Aidnography

Hi all, This week is a more essential and shorter link review as I am getting ready for my trip to South Africa. Great food for thought from MSF, WhyDev , on funding the revolution, aid in Kenya & 'studying up' in design anthropology! Enjoy! New from aidnography Aidnography in Stellenbosch & Cape Town I will be part of our ComDev/Glocal Classroom team that is going to travel to South Africa for a conference on ICT and education organized by Stellenbosch University as well as a seminar with colleagues in Cape Town. Two exciting and different events and you are most welcome to join us online or in person! Development Opinion and Debate: Either… Or - Building resilience is still not compatible with humanitarian aid Humanitarian aid does not offer a transformative agenda; it is a way of standing in solidarity with people in crisis as opposed to people in the West (still) trying to help ‘them’ bounce back. When I told colleagues and friends in Beirut that I was engag...

Hi all, I will be part of our ComDev/Glocal Classroom team that is going to travel to South Africa for a conference on ICT and education organized by Stellenbosch University as well as a seminar with colleagues in Cape Town. Two exciting and different events and you are most welcome to join us online or in person! Stellenbosch Seboka 'Transforming education through technological innovation', 25 & 26 March The first day will be focusing on the experiences of the global network of partner universities which will lead to the second with a diverse range of presentations and discussants: • Keynote speakers focusing on examples of innovation and transformation of various industries through the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies. • Panels consisting of university senior management members as respondents focusing on how the integration of ICTs has potential for innovation and transformation of their particular universities. • Case studies focusing on be...

Hello all, A packed weekly review with a special 'Development +' section that focuses on tech & digital issues...but let's start with a great photo essay on Western people doing mundane things followed by a new study on how Africa tweets, Nepal's slow and difficult transformation to improve women's lives, a great essay on labour-centred development as empowerment, new research that revisits large dams, a new book that challenges 'Protest Inc'; tech talent in Kenya, big data & resilience, new tools vs. old mindsets and essays on 'mindful' consumerism and 'digital Turks' round off the Development part. Two posts on 'digital pedagogy' in the Academia section and your bookmarks for weekend reading is complete! Enjoy! Development Unprecedented images of Western people looking just like you and me We have all wondered how Western people look like in everyday situations, behind the veil of exoticism that surrounds their myster...

Hello all, Finally a weekly link review that's pretty much on time ;)! New research on peacebuilding rituals, old insights into Nepal development politics and how the ADB is only 'open' when it suits. There's more on the relationship between NGOs and journalists, a PhD thesis on OLPC, the limits of collaborative technology and 'hacking' as a life motto. In Academia , we look at whether African PhD education will be repeating OECD mistakes, mental well-being and innovations in collaborative learning! Enjoy! New on aidnography Performing Peace-building: Conferences, Rituals and the Role of Ethnographic Research The basic idea is to apply classic anthropological concepts such as 'ritual' and 'performance' to the expanding spaces where peacebuilding is non-happening, i.e. indoor events, workshops and conferences. As the excerpt from the conclusion indicates, the emerging 'ritual economy' of organizations and experts has become an important ...

Hi all, It is always great to see a final product after a long and winding publication process! As part of a special double issue of the IDS Bulletin entitled ' New Perspectives from PhD Field Research' , my latest article 'Performing Peace-building - Conferences, Rituals and the Role of Ethnographic Research' is finally available! As always, an un-gated pre-print version of the paper is available from Academia.edu as well. My article is based on my PhD research and the advantage of revising, shortening and rethinking some of the theoretical and empirical issues behind it is that the outcome should be a reasonably readable article-in line with the mission of the IDS Bulletin to publish scholarship in an accessible way. Abstract This article explores performance and ritual theory in the context of anthropological research on peace-building institutions and knowledge discourses, as well as the process of writing up an ethnographic PhD thesis. Based on fieldw...

Dear all, This slightly more comprehensive link review makes for excellent end-of-beginning-of week reading! And best of all, it is a Ukraine-free round-up ;)! After a few announcements on crowd-sourced development knowledge, there is Bosnia and the failures of liberal peacebuilding, Haiti and the shortcoming of child sponsorship and India and the failures of tax governance; Burning questions like 'why avoid hip gadgets for development?' or 'what do White House policy-makers really read?' and career-related issues on MPH and the crushing power of aid bureaucracies round off the development section. Anthropology is all about writing more truthfully, more beautifully and more books! In Academia we look at fake conferences and their fake papers, a conference on the many faces of 'publish or perish' and an obituary of Stuart Hall from a Communication for Development perspective! Enjoy! New on aidnography ICT4D after Snowden From the Snowden leaks to the ‘deep sta...