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Showing posts from October, 2018

Links & Contents I Liked 298

Hi all, This week I needed to take a little break from blogging-but there's always time for a great weekly link review! Development news: You saw the Congo wedding pics, right, and thought 'WTF, white people...'; the political science of 'going local'; political economy reports nobody read; will Swedish mining executives go to jail for crimes in Sudan? The UN's failed 'war on drugs'; migrating from Nigeria; more on the World Development Report; UN wants to ban virginity tests; Optimism at the UNGA; What next for #AidToo? How to become a great #globaldev blogger? Our digital lives: Traveling on a 'weak' passport; the botification of Gmail communication. Publications: Technology for feminist creativity; security mapping Haiti. Academia: International criminal courts as sights of spectatorship; why we recycle.  Enjoy! Development news Dear White People... A couple took wedding photos of themselves appearing to be held at gunpoint in the 'Co

Links & Contents I Liked 297

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Hi all, Welcome to your weekly gateway to #globaldev readings! Development news: Impressions from the Safeguarding Summit; foster care instead of orphanages; foreign aid in Indonesia; do no digital harm; Canada's development policy; Kenya's devolution; Vox's journalism on Effective Altruism; Canada's famous development twins under critique; remember Thomas Sankara; plus, snarky tweets all through the section ;)! Our digital lives: Small-scale tourism in developing countries in an age of platform capitalism. Publications: Successful campaigns; humanitarian journalism; breastfeeding at the workplace. Academia: An African feminist reading list; reviewing the fall of the HAU publication project. Enjoy! New from aidnography Who really needs a World Development Report? If nothing else, Changing Nature of Work is an interesting case study on the communicative and discursive environment around so-called ‘flagship reports’. Their framing, but also the framing of the cri

Should aid workers fly less? Yes, but it’s a bit more complicated

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Over at From Poverty to Power my dear colleague Thea Hilhorst shared some reflections on why aid workers should fly less and how the industry needs to address air travel in its efforts to lead climate and social change work by example. I generally agree with her sentiment to fly less, have tougher discussions within aid organizations about (air) travel and be the change they want to see from other actors. But as basically everything else in #globaldev, things are a bit more complicated... Getting a sense of the scope of the problem How much of an issue is aid worker air travel? Most of us will probably agree that time-sensitive humanitarian work will always require air travel. There is probably also some ‘essential’ travel to get safely into countries and to avoid long road trips. And then there are trade-offs, for example whether stressed staff should be allowed to fly from their duty station to a relaxing R&R break or how often they should be allowed to fly ‘home’ to their fa

Who really needs a World Development Report?

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The World Bank released its annual World Development Report (WDR) last Friday. The Changing Nature of Work has already triggered some negative feedback which contributes to an emerging case study about the value of ‘flagship reports’, development policy discourses and ritualized behavior from the critics; above all, bigger questions loom what the purpose of the WDR exercise really is. Just in case you have been hibernating for the last five to eight years or so the report starts with an ‘everything has already been said-but not by everybody’ summary: Technology is changing the skills that employers seek. Workers need to be better at complex problem-solving, teamwork and adaptability. Digital technology is also changing how people work and the terms on which they work. Even in advanced economies, short-term work, often found through online platforms, is posing similar challenges to those faced by the world’s informal workers. The Report analyzes these changes and considers how go

Links & Contents I Liked 296

Hi all, Another book review + link review double-feature this week! Development news: Melania in Africa; Indonesia's tsunami, localization & empathy; another #AidToo story from Liberia; how Bring Back Our Girls created a different movement; aid billboards in Burundi; decolonizing global health; Gaza as laboratory for Israel's military-industrial complex; philanthropy at the crossroads; how to survive conferences. Publications: Uncovering 'community'; Oxfam's learning from influencing policy; from civil resistance to building democracy; voices from Silicon Savannah. Academia: Circular logic of humanitarian expertise; digital learning revisited.  Enjoy! New from aidnography Curated stories (book review) Curated Stories is a remarkable entry point for critical discussions that probably all of us should have who ‘do’ communication and/for development. Critical engagement with the storytelling discourse goes far beyond an authentic organizational blog or the