*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
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- CIVIL SOCIETY LITERATURE GROUNDED IN AND REPRODUCES HEGEMONIC WESTERN KNOWLEDGE
- USAID PAYS FOR THE STUDIES EVALUATING CIVIL SOCIETY PROGRAMS – BIASES THE RESULTS AND SERVES TO FURTHER WESTERN HEGEMONY OVER KNOWLEDGE
- MUST CRITICALLY ASSESS CIVIL SOCIETY SCHOLARSHIP FROM A MODERNITY POINTOF VIEW AND ONE THAT DIFFERENTIATES EXPERIENCE OF ARAB MIDDLE EASTERN SOCIETIES
- DONORS DIRECT THE KNOWLEDGE AVAILABLE TO CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS
Post-Modernism Ks LinkUSAID TRAINING PROGRAMS FOR CIVIL SOCIETY BUILDING SERVE TO REPRODUCE WESTERN HEGEMONIC CONTROL OVER KNOWLEDGE: DISTORTS BOTH THE EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE PROGRAMS AND GOALS OF INDIGENOUS GROUPS Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 121-2 Another mechanism of pre-defining interactions between certain donors and NGOs is that of training courses given about proposal writing. In the last ten years, some international organizations have offered the possibilities to local personal to follow “crash courses” on topics dealing with civil society promotion, role of NGOs and the more technical question of proposal writing. Thus, Tamkeen offers such courses in its Capacity Building Programs. AMIDEADST, one of the implementing partners for USAID Civil Society programs, and specializing in education activities also runs courses on “Proposal Writing,” “Business and Report Writing,” and “Project Management.” Though the focus for such courses tends to be rather on the linguistic level, formulation and content are also approaches in some of its courses. Most of these courses are done with USAID funding which has a rather limited and limiting view on civil society. It is also worthwhile pointing to this consultancy and managerial culture, much more widespread in North-American institutions. Chemonics provides the backstage machinery and networking back in Washington: its association MASSAR then relays and performs the job in the Territories and Tamkeen implements and selects grantees. It is therefore all about a form of “expertise” and managerial culture implied to set the tone. What “trickles down” might not be values about civil society going from local donors to the population, but rather a managerial culture, from Washington to a small club of local NGOs. So eventually, the key aspect in the interaction donors-NGOs is not so much about a diffused western model that would be “exported” but rather a whole mechanism of disciplinary institutional discourses (about a very restricted managerial approach to civil society) and of Habitus teaching that takes place in these forums, courses, seminars and brochures. Local NGOs serving as multiplicators to replicate or redistribute this form of expertise, are also a vital part of this disciplinary process: knowing local tricks and social anchorages, they can give a slightly different twist to the content, but the core of the message (a managerial civil society) remains. Then gradually, these views will be dispatched further, through various institutional practices and settings, giving thus credit to the view of Mary Douglas that “institutions think.”
Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 37 The mechanisms of differentiation between groups, societies, culture, nations, or related imagined “others” through narration and social sciences texts are thus intrinsically problematic. Generally speaking, any production of knowledge is reductive of reality since it aims to provide a cognitive map. There is therefore necessarily a process of selection and exclusions, which takes place in three different levels: a) the psychological dimension (complex reduction and Entlastung); b) the epistemological dimension (inherent blind spots to social sciences as part of the project of modernity and subsequent limitations to other settings) and c) the political dimension. It is a political act to select events (for historical narratives), categories (such as ethnies), or limits (real borders or putative ones) to turn it into a precise map of reality. With regard to the study of the AME society, one should therefore have an eye on all three dimensions to come to truly conclusive responses. In Chapter 4, we will see concretely how certain institutions function as filter in the organization of the master narratives deployed around the theme of civil society. To react and respond to the “entwinement” of social services with modernity and to the dominant position of western production of knowledge, one needs to look at the contingent situations in which a society, a culture, a religion or a polity has to evolve. This distinction between necessity and contingency is crucial in order to give less passion to the current debate about Islam and democracy, or about the existence of an AME civil society. Asad also rightly insist that religion cannot be excluded without a prior examination of the sociopolitical environment in which it evolves and by understanding its relation to power. USAID PAYS FOR THE STUDIES EVALUATING CIVIL SOCIETY PROGRAMS – BIASES THE RESULTS AND SERVES TO FURTHER WESTERN HEGEMONY OVER KNOWLEDGE Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 121 Certainly, some key texts and driving views on civil society are important starters in the process of establishing a model of reproduction of views through interaction between donors and NGOs. This is not to say that one of the works previously mentioned set the tone at once for the rest of the production about civil society. Nevertheless, in the cases of commissioned writings about civil society and Palestinian NGOs, international donors can influence already the type and content of reports by selecting one precise author. Surely a Ramallah-based research center will probably reach different conclusions than a smaller organization based in a refugee camp of the periphery, or at least they would probably stress different priorities.
Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 39-40 A more compelling approach to the question of an AME civil society (or Islam and democracy/democratization) is to spell out assumptions, and go through some preliminary deconstruction of core concepts behind the study of the possibility of an AME civil society (or of Islam and democracy). This is what could be called differentiation of a concept. This work must be done on two distinct levels, a horizontal axis and a vertical one. Let us attribute the horizontal axis to general characteristics of civil society, which, as demonstrated in the first chapter, has its origins, in western (pre-)liberal policies. This axis will also be the focus of attention for the deconstruction of concepts related to civil society, such as democracy, secularism, individualism and modernity. The axis is conceived as a continuum with on the left end a consistent differentiation of a concept and, on the right end, a total lack of differentiation thereof. The decisive factor to place one study about, e.g. civil society is the treatment (or not), or the deconstruction (or not) of a series of various elements that constitute the concept of civil society (such as its definition, discussion of its origins, assumptions outlined, etc.). The vertical axis has the same characteristics (continuum, not a scale) but will deal with deconstructing concepts within the setting of the Arab Middle East, with a central focus on Islam, and Arab cultures and their interaction with elements of the horizontal axis. As Ghalioun puts in with regard to the interaction between Islam and laicity, “even in countries belonging to the same culture and going through the same pitfalls of history, as in the case for Muslim countries and their common struggle towards religious renovation and against European colonialism, the processes of modernization are not equally the same.” Thus, one needs to apply a reading according to two axes, a horizontal one about, in this case, “modernity,” and a vertical one that would spell out the differences within the AME. On the top end, one will find studies that lack of differentiation of concepts related to Islam, the Arab culture, etc., and on the lower end, works that look at historical differentiation and/or evolution of concepts, at geographical diversity or that assess intervening variables.
Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 189 A final element of exclusion in terms of ideology comes from the legitimacy granted by international donors to local organizations and in particular to multiplicator NGOs. The multiplicator NGOs actually play the role of ideologues, of the shepherds, providing the “technical” knowledge that is re-distributed either through publications commissioned by some donors, or through training courses offered to smaller local NGOs. But the problem is that this type of knowledge is carefully selected or co-opted by donors. Directory: assets assets -> Northern territory of australia assets -> Number: caveat in the [Will/Will and Codicil/Estate of] assets -> Invitation for Bid Calact/mbta for Standard Floor and Low Floor Rural Duty Vehicles ifb no. 12-03 November 14, 2012 assets -> 12 Step Retreats For Everyone in Twelve Step Recovery Ratner Fellowship assets -> 12 Step Retreats For Everyone in Twelve Step Recovery Ratner Fellowship assets -> Sigaccess annual Report assets -> Central Government is expected to ask the seventh pay commission to consider merging 50% dearness allowance assets -> List of accessible executive records assets -> Emergency telephone numbers Call toll-free from anywhere in France Download 2.51 Mb. Share with your friends:
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