ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2005

In association with Development Policy and Practice and the International Development Centre at the Open University

Milton Keynes, UK
7th-9th September 2005

Connecting people and places: challenges and opportunities for development

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT PARALLEL SESSIONS
ABSTRACTS

This study group (formally called ‘The Public Faces of Development’) focuses on the conceptual and practical challenges surrounding Public Engagement in Development. The group has been established to provide a forum for exploring forms of engagement and the ways it is engendered by diverse organisations including NGOs, schools, government agencies, businesses and the media.

There are three sessions:
Session C: September 8th, 9.00-10.30
Session D: September 8th, 13.30-15.00
Session E: September 8th, 15.30-16.45

SESSION C - PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN DEVELOPMENT: IMAGING DEVELOPMENT

This panel will discuss how development has been historically pictured in the print media, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Its aim is to raise questions about compassion fatigue, iconic and stereotypical images, and the political effect of such photographs.

The panel links directly to The Imaging Famine exhibition, The Newsroom Gallery, London August 5th – September 9th curated by the conveners. The key issues are outlined below.

· Aid Industry: Images from the 84 Ethiopian famine raised in excess of $100 million but more interestingly led to a sustained growth in income for overseas development organisations. Save the Children, for example, grew from an annual income of £9 million to over £90 million during the 1980’s. What role do the iconic images of famine play in sustaining the aid industry?

· Politics of representation: In 2001 VSO published a research report that demonstrated the majority of UK consumers still retained a “one-dimensional view of developing countries…primarily driven by images of drought and famine”. Further research undertaken by Peter Adamson showed that School Children in the UK believe that 50-70% of African children are malnourished, when in fact the figure is less than 2%. Misrepresentation is perpetuated by the current image economy that prefers strong eye grabbing images over those that report more objectively on a scene. What effect does this have on those being photographed? On the other hand what happens if the images are not taken? Probably the worst famine in history happened in China from 1958-61, killing an estimated 30 million people. There are millions of eye witness accounts but very few photographs. What role does the photographer play in recording famine and what is his/her moral responsibility?

· Picture Policies: Although aid charities benefited financially from Live Aid many educationalists within them felt their work had been put back twenty years by the impact of the event. In response to this concern aid agencies established formal picture policies that banned the use of “negative” imagery. Twenty years on there is evidence that these policies are being rethought. How effective have such policies been?

‘THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES BY DEVELOPMENTAL AGENCIES AND THE WESTERN MEDIA’
Dr Shahidul Alam, Director of Drik, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Most NGOs seem to have the usual 'income generating activities,' the savings groups where the villagers gather round in a circle and sign the passbook, the functional education classes where village folk are taught urban middle-class expressions that even in cities only get used in formal situations. Where they are taught "the policeman is your friend..." and they know otherwise. Photographs of the activities of a hundred different NGOs would be largely identical. Where is the training to network that the donor circuit itself thrives on? Where is the emphasis on information technology that allows the richer countries to retain their stranglehold? The poor in these countries have been observed, analyzed and understood, but why have they been built a cell with no exit? Why are entire nations guinea pigs for foreign anthropologists, sociologists, economists and photographers?

This paper analyses perceptions of the majority world, discusses the cultural relationship of the subject to the photographer, deconstructs the stereo type and outlines the assumptions on how those stereo types are validated. It goes onto to discuss the business and marketing strategies of development in relation to the power of the images produced. The paper concludes with a call for a re-evaluation of the current accepted norm.

‘BABY FACE: IMAGES OF AFRICA IN SOCIAL JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS’
Kate Manzo, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle

This paper addresses questions of representation and repetition through a focus on the dominant image of Africa, which remains that of the starving or poverty-stricken stranger, manifested most often as the face of an unsmiling baby. At a time when questions about imagery continue to be posed by a range of actors in development (actors including, but not limited to, non-governmental organisations), the paper asks about the persistent use of such heavily critiqued imagery. What explains its ongoing appeal and can such imagery ever serve the cause of social justice?

