Back in April, I participated in a session on the role of geographers (and indeed academics more broadly) in development agencies. Though many outside of academia do not seem to know this, engagement with development agencies by those of us working in geography, anthropology and sociology tends to provoke both strong feelings and some controversy. Given geography’s and anthropology’s historical connection to colonialism, many academics fear that engagement with these agencies risks a return to these old relationships, where the work of academics serves to legitimize or even further neocolonial efforts. I thought the session was outstanding – the discussion was probably the most spirited I’d seen at an AAG, but it never degenerated into name-calling or other unproductive behavior.
Due to the success of and interest in the session, the participants in my panel decided to put together a forum of brief position pieces to be published in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, hopefully later this year (screaming fast by academic standards). In my short piece, I took up the argument that we should be engaging with agencies more (probably not that surprising, considering where I work these days) – a position I supported in a distressingly well-read email exchange on a few big listservs this past fall (see a related blog post here). Before I submitted it, I had to get it cleared by Legislative and Public Affairs (LPA), which led to several people reading it. It was cleared without comment, which I believe only serves to support Bill Easterly’s claim (made in the context of the World Bank) that nobody really cares what we write in the academic journals, because they don’t think anyone reads them.
Along the way, though, my office director read it. Or, more to the point, he read it three times, because, as he put it, it was “impenetrable.” He did not say this dismissively, but instead to point out that the jargon in which I engaged in the piece (and I fully admit that my piece is very, very jargon-laden) made it nearly impossible to follow for the non-academic. To his credit, he read it three times to get my point . . . how many people do you know who are willing to do that?
So, in the spirit of his intervention, I offer a translation of my piece, in two parts. This is part 1.
Engagement with international development is fraught with tension. On one side lies a belief in improvement that carries with it judgment of the lives of others. At its worst, this judgment can become a justification for the lifestyles and foreign policy of “the developed” by placing both at the top of a pyramid of human progress to which everyone should aspire. On the other side is the peril of an extractive intellectual industry. When academic research and writing on development has no impact on policy and practice, it serves only to further the career of the researcher who gains from those s/he researches. It is not possible for an academic to engage development and remain unsullied by one, the other, or both. I see the job of the academic in development as walking between these extremes, balancing the risks of each. Therefore it is incumbent upon each of us to evaluate critically the path we walk between them.
It is very difficult for the contemporary academic to make such a critical evaluation. Critical development studies are often based upon a surprisingly thin understanding of the object of research. I can count on the fingers of one hand the development geographers who have worked in a development agency (receiving a contract from a development agency as a consultant or subcontractor does not count, as in that case one is only seeing the end product of a long process of policy building, budgeting, programming and contracting). Yet without an understanding of mundane bureaucratic moments such as budgeting, contracting and monitoring and evaluation it is simply impossible to understand why agencies do what they do, or reliably to identify points of intervention that might change practice in the world.
Though it was a book that brought me to critical development studies, Ferguson’s The Anti-Politics Machine is exemplary of this problem. Ferguson’s analysis of the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) Thaba-Tseka project is constrained largely to the reports and field programmes that are the outputs of this complex process. There is no doubt that he is correct about the ways in which CIDA’s representation of Lesotho and its challenges bore little resemblance to events on the ground. However, without a link to the institutional practices and structures that are inextricably bound up with these (mis)representations, Ferguson’s explanation for development failure comes to rest on a vague sense that language/representations (largely reflected in documents related to development projects and agencies) shape action. But this language, and these representations, are produced and reproduced in the often-byzantine interplay of policy, budget, programme and contracting that currently happens outside the scope of analysis for the bulk of academics. Pointing out the problematic character of CIDA’s representations of Lesotho is not in itself a productive intervention – we must know when this construction was put into play, by whom, and to what end. This information cannot be inferred from an organizational chart or a history of organizational actions. Instead, it requires ethnographic attention in its own right.
