Civil society
Civil Society: Challenging Western Models
Edited volumes seems to have a shorter shelf life than books, similar to academic articles. I recently picked up the somewhat dated (1996) edited volume of “Civil Society: Challenging Western Models”, edited by Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn, to see what it might offer. It was written at a time when literature on civil society […]
Tags: #Civil society #magic of transition #Steven Sampson #Susanne Spulbeck #The Social Life of Projects
Civil Society and the Aid Industry
Civil society is said to provide “the agents of change that will cure a range of social and economic ills left by failures of government and the marketplace: autocracy, poverty, disenfranchisement, oppression, social malaise. Cornucopian expectations for social change have been heaped on this idea and, indeed, for some Northern donors in particular (both official […]
Citizen Action and National Policy Reform
“Citizen Action and National Policy Reform: Making Change Happen” (2010), edited by Gaventa and McGee, presents a series of case studies of citizen movements and advocacy for national policy change. The book fits well within the “How Change Happens” space. Cases are presented from: South Africa, Philippines, Mexico, Chile, India, Brazil, Morocco and Turkey. The […]
Tags: #Advocacy #Citizen Action #Civil society #How change happens #Policy
Civil Society & Development
“Civil society has established itself at the beginning of the twenty-first century as a significant, even paradigmatic concept in the field of development policy and practice” wrote Jude Howell and Jenny Pearce in their 2001 book “Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration” (p. 1). Yet, how do donors conceptualize, fund and engage with civil […]
Tags: #Civil society #Civil society and development #Democracy #Development #social capital
How Change Happens
Governments, activists, NGOs, politicians and development programs all want change. It is why donor dollars are raised and people protest in the streets. But, how much do we actually know, or reflect upon, how change actually happens – and to what extent is that embedded within how development works? “How Change Happens” (2016) by Duncan Green, […]
Tags: #Civil society #Development Studies #Duncan Green #How change happens #International development
Two Faces of Civil Society
A number of authors promote civil society as a mechanism to improve aid: Dwyer (2015) argued it as an alternative to traditional, top-down aid, Roy, Negron-Gonzales, Opoku-Agyemang and Talwalker (2016) as poor people’s movements, Eyben (2014) of the people-centered alternative vision of civil society, and Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) about the necessity of collective action for democratic […]
Tags: #Civil society #Effective aid #International development #NGOs #Politics
PhD: The Politics of Big Data
The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) of the Faculty of Humanities is looking for a PhD candidate to join the ERC-funded project ‘Data Activism: The Politics of Big Data According to Civil Society'(DATACTIVE), with Dr. Stefania Milan as Principal Investigator. DATACTIVE investigates citizens’ engagement with massive data collection, seeking to understand how activism evolves […]
Tags: #Activism #Big data #Civil society #Politics #Social change
The Anatomy of Giving
Most of the time development folks just speak with and to other development folks. Outsiders can bring a healthy voice to the conversation. Augusta Dwyer, in her 2015 work “The Anatomy of Giving” offers such a perspective on the aid industry, focusing upon Haiti. With a background as a journalist, she sets out to answer […]
Tags: #Aid #Anatomy of Giving #Civil society #Empowerment #International development
PhD Studentship: Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law
The Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL) at the University of Aberdeen is delighted to offer two 3-year PhD studentships to start in September 2016. The studentships will include home/overseas fees and a full stipend of £14,296 per annum. We welcome applicants from anthropology, cultural and literary studies, history, legal theory […]
Tags: #Citizenship #Civil society #Doctoral Studentship #Interdisciplinary #Rule of law
About me
Logan Cochrane
Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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