How development projects persist : everyday negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs / Erin Beck.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beck, Erin, 1982- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fundacion Namaste Guatemaya.

Fraternidad de Presbiteriales Mayas (Guatemala).

Non-governmental organizations--Guatemala.

Non-governmental organizations.

Women in development.

Guatemala--Social conditions.

Guatemala.

Social conditions.

Guatemala--Economic conditions.

Economic conditions.

Women in development--Guatemala.

Physical Description:

x, 266 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2017.

Summary:

In How Development Projects Persist Erin Beck examines microfinance NGOs working in Guatemala and problematizes the accepted wisdom of how NGOs function. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, she shows how development models and plans become entangled in the relationships among local actors in ways that alter what they are, how they are valued, and the conditions of their persistence. Beck focuses on two NCOs that use drastically different methods in working with poor rural women in Guatemala. She highlights how each program's beneficiaries-diverse groups of savvy women-exercise their agency by creatively appropriating, resisting, and reinterpreting the lessons of the NGOs to match their personal needs. Beck uses this dynamic-in which the goals of the developers and women do not often overlap-to theorize development projects as social interactions in which policymakers, workers, and beneficiaries critically shape what happens on the ground. This book displaces the notion that development projects are top-down northern interventions into a passive global south by offering a provocative account of how local conditions, ongoing interactions, and even fundamental tensions inherent in development work allow such projects to persist, but in new and unexpected ways. Book jacket.

Contents:

Social engineering from above and below

Repackaging development in Guatemala

Namaste's bootstrap model

Women and workers responding to bootstrap development

The Fraternity's holistic model

The uneven practices and experiences of holistic development

The implications of socially constructed development

Appendix: Research methods and ethical dilemmas.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Beck, Erin, 1982- How development projects persist.

ISBN:

9780822369615

0822369613

9780822363781

082236378X

OCLC:

957746966