A very large proportion of critical development studies rests on this sort of incomplete analysis, resulting in critiques and questions that often have limited relevance to the experience of development practice. The mismatch of the products of such analysis with the experiences of those who occupy positions in development institutions is a source of the widening gulf between academic studies of development and the work of the development agencies we criticize and seek to influence. This suggests that productive critical interventions require greater direct engagement with development agencies.
Next up, Part 2: Why does this failure of understanding prevent serious engagement?
Thanks Ed, looking forward to Part 2, and also the academic collection. Some of what you’re suggesting (academics paying closer attention to the possibility of ethnography of aid, perhaps while working for an aid agency) reminds me of David Mosse at SOAS in the UK, for example (http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31472.php).
I’m also interested in your thoughts on the practicalities of this engagement at different stages of an academic career. The Aidnography blog (http://bit.ly/g6rFp8) made a good point, aimed at prospective PhD students, that switching between academia and aid agencies is generally hard unless you are very experienced and established. I’m lucky that for my own PhD I’m based within a geography department in the UK, while collaborating with an international NGO and based part of the time in their office in Mali. But even so, I’m not sure how easy it would be for me to go into a programmes role in a development agency for a few years after the PhD, and then switch back into academia.
Stephen:
Thanks for this – the academic collection is actually much better than this post, and I think that my piece works very, very well with a piece by Kathleen O’Reilly who argues the other side. I have avoided doing ethnography myself while here, principally because I think it invokes significant trust issues that we would have to overcome . . . and I think working here, building legitimacy, is probably the best way to do this.
Your point about how and when to do this is an excellent one. In general, I think Aidnography was correct – it is a bit hard switching unless you are established/borderline psychotically productive (I fear I fit in the latter category, but self-awareness is better than no awareness, I guess). It is also quite different in the US and the UK. The UK looks rather favorably on secondments and contracts with agencies – I know many colleagues who have worked through formal channels to make this sort of thing work. In the US, secondments are basically unheard of until you are very, very senior and move into very, very senior positions in the government. There are a lot of fellowship opportunities here in the US, however, that can bridge this for younger faculty. The AAAS fellowship I am currently on generally brings in much, much more junior folks than I (new Ph.D./postdocs), and is a 1-2 year experience. Universities here tend to see this fellowship as prestigious, and therefore a good thing if you get it (that, and they don’t have to pay your salary for a year or two). You can shuttle back and forth that way – and, of course, you can be brutally instrumental. USAID has more money than NSF/National Geographic/SSRC/Fulbright/etc. put together, and they can dole it out for projects they see as worthwhile – in other words, there is a hell of a lot of money out there for research if you know who to ask, and that research money brings overhead to the university . . . and universities love overhead.
A final thought – tacking back and forth requires one constant, no matter what: publication. You simply can’t stop publishing. Since coming to AID, I have still kicked out two refereed articles (both 2011 pub dates), have another piece in this forum, my book came out in February, and I have one article in review (with about three that need writing). I plan to knock out 3-4 more articles before this fellowship ends. Thus, on my return to academia, nobody can look at my record and see a lapse in productivity. This is, of course, very hard to do from the agency/program side. One way around this is to partner with academics, and write with them – they can help carry that burden.
Anyway, just some quick thoughts – thanks again for your comment!
Thanks for this, Ed. I, too, look forward to Part 2 (too). One book that really got me digging into critical development studies was ‘The Samaritan’s Dilemma: The Political Economy of Development Aid.’ I thought it gave a good introduction to the incentive structures that shape much of aid design, delivery, and (lack of) monitoring, evaluation, and adaptation. I’m a fan of most of Ostrom’s work, and appreciate the diagnostic approach that she and colleagues take to complex problems.
– Nick
Nick:
Thanks – I hope part 2 is worth it! I too like Ostrom’s work, though I am only passingly familiar with this book. I will have to check it out, as the institutional ethnography literature on development institutions is somewhere between thin and anemic . . .
Hi Ed – very nice intro and I, too, am looking forward to Part 2.
