Bjorn Harald Nordtveit Constructing development
civil society and literacy in a time of globalization
Gedrukt boek
The author argues that a development project or policy should not be understood and analyzed as a linear system. Instead, he believes we should view it as a complex and dialectical organism. Nordtveit lays out a method of analyzing development – both on the ground and in the think-tank. Informed by quotations from interviews with local people involved in a World Bank literacy project in Senegal, the author demonstrates how a project is entangled in the global economy, and how it constructs development through a discourse of gender equity, growth of the civil society, and promotion of the use of private provision of social services. The author also examines the strengths and weaknesses of ‘public-private partnerships’, which are being used ever more frequently by donor agencies to implement social services.