Aidnography

Hello all, This was definitely a good week for the blogg ing review...it just so happens that two interesting themes emerged: First, H arva rd sch olar Carol Vance kicks off an interesting discussion on how stude nts and researchers should engage with the world they have set out to change; her case is the Policy Task Force that has been convened to ad vice India in the aftermath of the recent gang rape and mur der case, but most of her argument is also very relevant for most other 'development' topics. A post from the blog of the American Anthropological Association on science a nd advocacy and another on the challen ges of academic promotion s ystems and community engagement open up a broader debate on how academics can an d s hould en gage with students, deal with their aspirations and at the same time commit to meaningful and participatory engagement with local communities...Second, there's quite a lot on 'communication' in this we ek's review , featurin

It may be a bit unusual to put a disclaimer at the beginning of a review, but I have the privileg e to approach the review of Understanding Development as a bit more than just a reader : Not only do I know the author Paul Hopper from a previous teaching job at Brighton University, but more importantly, while he was finalizing the manuscript, I used some the draft chapters and ‘field tested’ them in an introductory course on international development for undergraduate students. For most of them this was their first academic exposure to international development topics and this is clearly where the core strength of the book lies: It is a very good, but also basic starting point into ‘understanding development’ and it will probably be most useful for undergraduate courses or in teaching environments where students have little or no background in this area. But let’s have a more detailed look at the book: Each chapter is written in accessible language and focuses on fairly factual ove

Yes, the debate on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition issue showed up in my facebook and Twitter newsfeeds and some friends even sent me direct messages with links to critical comments and analysis. None of this will be linked or featured in this post which is an attempt to ‘not write’ on this issue. While I totally agree that the approach reinforces bad stereotypes and may even be racist there are three basic issues why I resisted engaging with the debate so far: Web traffic doesn’t care whether you are a critical anthropological gender expert In the brutal reality of the 21st century attention-fueled economy web traffic, clicks, mentions, hashtags are part of the media reality – and they are primarily driven by abstract numbers. When the Huffington Post claims that SI is ‘ getting a lot of buzz for t he wrong reasons ’ and then inclu de a 52 image series ‘ Relive past Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues ’ you are essentially learning a lesson in media hypocrisy. What SI ha

Hello all, This week, the highlights of the link re v iew are distributed evenly across the three sections: In Development there are intere sting debates on 'Generation Z' & HR, the ethics and value of 'bi g d ata' and why policy-makers like to emb race 'uncertainty' unless they actually have to make a decision... This month's Himal Mag feat ures a n article from Sri Lanka that reminds peace resear chers that violence often affects 'post- con flic t' societies in many different ways than the actual war; in Anthropology there's a very interesting essay on Napoleon Chagnon and the long-lasting debat es around his research on the Yanomami tribe and how it has kept the discipli n e busy over many years; and in Academia the Th esis Whisperer asks the provocative question whether 'academic assholes' are calling the shots and w hether 'ci rcles of niceness' can be a coun terweight. Enjoy! New on aidnography WhyDev guest

Last week, Brendan Rigby and I publ ished a post tog ether over at Wh yDev.org , reflecting on People in A id ’ s annual report ‘ The State of HR in International Humanitarian and Development Organisations’. I a m highligh ting a few key excerpts below, especially on making sense of ‘ Generat ion Z ’ and that new HR challenges in the aid industry need to be discussed further in the context of academic institutions and development studies courses. You can read t he full post here: Bringing sexy back: the state of HR in development work 2013 (...) One of the biggest challenges that the report tries to address is that it shares best HR practices and presents humanitarian HR as a professional managerial discipline within the aid industry. When it comes to teaching, training and mentoring (see for example the case study on Save The Children’s cooperation with executive management coaches for new country directors, p.15) humanitarian HR certainly tries to look at ideas from other sec

Dear all, Due to a longer post o n The Global Journal 's Top 100 NGO ranking (see below) and another forthcoming piece co-written with WhyDev 's Brendan Rigby, this week's link review is a bit shorter than usual. That doesn't mean that there aren't some interesting, thoughtful pieces included, of course. Jemima Sherpa 's reflections on gr owing up as an upper-middle class girl in Kathmandu raises some interesting questions about old and new 'elites', the limits and dark sides of global cosmopolitanism, (post-)modernity and how live is different and at the same time the similar for many girls and women around t he globe -all written in a much more thoughtful and poetic style. In some ways almost the opposite is Enrique Mendizabal 's long essay on Think Tanks in Latin America and how they have been changing over time. And in the academic department, Eunice Williams describes her 'Life as a Job-Market Captive', with an interesting discussion