JEP » Issues » Civil Society, Cooperation and Development » Caught in the Funding Game: The Challenges of NGO Research within Development Aid

Caught in the Funding Game: The Challenges of NGO Research within Development Aid

Autor*innen: Sirpa Rovaniemi
https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-31-1-100
Volume XXXI • Issue 1 • 2015
Pages 100-116

Abstract

This article describes the methodological challenges I encountered during my ethnographic case study on the cooperation between two NGOs. My experiences show how the NGO actors strove to influence my data collection and analyses. This struggle for representation provides important insights into what kind of environment development aid creates for Southern NGOs, tying them to a fierce funding game which includes competition for funding and the need to demonstrate success. My research became subject to the structural pressure within development aid to demonstrate success, and my study became a battleground for divergent interests and logics. It is common for students and scholars to enter the field of development aid through NGOs or projects, and this often results in complications in the reconciliation of different interests and logics related to the production of knowledge. This should also be acknowledged in teaching and supervision.

Literature

Arce, Alberto/Long, Norman (eds., 2000): Anthropology, Development and Modernities: Exploring Discourses, Counter-Tendencies and Violence. London: Routledge.

Crewe, Emma/Harrison, Elizabeth (1998): Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid. London/New York: Zed Press.

Ebrahim, Alnoor (2003): NGOs and Organizational Change. Discourse, Reporting, and Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Edelman, Marc (2009): Synergies and Tensions between Rural Social Movements and Professional Researchers. In: The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (1), 245-265.

Eriksson Baaz, Maria (2005): The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid. London/New York: Zed Books.

Escobar, Arturo (1995): Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gould, Jeremy/Marcussen, Henrik Secher (eds., 2004): Ethnographies of Aid – Exploring Development Texts and Encounters. Roskilde: Roskilde University.

Hilhorst, Dorothea (2003): The Real world of NGOs: Discourses, Diversity and Development. London: Zed Books.

Koponen, Juhani (2008): NGOs in Tanzania and Civil Society: Developmentalist Complex at Work. Paper presented at the EADI General Conference 2008 in Geneva, unpublished.

Li, Tania (2013): Anthropological Engagements with Development / Les engagements anthropologiques vis-à-vis du développement. In: Anthropologie & développement 37-38-39, 227-256.

Mageli, Eldrid (2007): Donors and NGO activitism in Kolkata: the case of Unnayan and NOVIB. In: Opoku-Mensah, Paul/Lewis, David/Tvedt, Terje (eds.): Reconceptualising NGOs and their roles in development: NGOs, Civil Society
and the International Aid System. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press.

Mosse, David (2013): The Anthropology of International Development. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 42, 227-246.

Mosse, David (ed., 2011): Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York/Oxford: Berghahn.

Mosse, David (2005): Cultivating development: ethnography of aid policy and practice. London/Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.

Mosse, David (2004): Is good policy unimplementable? Reflections on the ethnography of aid policy and practice. In: Development and Change 35 (4), 639-671.

Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre (2008): La rigueur du qualitatif. Les contraintes empiriques de l’interprétation socio-anthropologique. Louvain-La-Neuve: Academia-Bruylant.

Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre (2005): Anthropology and Development. Understanding Contemporary Social Change. London: Zed Books.

Turner, Victor (1957): Schism and continuity in an African society: a study of Ndembu village life. Manchester: Manchester University Press for Rhodes-Livingston Institute.

Tvedt, Terje (2002): Development NGOs: Actors in a Global Civil Society or in a New International Social System? In: Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 13 (4), 363-375.

Sogge, David (2002): Give and take: What’s the matter with foreign aid? London: Zed Books.

Staples, James (2007): When things are not as they seem: Untangling the webs that hold together a South Indian NGO. In: Smith, Matt (ed.): Negotiating Boundaries and Borders: Qualitative Methodology and Development Research. Oxford: Elsevier, 131-154.

Urban, Greg (1996): Metaphysical Community: The Interplay of the Senses and the Intellect. Austin: University of Texas Press