Learning in North-South NGO (Nongovernmental Organization) Partnerships: Making Sense of the Local Through the Translocal

• In Event: Roundtable Session 90
  In Roundtable Session: Learning, Knowledge Production, and Research in Social Movement/Civil Society Milieux

Abstract

Learning has become important for partnerships between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Global North and their counterparts in the South because it is thought to hold the potential to reduce inequalities between partners and to promote better “development”. Specifically, it is suggested that if the Northern NGO partner is able to learn from its Southern counterpart then development practice may be better adapted and implemented in communities of the South. Furthermore, in sharing their knowledge with their Northern partners, Southern NGOs may have greater say in the direction of development practice. However, critics argue that embedded in North-South NGO partnerships are stark power inequities (Fowler, 1998; Malhotra, 1997; Mohanty, 2003). Such inequities support a pattern in which knowledge flows from North to South, thereby marginalizing local forms of knowledge that may more appropriately address local problems as well as inform international policy debates (Fowler, 2000; Haque, 1999; Mosse, 2001). It has been further argued that this type of unilateral knowledge flow reinforces the Eurocentric bias of development theories as well as neocolonial relations between North and South (Banuri, 1990; Slater, 2004).

While many Northern NGOs make claims to learning from Southern partners, there has been little empirical research to document such learning. Researchers who have undertaken research to investigate the travel of knowledge and the transnational potential of learning between NGOs have shared findings that point to the challenges more than to the successes in South-North learning (Thayer, 2000; Wilson & Johnson, 2007). Furthermore, research has given priority to examining how partnerships may be modified by NGOs at the micro level in order to promote learning. Yet there is a need to examine translocal development agency discourses and practice at the macro level to better understand their role in shaping partnerships between Northern and Southern NGOs, and the subsequent impacts on learning. This presentation will draw from preliminary findings of a study examining the partnership between social justice NGOs, one in Canada and the other in Bangladesh. Using institutional ethnography (Smith, 1987, 2005) and recognizing the incidental nature of learning in social action (Foley, 1999), this research explores how South-North learning is shaped by the discourses and practices of development agencies that are situated beyond the NGOs’ local contexts. Such understandings are crucial if we are to work against Northern-biased development, which is arguably perpetuated by unilateral North to South knowledge flow in NGO partnerships.

Author

• Erin Sirett, McGill University