Hey all it's Alex. It's been a while since I've talked to many of you and some I have probably seen just a few days ago. Anyway, I'm working on my dreams to push some great movements of filming in the Philippines with kids living in cemeteries. Read up on it and vote. Hit me up if you guys are interested in it. Would love your feedback.

I just voted on a great idea to raise money for a charitable goal. If you like it too, please add your vote.

What you're "voting" on is whether you feel the proposed project is worthwhile. When you vote, you're NOT making a financial commitment of any kind; you're simply indicating that you think it's a good idea and should go ahead.

Voting takes less than a minute, and it's easy - so please VOTE NOW, by clicking here
http://www.givemeaning.com/donate/p-project.aspx?gg=782 to review the project profile (and then just click on the Vote icon to cast your vote).

With enough votes, the Project's founder can work towards making the idea a reality.

Labels: campaign

Posted by Kurt at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments   

I felt like this might be an appropriate place to ask the question: What is the role of the West in Development?

I just came back from an amazing conference in Calgary with an organization, Engineers Without Borders: http://www.ewb.ca/en/index.html, http://conference2007.ewb.ca/and I wanted to share this question with you as well as some of the insights presented to me at the conference.

This question was addressed in an interactive panel discussion I attended as well as by a wonderfully inspiring Ghanaian woman, Adisa Lansah Yakubu. Dr. Apentiik who is a professor of African Studies at the University of Calgary called attention to the gap between our rhetoric and action in the West. Canada, for example, has not increased the amount of our Foreign Aid to 0.7% as we promised in the past. Dr. Apentiik spoke strongly against Westerns tying aid to good governance which encourages a Western model of development as well.

Paul Slomp, and EWB long-term overseas volunteer implied there were assumptions in the question of what Westerners can do for development: that the West has a role, and that we are different. Both Paul, and Adisa Lansah Yakubu in her keynote speech, called for a paradigm shift that recognizes our interconnectedness. Adisa Yakubu said “the West” can learn from Africa and encouraged Westerners who do not know much about Africa to learn more. I also had the opportunity to speak personally with Adisa Yakubu about what kind of development approach she supported, a model of state-led development, or a grassroots model. It was her sincere opinion that the top-down approach advocated by institutions such as the Wold Bank is ineffective because it doesn’t have a human face. Though, I am not entirely convinced of the superiority of grass-roots approaches to development, I am certainly more sceptical about the relevance of World Bank initiatives such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.

This certainly is an important question considering the aid worker should not want to be part of a bloated administration cost, or come with colonial ideas of creating Western models. Should the West only provide money? Should the West try to project values? Should we learn from other cultures? Should the West focus on developing itself more and ending unfair policies?

Let this be an open forum for discussion on the topic!

Posted by Vera at 3:05 AM | Permalink | Comments   

Dr. Uma Kothari "Disguising Race: The Sanitisation of Discourses of Development."

Dr. Uma Kothari, Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester.

Abstract: This paper identifies some of the silences about 'race' in international development that mask its complicity with broader historical and contemporary racial projects. Significantly, this concealment is founded upon the assumption that development takes place in non-racialized spaces and outside of racialized histories. The paper is concerned with how 'race' is disguised and development discourses sanitized through the use of specialized terminology and criteria whereby
race-neutral language continues to distinguish between the different capabilities, characteristics and attributes of Others.

Through this cleansing of development terminology, notions of 'race' are submerged and the development gaze is diverted from considering how racial differentiations might shape our understandings of key concerns of development, namely the dynamics of poverty
and exclusion. Furthermore, however, when a development ethos is framed around a language
of charity, empathy, humanitarianism and justice, and the role of developers is seen primarily to alleviate poverty, it might appear irrefutable that motives are wholly noble. This assumption of noble intention goes a long way in silencing the critical appraisal of development interventions and obscuring racialized relations of power while delimiting attempts to theorize concepts of 'race' in development praxis. This does not mean that questions of diversity and difference are altogether neglected in development, but through a philanthropic frame, ideas about 'race' become subsumed within supposedly more palatable discourses of, for example, 'culture' and 'ethnicity'.

Series Sponsors: The 2006-2007 Speaker Series is sponsored by the Department of Political Science, with the support of the following:
Centre for Constitutional Studies, Peace & Postconflict Studies Program; Canada Research Chair (Political Economy and Social Governance); Canada Research Chair (Social Theory and Social Policy); Augustana Faculty; Faculty of Education; the Middle East and African
Studies(MEAS) program; University of Alberta International Centre; the Master's of Arts Integrated Studies (MAIS); Athabasca University; and the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies.

Concluded sessions are now available on the Department web site in podcasting and video-streaming formats, thanks to the support of the Arts Resource Centre and Academic Information and Communications Technology:

Event URL:
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/polisci/SpeakersSeries_0607.cfm

Labels: article, conference

Posted by Kurt at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments