Aidnography

Hi all, August still seems to be a bit quieter as we are slowly getting into gear for a new semester and new academic adventures! Nonetheless, there's always great food for thought and excellent weekend readings! Development news: UNICEF & the YouTube ambassador; China joins the pop-cultural discourse of White Saviors; Are ‘beg-packers’ a thing in Vietnam? Tanzania’s ghost safari-an old tale of modernization & development in today’s Africa; Africans are not waiting for their diaspora; new ways of being a digital Nigerian; chatbots & humanitarian assistance; ICC uses social media as evidence; Indonesia’s restrictions of the Internet also determine SDG success; how to involve communities in SDG monitoring; the history of foreign aid & American public opinion.  Our digital lives: Facebook & platform capitalism. Publications: Climate change meets humanitarian aid discourses; online protests harm companies; Nkrumah’s legacy of national self-determination. Academi

Hi all, I'm wrapping up a fantastic week of teaching at a summer academy in Northern Germany! Lots of great discussions about the past, present & future of development and aid work! I even managed to get a new book review on the blog, but since I spent a bit less time online there are also fewer links in this week's review. Nonetheless, they are still worth exploring and provide ample food for thought as always! Development news: The ultimate guide to the cash-based aid debate; South Sudan's bleak humanitarian situation; a neat overview over the economic cost of accepting refugees; how feminist is Canada's new foreign policy really? Why do UN peacekeepers rape? the value of spiritual lives of aid workers; MUST-READS: A charter school travels to Thailand; the preservation of privilege in social activism. Our digital lives: UN Social 500; an archive on the history of the chemical-industrial complex.  Publications: New insights into participatory video; challeng

To be honest, I am not much of a military history person. I am also not exactly a WWII person either when it comes to readings at the intersection of work and leisure. But Philip Woods’ Reporting the Retreat-War Correspondents in Burma intrigued me for its sub-title and I really enjoyed the reflections it sparked vis-à-vis today’s challenges of war reporting and the complexities of truth in media more generally. Philip Woods’ book about ‘the six-month, one thousand-mile retreat of the British and Chinese armies from Burma in the first half of 1942’ (p.1) is a very well researched historical case study of journalism, news media and the work of foreign correspondents. The book looks at a group of twenty-six correspondents who reported from Burma for newspapers and weekly newsreel broadcasts and, equally important, about half of the group wrote memoirs shortly after their assignment in South Asia. The discrepancies between their daily work, always impeded by military censorship, and t

Hi all, Surrounded by moving boxes comes the latest link review! Development news: Did Angelina Jolie really do harm on her film set? What are the Clooneys up to in Lebanon? Haiti's sewage problem; climate change and suicide in India; crimes against women in India; electoral information campaigns don’t work anywhere; evidence-based policy-making in the tropics; sued over a critical facebook post; board trouble at Ushahidi? Corporate BS: Sending employees on voluntourism trips; aid workers as authors.      Our digital lives: Transparency & accountability at G4S; the ‘mind trap’ of social entrepreneurism: class and breastfeeding; the price of unpaid internships. Publications: New open access anthropological textbook Enjoy! Development news Angelina Jolie Refutes Vanity Fair’s Portrayal Of Controversial Auditions Jolie said in a statement Saturday that the audition scene had been taken out of context. According to the actress, there were parents, guardians and non-governm

Hi all, We are in the middle of packing boxes and prepare for the move to a new apartment next week, so I’ll keep the intro short: Development news: Angelina Jolie & how celebrities shouldn’t engage in distant places; how much ODA is really spend on #globaldev? Can Gueterres disrupt UN bureaucracy? Uranium mining in Niger; once and for all: Don’t send your old stuff abroad/to refugees! Uganda’s new activism; the IMF’s social protection thinking is behind the curve; Gentrifying Kibera-Kenya’s well-known slum; Kony’s bodyguard talks; perceptions of poverty of India’s urban youngsters; Sean Penn has a new terrible aid work(er) movie out; the trouble with caste-free Bollywood movies; is the world really better than ever? Our digital lives: Participatory community mapping; how to ace narrative writing; the gendered challenges of paying women in exposure and as influencers; where are the mothers in news rooms? Publication : Digital anthropology from the fields.  Academi