The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe: No.2 (Religion in History, Society and Culture) - Hardcover

Bornstein, Erica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415943833 ISBN 13: 9780415943833

Publisher: Routledge, 2003

Synopsis

This work is an ethnographic account of the work of transnational, Christian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Zimbabwe. Religious NGOs are one of the voices of pluralism in southern Africa, sometimes challenging the state and at others collaborating with it. The tensions of such engagement are key to understanding the successes and failures of transnational, humanitarian endeavours to foster democratic governance in Zimbabwe. While much scholarship has been focused, theoretically, on the role of NGOs in democratisation in Africa regarding international foreign policy, few studies offer empirically grounded insights into how transnational NGOs operate. The Spirit of Development addresses, ethnographically, how an American discourse of Christian humanitarianism transforms and is transformed by local settings. The book builds on scholarship on Christian missionaries in Africa to interrogate the religious dimensions of economic change. Situated in Zimbabwe of the late 1990s, the project engages with scholarship on a range of intersecting topics, including: development studies, the politics of transnational foreign aid, the politics of neoliberal economic discourse, recent debates on civil societies and states in Africa, the global politics of religion, and classical anthropological research on religious conversion. In the late 1990s, religious NGOs were on the forefront of reconfiguring humanitarian aid in Africa - entering where the welfare programmes of African states were unable to provide even basic services for citizens. Today, religious NGOs occupy a peculiar structural and ideologocal position in contemporary Africa, working in collaboration with African states and simultaneously providinh moral critique.

About this title

Review:

"Bornstein has written a book that every believer (or unbeliever) in the theology of (African) economic development should read." (Voluntas)

"Bornstein shows how ideas of material and spiritual development relate to each other in the everyday practices of development executives in California and their counterparts in Zimbabwe. As illustrated here, 'faith-based development' compels fresh engagement with the cosmologies of capitalist development. Rarely have classic concerns in social theory been made so directly relevant to understanding topical issues." (Harri Englund)

"This book makes an important and timely contribution to the sociology and anthropology of development....Bornstein writes with an honesty and a curiosity that engages the reader in her project." (Canadian Journal of Sociology Online)

"Erica Bornstein's ethnography is one of the finest [on NGOs], and is likely to find a place as a foundational study in this emerging field." (Journal of Southern African Studies)

"The Spirit of Development is a truly ground-breaking work on a topic of extraordinary contemporary significance. It provides a powerful and exceptionally revealing demonstration of how ethnographic methods and anthropological concepts can be brought to bear on the study of those 'non-governmental organizations' that play an increasingly prominent (and ill-understood) role in the contemporary social and political life of much of the world. It should be required reading for all scholars concerned with 'development,' Christianity, and humanitarianism, in Africa and beyond." (James Ferguson Stanford University)

"The Spirit of Development...provides exemplary insight into the debates and practices amongst NGO staff in Harare and the United States concerning the intersection of faith and development, providing much-needed analysis on the intertwining of religious and economic assumptions and their (mis)translations within transnational organizations such as NGOs and those they endeavor to spiritually and materially transform." (American Anthropologist)

From the Back Cover:

"The Spirit of Development is a truly ground-breaking work on a topic of extraordinary contemporary significance. It provides a powerful and exceptionally revealing demonstration of how ethnographic methods and anthropological concepts can be brought to bear on the study of those 'non-governmental organizations' that play an increasingly prominent (and ill-understood) role in the contemporary social and political life of much of the world. It should be required reading for all scholars concerned with 'development, ' Christianity, and humanitarianism, in Africa and beyond."--James Ferguson, Stanford University
"Bornstein shows how ideas of material and spiritual development relate to each other in the everyday practices of development executives in California and their counterparts in Zimbabwe. As illustrated here, 'faith-based development' compels fresh engagement with the cosmologies of capitalist development. Rarely have classic concerns in social theory been made so directly relevant to understanding topical issues."--Harri Englund, University of Cambridge

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0415943833
• ISBN 13: 9780415943833
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 225