Skip to main content

Reclaiming Development? NGOs and the Challenge of Alternatives

By D. Mitlin, S. Hickey and A. Bebbington | Published in World Development 35(10): 1699-1720 | Full text (PDF) | Abstract: In 1987, World Development published a supplement entitled “Development Alternatives: the Challenge of NGOs.” Although this challenge now seems far more complicated, this paper suggests one way of giving meaning (and possibility) back to the juxtaposition of […]

Of texts and practices: empowerment and organizational cultures in World Bank-funded rural development programmes

| By A. Bebbington, D. Lewis, S. Batterbury, E. Olson and S. Siddiqi | Published in Journal of Development Studies, 43(4): 597-621 | Abstract: The World Bank’s recent concern for ‘empowerment’ grows out of longer standing discussions of participation, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society. While commitments to empowerment enter World Bank texts with relative ease, […]

Transnational development networks

| By A. Bebbington and U. Kothari | Published in Environment and Planning A 38(5): 849-866 | Abstract: Development is embedded in networks that extend across space and time. These networks–maintained, reworked, and given meaning through the practices of the actors who constitute them–bring together assemblages of institutions, knowledges, and commitments that make possible and shape the ways […]

Donor-NGO relations and representations of livelihood in nongovernmental aid chains

| By Anthony Bebbington | Published in World Development 33(6): 937-950 | Abstract: Nongovernmental organizations have attracted growing criticism for being unrepresentative of and unaccountable to the poor people for whose well-being they claim to work. Research on Dutch and Peruvian NGOs suggests this happens in part because the chronic weakness of popular organizations makes it difficult […]

NGOs and uneven development: geographies of development intervention

| By Anthony Bebbington | Published in Progress in Human Geography 28(6): 725-745 | Abstract: Much research on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in international development has been case-study-based, with questions about the broader geographies of NGO intervention rarely asked. This paper explores the factors that drive such NGO geographies and considers how they relate to the uneven […]

Global networks and local developments: Agendas for Development Geography

| By Anthony Bebbington | Published in Tijdschrift voor Economische et Sociale Geografie, Vol. 94(3): 297-309 | Abstract: It can be argued that development geography has left few traces either on the broader canvas of development theory or on the thought and practices of social actors engaging with material processes of change typically framed within the […]

Development alternatives: practice, dilemmas and theory

| By A. Bebbington and D. Bebbington | Published in Area, Vol. 33 No. 1: 7-17 | | Reprinted in William Moseley, David Lanegran and Kavita Pandit (eds.) The Introductory Reader in Human Geography: Contemporary Debates and Classic Writings. Oxford. Blackwell Press, pp. 309-318. | Abstract: This paper argues that much scholarly work on civil society and […]