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Agency & Development - Do Individuals Matter?

Agency & Development - Do Individuals Matter?

Written by: PlanetWorka
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About this listen

Contemporary international development practice is shaped by politics and extends historical assumptions, concepts and narratives that specify ways of working for professional and practitioners in international NGOs. This podcast series explores the theoretical and ethical issues in contemporary development organisations and their discourse, and how development NGO workers are 'captured' by this discourse. A PlanetWorka podcast series - see other PlanetWorka podcast series: Culture & Development - Context Matters!; and, Planetworka - A World in Development

planetworka2023 Economics Management Management & Leadership Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Concluding Thoughts - Can Practitioners Have Agency?

    Concluding Thoughts - Can Practitioners Have Agency?
    Sep 20 2023
    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...

    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
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    8 mins
  • Do practitioners have individual agency?

    Do practitioners have individual agency?
    Sep 20 2023
    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.

    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
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    11 mins
  • Performatist Tropes - Project Media

    Performatist Tropes - Project Media
    Sep 18 2023
    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.

    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
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    16 mins
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