Abstract
It is a core principle in non-governmental organisation (NGO)-driven development that interventions must be ‘sustainable’. Individuals and communities are to be ‘empowered’ to take responsibility for their own development in ways that will eventually make donor funding redundant. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork with NGOs supporting ‘orphans and vulnerable children’ in Malawi, this article explores the practices, social relations and contradictory effects that the vision of sustainability engenders. The article illustrates how the commitment to sustainability paradoxically produces practices that can only be sustained through continuous flows of donor funding. It argues that the persistence of sustainability as an organising principle is connected both to its self-confirming logic and to the ways in which practices of ‘sustainability’ shape the subjectivities of local brokers and come to constitute a central avenue for pursuing personal projects of development.
Abstract
Un des principes-clés du développement dicté par les ONG c’est que leurs interventions doivent être ‘durables’. Les individus et les communautés doivent être ‘habilités’ à se responsabiliser pour leur développement, afin qu’en futur le financement des donateurs ne soit plus nécessaire. Cet article est basé sur le travail sur le terrain d’une étude ethnographique avec des ONGs soutenant des ‘orphelins et enfants vulnérables’ au Malawi. On explore les pratiques, les relations sociales, et les effets contradictoires engendrés par la notion de durabilité. On illustre comment l’engagement envers la durabilité produit, paradoxalement, des pratiques qui ne sont durables qu’avec un financement soutenu de la part des donateurs. La persistance de la durabilité comme principe organisateur est lie soit à sa logique autonome, soit à la façon dans laquelle les pratiques durables modèlent les subjectivités de courtiers locaux, et constituent un des moyens principaux de développement individuel.
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Notes
All names of organisations and persons appearing in this article are pseudonyms.
This interview was conducted in Chichewa by my research assistant and was subsequently translated into English.
It also makes sense according to local cultural norms. The ‘ethics of interdependence’ that Scherz (2014) defines as central to Kiganda culture resonates with my fieldwork experiences in Central Malawi; people with resources are morally obliged to share those with clients.
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Acknowledgements
Funding for this research was provided by the Danish Research Council for the Social Sciences. A previous version of this article was presented at the fifth European Conference on African Studies in Lisbon 27–29 June 2013, in a panel entitled ‘Governing AIDS through aid to civil society: power, responsibilization and resistance’. The author is grateful to the organisers and participants in this panel for helpful questions and comments. She also thanks her colleagues in the International Development Studies Research Group at Roskilde University for fruitful feedback on her article. Additionally, the author acknowledges the support of Susan Cotts Watkins, Uma Kothari, Lisa Ann Richey and Mette Fog Olwig – who have all read, commented or engaged with this article at various stages. Finally, the author is immensely grateful for the research assistance provided in Malawi by Ipyana and Augustine Mwalwimba, Macdonald Njoloma and McPherson Chatama.
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Rasmussen, L. In the Name of Sustainability: Contradictory Effects of NGO-Driven Development in Malawi. Eur J Dev Res 29, 312–327 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2016.8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2016.8