the global South where volunteers are often from marginalised communities. We analyse data collected in Africa and the Middle East as part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Global Review on Volunteering to explore these interweaving volunteering hierarchies and how they articulate with existing social stratifications. In these contexts, we argue that a livelihoods and capabilities approach across macro-, national and local levels provides an alternative and more nuanced way of accounting for volunteer remuneration within the range of assets that communities have to build their lives and future. When oriented towards catalysing these community assets, and away from rewarding particular kinds of individual labour, remuneration has the potential to enable rather than undermine sustained volunteering activity by and within marginalised communities.
... However, the rationales and interests of Northern donors may prevent NPOs from pursuing their own development goals (Elbers & Schulpen, 2013). One study found that Australian volunteers started their placement with hopes to facilitate transformative change but found themselves restricted to helping organizations survive in the neoliberal development industry (Georgeou, 2012). Furthermore, while volunteers "understood the exchange in terms of particular skill or knowledge as per their role description", their host organizations appeared to have a different view of the volunteer as a "whole resource to be utilised" (Georgeou, 2012, p. 158). ...
Although international volunteerism has been a part of official development assistance for decades, the capacity development (CD) impacts of such programs in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in the Global South have received scant attention. This article provides insights into the ways international volunteerism contributes to endogenous CD processes by analyzing survey and interview data collected from Australian volunteers and their host organizations in four countries. It shows that volunteers’ contributions can be usefully examined through the lens of Baser and Morgan’s framework of five core capabilities: to carry out tasks, to relate and attract support, to adapt and renew, to balance diversity and coherence, and to commit and engage. Although the voluntary nature of the relationship between host organization and volunteer can make CD impacts less predictable and controllable, it also affords time to explore and negotiate what contributions are most useful to an organization within a specific context.
... Empirical studies of V4D have usually focused on issues such as the motives and benefits for volunteers (Wearing 2001;Georgeou 2012;Mostafanezhad 2013;Smith and Font 2014;Boluk, et al. 2016) or on their impacts on host communities (Palacios 2010;Schech et al. 2015;Lough and Tiessen 2017;Tiessen et al. 2018). These contributions and insights have not however led to a resolution of theoretical tensions. ...
The proliferation of volunteering for development (V4D) models, approaches and funding sources means V4D is no longer able to be neatly located within the third sector. The enormous diversity of interactions within the Youth V4D (YV4D) field provides an opportunity to examine new and different activities and trajectories to ascertain the extent to which the traditional values of V4D, reciprocity and solidarity continue to form part of YV4D. Using the classical third sector model of Evers and Laville (The third sector in Europe, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2004), and drawing on Polanyi (The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our time, Beacon Press, Boston, 2001 [1944]) and Mauss (The gift. The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies, Routledge, London, 1990 [1925]), in particular their concepts of redistribution and reciprocity, we present three case studies of new hybrid YV4D trajectories—university YV4D, state YV4D programmes, and volunteer tourism/voluntourism—to reveal the different logics and features of contemporary YV4D. We argue that understanding these contemporary YV4D trajectories requires a focus on organisational and stakeholder structures of diverse volunteering activities, their relational logics and the forms of reciprocity they involve. We find that in the YV4D case studies we explore the neoliberal market logic of exchange, along with political ideologies and state interests, affects the YV4D model design.
... Peace Corps volunteers are also intrinsically motivated, and throughout the half-century of the organization's history, have typically joined the program to express some set of civic commitments (Kallman 2015). In this sense, they are similar to others doing national service: research at both domestic and international levels has shown that a desire to serve the public interest is a strong factor in committing to national service or volunteer work (Georgeou 2012;Perry, Hondeghem, and Wise 2010;Perry and Wise 1990;Rainey 1982). In some cases patriotism plays a critical role in the composition and quality of volunteer forces (Burke, Fossett, and Gais 2004;Lakhani and Fugita 1993). ...
In a globalized world, how do individual people navigate experiences with difference? How do they internalize cosmopolitan values? Using a large mixed-methods data set, this article explores the ways that individuals can be both cosmopolitan and nationalist at the same time. It does so by operationalizing cosmopolitanism, and analyzing how it develops among U.S. Peace Corps volunteers. This article distinguishes two patterns. Patriotic cosmopolitans, although they become sensitive to global context throughout service, come to identify more with U.S. values. They become particularly connected to ideas of freedom, choice, and administrative efficiency, and deeply supportive of the existing institutional and political order. Disaffected cosmopolitans come to see those same values as troublesome considering their identities as global citizens, and dis-identify with the United States because of them. The different types of cosmopolitanisms yield different types of relationships with the state, which express in different patterns of professional engagement and voluntarism.
... Drawing on these theories, both Heron (2007) and Perold et al. (2013) discussed how racialized relationships between white volunteers and black host members often reinforce, rather than challenge, dependency relationships, where the former undermines the latter's knowledge and capabilities, and also reinforces neocolonialism. Furthermore, the employment of a neo-imperial critical lens in the IVS scholarship has highlighted the managerialist and market-related realities of IVS (Georgeou 2012). Notions of citizenship are produced through highly neoliberalist values of individual autonomy (Baillie-Smith and Laurie 2010). ...
... Volunteers instrumentalize the idea of Western superiority in such relationships, for example as American exceptionalism among the US Peace Corps (Hanchey 2015). The host community tends to embrace the notion of the Westerner, which encapsulates assumptions of white masculinity as a marker of authority and competence as a development actor (Georgeou 2012). In such ways, scholars have pointed to the persistence of colonial and imperialistic power dynamics in volunteer-host relations (Grusky 2000;McBride and Draftary 2005) which are shaped by multiple aspects of representation. ...
As a donor, South Korea presents itself as a former recipient of aid that has successfully transitioned to a donor country, emphasizing international development volunteering as an act of “giving back what we have received” based on shared understanding and respect toward the host. This chapter critically engages with first-hand accounts of former volunteers of South Korea’s government-run international volunteer program. Taking a critical approach to development communication, the chapter demonstrates how a volunteer relationship with the host is inextricably tied to the broader dominant imaginaries of development where development actors are legitimized and delegitimized along lines of nation, race, and gender. The author demonstrates how Korea’s narrative of development as linear growth and the assumptions of a hierarchical world order further contributes to self-consciousness of the volunteers’ inferior positionality. Positioned within such established imaginaries of development, their performative assertions of cultural identity only subjects the volunteers as spectacle. This, in turn, challenges positive and meaningful volunteer–host relationship-building.
... Drawing on these theories, both Heron (2007) and Perold et al. (2013) discussed how racialized relationships between white volunteers and black host members often reinforce, rather than challenge, dependency relationships, where the former undermines the latter's knowledge and capabilities, and also reinforces neocolonialism. Furthermore, the employment of a neo-imperial critical lens in the IVS scholarship has highlighted the managerialist and market-related realities of IVS (Georgeou 2012). Notions of citizenship are produced through highly neoliberalist values of individual autonomy (Baillie-Smith and Laurie 2010). ...
