Doctoral Dissertation Research: Competing Donor Imaginaries: Gender, Development, and Comparative Aid Chains

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

Many international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) around the world use the broad category of gender and development to describe their work, but the programming carried out under this umbrella term varies: some INGOS promote projects addressing health, education, and vocational skills, while others focus on reproductive health, economic empowerment, civil rights, and political participation. Numerous studies document the key role INGOs play in transmitting global norms and adapting those norms in local contexts. But more recent research has established that INGO programming is shaped by its local political economy. We know relatively little about how this variation affects the way that INGOs organize their operations and with what consequences for local stakeholders. This project explores how the practices, beliefs and priorities of INGOs are transmitted along aid chains, or the links through which programs travel from INGO headquarters to INGO country offices, and finally to implementing partners. Specifically, this project asks: (1) To what degree, and how, do aid chains organized by INGOs from different countries vary?; (2) How do implementing partners, such as employees in government ministries connected to these aid chains, understand and negotiate the priorities of the funding INGOs in local political and cultural context?; and, (3) To what extent does engagement with INGOs shape the self-understandings of these local practitioners, including their professional identities? The project will advance policy debates regarding the role of international development aid in promoting global civil society, and more specifically, the changing landscape of the development sector and the emergence of important new actors, with implications for how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of U.S. aid provided to non-U.S. countries. Data from this project are comprised of 100 in-depth interviews, 10 months of participant observation, and a textual analysis of 20 documents. It is collecting qualitative data on each organization within two aid chains. First, it conducts in-depth interviews in U.S. INGO headquarters organizations, as well as interviews in the U.S. bilateral agency. Then, through 10 months of fieldwork, the project collects ethnographic observation and interviews in three sites: the field office of a U.S.-based INGO; an INGO field office abroad; and an implementing partner organization of these offices. Finally, the project will conduct short-term observation and interviews in an INGO headquarters office abroad. To supplement interview and ethnographic findings, textual analysis of INGO documents will be completed. All data will be coded using ATLAS.TI and open coding techniques. This research design will enable the project to analyze how international development programs are articulated and communicated across the three links, from INGO headquarters and donors, to INGO field offices, to local partners. This project will extend sociological theories of global civil society by demonstrating the micro-level organizational and inter-organizational processes through which national priorities shape global norms. It will also help to inform sociological theories of development, particularly those that inform issues related to gender in the developing world. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.