Werkzeuge des Geistes (Rubrik:Development)

NGO report on aid funds

age_man_eight — 2005-09-09T07:56:40Z

The Reality of Aid project is the only major north/south international non-governmental initiative focusing exclusively on analysis and lobbying for poverty eradication policies and practices in the international aid regime.
http://www.realityofaid.org/

NEPAD

age_man_eight — 2005-09-09T07:38:48Z

NEPAD stands for "New Partnership for African Development". It was launched in 2001 by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal.
Its primary objectives are:
a) To eradicate poverty;
b) To place African countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development;
c) To halt the marginalisation of Africa in the globalisation process and enhance its full and beneficial integration into the global economy;
d) To accelerate the empowerment of women
The programmes website: http://www.nepad.org/2005/files/inbrief.php
Zed books has just released a book about the programme:
Africa and Development Challenges in the New Millennium
The NEPAD Debate
Edited by J. O. Adesina, Yao Graham and A. Olukoshi
(http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/)

Overseas Development Centre & anthropology

age_man_eight — 2005-09-03T10:21:42Z

The Overseas Development Centre (ODI) is one of Britains largest independent think tanks on international development and humanitarian issues. Among their research activities, you can find
group with a focus on "Poverty and Public Policies":
http://www.odi.org.uk/PPPG/index.html
A Paper on Poverty regarded from an anthropological viewpoint can be found here:
"Experiencing poverty in Africa: perspectives from anthropology"
http://www.odi.org.uk/PPPG/publications/papers_reports/mul/wob_bp1.html

Poverty politics

age_man_eight — 2005-08-21T10:50:11Z

The social anthropology department of the University of Bergen has an interesting research programm on Poverty Politics http://www.uib.no/povertypolitics/index.htm

Journals

age_man_eight — 2005-08-14T11:30:47Z

For my friends, who are interested in the relationship of anthropology and development studies, developmental paradigms, anthropological contributions to ideas of social change and so on, I found these two journals quite helpfull:
Human Organization: http://sfaa.metapress.com/app/home/main.asp?wasp=cf48b23f8b654e2197181f1617d795f6
Development and Change:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0012-155X

Some articles from "Human Organization" are also available (for free) on:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3800

Old interview with Wolfgang Sachs

age_man_eight — 2005-08-06T10:36:00Z

Here you can found an interesting but older interview with W.Sachs on development. He argues:
Development has brought a new global middle class but the failure of 45 y of development is that it has produced a deep sense of inferiority in the South. Some other issues Sachs talks about like the birth of development in 1949 are mirrored in contemporary disscusions in the anthropology of development
http://cltwebs.lse.ac.uk/coursemedia/development/TimAllenInterviewWithSachs.htm

The notion of Globalization

age_man_eight — 2005-08-03T10:53:30Z

One of the key words of our time is the notion of globalization. While most scholars try to catch the term by its properties (free capital flow,
new IT media,...) I ask: Whats behind globalization? Which mechanism s allowed to create globalization?
Using the method of discourse analysis my idea is:
Globalization is a discourse that created a space for a dominant mode of thought.
So far so good, but what then are the underlying assumptions of this discourse?

Anthropological fields: Part 2

age_man_eight — 2005-07-23T14:02:09Z

Another important field for anthropologists is certainly the lifeworld of one of the several new institutions, that came with modernity:
I take here exzerpts from "French DNA" (by P.Rabinow) as an example of fieldwork in a biotechnological lab
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/701506.html:
On page 5, he describes the site of his fieldwork as
- an "heterogeneous zone where genomics, bioethics, patients groups, venture capital, nations, and the state meet."

Furthermore he describes this heterogenous zone as a lifeworld:
"Such a common place, a practiced site, eruptive and changing yet strangely slack, is filled with talk of good and evil, illness and health, spirit and flesh. It is full of diverse machines and bodies, parts and wholes, exchanges and relays."