Scholarship on international volunteering has largely focused on the experiences of the volunteers with far fewer studies examining the impact of international volunteering from the perspectives of host organizations and communities in the Global South. This introductory chapter underscores the significance of the active participation of host organizations for expanding our knowledge of the impact of international volunteering efforts. This introductory chapter provides a theoretical and methodological overview to explain the rationale for this collection and for the research that was conducted in nine countries in the Global South. In addition to validating the voices of Southern partners in the host communities where IVS takes place, this study explores the limitations of critical and normative theories and provides an important theoretical lens to build on human capabilities literature and subaltern studies in order to more fully consider the agency, voices and experiences of Southern partners in IVS programs.
... Clearly such claims of transformation need to be more rigorously assessed and treated with some caution. Indeed, some scholars ( Simpson 2004;Palacios 2010;Georgeou 2012;McGloin & Georgeou 2016) have argued that rather than immersion experiences being transformative in terms of altering a student's worldview, such immersion experiences may actually serve to entrench existing assumptions and binaries that reflect current global power inequalities. ...
Immersion tours place a student in an unfamiliar context with the purpose of inducing a change in their worldview. While the literature on immersion tours indicates that, on the whole, students have a beneficial experience, the claims that such experiences are 'life changing' are untested. This article examines one cohort of Australian university students who visited the Tibetan community of Dharamsala in India in 2008 and whether the immersion was a transformative experience for them in the long term. While initially most students claimed to have been greatly changed by the experience, five years later none felt that the experience had been truly transformative. This conclusion highlights the need to be sceptical of claims that outbound mobility will transform all students' lives.
... Rather, scholars have made a persuasive case that when the Western participant's experiences and benefits are the key priority, the impact on host communities can often be harmful. Regardless of motivation or intention, scholars have also drawn attention to a wide variety of potentially harmful outcomes of sending young students to the Global South (Georgeou 2012;Vrasti 2013). For example, negative and racist stereotypes are often perpetuated and reproduced when uninformed participants travel to the Global South and return to tell others about their experiences (Roddick 2014). ...
This article uses critical race theory to engage with the phenomenon of international experiential learning. Based on fieldwork in Mysore, India, we argue that students must be more rigorously prepared for volunteer work in the Global South. We suggest that pre-departure training should integrate components of critical race theory in order to more adequately prepare students to grapple with systemic racism. Finally, we contend that critical race theory and the concept of white fragility are essential to understanding the impact of international experiential learning programmes on international development.
Background Development aid to Pacific Islands states tends to take the form of grants to provide services in health, education and transport, however Melanesian states are largely rural, and it may be time to consider stronger support for the agricultural sector as a mode of development to provide for future food security, decreased reliance on imports, and improved nutrition in an era of climate change adaptation. Methods To understand the place of family farming in the donor development strategies of four Melanesian states we first assess the place of foreign aid in total development finance to Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji between 2008–2021. Using data from the Lowy Institute a detailed study of aid flows highlights the respective place of official development assistance (ODA), other financial flows, private flows and remittances in the financial flows for each recipient state. We then focus on donor aid flows and their sectoral breakdown concentrating on the ‘Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ (AFF) sector, and within AFF on the sub-sectors of donor intervention. Results We demonstrate the main areas of interest for each donor, paying particular attention to aid to agriculture, specifically who gives it, and why. Conclusions We conclude by noting that the orientation of agricultural aid to Melanesian states is outward and directed toward producing niche products for the global economy, and not inward or directed towards supporting the development of a stronger agricultural sector, nor the resilience of local population through food security. We thus argue that donor development aid to the agricultural sectors of these four Melanesian states is more reflective of ‘retroliberalism’ than of genuine concern for Pacific Islands food security.
The present chapter introduces the aims, key issues, and structure of this edited book on Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCVs). The book addresses the contributions by JOCVs and the advantages and disadvantages of the JOCV program, proposing a concept of state-managed international voluntary services (SMIVS). By definition, SMIVS refers to international voluntary services (IVS) sponsored and managed by the state, unlike non-government-managed IVS, which can be sponsored by the state but managed by independent boards like NGOs. The book argues that owing to state management JOCVs can impact on both downstream and upstream benefits, and, at the same time, state management gives JOCVs advantages and disadvantages. The first section provides an overview of the JOCV program and the second section examines the concept of SMIVS. These sections also review the literature on JOCV and SMIVS. Subsequently, the third section reflects on why JOCV was born under the SMIVS model, and the fourth section discusses the two key issues this book addresses: contributions by JOCVs and the advantages and disadvantages of the program over time. The final section introduces the structure of the book.
This concluding chapter summarizes what each chapter directly and indirectly contributes on the two key issues this book addresses—contributions by JOCVs and the advantages and disadvantages of the program—and draws scholarly and practical implications from this. Also, based on this summation, the present chapter considers the other issues related to SMIVS and JOCV discussed in the introduction: Are SMIVS programs, like JOCV, legitimate in the sense that NGOs have managed most IVS for downstream purposes by sending out volunteers with expertise? What are the impacts of SMIVS on state-society relations? Do they mean the state’s dominance of IVS? These issues can be summarized as contributions, advantages/disadvantages, legitimacy, and state-society relations. After examining them this chapter offers a prospect of JOCV as an SMIVS program. Is state management of JOCV sustainable? Will the JOCV program continue to be an international voluntary service or transform into another form of aid scheme? These questions are addressed in the last section.
Geographies of volunteering have examined the relationships between people, places and forms of voluntary action, but there has been limited geographical scholarship on the scales, forms and distribution of volunteering amongst specific populations in different settings, particularly in the global South. While in the global North there are some established quantitative data sets, often produced by humanitarian and development organisations, these are largely absent in the South. Where they do exist, they often reflect Western-centric ideas and concepts, meaning that volunteering behaviours that do not fit Western norms-such as amongst young refugees in the global South-can be excluded, or captured in ways that are partial or unrepresentative. This paper provides an important challenge to existing geographies of volunteering, expanding them through an account of volunteering amongst young refugees in Uganda, and how it articulates with social inequalities within and between the spaces and places where young refugees live. We analyse quantitative data from 3053 young refugees surveyed on their volunteering experiences in rural and urban settings in Uganda. The data provides new evidence of who these volunteers are, beyond their refugee status, why, where and how they conduct their activities, and reveals how these are connected to livelihoods and community development. Through this survey analysis, the paper argues for the need to establish grounded conceptualisations of volunteering that consider the scales, distribution, and various forms of volunteering within specific groups. In doing so, the paper offers a new framework for better understanding the relationships between volunteering and refugee lives through four interlocking factors: place, (im)mobility, income and gender. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for wider geographies of volunteering and research on refugee youth and displaced populations.
