Reclaiming partnership – ‘rightful resistance’ in a Norths/Souths cooperation

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the development discourse has been subject to various criticisms. Instead of rejecting these criticisms, however, the discourse absorbed at least parts of them. This led to discursive incoherencies. These appear as new concepts that seem incompatible with the initial development discourse and the power relations on which it relies. The notion of partnership, which refers to mutual trust and respect, is one of the discourse’s most prominent incoherent features. In the everyday cooperation between Jordanian women’s organisations and their North-based donors, however, partnership is an ideal, rather than an actual practice, and is frequently arbitrarily misinterpreted and misused by the donors. Through a case study grounded in a two-month participant observation of one Jordanian women’s organisation and a series of qualitative interviews with their staff members and donor representatives conducted in Jordan in 2017 and 2018, the paper explores how the organisation and their staff members intentionally resist their donors’ behaviour by performing acts of rightful resistance.

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