Abstract
This chapter investigates the listening histories of three major post-1940 NGOs, each with rather different historical roots: OxfamGB, which emerged in 1942 from a committee of concerned individuals, Christian Aid, which was created in 1943 from a coalition of British and Irish churches, and Tearfund, which was founded much later in 1968. In the cases of Oxfam and Christian Aid, evidence is drawn from the institutional archives of the NGOs, whilst Tearfund has produced its own history on the basis of primary material, which is supplemented in this study by interviews conducted with former members of staff. The relational geographies of these three NGOs are examined to provide answers to two questions. Firstly, how did perceptions of the distance from/proximity to the foreign ‘other’ emerge over time in the NGO’s imaginary? Secondly, how were the exchanges in transnational encounters between Northern anglophone INGOs and Southern communities, the listening to and learning from the ‘other’, enacted and supported over time? In the concluding section, the chapter underlines the relevance of these historical imaginaries to the ways in which NGOs today construct their listening zones.
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Footitt, H., Crack, A.M., Tesseur, W. (2020). NGOs Constructing the Listening Zones. In: Development NGOs and Languages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51776-2_2
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