Aidnography

Hi all,  Happy Valentine's, happy #globaldev reading & thanks for all your great birthday wishes! My quotes of the week Is civil society a means of providing service provision alternatives to the Government of Syria? Is civil society a means of improving local development in specific communities? Is civil society empowered as a means of politically transforming the Government of Syria? Is civil society support to be based on Western development theories and objectives, or on a more ‘community defined’ series of objectives? Is civil society being empowered for its own sake? ( Function Over Form: Rethinking Civil Society in Government-held Syria) The Academy has a huge way to go. I don’t even know if it wants to decolonize. Universities are bureaucracies, increasingly corporatized, we are hiring vice chancellors to be like CEOs, paying them huge salaries to get research grants. This is true in Ghana just like in the UK (How to Decolonize Academia. Interview with Prof.

Hi all, We just wrapped up to great days of teaching & it's late Friday afternoon-so I'll keep the introduction short ;)! Have a great weekend! My quotes of the week “They ignore us but without Rohingya involvement they can’t do anything in the camps, they can’t even understand us properly. They don’t know our language,” he says. “We are the nuts and bolts.” (Stop ignoring us: Rohingya refugees demand role in running camps) Which means moving from a pure documentary space to an editorial space, to ethical representation, where the goal is to help the world see the person we are photographing as someone who is worthy of respect and admiration despite their circumstances. Ethical representation is beyond obtaining consent to take the photo, and beyond making sure the subject understands how the photo will be used. Ethical representation is going beyond what the subject of the photo understands and working to represent and portray them in the best way possible, taking into ac

Hi all, To be fair, it felt it bit more exciting to share link review 350 last week, but time flies and great new content wants to be shared! So happy reading, thinking & sharing! My quotes of the week We must start respecting the diversity of approaches that support people in different societies and cultures; many of which start with the body, not the mind, and the acknowledgement that sometimes the emotions that need releasing are trapped somewhere in a physical form. (A Personal Account of Trauma and Healing) ‘My whole life is on my phone’ they say; that means your dating life, social life, self-image and maybe your business. Having a smartphone doesn’t change your life or your behaviour, it just extends it onto a new platform. Of course, smartphones are already expanding the potential of social ventures like ours. But to harness that potential, we need to keep one foot on the ground. Fundamentally, whether someone has a smartphone in their hand or not, they’re the sam

Hi all, It feels good to kick-off the new year with a small anniversary post; this is link review 350 and it certainly won't be the last one ;)! At the last bigger anniversary in November 2018 I shared My key learnings about #globaldev 20 years after I took my first undergrad course . But let's focus on 2020. As I wrote before the holidays , I'm not pretending to 'catch up' with events of the last few weeks and instead share an eclectic mix of content that somehow caught my attention. I just returned from a fantastic week in Bandung hosted by the Universitas Katolik Parahyangan and among the many highlights a visit to the Bandung conference museum was certainly very special for any #globaldev enthusiast-'the first transcontinental conference organized by colored people'! My quotes of the week Decolonizing has to be a collaborative journey and a collective struggle of committed individuals. It is one of undoing and redoing, of unlearning to relearn, of que