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The personal and the professional: aid workers' relationships and values in the development process

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 12:16 authored by Anne-Meike FechterAnne-Meike Fechter
This introduction, and the special issue as a whole, consider how the personal and the professional are interrelated, and how they matter for aid work. Taking up Chambers' call for the ‘primacy of the personal', this paper explores why the personal often remains un-acknowledged in development studies, even though its salience for aid workers is well-documented, for example, in the growing popularity of their blogs and memoirs. One possible reason for this is an implicit narrative of aid work as altruistic and sometimes self-sacrificing, which renders it inappropriate to devote much attention to the experiences and challenges of aid workers themselves. As the contributions in this volume demonstrate, however, their personal relationships and values significantly shape perspectives and practices of aid work. They therefore need to be taken into account in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of development processes.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Third World Quarterly

ISSN

0143-6597

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

8

Volume

33

Page range

1387-1404

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-08-17

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    University of Sussex (Publications)

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