Despite increasing interest in the role played by global South receiving organizations of development volunteers, their agency and efforts are rarely investigated in detail. Our qualitative study explores the involvement of receiving partners in international volunteering spaces, using the German Weltwärts programme in Mexico as an example. By applying decolonial theory, and politics and ethics of care lens to our data, we explore how these organizations are ‘weaving’ a dense assistance and safety web around the volunteers. Such assistance is usually not monetized and mainly invisible in the discussion of volunteering for development. Our findings challenge the development discourse and the positionality of northern volunteers within the development architecture.
Owing to the status of English as a global language, external donors, supported by the states, growingly promote the language for the economic development of countries in the Global South including Bangladesh. It is in this context that I argue that the local ELT has a crucial role to play, particularly by showing critical awareness of the theoretical and empirical processes of English for development discourse as a potential means of dehegemonisation of unwarranted ELT interventions. To this end, I provide a critical overview of the discourses of development, language and development, and English for development in this chapter to draw relevant insights for the local ELT. I show that development discourses are not settled, and within language and development scholarship, there is a greater understanding to critically explore the value of local languages for sustainable development. Showing furthermore that English and development discourses are not resolved either, both in the global and national contexts of Bangladesh, I argue, referring to the theoretical concept of ‘glocalization’, that the local ELT should play a more informed, agentive, and sensitive role to situate English for development discourses amidst the local needs and aspirations to make a sustainable impact.KeywordsEnglishELTDevelopmentBangladeshGlobal South
This research project is a collaboration between VSO and the Centre for International Development at Northumbria University. VSO is the world's leading independent international development organisation that works through volunteers to fight poverty in developing countries. VSO brings people together to share skills, build capabilities and promote international understanding and action. We work with partner organisations at every level of society, from government organisations at a national level to health and education facilities at a local level.
Relationships and relational outcomes are key in international development volunteering (IDV) research, but little attention has been paid to the spaces of relationship formation. This article contributes to the literature by unpacking volunteer–local relationships using a spatial lens. It uses a case study of Singapore–Cambodia IDV projects spanning the short and long-term temporal continuum to unpack how space, time and structure influence volunteer–local relationships. It presents three distinct development spaces—structured, social and transition spaces—that shape hierarchical, reciprocal or convivial relationships. These findings highlight the role organizations play in volunteer–local relationships, and the importance of making space and time for more equitable relationships.
It is widely acknowledged that emotions play an important role in international development volunteering (IDV), but researchers are divided about how they matter. For some, Northern volunteering in the Global South is an expression of political agency and solidarity with distant strangers, while for others, it is a product of neoliberal techniques of government that mobilise emotions, labour and social practices of care without challenging the status quo. This paper seeks to disentangle these contradictory claims by examining how participants in an IDV programme experience and articulate emotions, and the context in which they mobilise these emotions to fortify or critique dominant power relations. Drawing on recent theorising about the role of affect and emotion in society, and on interviews collected in Cambodia and Peru, I aim to show how emotions are shaped through relations with humans as well as with history, place and foreign policies. Attending to spatial and temporal context is important to understanding how and why volunteerism’s affective relations can become sites for critiquing unequal relations and imagining development differently.
Collaboration has been a hallmark of applied anthropology for as long as anthropologists have been putting anthropology to use. The very process of applying anthropological methods and theories to real‐world problems requires an understanding of the needs of the people experiencing the problem. Collaboration also has a long history in both archaeology and ethnography in Mesoamerica. This article explores the relationship between collaboration and applied anthropology in the context of a volunteer tourism program in rural Yucatan, Mexico. Tourism—and especially archaeological tourism—is a driving force in the region's economy. Increasingly, volunteer tourism initiatives provide visitors with the opportunity to contribute to the local community as part of their travel experience. I argue that the conceptual framework of what constitutes meaningful collaboration offers us a way to examine the interactions and power dynamics surrounding the encounter between volunteer, host, and even ethnographer. Specifically, the article questions whether contributions of various sorts are a requisite for achieving actual collaboration in these encounters.
Although there are an increasing number of funding facilities accessible for non-government organisations in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, critics suggest that it is still insufficient. Non-government organisations provide many essential services across the world, especially in the developing world, where they supplement or in some instances extend the government services. With services from health to gender issues to humanitarian support, non-government organisations continue to grapple with insufficiency of core and programming funding and unstable staffing. In Samoa, technical assistance through government volunteers supplemented the need for expert human resource and enabled the ability to apply for funding. With the mass repatriation of government volunteers such as Australian Volunteers, American Peace Corps and Japanese International Cooperation Agency, it resulted in a sudden and massive gap in technical human resource, equipped to apply for the rapidly expanding number of funding options. Through the experiences of a non-government organisation worker and an academic researcher based in Samoa, this piece shares the current experiences and potential repercussions of this sudden change in the non-government sector and suggestions moving forward to utilize the existing expertise in country in the academic sector to support non-government organizations to access funding.
This article examines how and to what extent perceived organisational support from key stakeholders is associated with the performance of expatriate development volunteers in highly complex multi-stakeholder employment relationships. We studied 214 volunteer-employer-agency relationships covering 21 countries. Two forms of support were positively associated with the volunteers’ performance: direct support from the host-country employer for the volunteer, and support for the host-country employer from the volunteer agency, with the latter partially mediating the former. No relationship existed between volunteers’ performance and support from the volunteer agency. In term of contextual and situational factors, emotional and informational support for volunteers were perceived as strongly enabling performance, while sub-standard instrumental support was the primary inhibitor. Our findings unearth the significance of a previously invisible ‘third arm’ of support in triangular employment relationships in the form of volunteer agency support for the host organisation, and identify the importance of discretionary, relational and proximal support to the success of expatriate volunteer placements.
Neoliberal policies alter development funding, practice, and actors. One effect of this is an increase in untrained individuals from the Global North who travel to the Global South to take action against perceived needs. This paper examines international development volunteerism (IDV) in Antigua, Guatemala. Scholars have documented the problematic nature of both volunteers and development projects; yet the relationships between actors are under theorized. I examine the development encounter: a space where people from the Global North and South meet briefly through development work. This space enables an examination of transnational actors who experience divergent impacts of neoliberal restructuring, and of unnoticed activities that could be indicators for social change. I ask: can development encounters shift perspectives to open the possibilities for social change? Through qualitative research, I show that everyday encounters in IDV can both open and close possibilities to catalyze social change. I make three contributions. First, I address a gap through an analysis of everyday relationships of multiple actors in development. Second, I propose that the development encounter is a productive space to examine changes between transnational actors. Development encounters in IDV projects are both a continuation of problematic development interventions in the Global South and also a space to examine the potential to eventually build solidarities across difference and distance. Lastly, I extended Bayat’s (2010) theories on social nonmovements to actors from the Global North and Global South to argue that their everyday actions are quiet encroachments in global street politics, or the silent actions of noncollective actors to generate change. I argue that development encounters can open possibilities to make a difference for people because strangers meet through projects; and also, it closes possibilities because it makes a difference between people since it is a commodified space with inequalities of power and wealth.