The research interest is now the discourse inside this lifeworld and its consequenses:
"For those mortally ill, or told they are so, all this discourse, all these diverse things, can produce a good deal of anxious waiting and solicitation. It can also produce a range of other effects and affects in the world. I became intrigued by the futures being carved out of the present. Their representations ranged from ones full of dangers to others of a potential luminosity. Today, as yesterday, partisans of both visions abound. Partisans that they are, they find their antagonists' arrogance, misplaced emphases, failures of nerve, and sheer blindness trying. Amid all the discord, however, all parties agree that the future is at stake and that there is a pressing obligation to do something about it."

Anthropological fields: The Caribean

age_man_eight — 2005-07-23T08:49:36Z

While thinking about specializing in anthropology in a certain region, I came across the site of Sidney, Mintz
http://www.marcelloworld.org/caribbeanpage.html, a prominent scholar of historical anthropology. His research focuses on the Caribean and he writes about it:

" The Caribbean region, which is made up mostly of islands and forms a sort of archipelago between North and South America, is a small region when viewed worldwise, with a tiny portion of its population. Yet it was early one of the most ethnically diverse segments of the globe, exposed to an excruciating modernity that rested on genocide, slavery, large-scale acculturation, early and forced industrialization, and then, revolution. Most of that past has been obscured in recent decades by emigration, tourism and drugs. But it's a past that has never wholly died or disappeared."

Literature on social movements

age_man_eight — 2005-07-22T17:44:31Z

The following is a literature list on social movements:
1. Marc Edelman: "Peasants Against Globalization
Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica."
2. Edelman, M.2001: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Changing Paradigms and Forms of Politics in Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 30: 285-317
3....to be continued

Social movements

age_man_eight — 2005-07-22T17:40:04Z

Some notes, why I think its necessary to study social movements.
1. One of the mayor paradigmas in the development lliterature is the project of neoliberal reforms.
2. Privatization is one tool to achieve this project.
3. The people who are directly concerned by privatization are the local
peasants.
4. Peasants are often characterized as weak, vulnerable and without oppurtunitys.

Now here comes the importance of the anthropological study of social movements:
a) in regards to the image of the peasants
1. They have the power to deconstruct the mentioned characteristics.
2. The latter is a necessary important corrective.

b) in regards to anthropology as a subject
1. The participation in social upheavals raises important ethical questions, that have to be discussed.

c) in regards to neoliberalism
1. It shows the dark side of the neoliberal project
2. Social movements develop new techniques to encounter the neoliberal project. Anthropological Studies are necessary to discover these new protest reservoir

Humanitärer Supermarkt

age_man_eight — 2005-07-21T21:18:01Z

"Außer 250 NGOs gab es in der Region acht verschiedene UN-Abteilungen, etwa zwanzig staatliche Geberorganisationen, unzählige von Geberorganisationen finanzierte örtliche Hilfsorganisationen und neun internationale Militärkontingente, die die Hilfe im Gebiet der Großen Seen unterstützten. Hundert der 250 Hilfsorganisationen kümmerten sich ausschließlich um die Lager rund um Goma. Bei einer derartigen humanitären Megaveranstaltung nur dabeizusein reicht nicht aus. Zeigen, daß man da ist, um bei der überwältigenden Konkurrenz nicht unterzugehen, ist für die Hilfsorganisationen von größerer Bedeutung. Als ich nach Goma kam, ein Jahr nach dem Einmarsch der Hutu, flatterte über den Hunderttausenden von blau-weißen UNHCR-Planen, die die Flüchtlinge zum Bau von Hütten bekommen hatten, noch ein Meer von Fähnchen mit Firmenlogos. Hatten solche Banner einst die Funktion, den Konfliktparteien zu signalisieren, daß hier humanitäre und keine militärische Organisationen am Werke waren, so sind sie jetzt Grenzmarkierungen im Kampf um Aufmerksamkeit. Es war, als stünden Wahlen bevor. Auf T-Shirts und Mützen der vielen Hundert Mitarbeiter der Organisationen, die sich zwischen den Hütten herumtrieben, und auf den Türen ihres Fuhrparks war Werbung gedruckt, Latrinentüren waren mit Aufklebern übersät, und vor den Eingängen von Bürozelten, Wellblechkliniken und Waisenheimen waren Namensschilder in den Boden gerammt."
gefunden via www.lettre.de von Linda Polman