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Beyond Translation: Reconceptualizing the Role of Local Practitioners and the Development ‘Interface’

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Abstract

This article contributes to the growing scholarship on local development practitioners by re-examining conceptualizations of practitioners as ‘brokers’ strategically translating between ‘travelling’ (development institution) rationalities and ‘placed’ (recipient area) rationalities in relation to the development ‘interface’. It argues that local development practitioners, as a result of unconscious dispositions linked to a growing ‘development legacy’, habitually employ a simultaneity of rationalities. Based on fieldwork in northern Ghana conducted in the context of changing development discourse, policy and practice spurred by new challenges deriving from climate change anxiety, the study shows how local practitioners often make local activities fit into travelling development rationalities as a matter of habit, rather than as a conscious strategy. They may therefore cease to ‘translate’ between different rationalities. This is shown to have important implications for theory, research and practice concerning disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in which such translation is often expected.

Abstract

Cet article contribue à la recherche croissante sur les professionnels du développement local en mettant en question les conceptualisations de ces praticiens en tant que « courtiers » opérant une traduction stratégique entre les rationalités « mobiles » de développement et les rationalités « fixes » des bénéficiaires, en rapport avec l’«interface» de développement. Il soutient qu’en raison de tendances inconscientes liées à l’essor d’une tradition de développement, les praticiens du développement local ont pris l’habitude de mobiliser plusieurs rationalités à la fois. Sur la base d’un travail de terrain effectué dans le nord du Ghana, dans le contexte de l’évolution du discours, de la politique et de la pratique de développement devant les nouveaux défis découlant des inquiétudes liées au changement climatique, l’étude montre comment les praticiens locaux font souvent correspondre les activités locales à des rationalités de développement mobiles plus par habitude que dans le cadre d’une stratégie consciente. Il est par conséquent possible qu’ils cessent de jouer leur rôle de traducteurs entre des rationalités différentes. Cela a des implications importantes pour la théorie, la recherche et la pratique en matière de réduction des risques de catastrophe et d’adaptation au changement climatique, dans lesquelles cette traduction est souvent attendue.

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Notes

  1. Some organizations, however, were working towards increasing their local funding.

  2. Names and affiliations are anonymized.

  3. Indeed, as one of the reviewers pointed out, in their professional behavior Ghanaian development workers are not so different from Western researchers applying for research grants when it comes to employing the latest jargon.

  4. ‘Security center’ is probably not a concept the local population would generally use. The two practitioners were using it to explain the extended family network to me and I therefore use it here.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Philip Ayamba and Francis Danso; without their practical, social and intellectual support, this fieldwork would not have been possible. Thanks also to colleagues at the University of Copenhagen for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article, in particular Katherine V. Gough, Birgitte Refslund Sørensen and Cecilie Rubow. The research was funded by the European Research Council Grant (grant 229459 Waterworlds).

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Olwig, M. Beyond Translation: Reconceptualizing the Role of Local Practitioners and the Development ‘Interface’. Eur J Dev Res 25, 428–444 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2013.9

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