Disasters tend to stimulate the creation of spontaneous informal activity by self-organising voluntary groups and individuals. This has been demonstrated by the transnational surge of volunteer activity in the aftermath of countless disasters worldwide that have varied in both size and nature. Yet despite the universality and inevitability of volunteer behaviour, research into the phenomenon of voluntarism following the occurrence of a natural disaster has only been lightly examined. This paper presents a scoping review of the available literature on the emergence of local and international volunteerism following the occurrence of a natural disaster. Four major themes were identified in the literature: (i) motivational drivers of volunteerism in post-disaster contexts; (ii) volunteer typologies; (iii) opportunities and challenges presented by the informal volunteer; and (iv) extending volunteerism.
In this paper we use assemblage thinking to offer a new interrogation of the relationalities of volunteering and development and to revisit volunteering’s relationship to cosmopolitanism. Recent debates about the rise of new actors in development cooperation have seen a growing interest in the geopolitical significance of volunteers and their contribution to development. Research has addressed the ways international volunteering can shape cosmopolitan subjectivities, whilst claims for volunteering’s universality are a key feature of global development policy. However, we argue that existing approaches to volunteering, cosmopolitanism and development remain contained by established development imaginaries and their ascription of agency, authority and expertise to actors from the global North. We use the idea of the assemblage, and data from two research projects, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent’s (IFRC) Global Review on Volunteering, and a doctoral research project on diaspora volunteering, to explore the constitution of what volunteering is within and between places. Through this, we identify alternative sites for interrogating the capacity of volunteering to challenge established ideas of agency, care and responsibility in development.
The literature on international volunteer motivation has highlighted mainly Western cases, while almost ignoring Asian volunteers. Through an analysis of the motivations of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCVs), this study aims to identify who they are and to contribute to our understanding of individual behavior in relation to international volunteering. This is the first quantitative study of their motivation, and we surveyed them using a series of questionnaires. We obtained 1507 responses from the volunteers, and a cluster analysis of the revealed motives categorized them into six types, labeled as: (I) curious; (II) business-minded; (III) development assistance; (IV) quest for oneself; (V) change-oriented; and (VI) altruist. The results show that each of these groups tends to have a different set of motives, and these can be characterized according to their socio-demographic and behavioral information. The results confirm that JOCVs have the same altruistic and egoistic motivations that have been observed in the Western studies. From a practical perspective, our six clusters of volunteers match the three purposes of the JOCV program, and show that, to a certain extent, the program has been successful in recruiting young Japanese people. Moreover, the classifications will be helpful when the JOCV Secretariat managers wish to target specific types of volunteers for special recruiting and training.
Research on international development volunteering has increased significantly in recent decades, but there is a need for greater depth of understanding in relation to host communities. This article examines the impact of younger volunteers from the perspectives of host community members, evaluating the positive and negative aspects in working with young people from the “UniVol” programme of Volunteer Service Abroad, New Zealand. It argues that further insights into host community experiences can play a key role in enhancing youth IDV volunteering, creating assignments that are more beneficial for hosts, and moving away from neo-liberal “volunteer-centric” youth volunteering.
This article reconstructs how democratic participation and interference can be fended off by the construction of an international authoritarian political architecture and a strongly legalised and specific form of market economy. We do this by interrogating International Territorial Administration (ITA) regulations established to administer post-conflict Kosovo and post-invasion Iraq. In following the regulations and executive decrees of a largely unaccountable international policy-making bureaucracy in reforming the agricultural sector, the article demonstrates how and with what impact an authoritarian-liberal approach to economic reform materialised in the agricultural sectors of post-conflict Kosovo and Iraq. The regulation of land reform and patent law in turn served in these cases to establish distributional outcomes in favour of large-scale agricultural interests and multinational corporations. Even though the two administrations focused on different aspects of land and agriculture regulation, we argue that significant commonalities exist between their political preferences and interests. Our work draws on the tradition of critical legal studies in International Law (IL) and we posit that by drawing on this tradition, scholarship on post-conflict international territorial administration is better able to capture the long-term ramifications of international intervention.
The challenging and rapidly evolving times in which we live require that students understand, analyze, and address the complex realities facing their nation and world. However, efforts in global learning have primarily focused on expansion of programs rather than student learning and meaningful community engagement. Building on Bouma-Prediger and Walsh's (2003 Bouma-Prediger, S. C., & Walsh, B. J. (2003). Education for homelessness or homemaking: The Christian college in a postmodern culture. Christian Scholar's Review, 32(3), 53–70. [Google Scholar]) essay entitled, “Education for Homelessness or Homemaking: The Christian College in a Postmodern Culture,” this article explores how global engagement models can establish local and global community partnerships for the common good. It also explores how glocalization pedagogies can expand concepts of homemaking and solidarity to reflect important recent trends in development and higher education.
The growing diversity of North – South international volunteerism challenges the widely accepted distinction between volunteering for development as a long-standing component of official development assistance and the more recent phenomenon of volunteer tourism as a private sector led commercial endeavour focused primarily on the personal growth of the volunteer. This paper reviews recent research that blurs this distinction by placing international volunteering within the geographical imaginaries of development and the neoliberal practices of governance of aidland. It focuses on four themes tackled in recent research: i) the ways in which neoliberal ideologies have shaped the motivations, goals, practices and governance of international volunteering; ii) the contexts in which international volunteering can foster more equitable relationships between Northern and Southern development actors; iii) what roles emotion and affect play in these relationships, and iv) the extent to which international volunteering can offer a critical perspective on the rules, logics and ideologies of aidland. The main argument is that while neoliberal conceptualisations of development have evidently shaped international volunteering, they do not fully capture the relational and experiential impacts of volunteering. The technologies of proximity afforded by volunteering can lead to critical and transformative insights into development and aidland, particularly when volunteers are embedded in local organisations over a longer time.
Independent development volunteers (IDVs) and their DIY development projects, although largely neglected in the literature, are part of an emerging movement of non-traditional agents within development. However, they are also participants in a deeply paradoxical industry; both a reflection of passion and commitment, and a paternalist and neo-colonial practice that reflects the messy realities of geo-political and cultural power and privilege. This article explores these debates, drawing on research with IDVs in Honduras. The intersection of passion, paternalism, and politics highlights the complex environments in which IDVs work, and the need to make them visible in discussions of development.
Great powers seek to influence world affairs; middle powers seek to influence their regions. Australia's ‘near abroad’ includes Indonesia and the South Pacific, especially Melanesia. Elected Prime Minister in November 2007, Kevin Rudd has indicated a new direction for Australian policy in the Pacific and the previous image of a pushy or bullying Australia has to some extent been laid to rest. Yet the key differences between Rudd's policies and those of the former government of John Howard appear to be of style rather than substance. Despite the new rhetoric of greater engagement, the emphasis on market forces creating development shows an essential continuity of Australian foreign aid policy in the South Pacific
In recent times, a wave of public sector reforms has swept through developed, developing and transitional countries, prompting observers to herald the emergence of a 'new public management revolution'. However, this tendency, while evident across a range of nations, both North and South, is a complex, highly uneven and contradictory process. Indeed, we concur with, and seek to develop, the point by Polidano, who notes that it can 'be argued that such a thing as a unified coherent new public management model exists only in concept'. Subsequently, the paper is divided into two main parts. The first provides a brief overview of the broader purported changes in local governance by outlining aspects of Clarke and Newman's thesis concerning the managerialisation of local government. Thereafter, we consider some of the key determinants of, and contradictions within, transitions to the new managerialism in two contrasting contexts, the UK and India. In doing so, we seek to highlight the importance of transitions in governance structures not as some end state but as a complex of interrelated processes which interconnect, as Dicken et al. suggest, 'in a complex and contingent fashion with extant (historically and geographically specific)' socio-institutional, economic, and political structures.
