Aidnography

In my book reviews I usually include my endorsement towards the end of the review, but Sujatha Fernandes’ Curated Stories-The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling deserves praise right from the beginning! Her excellent, critical, theoretically strong and empirically rich book will hopefully find its way onto many reading lists for courses on media and communication studies and beyond. And even though her case studies are rooted in the US and its foreign policy it is an important book for communication for development and social change as well. Alongside a broader shift to neoliberal and financialized economies, storytelling is being reconfigured on the model of the market to produce entrepreneurial, upwardly mobile subjects and is leveraged toward strategic and measurable goals driven by philanthropic foundations. Curated personal stories shift the focus away from structurally defined axes of oppression and help to defuse the confrontational politics of social movements (pp.2-3). ...

Hi all, Let's just say it was a long week, the link review is quite extensive & there's also a new book review-so check things out, enjoy your weekend & keep reading! New from aidnography Learning service (book review) Learning Service is an important, positive, constructive and encouraging collection of volunteering best practices and food for thorough reflection as well as an excellent introduction for all those who may be approached by young people or co-workers who are excited about saving the world and want to do it as ethically as this imperfect offering allows. Development news Nobel peace prize 2018 won by Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad - as it happened Haroon Siddique for the Guardian with live updates & background readings on this year's Nobel peace prize winners. The best Nobel Prize in a long time. Finally focus on horrific & widespread sexual violence in war. Must lead to action against impunity for perpetrators & preventive action...

Stories about bad volunteering experiences, voluntourism and things that go wrong when predominantly young people yearn for meaningful experiences in the global South are regulars in my weekly link review. As tempting as snarky comments and virtual eye-rolling from development insiders (myself sometimes included) are, it is important to engage with the phenomenon constructively as well. Australia’s efforts to ban orphanage tourism and to educate young people about more responsible ways of global engagement are an important step in the right direction. Among all those pieces of a complicated puzzle, Claire Bennett, Joseph Collins, Zahara Heckscher & Daniela Papi-Thornton deliver a comprehensive, accessible book on Learning Service-The Essential Guide to Volunteering Abroad that comes very close to delivering what the title promises. What I really like about Learning Service is that the book takes a while to outline the framework of learning and broader issues of global volunteer...

Hi all, The week started relatively calm, but after a last-minute invitation to a great conference on development volunteering in Cologne, a new book review and plenty of interesting readings for the latest review I'm ready for my weekend! Development news: UNEP's travel expense problems; WHO abolishes unpaid internships; inside the localization debate; a lot of aid is still tied to Northern expenses; Healing Solidarity; companies & SDGs-mainly empty promises; H&M's trouble with 'good'; factories; African designers & sustainability challenges; sex & the Indian village; a young MP rises in South Africa; Nepal's cool Kautam reminices on a career at UNICEF & #globaldev; getting the story of migration & aid workers on stage. Our digital lives: A Mandela exhibition with a sour corporate aftertaste; mental health well-being in the gig economy. Publications: The u nprotected, unsupported & uncertain status of refugees in Greece; journali...

Not just for a development-related autobiography enthusiast like me is Elaine Mokhtefi’s Algiers, Third World Capital-Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers a literary treat! Mokhtefi’s memoir centres around the decade after the defeat of France and independence in 1962 until she is forced to leave Algeria. A journalist, translator, ‘fixer’ as well as book author and seller in later life, Mokhtefi’s vivid anecdotes bring to live a time when ‘alternative development’ meant more than arguing about the best methods for an RCT or what kind of microcredit is more sustainable. Between Algeria’s competing visions of development, visitors from all across Africa and global connections to various freedom movements a time comes to live that promised so much-a radical shift in world politics and decolonized world long before it became the topic of increased academic interest. There were so many reflections her book triggered when I read it over the course of a weekend: How the develo...

Hi all, Welcome to a fresh link review from stormy and rainy Sweden! Development news: Commitment to development (Sweden is #1!); Rwanda's cash transfer program everybody is talking about; Canada's OECD-DAC peer review; UN Women staff sacked over #AidToo; is the UNSG under siege? Citizens United Against Inhumanity; is pessimism a privilege? Positive thinking & poverty; edutainment meets behavioral science; CARE's humanitarian imaginary; Africa is always portrayed as a passive woman; accepting charity with dignity; challenging white drones; the radical history of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Our digital lives: Excuses are like...white male panel edition; Mo' cryptocurrencies, mo' opportunities for tax havens! Publications: Investigative journalism in Africa; ending extreme poverty; medical brain drain? Not so fast! Academia: Caribbean hurricane vulnerability & British colonial plantations. Enjoy! Development news Commitment to Development Index 2018 The ...