Aidnography

Hello all, It's one of those weeks where basically all of my favo rite to pics are feat ured in the weekly link review in one way or another: The value of anthropologists in a great piece on Mali; the chances an d challenges of 'open development' in my own post and in an excellent review on technolog y & transparency; academic research on aid blogging and a more substantial part on storytelling, participatory video, communicati ng aid and complexity in capturing 'evidence' that development 'works'. Plus Ed Carr reflects on academic copyright and there is a fanta stic link to l ots of anthropological blogging and old-fa shioned writing. Enjoy! New on aidnography Rituals, risk, development & Aaron Swartz – in response to Owen Barder Owen Barder wrote an interesting piece on the legacy of Aaron Swartz for technology & development. In my reflections I am more cautious in invoking his legacy as research rituals, development's guarded professiona

Owen Barder just wrote a very interesting post on Aaron Swartz’ legacy and how his work is linked to international development and future debates especially in the area of ICT4D ( Development and the Death of Aaron Swartz ). Owen reminds us that open access publishing & data, implementing IATI, open source coding and software and opposing ACTA (or SOPA ) should be on top of our technology development agendas. I agree with Owen, but I am more cautious in linking these processes to the work of Aaron Swartz. In short, many of these issues have been and are likely to continue to be discussed within the ritual frameworks of development and research policy-making. Owen concludes that there is still a ‘long, hard fight against those who want go control information and use it to exercise power’, but at the moment I see very few ‘fighters’ out there that would follow a path even remotely similar to Aaron Swartz’, a path that involved personal risk, non-conformity to traditional institutio

Hello all, A link list featuring interesting opposites: First, i t seems that this week's links would turn into a 'Max We ber bureaucracy memorial list' , but luckily, in the second half there are some great links that highlight the power of storytelling, innovativ e co-operations for l earning, helping & healing, development-related journali sm from Colombia, admitting failu re, thinking outside the box and getting advice from F. Scott F itzgerald on writing as soldiering... Enjoy! New on aidnography Simulating civil society participation, European Investment Bank edition A picture says more than...Merry Christmas, Africa from the German ministry of development These two short posts, on an invitation of the European Investment Bank to attend a civil society seminar including a discussion with board members where detailed questions have to be handed in beforehand and on a German newspaper ad signed by the minister for development cooperation that conveys some very old

Merry Christmas, Africa! German minister for development cooperation Dirk Niebel wishes every g iraffe and roundhouse happy holidays Christmas in this official newspaper ad from December 2012 (not 1962...). This really says a lot about the current leadership of the Bonn-based ministry and potentially also about their communications team and their expectations of the German, printed new spaper reading public... We have already achieved a lot. With your help we can even do more. May be rethinking communications and images/stereotypes of Africa could be one of those achievements in the future... (HT: Claudia of OpenAid Germany )

I am a firm believer that relatively small, routine events, conferences or seminars actually say quite a lot about large organizations and how they perceive their environment and engage with the outside wor ld. Granted, I was not expecting a lot from the Luxembourg-based E uropean Investment Bank (EIB) , but their announcement of their ‘ EIB Board of Directors Seminar with Civil Society 2013 ’ is a particularly good example of ‘civil society engagement – you are doing it wrong’ (see last week’s post on the EU 's ‘ European Year of Citizens ’ for another bad example from the European heartland...). The ‘Board of Directors Seminar’ is essentially a 90 minute affair. Prior to the Board of directors holding court engag ing with civil society, there is a half-day of meaningless discussions that somehow is supposed to simulate a critical debate: ‘Promoting growth in Europe – with the right economic, social and environmental returns’ already contains all the spoilers in the title. You

Hello all! Happy New Year! And w elcome to the first regular Thursday link review of 2013! There's some interesting stuff to ki ck-off a new year in development (blogging), featuring a very interesting piece on the 'murky fields of imposition' inside an organization that struggled with a systemic review process , an innovative Tanzanian digital poli tician , the question whether or not Oxfam should pay interns, a word from 'Everyday Ambassador' Jennifer Lentfer, an essay on anthr opology and the U.S. military, great career advice from Forbes (the economy needs YOU! 'transcultural anthropologist'!), a list of great po litical science & IR bloggers and last not le ast a new study on gender disparities in academia.  Enjoy! New from aidnography Learn, stimulate, encourage: Participatory plastic words & the EUs European Year of Citizens Links I Liked 56 I started combing through my every-increasing list of interesting and noteworthy links and

2013 is the European Year of Citizens! The better the men and women of Europe understand their rights as EU citizens, the more informed the decisions they can take in their personal lives, and the more vibrant democratic life in Europe can be at all levels. This is the vision for the European Year of Citizens 2013, which will provide an opportunity for people throughout Europe to: -learn about the rights and opportunities open to them thanks to EU citizenship – particularly their right to live and work anywhere in the EU -stimulate debate about the obstacles that prevent people from fully using these rights and generate specific proposals for addressing them -encourage people to participate in civic fora on EU policies and issues. The Year's activities will be organised as much as possible at the grass-roots level, by citizens and civil society organisations themselves. Happy new year of citizens! Although not strictly development-related the recent announcement of t