Aidnography

Hi all, It's the busy marking season, plus I pulled many muscles from eyeball-rolling and hand-wringing over Ebola-Christmas-Song-gate, but finally there is a new, substantial link-review for our enjoyment ;)! In tech/development/comms news we look at dumping smartphones in Liberia, contraband-smuggling in Colombia, depoliticised state capacity building, a new blog with critical 'white saviour' reflections, the power of Infographics, Buzzfeed vs. WHO tweet-off, Ebola & C4D and a ritualized UN data report summary. Digital lives features a great long-read on Anonymous's nerd activism. Academia & anthropology approaches important questions such as: Why is research hidden behind paywalls? Why is anthropology faculty mostly white? Why should you live tweet from academic conferences and why should you do a PhD? Enjoy! New from aidnography Celebrities – the trolls of (virtual) global development? But then I heard a distant knock on the my development blogging door ...

Brendan Rigby 's post on his facebook probably captures a sentiment that many of us share: Duncan Green of From Poverty to Power (...) says that this Geldof-led band reformation feels like a mistake/step backwards. I agree. Surely, we've come further than this in 30 years in representation, knowledge and public campaigning? Why is Africa and African countries still the stage for the egos and guilt of others? My initial response was short and simple: I'm going to sit this one out. The default rituals of celebrity involvement are getting too tiresome for me. People like Geldof don't really want to listen, learn and change and are wasting my time... But then I heard a distant knock on the my development blogging door and as an inner voice urged me to keep that door shut. I opened it nonetheless and let them in: The celebrity development trolls who usually operate on a strange reverse-hibernating system and wake up as important festivities in the Northern part of the p...

Hello all, Let's just jump right into another comprehensive review! We have new stuff from Aidnography-and a new section that digs into t he blog's archive. UN South Sudan whistle blowing , international adoptions, a code of conduct f or using photos, the problem with ' evidence' and 'founderiti s'; new reports from UNV on global volunteer ing and from IRIS on localising humanitarianism; tons of digital issues: PopTech, cyber cartels, your dads tech & the cha llenges of big data and tra nsparency for school quality rating websites; last not least, a look into the value of research methods when d iscussing Hollaback and research papers as high as Mount Kilimanjaro! Enjoy! New from aidnography The future of expats in a globalized development industry-Reflections on the Devex Career Forum The (expat) aid worker experience will become ‘cheaper’ – in terms of lifestyles, salaries and perks as well as a general ‘doing more with less’ theme. Old* from aidno...

Last week DevEx’ Kate Warren shared three major points from the DevEx Career Forum : 1. The localization of aid movement has drastically changed career opportunities for both international and local national professionals. 2. The center of gravity in development continues to shift from the West into the South. 3. Organizations are looking at how they can restructure and staff their operations to achieve more value for money These are very interesting trends with a seemingly clear overachieving overarching theme: The (expat) aid worker experience will become ‘cheaper’ – in terms of lifestyles, salaries and perks as well as a general ‘doing more with less’ theme. But these three themes are also worth unpacking a bit more and putting them into a broader perspective of a global ‘ development industry ’ that not only comprises expat aid workers in large organizations, but different forms of services-from academic teaching and learning to service industries (e.g. entertainment and wel...

Hello all, As we are starting a fresh week, we all deserve some good, critical readings for the breaks, waits or evenings... The Development news section features sex (well, in the context of development and health work...); open data hypocrisy courtesy of USAID and the World Bank that continue to preach open water and drink closed off wine; how Mark Zuckerberg has become a 'natural leader' in philanthropy (hint: he has money...lots of it!); a long and sad read from on the 'forgotten' crises in the Central African Republic; the question of how and what we should pay participants of C4D campaigns & new reports; Our digital lives starts with quite a disturbing long-read into the work and lives of global content moderation workers; a veteran blogger reflects on 20 years of blogging; Academia & Anthropology looks at new research on social media use for science communication; I still disagree with Jill Rettberg on her decision to pay 7500 pounds for her open acc...

Forgive the catchy headline, but this is still a development blog ;)! To answer my question straight away: No, of course not. But wait, there’s more… In a recent NPR feature How Millennials Are Reshaping Charity And Online Giving Elise Hu shared the story of Charity Water founder Scott Harrison: Harrison volunteered to spend the next two years in West Africa. What he found when he first got to Liberia was a drinking water crisis. He watched 7-year-olds drink regularly from chocolate-colored swamps — water, he says, that he wouldn't let his dog drink. Most childhood diseases in the developing countries he visited could be traced to unsafe drinking water, so everything changed for Harrison. He got inspired to start raising money for clean water when he returned to the states, but his friends were wary But this is not a critical post about Charity Water and development entrepreneurs (there was a nuanced debate on the organization over at Humanosphere last year). The real dynamit...