Aidnography

Twenty years ago, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures was published. The catchy title ensured that the book became one of the first modern classics of aid worker literary endeavours, mixing autobiographical anecdotes, a bit of fiction and an unfiltered view of what it is really like to be a humanitarian. Mustafa Marwan’s Guns and Almond Milk is a contemporary answer to the question of how we ended up in a hospital in Yemen’s port city of Aden with a lot less sex and a whole lot more desperate measures… But let’s start at the beginning, perhaps even a bit before… When I first saw Marwan’s book, I expected something a bit more light-hearted. After all, “almond milk” has become a trope in aid worker social media circles after someone posted a question about the availability of non-dairy drinks in Lebanon in a large and well-known global aid Facebook group. “Almond milk” turned into a meme for privileged Western expectations of life in “the field”. We are not in Solferino anymore

NightCafe prompt "Sweden cuts development aid" While the announcements of cuts that large INGOs like International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Save The Children International (SCI) have recently made receive attention in the sector, the developments in Sweden provide a glimpse what the “future of aid” may hold for traditional Western donors and particular their civil society. I agree to a large extent with Will Worley’s assessment that International aid agencies pay the price for boom and bust and that “staff cuts and financial turbulence (…) follow years of aggressive growth (…), even as government aid budgets have fallen” but what we are seeing in Sweden right now is worrisome on a different level. Just over a year ago I wrote about The worrisome shift to the right of Nordic development cooperation and the fall-out has now become quite visible in Sweden, after initially toning down feminist foreign policy and cutting development-related academic research funding. When I

One of the most influential global development bloggers announced his retirement from blogging and aid work recently and since I was socialized to some extent in German academia I was thinking of a Festschrift -style farewell publication. Only that Duncan is not an old-school professor. And in the democratic tradition of writing things on the Internet I am not his disciple. And as far as I can see, nobody else has written a post in his memory. But you still get the idea, I guess...   Blogs are linked to people, personalities and their writing style, so the retirement of Duncan from Oxfam will be another blow to global development blogging regardless of what will happen to his blog and the Oxfam blogosphere. As I wrote on the occasion of 500 weekly curated Links I Liked  last year, blogging about development is a project riding into the digital sunset and no amount of Substacks (I really like Oliver Kim's Global Developments and Ken Opalo's An Africanist Perspective , of cour

There is a folder with close to 1,000 Emails in my Outlook that documents the process of publishing our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality from Silke's first idea in May 2021 to its publication in February 2024! And then there is the space in Teams with more than a dozen folders and hundreds of documents that we used to remotely edit this great volume (criticize Teams all you want, but it has proven to be a very, very useful tool to manage, well, a team across continents, time zones, tasks & a bloody pandemic...). And after all this remote, digital work it was fantastic to open a box with physical copies of the book! The 39 chapter handbook examines how legacies of colonialism, gender, class, and other markers of inequality intersect with contemporary humanitarianism at multiple levels. Authors include academics, pracademics and practitioners and examine a range of contemporary issues including the role of the media and technology, the COVID-19 pandemic, linguistic

As I briefly mentioned in the 500th anniversary post at the beginning of December, my weekly Links I Liked post will take a break in the new year. I will briefly discuss some of the personal, content-related and digital challenges that led me to this decision. Maintaining regular blogging during the pandemic was a small writing strategy to maintain important routines, connections and to focus on topics other than Covid-19. But like many of my readers, I am just tired right now. The developments on social media, a key resource to learn about new content, are another factor linked to this fatigue (what Cory Doctorow describes as “enshittification” ). I don’t have to discuss the state of affairs at the platform formerly known as Twitter and even though I enjoy Bluesky it’s not the same and perhaps never will be for global development and humanitarian content. At the end of the day I just want to spend less time on social media in 2024 and not feel guilty that I haven’t collected enough

Hi all, 500, eh? In the spirit of my curated link review this will not be a special weekly feature of interesting readings-and then again it will be...as the year is coming to her usual hectic end, I decided that I will pause my weekly link review after a holiday break. 500 is such a nice, round number... I am working on a longer post for next Friday that will explain some of the reasons behind my decision, but frankly, I am just a bit tired and need more distance from social media and 'the Internet' in the year new. In the meantime, enjoy this week's readings! My aim has always been to highlight at least one news article, blog post or academic reading that you find relevant for your work, can share with a colleague or friend or bookmark for weekend reading. This week we are looking at Mexico, New Zealand, Virgin Islands, Myanmar, Central America, historical Guinea-Bissau, humanitarianism, black women leadership, visual art from Ghana & Yemen, plus open access article,

Hi all, Capitalism suggests that today is Black Friday in connection with another holiday in the US, so why not treat yourself to some free readings instead :) ?!? News from inside #globaldev organizations, from the Amazon rainforest to the Congo basin, from Puerto Rico to India plus beautiful essays, book reviews & more! Enjoy! My quotes of the week Life has accelerated, attention spans have shortened. Awareness of the limitations of top-down development has grown. I haven’t read any of those big docs for years. So the arrival of the first UK Government ‘White Paper on International Development’ since 2009, launched on Monday, had a distinctly retro feel. ( What to read on the new UK White Paper on International Development?) Here are five ideas for improvement: 1. Brand your building, vehicles, or team uniforms — not the supplies or gifts. 2. Use a unique identifier like a barcode if you need tracking or traceability. 3. Communicate stories — not just pictures of logos — to donor