Experienced practitioners and academics provide an insightful look into the limitations of NGOs in claiming to represent and assist 'civil society'. Changes in approaches to development are situated within changes in global political economy. Relations between donors, states and NGOs are also considered in specific contexts. The volume outlines many of the tensions NGOs face in claiming to speak for the poor while also remaining accountable to national and international actors. Together the authors provide an excellent overview of these important issues.

Explores people's varied expectations of development.

Many aid agencies advocate approaches to development which are people-centred, participatory, empowering and gender-fair. This volume of essays explores some of the middle ground between such values-based approaches and the methods and techniques that the agencies adopt. The selection offers critical assessments of fashionable tools such as Participatory Rural Appraisal and Logical Framework. It demonstrates how these are linked (conceptually and in practice) to the wider ideological environment in which they are used, and shows how they depend upon the skills of the fieldworker and/or...

Most major development NGOs dedicate significant resources to advocacy. Many also work to inform and shape public opinion, whether through advertising or fundraising or through education programmes. They argue that fundamental change is not achieved until the policy environment is right and cannot be sustained without a groundswell of support for reform. In recent years, however, advocacy work has come under increasing criticism. NGOs are challenged on the grounds of: Legitimacy - Whom do they represent, and to whom are they accountable? Effectiveness - What practical impact does high-level...

Approaches to sustainable development in cities of the South have focused too exclusively on narrow technical aspects of environmental protection, with no benefit to most residents in cities and peri-urban areas. However, in many countries of the South the disengagement of government along with budgetary constraints, a reliance on cost-recovery mechanisms within structural adjustment packages and increasing disparity between poor and rich, further reduces access by the poor to even the most rudimentary services. Development and Cities focuses on the political, social and economic viability of...

Development practitioners and development thinkers and academics have tried to make women matter in development. However, women-focused approaches have often addressed women's needs outside the wider social contexts in which they live and have been as damaging to women's interests as earlier gender-blind efforts that ignored women's specific concerns altogether. These papers taken from the journal Development in Practice cover topics as diverse as mainstreaming versus specialization, methodologies for introducing gender analysis into planning and evaluation, limitations of gender training and...