At a time when uneven power dynamics are high on development actors’ agenda, this book will be an important contribution to researchers and practitioners working on innovation in development and civil society.
While there is much discussion of localization, decolonization and ‘shifting power’ in civil society collaborations in development, the debate thus far centers on the aid system. This book directs attention to CSOs as drivers of development in various contexts that we refer to as the Global South. This book take a transformative stance, reimagining roles, relations and processes. It does so from five complementary angles: (1) Southern CSOs reclaiming the lead, 2) displacement of the North–South dyad, (3) Southern-centred questions, (4) new roles for Northern actors, and (5) new starting points for collaboration. The book relativizes international collaboration, asking INGOs, Northern CSOs, and their donors to follow Southern CSOs’ leads, recognizing their contextually geared perspectives, agendas, resources, capacities, and ways of working. Based in 19 empirically grounded chapters, the book also offers an agenda for further research, design, and experimentation.
Emphasizing the need to ‘Start from the South’ this book thus re-imagines and re-centers Civil Society collaborations in development, offering Southern-centred ways of understanding and developing relations, roles, and processes, in theory and practice.
Author(s): Margit van Wessel, Tiina Kontinen, Justice Nyigmah Bawole
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 364
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Towards reimagining civil society collaborations in development
2 Conceptual foundations: Reimagining roles, relations, and processes
PART 1 Reclaiming the lead
3 Reflections on using a community-led research and
action (CLRA) methodology to explore alternatives in
international development
4 Reimagining development from local voices and positions – Southern feminist movements in the lead
5 Building resilient communities by growing community assets, capacities, and trust
6 Contesting practices of aid localization in Jordan and Lebanon: Civil society organizations’ mobilization of local knowledge
PART 2 Displacing the North–South dyad
7 Southern civil society organizations as practical hybrids: Dealing with legitimacy in a Ugandan gender advocacy organization
8 Beyond the North–South dyad: Diaspora-led organizations in development collaborations
9 Exploring mutual dependence through non-financial resource exchanges: A Tanzanian non-governmental organization network case study
PART 3 Asking Southern-centred questions
10 Advocating for land rights in Kenya: A community-based organization’s attempt to reconcile external funding with local legitimacy
11 Surreptitious symbiosis in promoting advocacy? Collaboration among non-governmental organizations, social movements, and activists in West Africa
12 Moving beyond (en)forced North–South collaboration for development: Possibilities from Pakistan
13 Shifting the narrative: Localization and ‘shift the power’ in the African context
14 Contrasting gifting postures in a local Ghanaian community: Are there lessons about African philanthropy?
PART 4 Learning new roles for the North
15 Localizing humanitarian knowledge management: A call for pragmatic robust action
16 The journey to Southern leadership in programming: The story of a decade-long Ghanaian–Dutch partnership
17 Starting advocacy programmes from the South: Rethinking multi-country programming
PART 5 Choosing new starting points for collaboration
18 A feminist approach to collaboration: A sex workers’ network in India
19 Practising organizational autonomy at the community level: Evidence from advocacy projects in Uganda and Vietnam
20 Beyond the North–South dichotomy: A case study on tackling global problems starting from the South
21 Shift the power? Constraints and enablers of more equitable partnerships between non-governmental organizations: The case of Dutch small-scale development initiatives in Uganda and India
22 Conclusions
Index