This paper examines participatory processes in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) technical assistance package in Thailand's water resource sector. The authors analyse various levels of social interaction in the local community, in meso-level stakeholder consultations, and in opposition to ADB's environment programmes expressed by civil society organisations. While participatory approaches are employed to promote more bottom-up management regimes in water resources, the authors find that local power and gender differences have been overlooked. Evolving institutions of resource governance are constituted by gender, reproducing gender inequalities such as regarding water intended for agricultural use as a 'male' resource. Finally, it is argued that understandings and practices of participation legitimise particular agendas in a politically polarised arena
On many measures of ethno-linguistic diversity, Papua New Guinea is the most fragmented society in the world. I argue that the macro-level political effect of this diversity has been to reduce, rather than increase, the impact of ethnic conflict on the state. Outside the Bougainville conflict, and (to a lesser extent) the recent upsurge of violence in the Southern Highlands, ethnic conflicts in Papua New Guinea have not presented a threat to national government. In contrast to most other ethnically diverse societies, the most consequential impacts of ethnic conflict in Papua New Guinea are at the local level. This paper therefore examines the disparate impacts of local- and national-level forms of ethnic conflict in Papua New Guinea.
This article analyzes the development education and exchange activities of the Dutch development organization Edukans with its longstanding experience in the "Going Global" program among secondary schools in The Netherlands. Based on a survey with 186 direct participants in the foreign exchange program and 608 schoolmates at 126 secondary schools, a detailed analysis is made of differences in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior with respect to international cooperation, and tolerance regarding ethnic minorities. To guarantee unbiased impact assessment, the same data is collected among 276 students of a comparison group. Propensity score-matching techniques are used for data analysis, controlling for intrinsic differences among the three groups. Results show that international exchange programs have a significant positive impact on all four dimensions of societal support of the direct participants compared to their schoolmates. Only knowledge and attitudes changes are registered in the scores of the schoolmates compared to the comparison group. These outcomes remain robust when corrected for individual and school characteristics, parental background, and political preferences, and when unobserved heterogeneity is included.
The international aid system forms a powerful structural force impacting organizational landscapes and civil societies all over the world in complex ways we do not yet understand. Dominant NGO research has failed to properly address this crucial issue, because of a conceptual, theoretical, and ideological tradition that is itself embedded in this very same system's normative, rhetorical agenda. This paper suggests some conceptual and theoretical approaches that should encourage more comparative research on the role of the development NGOs in shaping national and global civil societies
Este estudo realiza o primeiro teste empírico, a um nível verdadeiramente global, de dois modelos contraditórios da sociedade civil global, que são propostos pelo pensamento neo-Gramnsciano, no sistema de governação global. O primeiro modelo pressupõe que a sociedade civil global é cooptada pela hegemonia capitalista e elites políticas, e promove interesses hegemónicos ao espalhar os valores neoliberais usando uma fachada de oposição. O segundo modelo perspectiva a sociedade civil global como a infra-estrutura através da qual a resistência contra-hegemónica, e em última análise um bloco histórico contra hegemónico, evoluirá para desafiar a hegemonia neoliberal. As previsões feitas por estas duas perspectivas, no que respeita a estrutura das redes da sociedade civil global, são testadas analisando uma matriz de relações entre 10,001 ONG’s internacionais de uma amostra de ONGIs, retirada da base de dados da União das Associações Internacionais. Os resultados apoiam parcialmente as previsões e ambos os modelos, e levam à conclusão de que, presentemente, a sociedade civil global está numa fase de transição, mas que a infra-estrutura actual proporcionada pela rede de ONGIs global pode conduzir ao desenvolvimento futuro de um bloco histórico contra- hegemónico, isto se o enviesamento da rede na direcção do Norte for diminuindo. Serão apresentados os passos estratégicos necessários para que isto se torne uma realidade.
This article unfolds in three stages. First, it locates the emergence of modern conceptions of social justice in industrializing Europe, and especially in the discovery of the “social,” which provided a particular idiom for the liberal democratic politics for most of the twentieth century. Second, the article links this particular conception of the social to the political rationalities of the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. Finally, the article discusses the myriad ways in which this legacy of the social and social justice has been disrupted, although not yet fully displaced, by the economic orthodoxies and individualization that inform the contemporary neoliberal governing project in Canada. The result, the article concludes, has been the institutionalization of insecurity, which demands the renewal of a social way of seeing and a politics of social justice on local and global scales.
NGO researchers have rarely understood the reasons for the growth of NGOs across the world. This paper sets out the parameters for an improved framework for NGO research. Beginning with a short description of the history of the international aid system, the paper then argues that a set of concepts are needed that can establish a greater analytical distance for NGO research from a policy area that has for decades enjoyed an unusually high degree of moral and political legitimacy. In conclusion, the article argues that the institutional architecture and world views developed within this policy field will need to be integrated analytically in narratives of the general historical development of societies in the era of globalisation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Studying globalization challenges disciplinary traditions that implicitly privilege a geographically demarcated field and classic models of ethnographic fieldwork. Understanding transnational processes calls for innovative, multilocal research strategies that both capture people's perceptions of change and analyze the interconnecting systems. Although the study of large, "southern" NGOs that link international donors and community-based groups offers one such strategy, it also generates a series of methodological complications associated with discerning the contours of the ethnographic field itself and the researcher's position in the volatile NGO sector. These issues are addressed in relation to the author's current fieldwork in Andean southern Peru.
The Mexican financial implosion of 1994-1995 marked the beginning of a parade of financial crises throughout the developing world that today shows no signs of abating. From the Asian crises of 1997-1998, to Russia and Brazil shortly thereafter, to Turkey in early 2001, and Argentina today, financial instability has swept through those developing countries that have embraced neoliberal financial reform. Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Michel Camdessus, had it right when he dubbed the Mexican debacle the "first financial crisis of the twenty-first century." What he didn't understand was that the neoliberal financial regime that his institution had installed throughout the developing world contributed to the very turbulence that he lamented. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.
