Methods

This article explores the changing dimensions of women’s empowerment over time in three Bangladesh villages where one of the authors has been conducting research since 1991. The article discusses theoretical issues related to the measurement of women’s empowerment, and describes findings from a recent study in the villages exploring the current salience of indicators developed for a 1992 survey.

This article examines the experiences and outcomes from collaboration between a group of researchers and a Northern NGO to improve recovery work in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. A Real-Time Research methodology was established to follow and intervene in the recovery practices as they took place on the ground. What was learned and achieved through this collaboration is assessed, with particular reference to the relationships between various stakeholders in the collaboration.

This article reports on a research project intended to develop systematic ways of managing downward accountability in an international NGO. Innovative tools were developed and trialled in six countries. The tools comprised a framework, defining downward accountability in practical terms, and three management processes.

This article develops the ‘safety–emotion–power’ nexus and highlights the role of emotion in research by politicising the unequal power relationships between researchers and NGO staff members in defining danger and negotiating safety in their fieldwork. Drawing on the author’s research experiences in Bangladesh and Ghana, it argues that research touching on emotion-laden topics can inflict stress and pain on NGO staff members and their families.

This article offers a critique of the dominant ways of conceiving of, managing, and evaluating development. It argues that these management methods constrain the exploration of novelty and difference. By drawing on insights from the complexity sciences, particularly the theory of emergence, the article calls for a broadening of our understanding of how social change comes about.

Despite its adoption of a partnership approach within its countries of operation, Concern Worldwide has struggled to match its definition of partnership with the range of relationships in which it actually engages on the ground. A relationship-mapping diagram conceived during its Partnership Policy formulation workshop has now helped to bridge this gap between theory and reality.

Development cooperation has traditionally been the playing field of governments, multilateral institutions, and established development NGOs. In the last decade however, other actors in Northern countries (such as businesses, migrants’ organisations, professional groups, and schools) have shown active interest in development-related activities Although they do not belong to the epistemic community of development specialists and are often overlooked in the discourse and literature on development cooperation, their number and importance are growing.