| Abstract |
How could anyone be against NGOs? Non-governmental organizations serve a variety of purposes and are increasingly the crucial vehicle to distribute humanitarian aid and ensure developmental outcomes. They are commonly perceived as altruistic, privately registered, expert-driven, seeking common good. However NGOs are increasingly under attack, whether from governments suspicious of 'foreign agendas', analysts eager for social impact, activists impatient with compromises, or scholars concerned with global inequality and poverty. Two themes dominate such critiques, that NGOs are part of a technocratic shift within development from political mobilizing towards outcome management, thus truncating the realm for political action; and that the normative expectations of civil society are now eclipsed by the inflated and heroic demands made on NGOs. A sharp consequence is a depoliticizing of development, further tilting towards elite experts, and forms of accommodation to market-friendly policies. This presentation seeks to understand whether it is worth being "against" NGOs. |