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Analysing the debate around state-civil society relationship in modern western and Indian political discourse, the paper points out the hiatus between the 18th and 19th century political thinking and later 20th century political thought. The second half of the 20th century is characterised by a loss of faith in the institutions of the state and looks towards civil society to preserve essential human and democratic rights. As against this, the paper advocates a return to an earlier rights-based conception of civility by enforcing universal laws through the instrument of the state. Since the state alone can create conditions necessary to protect the institutions of civil society from internal disruptions, the paper argues against detachment of civil society from the state. Instead, the institutions of civil society are very much part of democratic constitutional state, which alone will ensure social equality and non-discrimination along with individual liberty. SPECIAL ARTICLES IN contemporary social and political theory civil society is almost always associated with democracy. Yet, there continue to exist vast differences of opinion about what is civil society and the precise manner in which it is linked to democracy. For some theorists civil society represents autonomous associations that exist independently of the state; associations which curtail the power of the state while simultaneously allowing individuals and groups in society to manage their affairs directly. By this reckoning civil society is another name for voluntary associations of all types, from football associations and theatre groups to trade unions, churches and caste panchayats. Irrespective of the goals that these associations pursue and without consideration to the way they impact upon the freedom and rights of all citizens, all forms of collectivities are seen as agencies of civil society and weighted positively. What is perhaps equally problematic is that in this framework proliferation of associations and non-government agencies become the hallmark of democracy. Instead of ensuring that the state provides equal rights to all citizens, its retreat from the public arena is presented as being a condition necessary for strengthening and reinventing democracy. In contrast to this fairly popular conception of civil society there exists another viewpoint: one where the condition of civility is the presence of rule of law. A variety of institutions – from hospitals to schools – that exist outside the state and possess a rational legal structure of organisation constitute the realm of civil society. Here the presence of an open system of stratification along with a stance of neutrality become the primary attributes of civil society. Just why should an open system of stratification be the dis-tinguishing feature of civil society and not the state? And why should civil society be placed outside the state? These are questions that remain imponderables within this framework. After all democracy challenges existing hierarchies based on status, land and birth, and seeks to institute a more open system based on equal rights of citizenship. Consequently, within a democracy all social and political insti-tutions are expected to abide by this norm of openness. Assuming that civil society heralds the presence of an open and secular system, there is little reason to separate civil society from the state. Why should civil society be placed outside the domain of the state which enunciates the law? Faced with dilemmas of this kind, one needs in fact to ask whether civil society is, or must be seen as, an identifiable zone that lies outside the state? Is it an arena that is equidistant from religious and political institutions? Is it a synonym for voluntary and non-state associations? Is self-management the chief attribute of institutions of civil society? Is civil society the arena of struggle and participation? Above all, why is civil society considered to be an integral and indispensable aspect of democracy? These are questions that need to be addressed if we are to make sense of the concept of civil society and to understand its privileged status within democratic theory.
This paper discusses the theory and practice of rural socioeconomic surveys in the Third World. It offers a personal commentary on some practical problems and pitfalls that beset the would‐be researcher in making the leap from seminar room to someone else's distant home. It highlights the close links between choice of research topic, field area and research methods, and the importance of the ethics of field research. It considers in particular questionnaire design.
The vast cheapening and acceleration of communication between distant strangers has facilitated the formation of a transnational community of development non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) working in poorer countries. These carry funds and specific discourses and practices to most corners of the globe, and bring back information and images that attract more funding and legitimization to donors and NGOs. A managerial revolution through which specific governments sought to control costs and increase governability in the public sector has been extended to NGOs, North and South, so that significant overlaps may be found. In exploring some ethical issues involving NGOs North and South, we find that many arise from this managerial revolution and from very uneven accountability. Problems discussed include negative outcomes of the audit culture, transparency and legitimation. Misrepresentation by donors and NGOs, conceivably on ethical grounds, faces academics with complex choices. What are the risks to the poor of academic exposures of prevalent corruption, or misuses of gatekeeper roles, or NGO actions which may be ‘good’ for the majority in the short term, ‘bad’ in the long run?
Throughout Latin America unique examples of the implementation of sustainable methods through postmodern mechanisms can be found in the political activism of the Christian base communities. The emergence of base communities in numerous countries throughout Latin America continues to provide a venue for the poor to organize and reflect on their spiritual and social status in life. In countries such as Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, these communities have become significant with respect to pressing for justice and social change and the possibilities of direct action to remedy injustices. This form of grassroots populism seeks to promote greater democratic participation in society and simultaneously promote the welfare of its members. As a blend of early Christian communities and Rousseauian populist democracies, these highly "decentralized" communities have sought to bypass the state and international institutions in pursuing remedies for social justice and sustainable policies. In fact, they have run the gamut in seeking social equity for their communities either through direct political action (resistance to landowners and the promotion of agrarian reform, agitation along with unions for a living wage, promotion of health care and medical insurance, demonstrations against police brutality, protests of poor or nonexistent public transportation), or working through NGOs, nonprofits, coops, and the like (Sigmund, 1990). Recognizing that the vast majority of poor in Latin America are unlikely to be liberated by state and international solutions or, for that matter, by cataclysmic political transformations, Christian base communities have in essence formed postmodern networks. Through these networks they are committed to furthering social equity and meeting the needs of the poor by ensuring sustainable policies through postmodern institutions and administration. Consequently, they continue to experience "deinstitutionalized" success as agents of their own spiritual and political liberation.
In September 2005 Papua New Guinea (PNG) celebrated 30 years of independence from Australia. Despite greater Australian control over foreign aid spending in its former colony since the late 1980s, the Australian government still fears ‘state collapse’ in PNG. Framing its concerns in such a fashion assumes that there was a time when the state in PNG ‘worked’ in the same way as developed states. Australia practised paternalistic colonial policies before 1975, and independence was thrust upon PNG rather than achieved as the result of the efforts of an organised nationalist movement. Nation-building in PNG has been problematic from the outset, with a linguistically diverse population and no significant nationalist sentiment or structures on which to build. In the past decade neoliberal economic policies promoted by Australian policy makers and international lending agencies have tried to force the government and economy to be more efficient. Slowing growth, increased unemployment, rising crime rates and the apparent inability of the PNG state to reverse these trends led Canberra to force the PNG government to accept an ‘Enhanced Cooperation Program’ (ecp) to shore up the PNG state and reverse its predicted demise. The ecp raises questions over the success of nation- and state-building in PNG, as well as the degree of actual sovereignty enjoyed today by PNG.
