Aidnography

Hi all, It has been a while since I published my last book review -so I'm glad that a new one for Keenie Meenie is up now! The Covid-19 section features some interesting pieces on how the virus is affecting platform workers in the South & there are plenty of other interesting readings on Dutch reparations, fundraising communication, safeguarding in #globaldev research & more! Enjoy! My quotes of the week “We are now down to zero income, zero savings, and have zero insurance. We’ve managed to get through the last two weeks using donations from friends.” (How are platform workers in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria responding to the Covid-19 crisis?) As the research shows, contributors want their voices heard and to have a greater say in the stories that are told about them. So to continue showing need without changing the process by which we gather stories, or without investing in other, broader depictions, would be to undermine the research findings entirely. (You’ve been refr

Like most of my readers I have had a hard time these past few weeks to stay focused enough to read longer texts so it took a bit longer to read Phil Miller’s excellent Keenie Meenie-The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes . But Miller’s meticulously researched and sourced book about a relatively small British private security company that was active in some of the usual and less usual hot spots in the 1970s and 1980s is an important exploration into the capillary system of power, British foreign policy and ultimately into unpacking how the company’s mercenaries got involved in war crimes in Sri Lanka at the end of the 1980s. Keenie Meenie Services (KMS) with its unclear origins of the name, staffed with predominantly former British SAS elite soldiers and excellent contacts within the establishments at home and abroad was a different outfit than today’s global private military security companies. But it was the right set-up for the ‘old boy network’ days of foreign pol

Hi all,  I hope everybody is still OK. I think this week's review is nicely balanced between watching Netflix ' 'Sergio', food for thought on a (post-) Coronavirus world, growing up in Dadaab, social movements in Hong Kong & anthropological research on the ICRC. Enjoy!   My quotes of the week We had fun like kids anywhere do. Celebrities visited Dadaab, although we only heard about it on the radio. We felt the pity visitors felt for us, and hated it. To the world, Dadaab was a garden where people, mostly white, came to plant trees and watch crowds of us squash each other in line for porridge. My father was the muezzin at the mosque, and every morning I woke up to his call to prayer. My mother promised she would kill me with her own two hands if my photo ever appeared on the pamphlets passed around the refugee camp to remind us of our own destitution. (Chasing the Mirage, from Nairobi to New York City) We are making a mistake by continuing to explore war in terms

You are probably too immersed in debates around the aid industry when you notice during the end credits that Jordan and Thailand, two favorite R’n’R places of the industry and its aid workers, replaced Iraq and East Timor, the central stages for Netflix ’ new Sergio movie. I am generally a big fan of using different artistic formats to communicate ‘development’, including humanitarian work and international politics, and after watching the trailer I was prepared to cut the movie some slack in terms of what to expect in terms of critical, even educational value. With that and my first book review I wrote on the blog in 2010 on Samantha Power ’ s De Mello biography in mind I was still a bit disappointed with Sergio which frames his story almost completely around the romantic relationship Sergio De Mello (played by Wagner Moura) develops with his young colleague Carolina Larriera (played by Ana De Armas). Ever since the notorious book Emergency Sex came out and in today’s world of

Hi all, I hope you are well & enjoyed some form of Easter-related break! This week's review features a lot of great long-reads on the history of pandemics, Canadian steel plants, World Vision & Renee Bach...perfect for exploring at home ;)! The COVID-19 section does not try to 'catch up'-so it is relatively short and selective. And there is poetry, wins against algorithmic intransparence, reflections on 'naked' research & more! Enjoy! My quotes of the week Bach’s two sisters live in California—one is a nanny, the other a doctor—and she was considering moving there. “I want to be in a place where I could live a life of service again,” she said. “I genuinely enjoy helping people. And I feel like an idiot saying that, because everyone is, like, ‘You just killed a bunch of people.’ I would love to live in a really low-income, diverse community—like immersion. Just to move into a Section 8 housing community, and not be completely ostracized, is an art.”