Blog

One of the Most Effective Aid Projects (Agriculture)

Many individuals and organizations suggest that selecting and implementing highly effective international development projects is straightforward. My experience working in North America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia over the last twelve years is that it is far more complex. When projects are smaller-scale, some of the most effective international development projects I have seen are […]

Tags: #Agriculture #Effective aid #International development #Irrigation #Thinking Outside the Box

Research

Top Posts from 2015

Posts with the most page views in 2015: 1. International Development Essential Reading (Books) 2. Conducting Research in Ethiopia 3. Advice for Conducting Household Surveys 4. Want to Volunteer Overseas and Don’t Know Where to Start? 5. PhD Reality Check

Uncategorized
Land’s End (2014)

Land’s End (2014)

Tania Murray Li, professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, published Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier in 2014. If you are interested in ideas put forward by James C. Scott, such as his Weapons of the Weak or Seeing Like a State, Li provides a number of challenges and alternative conclusions. In […]

Tags: #coercion and control #Ethnography #invisibilization #Tania Murray Li #Tarmac Bias

Thought Provokers

In Canadian Association of Food Studies Newsletter

Canadian Association for Food Studies (2015) Fall 2015 Newsletter, Issue 20, p. 10.

Research
Blinded by Humanity (2015)

Blinded by Humanity (2015)

Interested in international development, NGOs or the United Nations? Martin Barber’s “Blinded by Humanity: Inside the UN’s Humanitarian Operations” (2015) provides insight on the challenges and lessons learned. On good intentions: “…if there is one message that I would pass on to young people wanting to do good in the world, it is this: be passionate, but […]

Tags: #Celebrities #Good intentions #Priorities #Self-reflection #United Nations

Thought Provokers
The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)

The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)

Published in 1957, this book is authored by a Tunisian living under French colonial rule. Albert Memmi’s wrote as European colonization was falling. It provides broader insight into oppressor-oppressed relationships: On the system: “Racism appears then, not as an incidental detail, but as a consubstantial part of colonialism. It is the highest expression of the colonial system […]

Tags: #Albert Memmi #Colonized #Colonizer #Oppression #Power

Thought Provokers