Because of the recentness of neoliberalism's rise in popularity within development studies, it has only been in the last few years that it has been subject to close scrutiny in the development literature. Moreover, much of the criticism of the neoliberal approach has been focused on the immediate consequences of structural adjustment and other neoliberal policy instruments on Third World countries. However, there is also a theoretical critique that can be applied to neoliberalism which can help explain the root causes of many of its shortcomings as a development strategy. Given the close links between neoliberalism and neoclassical theory in general, much of this theoretical criticism concentrates on basic problems of the neoclassical framework. This paper particularly focuses on the problem of economism and the consequent neglect of three important areas of development studies: sociocultural and political relations, the intersubjective realm of meanings and values in development, and the environment and issues of sustainability. The narrowness of homo economicus and associated neoclassical assumptions The multifaceted and dynamic nature of development processes makes it necessary to take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of development, one that includes sociocultural, political, and environmental factors as well as those economic. However, neoliberalism and other mainstream development frameworks that draw their conceptual roots from neoclassical theory have virtually omitted non-economic factors of development from serious consideration.' As Hirschman notes, 'The discipline became professionally more narrow at precisely the moment when the problem [of development] demanded broader, more political, and social insights' 2 Characteristically, neoclassical theory treats people as atomistic individuals who are bound together only through market forces. People are reduced to isolated creatures of the marketplace, devoid of history, cultural traditions, political opinions and social relationships beyond simple market exchanges.3 The conventional assumption is that non-market relations and institutions-the broader environments within which economies operate-are universal, unchanging, and have no significant impact on economic activities.4 Economies take on an ahistorical, static nature and economic change becomes solely the result of exogenous changes in tastes and technology.5 Stripped of their social relations
This essay examines neoconservative criticisms of equity planning, and the challenges against the right of government to regulate local development and land use. The specific concern of this essay is how, or if, local development administrators (equity planners), should use their discretionary powers to ensure that city officials and private developers promote and protect the interests of urban residents, particularly the poor and disadvantaged. The essay begins by discussing the alleged conflict said to exist between needy urban residents and the more secure urban taxpayers. The contrary views of equity planners are then reviewed, and the tensions within the neoconservative arguments are exposed and critiqued. Finally, the dispute between equity planners and neoconservatives is further explored by examining the dispute over the voucher system to address the problem of equal educational opportunity in urban communities.
International service-learning programs burst with potential and stumble with the weight of contradictions left unattended Without thoughtful preparation, orientation, program development and the encouragement of study as well as critical analysis and reflection, the programs can easily become small theaters that recreate historic cultural misunderstandings and simplistic stereotypes and replay, on a more intimate scale, the huge disparities in income and opportunity that characterize North-South relations today. Integrated into a well-developed program, international service learning can fulfill its potential as a transformational experience for students informing subsequent study and career choices. This article identifies seven loaded issues in international service learning that if addressed with creativity and forethought, can provide important opportunities for critical analysis, study, and reflection and in the process bring international programs closer to achieving their transformational potential.
Among the most successful recent efforts at political engagement among low-income Americans have been those led by church-bared community organizations (CCOs) This article discusses the strengths and limitations of Putnam's social capital framework for understanding the CCO success. A brief case study of community organizing among low-income, ethnically diverse residents of Oakland California, shows how participants build a culture of political engagement. Three years of participant observation in Oakland and 65 interviews there and in 5 other U.S. cities generated the primary data. The article argues that social capital as conceptualized by Putnam, contributes substantially toward explaining how CCOs project power into the political arena. However; understanding the success requires broader insight into political capacity. Attention must be paid to a ''second face of culture'': shared values, symbol systems, and assumptions about the world Here, political and religious culture cannot be reduced to social capital.
Despite a growing emphasis by aid agencies on local participation and consultation, the recipients of aid commonly have mixed, if not hostile, responses to relief assistance. Agencies need to acknowledge the inequalities that are inherent in an aid relationship, and be more judicious in determining their proper role. The author calls for aid providers and recipients to accept our innate human equality and our circumstantial inequality in order to establish relationships of mutual respect and contemporaneous enjoyment of each other.
This article assesses the recent embrace of the concept 'civil society' within development discourses, both conceptually and in the context of the construction of civil society in El Salvador. It challenges the tendency to generalise about civil society, warning against its glorification as a panacea. In a critique of the liberal approach to civil society, commonly used among international agencies, the discussion highlights how civil society organisations in El Salvador are fragmented politically, socially, but also geographically. Furthermore, civil society is not a unified entity with its constituent organisations working towards common goals. Nor may it be created or imposed from above by governments or donors. Instead it comprises a diverse range of competing groups grounded in different historical, political and geographical circumstances. While it is suggested that fostering civil society is a useful aspiration, it is essential that the concept also be recognised as contested.
Within the large volume of research on aid and development there has been limited study of international development volunteering generally and the ways in which it has been affected by neoliberalism. Development volunteering has undergone a resurgence over the past decade and some new forms of volunteering have emerged, but state-sponsored development programs are still a key form. These programs were relatively immune from neoliberal ideas and managerial practices until the early 2000s. An interesting puzzle is why neoliberal principles were operationalised in Australia's volunteering program at the same time as it, and other donor states, softened this focus in the rest of their aid program. These shifts in Australia's development volunteering programs have changed the logic, forms and outcomes of development volunteering.
As one of Australia’s largest and most active non-governmental development assistance organisations, Community Aid Abroad-Oxfam Australia (CAA) places development education and advocacy among its priorities. This study evaluated one of CAA’s development education programs to determine if a program lasting only twenty-eight days could heighten participants’ awareness of social justice issues sufficiently to be considered successful. The research aimed to determine what participants’ pre-program expectations were, and if after completing the program, participants believed that they had been changed sufficiently by the experience to become activists for social justice, thus fulfilling CAA’s stated reason for running the program. The study revealed that all participants had their positive expectations of the program met and all hoped, and most expected, to become activists for social justice in some way in the future. It was therefore concluded that, in the context of a development education program with a limited number of annual participants, 28 days does make a difference.
The first part of this paper offers a cumulative review of the changes in global objectives and operating principles and their global consequences, characteristic of the shift from the ideal type of the modern welfare state to the neo-liberal or post-modern paradigm. The paper then spells out some of the implications of this shift for social security in the “transition countries” of Central and Eastern Europe. The tendencies (from marketization to the spread of means-testing) are similar to those in the West; but they are much more marked and there is much less political and popular resistance to these changes. One of the crucial ingredients of the shift is the undermining of the age-old solidarity between generations, a trend also strongly recommended by the supranational agencies. The “catch”, or the “paradox of democracy” is that, for all the lack of resistance, people do not seem to approve of the rapid withdrawal of the state and the loss of their existential securities.
The worldwide homogenisation of thinking, analysis, and prescription, coupled with the de-legitimisation of social critique, dissent, and alternative thinking in the 1990s, are characteristic of globalisation and of the current international system. The homogenisation is the outcome of global geopolitical changes and the end of the Cold War, with the ascendance of a victorious paradigm. The resulting global intellectual hegemony (GIH) is of special concernto developing countries and to the United Nations. It has undermined the goals and aspirations of the former and contributed to their intellectual disarmament and disempowerment; it has undermined the mandate and role of the latter. This essay discusses GIH in the context of international development cooperation, showing how it is nurtured in many different ways. It is argued that the mechanisms at work are well-known in national politics, in particular inundemocratic societies, and are now projected by new technologies and through the global domination by those with power, a task made easier by the lack of organised and credible opposition. It suggests the need for further study and policy debate of this global phenomenon which seems to have largely passed unnoticed in academic, policy, and public opinion circles.
