Negotiating Knowledge: Evidence and experience in development NGOs - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1853399256 ISBN 13: 9781853399251

Verlag: Practical Action Publishing, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Negotiating Knowledge draws on a diversity of scholarly and practitioner research across three continents, and a number of case study civil society organizations, operating within local, national, and global spheres, to illuminate these challenges for practitioners, scholars, donors and policy-makers.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Dr Rachel Hayman is Head of Research at INTRAC (). She holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Edinburgh, where she worked for several years before moving into a role at INTRAC that bridges academic, policymaking, and practitioner sectors.

Dr Sophie King is Research Fellow within the Centre for Urban Processes, Resilient Infrastructures, and Sustainable Environments (UPRISE) at the School of the Built Environment, University of Salford. Her research focuses on relationships between marginalized communities and governments.

Dr Tiina Kontinen is a Senior Lecturer on a Master’s Degree Programme for Development and International Cooperation at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research revolves around civil society in development, knowledge production in development NGOs, and North–South partnerships.

Dr Lata Narayanaswamy is a Lecturer in International Development at the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Leeds. Her research interrogates how knowledge is both understood and operationalized in development theory and practice.

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Negotiating Knowledge

Evidence And Experience in Development NGOs

By Rachel Hayman, Sophie King, Tiina Kontinen, Lata Narayanaswamy

Practical Action Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Rachel Hayman, Sophie King, Tiina Kontinen, Lata Narayanaswamy and the contributors
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-85339-925-1

Contents

About the editors, 
List of figures, table, and boxes, 
Preface, 
1 Introduction: Why do NGOs need to negotiate knowledge? Sophie King, Tiina Kontinen, Lata Narayanaswamy and Rachel Hayman, 
Part I Understanding knowledge and evidence, 
2 What do we mean by evidence-based advocacy? Ideas from NGOs in Malawi Kate Gooding, 
3 What sense does it make? Vocabularies of practice and knowledge creation in a development NGO Tiina Kontinen, 
Part II Knowledge and power, 
4 Legitimacy and knowledge production in NGOs Erla Thrandardottir, 
5 Knowledge and conditional participation of civil society organizations in India's urban governance regime Swetha Rao Dhananka, 
6 Research for development alternatives: inter-elite relations and grass-roots knowledge in Western Uganda Sophie King with Christopher Businge, 
Part III Knowledge agendas and development practice, 
7 Progress towards effective knowledge sharing in an NGO Kai Matturi, 
8 'I have not seen a single person use it': NGOs, documentation centres and knowledge brokering in development Lata Narayanaswamy, 
9 NGOs and the evidence-based policy agenda Rachel Hayman, 
10 Conclusion: negotiating knowledge, evidence, learning and power Rachel Hayman, with Sophie King, Lata Narayanaswamy and Tiina Kontinen, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: why do NGOs need to negotiate knowledge?

Sophie King, Tiina Kontinen, Lata Narayanaswamy and Rachel Hayman

Abstract

Can knowledge and evidence work better for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)? Throughout the world, NGOs are under pressure to demonstrate their legitimacy and credibility. How NGOs use knowledge and evidence forms both part of the critique of NGOs and part of the solution. This book unpacks ways in which NGOs – at international, national, and local levels – understand and engage with different forms of knowledge and evidence in their daily practice. This chapter introduces the key questions and themes that the book tackles, and provides an overview of the empirical chapters. It emphasizes the need for continuous self-reflection and negotiation of knowledge issues by practitioners, policymakers, and scholars.

Keywords: NGOs, civil society, international development, knowledge, evidence, result-based management, politics

Can knowledge and evidence work better for NGOs?

When asked what messages practitioners and policymakers should take away with them on reading this book, Kai Matturi (author of Chapter 7 in this volume) commented 'Action and reflection can co-exist in the busy and hectic NGO world'. This point reflects a perpetual dilemma for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): how to create time and space to stop, think, assess, analyse, and reconsider. Yet, there has never been a greater need for practitioners to find ways of underpinning their actions with better knowledge and better evidence. NGOs involved in development work, located in both the global South and North, are under fire from many angles. They have to negotiate a rapidly changing global political economy and operational environment, within which their perceived and actual roles are being placed under great strain. There is growing pressure to demonstrate their legitimacy and credibility at national and international levels as well as within the societies where they operate. In response to these pressures, many international and national NGOs are reinventing themselves and redefining their roles.

'Knowledge' is a central component of this reinvention. A survey by the UK network of international development NGOs in early 2015 (Bond, 2015) suggests that many development NGOs perceive a future role for themselves as 'knowledge hubs': as spaces for expert knowledge creation; as professional institutions with effective knowledge-management systems; and as proactive organizations that constantly create, use, and communicate knowledge and evidence in support of their developmental objectives. As one of this book's authors, Erla Thrandardottir, observed in preparing this book, NGOs have carved a reputation for themselves as experts in many areas. They are taken seriously as such by many governments and international institutions.

But how well do NGOs – from the very small to the very large – continuously reflect on what knowledge and evidence mean in their daily work, and on the power dynamics inherent in their use of knowledge and evidence? And could knowledge and evidence work better for NGOs? This book contends that they can and must.

The empirical studies and conclusions presented here challenge practitioners, policymakers and development scholars to unpack their assumptions about knowledge and evidence. They offer ideas drawn from practice about how to address knowledge pressures in positive and constructive ways. In an era when results and evidence are becoming unassailable orthodoxies, this book reminds practitioners that a counter-narrative is feasible and indeed is very much alive; that values-based, experiential knowledge remains vibrant, and that it is possible to think and act. At the same time it warns against the presumption that knowledge and evidence are inherently good things, arguing rather that the uptake and application of knowledge and evidence must be continually refreshed, negotiated, and justified.

Engaging with this debate and these issues matters, not just to NGOs. It matters also to policymakers and funders of NGOs, who need to recognize that the pressures on NGOs and practitioners to respond to demands and debates around evidence has implications for their structures and even their values and missions. This affects their legitimacy and accountability practices, as well as their relationships with local communities, authorities in other countries, and beneficiaries. The studies in this book offer empirically-based insights for policymakers and funders that can help ensure their expectations are realistic, and improve their understanding of knowledge, learning, and evidence as encountered in their work with NGOs. By taking up the recommendations proposed, there is a chance that knowledge and evidence can work better for NGOs and the populations they seek to serve.

Finally, scholars also have to engage with this debate, responding to the empirical and theoretical questions that emerge from the realities experienced by practitioners in relation to knowledge and evidence. By offering interdisciplinary insights into these questions, scholars can help the NGO and policy sectors to find ways of improving their understanding and use of knowledge and evidence.

Contextualizing the debate

The ways in which the broad spectrum of organizational forms grouped as 'development NGOs' have conceptualized, created, and employed different forms of knowledge and evidence over time are bound together with shifts in international political economy and associated trends in international development. However, over the last two decades, debates about knowledge and evidence have gained new currency. In the 1990s, the shift to network and knowledge societies (Bell, 1999; UNESCO, 2005; Castells, 2010) and the spread of new Information...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Practical Action Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1853399256
• ISBN 13: 9781853399251
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 171
• Herausgeber: Hayman Rachel, King Sophie, Kontinen Tina, Narayanaswamy Lata
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland