Development Inqualities

Angola-based

Between _____, I completed ethnographic fieldwork in Luanda, Huambo, and Bié Provinces. Through participant observation, formal interviews, and archival research in Portuguese and English, I examined the experiences of in-country development and humanitarian aid professionals. This study focused on how institutional categories in development organizations formalize differential privilege within the industry.  Ultimately, I argue, in this way these institutions replicate and reproduce many of the same global inequalities they seek to combat.

Following this research, I have also published numerous academic articles in journals.  These articles examine themes such as the professional distinctions between “local” or “national” and “international” staff, the experiences of transnational professionals, interpretative labor and policy execution at the community implementation levels, and the logics underpinning monitoring and evaluation as a staple in development NGOs’ operations, among others.  

My book, Implementing Inequality, examines how common bureaucratic practices obscure the on-the-ground work of implementation agents, rendering them an inferior class of professionals and frustrating their efforts.