After setting current questions in the context of ongoing debates about the Live Aid legacy and the production of image guidelines by NGOs, the paper challenges the grounds of debate by critically examining the positive/negative dichotomy that underpins it. The fundraiser/negative image versus educationalist/positive image distinction rests on a problematically ‘realist’ understanding of images, as Henrietta Lidchi has argued. It also rests on a simplified understanding of NGOs and fails to account for the common use of the universal image (i.e. the baby face) by fundraisers and social justice campaigners alike.

The concept of moving images is introduced in part two, in the context of discussion of the use of the baby face image in two campaigns at different historical moments, i.e. the UNICEF ‘adjustment with a human face’ campaign of the late 1980s and the more recent Make Poverty History campaign. Moving images are those designed not only to move people emotionally but also to move policymakers to policy change. The baby face image, it is argued, is an effective way to move people but whether or not people then move policy depends on two factors: a) the extent to which the images themselves are accompanied by political demands for action; and b) the wider policy context in which demands for change occur. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the use of the baby face image by social justice campaigners can be justified as long as it is put to the cause of meaningful change.

‘CHINA, PHOTOGRAPHY AND FAMINE: A CRITICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE PHOTOGRAPHIC CULTURE AND IT’S REPRESENTATION OF THE PERIOD 1958-62’
D.J. Clark, Department of Art and Design, University of Bolton

This paper discusses the photographic representation of China during the period 1958-62 in particular reference to the absence of images of the famine that engulfed the country at the time. It argues a unique combination of cultural and political factors led to what is widely regarded as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, passing unrecorded although there were photographers present. The paper critically analyses the development of photographic culture in China and uses this example to discuss the relationship of photography with humanitarian disaster.

‘FROM BEACH-HEAD TO BLACKHAWK DOWN: IMAGING THE SOMALIA INTERVENTION’
Caitlin Patrick

The Somalia intervention of 1992-93 is perhaps most famous for its highly-visible moments of beginning and closure, extensively documented by Western media. The importance of these images provoked questions about how exactly these images of Somalia could be linked to actions being taken by US and UN forces in this ‘failed state’. Congressman Lee E. Hamilton declared, “Pictures of the starving children, not policy objectives, got us into Somalia in 1992. Pictures of US casualties, not the completion of our objectives, led us to exit Somalia.” Thomas Keenan, in his work “Live From…” goes further than mere differentiation and negates the importance of policy altogether, suggesting that precisely what was significant about the Somalia intervention was its lack of planning and foresight. “It was an operation on the surface, of the surface. One need not look behind or beneath the images it produced, as if they concealed some lurking geo-strategic ambition or agenda. The agenda, and the strategy, was the imagery”.

This presentation will consider some of the powerful, and usually stereotypically ‘African’, images of Somali people documented during the intervention, given their contested importance for the creation and development of the mission. The presentation will argue that, despite their two-dimensional quality, TV and print images and narratives had significant effects on Somalia and its people and how they were dealt with by the USA and the broader international community through the UN.

SESSION D - FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT

‘CONNECTING CULTURES: ROLE OF VISUAL IMAGES OF INTERNATIONAL NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS’
Nandita Dogra, Research Student, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, London, U.K.

Understanding and projecting ‘connections to distant strangers’ in increasingly multicultural societies remains a challenge for policymakers and practitioners alike. While the bulk of messages about the third world are received from the media, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) too form an important, often more credible, source of information about developing countries or the third world for Northern constituencies. This paper explores the ways in which international NGOs understand and project their work and stakeholders through their visual images.

The paper draws upon the analysis of a time series of regular or development fundraising images spread over three decades of a UK based development INGO. Examining both pre- and post-Ethiopian crisis imagery, it traces shifting trends in the visual images used by international NGOs. Images quite often mirror many complexities and pressures being faced by international NGOs and their attempts at internal and external coherence at various stages.