This paper discusses an emerging role for Philippine NGOs—building and maintaining intersectoral cooperation among various sectors of society to tackle key issues like agricultural development, HIV/AIDS, and agrarian reform. The three case studies elaborated in the paper show that Philippine NGOs play important intermediary and bridging functions crucial for the success of multistakeholder partnerships. NGOs are well equipped for this because of their middle-class and professional nature and because of various characteristics like autonomy, flexibility, and the ability to mobilize resources.
Incl. abstract and bibl. references This article seeks to contribute to the debate on collaboration between national and international NGOs. It argues that it is vital for the development of stable, independent, and viable civil societies that international NGOs promote a bottom-up approach in their support to and collaboration with local NGOs, especially among those emerging from situations of conflict or other profound social disruptions. From a study carried out in East Timor, the author concludes that there is a noticeable discrepancy between rhetoric and practice with regard to such support. The multiple challenges the international NGO community faces on this front persist despite the existence of abundant learning opportunities accumulated through years of development work. The author argues that such challenges are less a question of standards and rules than of basic approach, attitudes, and power relations. She maintains that if international NGOs and the wider international community do not alter their approach, they will suffocate rather than foster the development of a viable and autonomous civil society in the countries in which they operate.
Incl. abstract and bibl. references Expatriate volunteers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, work in a country where many of their fellow expatriates are paid considerably more than they are. Such volunteers often find that the financial disparities affect the perceptions that people have of them. This paper explores the self-perceptions of volunteers working with Voluntary Service Overseas in Phnom Penh, and sets these perceptions within current theories of motivation and commitment. Two issues are then raised: whether these volunteers are willing and able to deliver quality assistance; and how perceptions of their status can affect their ability to deliver such assistance.
Many definitions of volunteering are used in research, creating confusion for readers and researchers alike. Further, many of these definitions are narrow and result in exclusion of a range of activities, behaviours, and sectors of society. In a more global environment, researchers need to recognise the diversity of activities that can be included under a definition of volunteering. In recognition of this diversity, a new typology or measurement matrix is proposed that delineates these differences and ensures clarity for the research community.
This paper takes as its starting point recent work on caring for distant others which is one expression of renewed interest in moral geographies. It examines relationships in aid chains connecting donors/carers in the First World or North and recipients/cared for in the Third World or South. Assuming predominance of relationships between strangers and of universalism as a basis for moral motivation I draw upon Gift Theory in order to characterize two basic forms of gift relationship. The first is purely altruistic, the other fully reciprocal and obligatory within the framework of institutions, values and social forces within specific relationships of politics and power. This conception problematizes donor-recipient relationships in the context of two modernist models of aid chains-the Resource Transfer and the Beyond Aid Paradigms. In the first, donor domination means low levels of reciprocity despite rhetoric about partnership and participation. The second identifies potential for greater reciprocity on the basis of combination between social movements and non-governmental organizations at both national and trans-national levels, although at the risk of marginalizing competencies of states. Finally, I evaluate post-structural critiques which also problematize aid chain relationships. They do so both in terms of bases-such as universals and difference-upon which it might be constructed and the means-such as forms of positionality and mutuality-by which it might be achieved.
Has the increasingly pro-poor stance of the World Bank, as manifested in particular in its most recent World Development Report (WDR), caused it to abandon its traditionally free-market attitudes ? The answer is 'yes and no'. The pursuit of 'security' espoused by the WDR has forced the Bank to acknowledge widespread market failure in the provision of security, both social and financial; and this has caused the Bank to espouse some measures very inconsistent with the Washington consensus, such as international capital controls. On the other hand, the old agenda of rolling back the frontiers of the state remains, and is given a new twist in WDR 2000 by the revelation that the 'voices of the poor' are arrayed against bureaucratic abuses. Debate within the Bank has become much more open and transparent, and this has exposed long-persisting internal differences about what markets still need to be liberalized in what environments. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
As we enter the 21st century, a dominant trend in development thinking makes it refer specifically to the practice of development agencies. However, to accept this as the main meaning of development would carry the dangers of losing the complexity and ambiguity of development, of underplaying the importance of vision and of historical process, and of limiting development to actions and policies aimed at reducing poverty in poor countries. It is important to challenge this restricted view of what development is. At the same time, the current prime importance of practice within the development field should be recognized and development practice should be taken more seriously from the point of view of theory building. Focused work on notions such as accountability, trusteeship and public action would help here, as would work on building up a tradition of critical practice analogous that in Organization Development. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Notions of empire and imperialism have increasingly returned to the lexicon of mainstream theorisation of the international. Much of this literature identifies a ‘new’ imperialism, distinct from the supposed post- and non-imperial global(ising) order of the Westphalian state system. The article contends that such accounts occlude our understanding of the ‘long’ history of imperialism. It argues that the putatively post-imperial institutions and discourses of ‘global governance’ are internally related to ‘post-colonial’ imperialism. In particular the regime of ‘democratisation’ and the curtailing of democratic freedom constitute a principal means through which imperial rule is articulated. Despite a vast literature on ‘democratisation’, there has been a paucity of analysis which interrogates the Great Power-defined agenda of democratisation. Mainstream accounts presuppose what requires explanation, taking for granted the non-imperial character of this global project, the hegemony of a specific and impoverished model of (neo)liberal democracy, highly problematic, de-historicised notions of state, society and self and the categorical separation of the ‘domestic’ and the ‘international’. The article provides detailed substantive analysis of the endeavour by the dominant social agents of the democratisation project to constitute a (neo)liberal procedural notion of democracy in the ‘post-colonial’ world. It identifies the dominant social agents of this project and explores the theoretical underpinnings of the dominant model being propounded. Informed by this, the article examines the democratisation project according to coveted transformations in three domains: the minimal, ‘neutral’ state, the constitution of ‘civil society’ and the promotion of the liberal ‘self’. The article contends that far from an alternative to imperialism, ‘democratisation’ involves the imposition of a Western (neo)liberal procedural form of democracy on imperialised peoples. The character of the ‘informal’ imperial order is such that self-determination does not mean autonomy. Rather it means the ‘freedom’ to embrace the rules, norms and principles of the emerging (neo)liberal global order.
Mark Duffield analyzes how the conventional understanding of the new wars establishes both a justification and legitimacy for external intervention. He argues that the encounter of global liberal governance with resistance is shaping the post-Cold War reuniting of aid and politics. Development (2005) 48, 16–24. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100164
This article considers how changing trends in patterns and modalities of aid are affecting the roles of civil society organisations. It draws on research carried out in Uganda in 2001 to argue that donors are adopting an oversimplified conception of the roles of CSOs. In particular, by separating 'service delivery' from 'advocacy' roles, donors fail to appreciate a situation in which organisations play several roles simultaneously, and the vital synergy that can be created between roles. Furthermore, there is a danger that the changes in funding modalities will force a new dependence on government which will restrict CSOs' ability to carry out the very role that donors are trying to enhance - that of 'holding government to account'. Copyright Overseas Development Institute, 2003.