Doing development differently: Rituals of hope and despair in an INGO

Abstract

Through an anthropological lens, using examples from working in an international NGO, I explore how and why a group of development workers navigated the coercive practices of aid in ways that benefitted their partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Rather than seeking conspiracies to explain the gaps between development rhetoric and practices, I suggest that people both contest and collude with bureaucratic systems of rule. Youth Rights reformed various rituals and created different management practices internally, as well as maintaining its long-established solidarity approach with partners, but only managed to challenge the donors’ controls to a limited extent.

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