A comment that I have is peripheral to a degree, as I am neither an academic, nor someone experienced in NGOs. However, I gave up 20+ years as a business manager and consultant in order to retrain in environmental anthropology. I probably will be commencing my doctorate this autumn, but I feel that it is by default. In other words, I had imagined that getting through a masters coupled with decades of real-life private sector experience would enable me fairly easily to gain an entrée into the more idealist and philanthropic world of societal and environmental aid.
The reality is that I can never get past the initial requirements which tend to state X years of experience in such-and-such NGO/environmental/ecological domain. So, at my age, I feel it unlikely that I wiull be actually able to apply my knowledge AND experience unless I’m willing to struggle to find a few consulting gigs, and write a few books hoping for a popular best-seller or two…
Peace,
Tony
Tony:
You raise a great point here – and one that I struggled with myself. I could find no point of entry to a position in an agency, even as an “established” academic. The one interview I got was through a personal contact that introduced me to someone at the agency, and sang my praises. This, of course, is not all that different than finding jobs in other sectors of the economy, but it speaks to the self-reinforcing nature of academic isolation from practice – the networks in each world don’t cross much, and therefore there are no connections to draw upon when one wants to move between them. I am working on this at a personal level – some of my grads are not going into academic positions, but want to join agencies/NGOs. After this fellowship, I suspect I will be a viable point of contact to start making that happen for them. It will take time, but I am hoping to build a network between the agencies and academia that will address the problems you raise – to some extent. This does little for you, of course . . . but then, there are other sorts of fellowship opportunities/contracting opportunities/secondments that can be had – sometimes you have to be willing to take whatever you can to get in the door, but once in the door your mobility will improve. I wish I had something more concrete to offer, but I think a realistic view is that it will take some time, and a lot of hard work, to address the very real challenges you raise.
Tony,
I have had the same experience recently. I have about half your experience in terms of years in business and consulting, and I recently completed my PhD in environmental anthropology. I have spent the past five months looking for entree into the development and conservation industry before I realized I had hit an impenetrable wall because I lacked X number of years in a particularly type of project/region/etc. I am curious to hear if you plan to pursue the path you outlined as feasible – consulting gigs and (successful) popular books – or if you have other thoughts about what you will do post-PhD.
Thanks for your comments, Teressa and Ed.
Three years ago, I almost secured a job as business development manager with WWF International in Switzerland, but they were eventually obliged to take an internal candidate. What they found interesting in my background was my working and practical knowledge of change management and business process engineering. Obviously I was encouraged by this opportunity. Needless to say, nothing has materialised since 🙁
So how to go about breaking down the barriers?
First of all, Teressa, I believe that in the absence of getting a job related to my passions, I will go absolutely crazy if I am not a part of a larger community and thus will reluctantly use my retirement savings to pay my way through the PhD(read: equity in our house as I’ve nothing else that really matters as it was all stock based an wiped out totally by multiple ‘recessions’ and ‘market corrections’). So in order to become part of a wider community, I will NEED to find some basic consulting work.
However, finding consulting in my ‘old’ world was easy – you just got in front of a senior decision maker and hit his or her buttons: ‘If you allow me to do this for you for X dollars, pounds or euros, then I will increase your earnings-per-share by Y%, margins by Z%, revenues by…’ When I coached my sales forces, I used a couple of keys – one, ‘WIIFM’, pronounced like an American radio station, meaning the key question to answer regarding the decision maker, ‘What’s in it for me’? The seoond question to answer was whatever it was that was keeping this person awake at night. I think these are both valid questions to place in the ‘new’ NGO-type scenario, although the correlation with funding and payment may be far less evident. Furthermore, when the message is essentially (in my case at least) that capitalism is the cause of the problem and not a symptom, the chances of finding paying gigs with private companies diminishes dramatically 🙂 Imagine the punch lines: ‘If yo do as I suggest, then we would be able to demonstrate that by reducing your output, you will provide enormous opportunities for less-profit-oriented local guys to do their own thing and provide a better life for their families and communities. We might even be able to draw a direct correlation to ‘X’ fewer people who starve to death in undeveloped nations. But of course, you will have to accept that your revenues, profits and EPS will go down’!
