Aidnography

Hello all, After a final week of work to wrap of the semester, you are probably not entirely surprised that the weekly link review arrives with a bit of a delay...however, I did the compiling, reading and editing work so you can enjoy some good, critical reads this Sunday or early on in the week. Development News feature pieces on new militarized NGOs, more evidence on how biofuels fuel malnutrition, how the American Red Cross dodges transparency requests as well as news from Nepal, Tunisia & Equatorial-Guinea. Development as career has more advice for aspiring humanitarians, challenging times for expats in Asia and questions on how the data revolution can challenge organizational routines. Our Digital Lives on a Facebook experiment with questionable ethics and reflections on 'big data' and historical anthropological data collection. Finally, more Anthropology questioning the 'monster myth' of sexual violence and a round-up of the recent BBC ethnography award. E...

Hi all, Our teaching term was rounded off with the largest-ever examination seminar our ComDev program has seen so far! As the course convener of the Degree Project/MA thesis course I am very proud of the students and their range of excellent and good projects that we have examined in Malmö over four days. Congratulations! We also had a very interesting seminar in Malmö on ICT4D, Crisis Communication & Social Change and you can find a link to the updated post with the recorded presentations below. During all these exciting events quite a few interesting links have piled up and I'm happy to share my latest carefully edited and concisely reviewed link list with you! The review starts with a new post on reflecting on emerging bad South-South development practices and an updated post on our ICT4D seminar last week. To make the review more exciting, there are four sub-headings: Development News features new publications and contemporary debates from 'the cult of glamorized ...

It is maybe a bit unfair to single out one bad idea like donating used bras to ‘underprivileged women’ , an initiative from Malaysia that has been shared in my social networks. From a research and teaching perspective the short post about the campaign is, shall we say, interesting to read and includes a reference to ‘the late Nelson Mandela’ and a cringe-worthy quote that ‘the problem of (...), however complicated it may seem, is actually really simple’. My concern is that this will definitely not be the last well-intentioned project that originates in the global South and that is criticized extensively (just as another ‘charitable hero’ is challenged right now for very different reasons, though). As ‘South-South cooperation’ increases, the BRIC countries continue to grow and a bigger global middle class emerges in more countries the finger-pointing at your local church group’s shoe donation, North American college graduate gone social entrepreneur or European voluntourist gone to an...

Hi all, Back from a great trip to New York, Guelph & Toronto new content and new links are ready to be explored! Research confirms that de-complexified campaigns have no long-term impact; small special sections on the UN & Nepal (from hydropower and peacebuilding to orphanage tourism and development in the 1950s...); post-Sandy accountability; graduation advice for aspiring humanitarians; 'Our digital lives' is a new sub-section that will probably become a bit of a new feature (panoptic tourism photography and the case against the sharing economy) and in the Academia corner interesting reflections on anonymity in research in a data-dense digital domain & a satire on med school prep essay writers in an African village...   Enjoy! New from aidnography Seminar in Malmö & online: ICT4D, Crisis Communication & Social Change IPID & ComDev invited Emrys Schoemaker and Timo Luege to join students, staff & guests online and in Malmö to discuss The Role of Id...

Hi all, You are warmly invited to our seminar in Malmö next week that IPID – The International Network for Postgraduate Students in the area of ICT4D – and me on behalf of ComDev have organized! We invited Emrys Schoemaker and Timo Luege to join students, staff & guests online and in Malmö to discuss The Role of Identity in ICT4D & The Role of Social Media and Crisismapping in Disaster Response - Examples from the Philippines respectively.  Timo Luege Emrys Schoemaker Do join us online or in person at Malmö University, on Wednesday, 11 June 2014, 1–4 pm (Swedish time). You can find us at Malmö University , Aktersalongen, Östra Varvsgatan 11 A, Room E 203 or online at www.orecomm.net !    Emrys' presentation: Your browser does not support iframes. Timo's presentation: Your browser does not support iframes.

Ken Silverstein’s new book The Secret World of Oil is an interesting and engaging reading experience and a very good fit for a review on Aidnography . By bringing some of the often hidden dynamics of the oil world to the front stage his book is located between journalism and engaged ethnography while touching on an issue with clear, yet often unaddressed, consequences for the development industry: Virtually every stage in oil's production process, from discovery to consumption, is greased by secret connections, corruption, and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public. The energy industry, to cite just one measure, violates the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act more often than any other economic sector, even weapons. This book sets out to tell the story of this largely hidden world. The Fixers The first chapter The Fixers: Ely Calil takes the reader right into the ‘shadows’ to employ Carolyn Nordstrom’s ethnographic concept of looking for the grey areas where...

Hi all, Amidst the end of the teaching term demands and our forthcoming trip to New York and Guelph, I managed to fit in a fresh link review: More on our forthcoming communication and development seminar in Canada; it's not just World Bank publications that nobody reads; Canada’s ‘confidential’ aid transparency; why I largely agree with Anti-Voluntourists; debunking myths about the ‘data revolution’; why ICT4D will stick around as political project; women entrepreneurs' difficult access to funding; DevBalls-new fresh aid snark from the UK; Is science blogging bad for research applications? New publications by Saskia Sassen and on Foucault & Deleuze Enjoy! New from aidnography Shame (book review & discussion with author Jillian Reilly) One of my personal highlights of our recent trip to South Africa was the discussion I had with (former) aid worker and author Jillian Reilly. We took her biography as the starting to discuss aid work as a career, entering the industry...