Aidnography

Hi all, I have to admit that my initial reading list turned into several reading piles ... yes, I have gone a bit crazy and I am not quite sure yet how to cope with all these fantastic books...but one of the great privileges of being an academic is that reading, collecting and curating books is actually part of my job :)! The different piles are hopefully pretty self-explanatory:  'Classic' new material on global development from - and on - a who-is-who list including Easterly, Chambers and Sachs.   From Nepal to Central Asia, from the street of the U.S. to the inside of multilateral organizations-I was actually a bit surprised to discover that my biggest pile is on ethnography and anthropology ... This is probably the most directly work- and teaching-related pile-updating the reading list for our ComDev course on New Media, ICT & Development : Closer related to the core of 'aidnography' are these books on aid work, (expat) aid workers an

Did you read the news recently? It is full of the same old stories: How MSF struck at huge tax evasion deal with British authorities, how PLAN is essentially a foundation based in Liechtenstein, how Save The Children is stashing away hundreds of millions of dollars of their donations in Caribbean bank accounts and how the WFP is basically a one-person entity with headquarters in Guernsey. And then there were those stories of how Action Aid started to sell submarines to dodgy governments and how the ICRC bought up all the local charities, sacked everybody and made them re-apply for their old jobs on minimum wages and without benefits. Obviously none of these are true stories. They cannot be true, because no humanitarian or development charity, foundation or NGO works like a corporate entity (although the recent story that the American Red Cross responded with corporate lawyers to information requests about their post-Sandy spending is not exactly encouraging...). But it is easy

Dear all, Aidnography and many parts of the digital development and communication world are not on holidays (yet) and great (summer) readings continue to show up on my screens and get the proper Aidnography vetting, summarizing and commenting before shared here! This week's review features Development News from World Bank's (non-)struggles to become a different organization, the 'Agony of UNMISS', the half-forgotten crises of Western Sahara, BRAC's gender challenges, the dark sides of volunteering & tourism in Nepal, reflections from the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum and new reports-including reflections from Jennifer Lentfer's Georgetown students on the future of development communication. Our digital lives looks at being smart in meetings, World Reader, business travel & #JerkTech; Finally, Academia focuses on Southern scholars, journal representation and academic self-governance/governmentality. Enjoy! New from aidnography Former German min

Dirk Niebel, the former German minister for development cooperation, has joined Rheinmetall as a lobbyist . Given his abysmal performance as politician in charge of development, good governance and human rights this is not at all surprising, or, as the German version of The Onion , Der Postillon puts it: ‘ 0% of respondents were surprised about his career move in a recent poll ’ (in German). But this is not simply about a former politician moving into the famed ‘private sector’, but it raises (at least) three critical issues that I want to point out in the following: First, it shows that traditional, government-run development policy is really in a state of crisis-not just in Germany. Second, Niebel’s case highlights some of the structural problems that ‘open aid’ and open data initiatives still have when faced with unaccountable, yet powerful people and institutions. Third, very much linked to the second point, when arms (deals) are involved development is certainly not in the drive

Hello all, After a final week of work to wrap of the semester, you are probably not entirely surprised that the weekly link review arrives with a bit of a delay...however, I did the compiling, reading and editing work so you can enjoy some good, critical reads this Sunday or early on in the week. Development News feature pieces on new militarized NGOs, more evidence on how biofuels fuel malnutrition, how the American Red Cross dodges transparency requests as well as news from Nepal, Tunisia & Equatorial-Guinea. Development as career has more advice for aspiring humanitarians, challenging times for expats in Asia and questions on how the data revolution can challenge organizational routines. Our Digital Lives on a Facebook experiment with questionable ethics and reflections on 'big data' and historical anthropological data collection. Finally, more Anthropology questioning the 'monster myth' of sexual violence and a round-up of the recent BBC ethnography award. E

Hi all, Our teaching term was rounded off with the largest-ever examination seminar our ComDev program has seen so far! As the course convener of the Degree Project/MA thesis course I am very proud of the students and their range of excellent and good projects that we have examined in Malmö over four days. Congratulations! We also had a very interesting seminar in Malmö on ICT4D, Crisis Communication & Social Change and you can find a link to the updated post with the recorded presentations below. During all these exciting events quite a few interesting links have piled up and I'm happy to share my latest carefully edited and concisely reviewed link list with you! The review starts with a new post on reflecting on emerging bad South-South development practices and an updated post on our ICT4D seminar last week. To make the review more exciting, there are four sub-headings: Development News features new publications and contemporary debates from 'the cult of glamorized