Therefore, given that I, like you, do not have the prerequisite ‘X’ years of experience, then writing will be paramount, and I believe that the more ‘popular’ and ‘relate-able’ the writing to ‘ordinary’ people, the better, as it will demonstrate the capacity to get the message out persuasively. So, blogs like Ed’s and other social media will be essential. Perhaps this might get us closer to an euqivalent of ‘X’ years of experience.
I live in France, and another way of getting information out here, albeit reentering a little into the capitalist world which I’ve tried to put behind me, is to hold ‘conferences’ or seminars. These can be private or via intervention with schools for example. Small earnings might be achieved and reputation might be enhanced.
Finally, unfortunately, I think that the only other option I can think of is to offer the same services to NGOs pro bono. Even here, I’m not convinced that they’d accept given the lack of ‘X’ years… Also, my experience has proven beyond doubt that when I’ve offered any such services, the results have not been accepted unequivocally and the organisations or people involved have rather then PAID someone else to confirm or support my own work! There is tragically a direct link between the amount of money paid and the validity of the findings.
Regarding post-PhD, I had always imagined working in applied anthropology knowing that my chances in the academic world (I’ll be over 55 by then) would be slim at best. But now I’m not so sure, hence my proposed approach as an independent researcher/applier. I’ve thought about either converting our existing home or buying a new property somewhere from which we can walk the talk – create a totally sustainable life-style, re-build links between humans and environment, and offer training and perhaps even health-based services from that same environment. For example, holding sessions for autistic children or sufferers of chronic pain/diseases, or even young delinquents (the victims of our current economic model) to ‘work’ with the animals and landscape in order to perhaps ameliorate their lives a little. Such a plan is very challenging but some funding might be available through govt plans as the goal would be to reduce other social and medical spending…
Sorry this is not more concrete, but I think it represents a place from where to start 🙂
I certainly hope, Teressa, that you can find your entrée. And that Ed can help some of his students do the same 🙂
Peace,
Tony
An interesting read.
With reference to: “Yet without an understanding of mundane bureaucratic moments such as budgeting, contracting and monitoring and evaluation it is simply impossible to understand why agencies do what they do, or reliably to identify points of intervention that might change practice in the world.”
I am sure you’re right, but if academics are failing to understand how the agencies operate, I shudder to think what they must be ignoring in terms of the even more ‘mundane’ lives of the recipients of development project, i.e. the poor on the ground. How are they able to advise without at least some understanding of the parameters that both the agency and the ‘ordinary people’ (i.e. recipient) operate under and within?
Actually, I would argue that academics are much better (hardly perfect, but better) at understanding the lives of “the developing.” There is a lot of good ethnography out there that, I think, reflects a real sensitivity to the important, anything-but-mundane details of people’s everyday lives. I know this is what I set out to do in my book, and I focus heavily on everyday life in my academic research. This is because academics often have the time to spend in the field, really getting to know the situation on the ground, and are highly incentivized to do so (the need for original research and publication) where agency folks generally are overtasked and lack the time/incentives to get out into the field. This is not to say that agency folks don’t “get” the problem – many folks know they have no idea what is going on in particular communities, and they are reliant on “implementing partners” to report back, but there are structural barriers to addressing these challenges. This is why I think we need more effective partnerships between academics and agencies – academics can provide much of what the agencies lack and need, and can do so with depth, sensitivity and intelligence (which are often lacking when contractors are in play).
Incidentally, that depth, sensitivity and intelligence can often mean arguing that the communities need more avenues to communicate for themselves – I am not a fan of the “academic who speaks for the poor/oppressed” model of research/activism.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it and your reassuring reply! You make a valid point regarding field work and I agree with your position viz. academics speaking for the oppressed.