Agency & Development - Do Individuals Matter?

Is there space for individual agency within the confines of developmentalism? Only if we actively dismantle the two pillars of this ideology - neliberalism and institutionalisation - and confront the power of technocratic elites and INGOs...

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Considering what we have covered in this podcast series, do Plan CDFs exert agency as individual actors? As this episode argues, they cannot, as this is a misreading of 'agency' as an expression of individual action or attributes that is central to developmentalist discourse.

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Publicising development in the form of projects fulfils important needs of developmentalism. On the one hand it serves northern donors with expressions of the success of development subjects, while simultaneously re-legitimising the INGO as an enabling actor in this success. To do so, project media visits have to set up highly performative scenarios where the primary emergent interests are not necessarily those the project beneficiaries.

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NGO, donor and local government project visits are ceremonious and ritualised, imbuing the event with important political symbolism essential to the legitimacy of actors and their relative status. For the development actors, these events maintain developmental continuity in their areas of operation.

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Child sponsorship is essentially a virtual experience, played out through communication and marketing intermediaries. These programs do, however, offer the opportunity for a sponsor to visit 'their' sponsored child. The sponsor visit becomes a microcosm of neo-colonial arrangements and interactions. The compliance of the sponsored child's family is essential to this enterpise, regardless of benefit to them or their child.

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Partnership is an essential part of contemporary INGO practice and a central trope of developmentalist discourse. Yet, the interaction between INGOs and local actors is replete with contradiction, embedded power imbalance, and reproduction of traditional roles. In fact, the process and instruments in establishing partnership are the main driver of neutralising contention.

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Developmentalist practice involves the performance of well-worn tropes. One of these is 'planning development', with highly stylised processes to design and conduct participatory design workshops. This episode examines this iconic development trope.

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The field setting is where developmentalism finds expression in the everyday operations of organisations and the daily lives of practitioners. This episode sets the scene for the reality of operational practice of NGO community practice teams in Tanzania.

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Towards and into the 2000s, the shift from individualist charity - in the form of child sponsorship - to collective modes of community development accelerated in INGOs like Plan International. PlanetWorka explores how this was influenced by development trends, as well as insitutional pressures to preserve the power and confidence of Northern donors.

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The Girl Effect, and a focus of development effort on the 'girl of the South', has become a dominant theme in international NGOs and development institutions. Driven by neoliberal feminism in the North, this narrative seeks to redefine the identity of women in the South, and legitimise neoliberal tropes of empowerment and entrepreneurship. PlanetWorka explores the rationale and implications through the example of an international NGO, Plan International.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit planetworka.substack.com