Tidy concepts, messy lives: defining tensions in the domestic and overseas careers of UK non-governmental professionals

Abstract

The identities of development professionals and activists can usefully be analysed in the context of the dominant policy ideas and models within which their expertise is constructed and given value and meaning. Recent ethnographic research has used the life-history method to understand the longer-term trajectories of people who cross between governmental and nongovernmental careers and, more generally, to learn more about the motivations, working experiences and world views of activists and professionals (Lewis, 2008a; Lewis, 2008b). In this chapter, I consider the experiences of a particular sub-set of individuals in the UK who have built careers within two distinctive domains within the broader non-governmental sector. One group has worked primarily in the UK domestic setting, where they have sought to tackle issues of poverty ‘at home’, while another has built international careers doing overseas work within so-called ‘developing’ country settings. Expertise and professionalism among these two groups of people has been differently constructed in relation to two main models or institutional maps, which are explored in this chapter. The first is the model of the three ‘sectors’ of institutional life (government, business and ‘third’ sector), which has become central to current global concerns with good governance. The second is the still-prevailing post-colonial separation of professional third sector work spaces in the UK into categories of ‘domestic’ and ‘international development’. The life history narratives collected take us further into what Apthorpe (this volume) has termed ‘the virtual reality of aid-land’, making possible a more detailed exploration of these two key issues in the world of ideas relating to professional non-governmental activities in the UK. There is a ubiquity to the ‘three sector’ model of state, market and civil society as a central framing device and organising principle of contemporary policy landscapes, yet this simple yet persuasive institutional idea tends to sit uneasily upon ‘real’ worlds of history and practice (Lewis 2006; 2008a and b). An important element of the identity and role of the development professional is the need continuously to mediate and ‘broker’ the relationship between disparate everyday work

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