Reviewing the contradictory views on representations by international NGOs as being either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, the paper carves out several indicative two-way links between the visual images used by international NGOs and the contradictions and tensions within the NGOs, their roles especially related to development education and advocacy, and their relationships with southern clients, other NGOs, media, northern donors and public. The selectivity of images by the NGOs shows the continuous attempt to find a delicate balance between imagery which serves to educate about the clients and their situation and publicise their own work. Juxtaposing the divergent portrayals by media and international NGOs, the paper also considers the implications of the same in constructing the discourse of the third world.

Visual representations are inextricably intertwined with controversial and recurrent questions of ideologies, power balance and relationships with southern clients and partners that need to be addressed constantly. In conclusion, this paper highlights the significant role played by visual imagery in influencing and contesting existing meanings and discourses about the third world and the overall inter-connections between Western ‘us’ and non-Western ‘them’ or ‘others’.

‘TEN YEARS OF WASTE – HOW SELECTIVE ACTIVISM HAS STUNTED PROGRESS IN CHIAPAS’
Clive Gabay

The 1994 Zapatista uprising, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, became the cause celebre of the anti globalisation movement, and in many cases catalysed the formation of a new form of secular solidarity-activist networks primarily in the United States, Canada, and Europe . These networks quickly coalesced around a narrative of the uprising in Chiapas that posited two main contentions: That the uprising was a direct result of and response to the industrialisation and capitalisation of Chiapas’ abundant natural resources; and that the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (The Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN, or, as most popularly known, the Zapatistas) were and remain the sole representatives of authentic Chiapaneco Indians, with those operating outside of the Zapatista realm of control automatically credited with being at best irrelevant, at worst pro-government, capitalist, ‘sell-outs’.

Using a range of online and printed sources, as well as interviews with prominent Chiapas-based interlocutors in the conflict, this paper explores how these themes have been represented amongst and by solidarity-activist networks, and compares the results with anthropological and primary accounts of social and historical diversity in Chiapas. The paper proposes that the representations of the conflict by solidarity-activist networks have in fact largely papered over very important historical, political, religious, social and cultural cleavages that existed in Chiapaneacan society at the time of the uprising, and persist today. This has had two related theoretical implications. Firstly, it has meant that whilst the language employed by the Zapatistas has consistently placed autonomy as the core aim of the movement, solidarity-activist networks have in large overlooked this and placed opposition to neo-liberal globalisation as the primary ideal of the Zapatistas. This opposition was indeed an important factor in the uprising, but only as a sub category of the greater project of autonomy for the people of Chiapas. The second and related implication is that whilst this autonomy, together with the societal cleavages mentioned, have spawned a large variety of socially progressive organisations that share the broad aims of the Zapatista movement, they have been largely overlooked by the solidarity networks in their representation of the region and the actions of solidarity that they have advocated, in many cases because these other organisations differ with the Zapatistas in their means to achieving their shared aims, and thus fall under the radar of the majority of solidarity-activist networks.

The paper concludes with a short impact analysis, highlighting areas where a distorted or ‘flattened’ view of Chiapas amongst Northern solidarity activists has at times accentuated local conflicts, and has meant that the potential of the global Zapatista solidarity movement has been severely curtailed. Finally, recommendations are made for how Northern solidarity networks could conduct information dissemination and action that would be of benefit for the greatest possible number of people in Chiapas.

‘CASUALTY GOES TO AFRICA: DOES IT HAVE TO BE A DISASTER TO GET DEVELOPMENT ON TV? PERSPECTIVES FROM PROGRAMME MAKERS AND BROADCASTERS ON THE CHALLENGES IN PORTRAYING THE SOUTH TO A UK TELEVISION AUDIENCE’
Katrina Phillips

This paper explores the perspectives of a sample of programme makers and broadcaster commissioning editors on covering international stories and developing countries in particular.

Research (VSO The Live Aid Legacy) has revealed that public understanding and attitudes towards the South are under-informed and one-dimensional. The media, and television in particular, has had much of the blame for the generally poor level of public understanding of development issues laid at its off-switch. This blame may not be misplaced. Television coverage of international stories and developing countries in particular has followed a downward trend, to the extent that 2003 marked the lowest ever ratings. (3WE World on the Box).

