Implementing Inequality

Peters, Rebecca Warne

doi:10.2307/j.ctvscxqzf

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The deep-rooted aid and development systemic and structural requirements privilege foreign aid professionals, despite the capable and often well qualified local actors, leaders, and development practitioners. Warne Peters (2020) similarly argues that the underestimation of what she describes as "in-country implementation agents" results in a form of self-sabotage of the development industry. Warne Peters (2020) further argues that the development industry must "revisit and reassess its work and its workers.…”

Section: Pacifi C De Velopment: Eng Ag Ement and Entang Lements?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Warne Peters (2020) similarly argues that the underestimation of what she describes as "in-country implementation agents" results in a form of self-sabotage of the development industry. Warne Peters (2020) further argues that the development industry must "revisit and reassess its work and its workers. "…”

Section: Pacifi C De Velopment: Eng Ag Ement and Entang Lements?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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How can aid be decolonized and localized in the Pacific? Yielding and wielding power

Meki¹,

Tarai

2023

Development Policy Review

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MotivationThe colonial legacies of aid and development in the Pacific continues to be at the centre of policy debate. The ideal is to decolonise and localise the practice of aid and development. However, decolonisation and localisation have become highly contested in their definition and proposed practical approaches. We call decolonisation and localisation ‘decolocalisation.’PurposeThis paper aims to explore perspectives and proposals for decolocalisation in the Pacific Islands.Methods and approachWe talked to five key informants, all local to their islands, all with much development experience; we held a focus group; and we combined these insights and learnings with our own experience as Pacific Islanders engaged with development. Our analysis is reflexive.FindingsDevelopment practice in the Pacific Islands typically overvalues expert knowledge and undervalues local knowledge. Most aid and development discourse stressed financial figures, charts and statistical assertions overwhelmingly from a donor perspective; Pacific non‐statistical, human and embodied contextual realities are overlooked or discounted. Hierarchies are created that privilege outsiders and discriminate against islanders.A practical operationalisation of decolocalisation can begin with the recognition and practice of outsiders yielding and insiders wielding power.Policy implicationsWe recommend decolocalisation as a frame to examine and critique colonial vestiges in Pacific aid and development. Decolocalisation can be practiced by outsiders yielding and insiders wielding power in aid and development.Decolocalisation is not an ultimate solution to a highly complex issue but offers a conceptual position; one that allows Pacific Islander scholars, thought leaders, aid and development practitioners to further unpack the nuances and issues around aid and development from a Pacific Islander perspective.

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Section: Pacifi C De Velopment: Eng Ag Ement and Entang Lements?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pacifi C De Velopment: Eng Ag Ement and Entang Lements?mentioning

confidence: 99%

How can aid be decolonized and localized in the Pacific? Yielding and wielding power

Meki¹,

Tarai

2023

Development Policy Review

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“…We recognize that using such a blanket binary approach is not helpful. To illustrate, recent works by Peters (2020) and Sundberg (2019b) show, in the contexts of Angola and Tanzania respectively, that in-country development professionals may have a similar type of knowledge due to their education and training (often in western universities) and class background (largely from affluent or elite backgrounds). Kamruzzaman (2013) describes them as a "comprador class" who pursue self-interest and other benefits by "parroting" the donors' language.…”

Section: Development Experts In International Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whether this is a performative action (aimed at the donors to get into their good books) is perhaps a larger issue, but certainly allows us to distance ourselves from making the indiscriminate suggestion that people born in a specific country may possess deeper local knowledge than outsiders/foreigners. Nevertheless, we want to emphasize that the hierarchical nature of international development identifies the national staff as beneficiaries of development interventions rather than professionals who enjoy less professional authority than their foreign colleagues (Peters, 2020;Sou, 2021;Sundberg, 2019a).…”

Section: Development Experts In International Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why national development experts are not included in development policy‐making and practice: The case of Ghana

Kamruzzaman

Kumi

2023

Development Policy Review

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Motivation: This article contributes to the debate around understanding whether and how the identity of aid workers (e.g. nationality, race, etc.) can contribute to inequality within various aid relationships. As "decolonizing development" is often employed either as a slogan or genuine goal, it is imperative that the politics of exclusion among/within development experts is critically scrutinized. Purpose: This article explores the processes of and the motivations behind how national development experts (NDEs) are frequently excluded in development policy-making and practice in Ghana. Methods and approach: This article relies on qualitative research methods and draws from semi-structured interviews conducted in two phases in 2017 and 2018 in Ghana. We focus on the narratives of the NDEs in Ghana who are perceived to be well placed to elucidate different mechanics of exclusionary processes and practice. Findings: International development experts (IDEs) are able to set agendas and exercise development decision-making power as their governments or organizations provide funding for many development projects. This allows IDEs to influence development policies and practices in a way that eventually excludes the NDEs from development policy-making in Ghana. We also reveal internal competition and power relations between NDEs and local actors (i.e. bureaucrats and politicians) can also exclude the NDEs from development policy-making processes, a feature that is non-existent in current scholarship. Policy implications: The exclusion of NDEs from national development decision-making processes undermines efforts to promote national ownership. It is important to adopt a holistic approach that does not just focus on one particular aspect (e.g. power inequality among different actors) of exclusionary practice in international development but also looks into local political-cultural settings as well as possible internal competition for resources.

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“…Their ability to move and manage policy depends not only on the support of political decision-makers, but on their ability to shape the interpretation of program data and marginalize sources of alternative interpretation, in particular the staff within state agencies (Ocampo & Neu, 2008). Variously labeled "local/national experts" (Koch, 2020), "national development experts" (Kamruzzaman, 2017), "local development practitioners" (Olwig, 2013), implementation agents, or the "implementariat" (Peters, 2020), such staff often have training in Western universities and work experience with international organizations (Broome & Seabrooke, 2012). This positions them to perform the "interpretive labor" needed to translate between local institutions and consultants and global funders.…”

Section: Consultants and Informational Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mundane technologies of educational policy consultancy: Presentations and interpretive control

Nasir,

Nespor

2023

EPAA

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This conceptual article examines how consultants use a mundane policy device, the powerpoint presentation, to manage education policy relations between international lenders and education ministries in the global South. The article theorizes presentations as socio-material assemblages that combine consultants, software, visualization conventions, presentation styles, and participant structures in ways that enable consultants to control public interpretations of program evidence. Our analysis is a “constitutive argument” (Pacewicz, 2022) about how to conceptualize presentations. We draw evidence from diverse sources including published accounts by consultants, descriptions of presentations in corporate settings, internet discussions of slide construction, online archives of slides, and data from semi-structured interviews with 12 current or former members of a education ministry in a South Asian country. We argue that consultants use mundane presentation technologies to establish closed interpretive spaces in which they can control interpretation by rendering project information in visually coded forms and structuring interaction through language ideologies and participant structures that ritualize presentation discourse. We close by highlighting implications of these arguments and noting lacunae in our account to be addressed in further research.

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Implementing Inequality

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

How can aid be decolonized and localized in the Pacific? Yielding and wielding power

How can aid be decolonized and localized in the Pacific? Yielding and wielding power

Why national development experts are not included in development policy‐making and practice: The case of Ghana

Mundane technologies of educational policy consultancy: Presentations and interpretive control

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