Aidnography

Hello all, Happy International Women's Day! It has been quite a busy week in the development blogosphere. But I promise you an almost Kony 2012 and Jeff-Sachs-for-President free zone in this post. Not that these are not important debates, but they have already been in the spotlight for a few days and there were many other posts that also caught my attention. There are also three new posts on aidnography that I hope you enjoy, too. New on aidnography Is writing reflective blogs on development a girl’s thing? And if so, am I really a female blogger? In some ways, a pre-emptive Women's Day debate took place last week on the subject of gender and writing blogs. Tom Murphy's balanced post Carefully Wading into Gender and Development Blogging summarizes the debate quite well - although more research certainly needs to be done ;) Open data, crowd-wisdom and ‘hunting plagiarists’ – how a group of activists is challenging the German academic system A Wikileaks-equivalent on uncover...

I am not going to write about Invisible Children and their Kony 2012 documentary. Many others have done so already and fellow bloggers at Whydev.org have a neat compilation of all the material. I found the ' We got trouble ' and ' Taking "Kony 2012" Down a Notch ' particularly good food for thought and reflections. But as I was reading through the material I came across 5 bigger issues and questions that I find important to address once the viral dust has settled a bit. As always, I'm writing this from the perspective of a blogging development researcher and teacher and my feeling is that 'we' will have to engage more and better to break through the cycle of 'good intentions' - '15 minutes of virtual fame' and 'viral critique' that seems to have become part of contemporary discussions and approaches on development. 1. Is transparency overrated? Although the issue of transparency would probably come up quite early in a ...

Yesterday, the University of Cologne stripped off the title of one of their PhD graduates after a web-based plagiarism platform discovered significant amounts of allegedly plagiarised material in the Liberal Party Member of Parliament's dissertation. What started as a more organised and crowd-based project after the Minister of Defence resigned last year because of a plagiarised dissertation is slowly turning into a 'dissertation Wikileaks'. Except for a REUTERS article about a year ago, I couldn’t find any new English information on Vroni-Plag (named after the nickname of a former Bavarian Prime Minister’s daughter who also came under scrutiny of the project) and the potentially global implications it may have for PhD dissertations, academic accountability and issues of plagiarism and fraud. [Update: WiseWoman @WeWuWiWo sent me a link to ' Copy, Shake, and Paste ' which, among other issues on plagiarism, features some English posts on Vroni-Plag ] Abou...

Duncan Green’s post Is blogging (or commenting on blogs) a guy thing? And if so, why? on development blogging gender disparities tackles an interesting issue with surprisingly sexist contemplations that may generate comments for the Huffington Post (where his article was also published), but really don’t take the debate forward. Just to get two things out of the way. First, Tom Murphy would be the first person to admit that the ABBAs shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Many interesting comments have already been made as to how to improve them, but the basic question is whether it should turn into a ‘serious’ award or remain on the level of group of friends engaging with development blogging. Second, as always on topics with very little data, one should be careful about generalisations. Many of my favourite development bloggers are female – Saundra Schimmelpfennig , Jennifer Lentfer , Whydev (e.g. Lucy Daniel's recent post on children, education and disability), Linda Raftre...

Hello all, Some of you may have noticed that there was another 'Links I like' post earlier this week, but since then quite a few interesting posts, new blogs and intellectual tidbits have gathered in my Inbox. One piece I found particularly important is Hugh Gusterson's report from inside the Iraqi university system (filed under the Anthroplogy section). In many ways, it's an sad example of how interconnected 'development', 'peacebuilding' and academia are and how the war in Iraq was exactly the opposite of laying a foundation for a a bright, democratic and prosperous future of the country. I hope this week's second link edition has something worthwhile for you to read as well! New on aidnography Links and Content I liked 14 Links I like Monday edition-Canada, mining & good governance; Nepal, community forests & post-war spoils; Kenya, ICT4D & offline advocacy; how to find a job as anthropologist; suing 3 Cups of tea & SpikeTV's ...