In 2005 the Africa Commission, Comic Relief and the BBC’s Africa week, might be expected to mark a change in this trend. Programmes have included taking such familiar television formats as Casualty to Africa, moving well-known British drama characters into development storylines. But is this the answer to the conundrum of how to include development stories in British programming schedules? Or does it underline the preconception that developing countries are permanent disaster zones in need of emergency resuscitation?

What do programme makers and broadcasters in the UK think draws an audience to an international story? What are the challenges in featuring other parts of the world on British television? Through analysing the perspectives of some of the programme makers and commissioning editors responsible for broadcasting international stories, this paper aims to contribute to the debate around how best to provide information on other parts of the world in such a way as to foster a longer-term interest in development issues.

SESSION E - PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

‘GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP AND CONCEPTS OF EACH OTHER: HOW VOLUNTEERING ON AN EDUCATIONAL AID PROJECT IMPACTS ON YOUNG PEOPLES’ VIEWS OF THEIR PLACE IN THE GLOBAL SOCIETY’
Wendy Newton, The Open University

One aspect of the concept of citizenship is the opportunity to contribute to the public life of the community through participation. The paper will begin by exploring conceptions of global citizenship drawn from a broad ranging literature review currently being undertaken by the author. The paper will then report some preliminary findings from an educational aid project in which the author was a participant observer.

Malawi Education Link is a small registered charity which offers Year 10/11 students from two schools in Eastern England the opportunity to spend up to a month living and working in Malawi. They and the project leaders are based in Ngala, near Dwangwa, where they assist (both financially and ‘hands on’) with building programmes in local schools. The three schools likely to be involved in 2005 are located in diverse settings, one in a township behind a small town, one on a sugar estate and the other in a remote rural area. The project activities may, for instance involve renovating and extending classroom provision, or building teachers’ houses, so that the government will recruit and pay more teachers.

Close contacts are maintained between the project organisers with local communities and their chiefs as well as with governmental organisations. The local community provides materials and is actively involved in each project. The English students also spend time teaching and taking part in a variety of cultural and sporting activities with local Malawian young people.

Fund raising by the young people in their schools and home communities raises awareness about Malawi and provides a direct link and experience of ongoing involvement with communities in the developing world. In turn, Malawians in rural areas have few opportunities to learn about the wider world and the on-going relationship between the project schools provides a conduit for mutual information and understanding.

The author of this paper is a Social Anthropologist and will be reporting findings both from the perspective of a leader on this year’s project visit and an academic based in the Faculty of Education at the Open University.

Questions which will be addressed will include:

• What kinds of creative/participative learning are experienced and what kinds of knowledge and understanding about citizenship are generated through students’ experience of working
  as volunteers in a culturally different environment?
• In what ways are participative processes developed among team members drawn from the different cultural contexts (English and Malawian) which contribute to their understandings of citizenship?
• Participants in the session will have the opportunity to contribute to the thinking about the subsequent stages of this research and the questions to be addressed when the author returns to Malawi in 2006.

‘AMBIVALENT COSMOPOLITANISM? NGOS AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN DEVELOPMENT’
Dr Helen Yanacopulos (Open University) and Dr Matt Smith (Northumbria University)

Development NGOs are often seen to exemplify the transcendence of national boundaries of morality, affiliation and empathy and are believed to be central to the shaping of a global civil society and ideas of transnational politics. However, their public production of notions of justice, development, authority and identity, particularly as these relate to a cosmopolitan politics, have been subject to relatively little attention. This paper focuses on the ways development NGOs have sought to define public discourses of development linked to strategies to engage Northern constituencies. Drawing on ongoing research on NGO advocacy and development education, the paper explores the ways the diverse practices of NGOs intersect with different conceptions of cosmopolitanism. It is argued that this produces an ambivalent cosmopolitanism which has implications for both NGOs and the emergence of a cosmopolitan politics.