Overview

Against an international context where NGOs are still seen, in contrast to many official development agencies, as the saviours and sources of hope for an otherwise disappointing development process, Dorothea Hilhorst provides for the first time an empirically rooted and theoretically innovative understanding of the everyday politics, actual internal workings, organizational practices and discursive repertoires of this kind of organization. Her evidence and insights lead to a different picture of NGOs from the one prevailing in the literature. Hilhorst develops a model of NGOs not as clearcut organizations, but often with several different faces, fragmented, and consisting of social networks whose organizing practices remain in flux, is helpful to understanding not just these bodies, but official development agencies too.

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9781842771655

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Reviews

Hilhorst goes beyond an unravelling of simplistic notions about NGOs and brings to life a detailed picture of everyday practices within them. * Emma Crewe, University College London * This study of the everyday politics of a Philippine NGO is both entertaining and hard-hitting.' * Norman Long, Wageningen University * This book makes a vital contribution to a critical anthropology of development and the comparative study of everyday politics. * Vicente L. Rafael, Professor, University of Washington * This story of indigenous women involved in transformation work provides significant insights for social activists and social scientists. * Victoria Tauli Corpuz, Executive Director, TEBTEBBA Foundation (Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education) *

This work is outstanding for the way in which it opens up new theoretical and empirical understandings of the nature and functioning of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in development... [It] sets out to as the following questions: Why do certain social actors form organizations which they call NGOs? How do they represent what it is to be an NGO? What practices does being a member of such an organization entail? And how do they legitimize what they say and do vis-a-vis clients, donors and constituencies?... This highly original study is the first time that such a detailed analysis of the everyday practices and social dynamics of an internationally oriented NGO has been achieved' - Professor Norman Long, Wageningen University 'A coherent and compelling alternative approach to the study of development policies and practices [which] deserves a readership well beyond development studies' - Gerd Baumann, University of Amsterdam

Author Information

Dorothea Hilhorst is Lecturer at the Centre for Rural Development, Waginingen Agricultural University, The Netherlands.

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