Aidnography

Last week I was invited to talk about development blogging, social media and research dissemination at an event in Manchester that the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Postgraduate Forum organized. The topic was Publishing and disseminating your research and I s hared some reflections on development blogging virtually from the comfort of my desk at home: The focus is on publishing and disseminating ‘developing areas’ research, both in academic journals and beyond the academy – through press and broadcasting, social media, non-academic publishing and community engagement. The workshop combines presentations from a range of professionals, alongside postgrads talking about their experiences, with practical advice and lively discussions. Thanks to 21st century technology I am very happy to share my presentation with th e audience outs ide the classroom as well : The full presentation, incl uding slides and audio is available as a You T ube ...

Hello all, This week's review t urned out to have a peace , conflict & gender focus, featuring new research on local accountability, violence & disability , results-orientation in peacebu ilding, Quaker h isto ry & memory, all-male (peace) conferences and a great blog on Z imbabwe. But make sure to leave room for a brilliant 'Letter to a Social Entrepreneu r' and more reflections on the end of 'educational cartels'. And for the very bra ve there's even a 15 minute interview with Aidnography on development HR, generational shifts & the risk of me dicalizing humanitarian work risks. Enjoy! New on/from aidnography AidWorks 17th April 2013. Tobias Denskus discusses development HR & Generation Z People in Aid recently released a report on the state of Human Resourcing in development organisations, with results that were less than encouraging. Calling for a promotion of Human Resourcing within aid and development organisations as a specialist ski...

This volume is a collection of articles published in the journal Critique of Anthropology between 1975 and 1991. Its purpose is to illustrate key trends in what is sometimes referred to as “critical anthropology”, a non-dogmatic Marxist turn within anthropology that has strongly shaped the field. [...] Because many of the articles have long been out of print and inaccessible in its original form, this book is a teaching resource, and, for future generations of scholars, a compendium if original arguments that are of continued relevance to the evolution of the discipline (p.7).  Stephen Nugent, the editor of the Critical Anthropology. Foundational Works collection and an editor of the journal Critique of Anthropology , manages to capture the purpose and value of the collection very well right on the first page. Featuring authors like Andre Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein, Marshall Sahlins, Michael Taussig and Eric R. Wolf (and basically no female anthropologists-but read my...

Hello all, Sometimes the intro feels like more work than the act ual link review...in short: as with previous weeks , there's lot of great stuff to discover. It's broadly along the 'words' and 'action' trajectory and different moments when one o r the other seems to speak louder /too loud. The humanicontrarian points out how the illusion of poli tic al will is ma intained through celebrities, summits and inaction on the ground. On the other hand, there are great su ccess stor ies of reducing open defecation and introducing more efficient stoves in N epal that are often ignored by the media. There's more on drones and peacekeeping , World Bank corruption and the question of how peacebuilding should engage with homicides & crime in post-war situations . Duncan Green intr oduces his 'best of blogging' and the UN - ECA's Director's blog proves to be a great new find. A new anthropological project engages with q ues tions of gender and h...

It may be a bit unusual to start a book review with the Contributors’ biographies (pp. xvi-xxvii), but to understand the context of Zachary D. Kaufman’s edited volume Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities. Changing our World they are worth a closer look. Some of the biographies comprise an entire page and the catchwords read like a ‘what-is-what’ in North American personal, intellectual, entrepreneurial, cultural and social achievement: ‘Yale’, ‘Harvard’, ‘Oxford’, ‘founder’, ‘executive director’, ‘CEO’, ‘McKinsey & Co.’, ‘White House Fellow’, a couple of high-profile law firms, the full range of transatlantic scholarships and m ultiple leadership awards. Many of those catchwords appear more than once and morph into a network of Yale and Oxford graduated management consultants who have also been giving back ‘pro - bono’ throughout their studies and careers. The eight case studies ( Seven success stories and one failed project) of social entrepreneurism that K...