The Personal and the Professional: Aid workers' relationships and values in the development process"

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Sussex Library] On: 13 June 2013, At : 08: 57 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Third World Quarterly Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ ct wq20 ‘Living Well’ while ‘Doing Good’? (Missing) debates on altruism and professionalism in aid work Anne-Meike Fecht er Published online: 09 Aug 2012. To cite this article: Anne-Meike Fecht er (2012): ‘ Living Well’ while ‘ Doing Good’ ? (Missing) debat es on alt ruism and professionalism in aid work, Third World Quart erly, 33:8, 1475-1491 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 09700161.2012.698133 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- and- condit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warrant y express or im plied or m ake any represent at ion t hat t he cont ent s will be com plet e or accurat e or up t o dat e. The accuracy of any inst ruct ions, form ulae, and drug doses should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 8, 2012, pp 1475–1491 ‘Living Well’ while ‘Doing Good’? (Missing) debates on altruism and professionalism in aid work Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER ABSTRACT This paper takes at its starting point public criticism of international aid workers who appear to be ‘doing well out of poverty’. Based on fieldwork in Cambodia, the paper suggests that such public perceptions are mirrored by some aid workers’ uncertainties about the moral dimensions of their own and others’ lifestyles. Significantly, analyses of such public and private unease are largely absent from development ethics, even though comparable professions, such as nursing or social work, having produced substantial work on these issues. I argue that the scarcity of equivalent studies in development studies is partly the result of a tendency to foreground the ‘other’—the world’s poor—while rendering those who deliver aid invisible. Placing ‘aid recipients’ and ‘aid givers’ in separate categories, together with an emphasis on collective rather than individual moral responsibilities, not only makes it difficult to conduct open debates on the role of altruism and professionalism among aid workers, but also indicates how practices of ‘othering’ continue to inform aspects of development theory and practice. One evening in Phnom Penh, a 20-something British graduate who had recently begun working for an aid agency recounted to me his experience of a few weeks earlier: I went to one of these UN parties, with lots of interns, and they had this fantastic house on the riverside, a roof terrace with a swimming pool. There was a super atmosphere, free cocktails, and they were talking about their jobs, where to go next, which conflict or disaster or whatever, the next tribunal . . . it felt a bit sick really. Then when I went home on my motorbike, I passed the cyclo drivers parked up behind the National Museum sleeping in their vehicles, and I thought, somehow this is wrong. Scenarios such as these are probably familiar to many who have spent time working in overseas aid, although my informant’s diffuse sense that Anne-Meike Fechter is in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9QN, UK. Email: a.fechter@sussex.ac.uk. ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/12/081475–17 Ó 2012 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2012.698133 1475 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER something was ‘wrong’ about the situation might not be shared by all. It does, however, capture a situation that has been seized on by public critiques of aid work, namely, that it is possible for international aid workers to do well out of poverty.1 In this paper I use such observations as an opportunity to consider the moral dimensions of aid workers’ lives, and more broadly to ask in what ways notions of altruism and professionalism inform public, private and academic understandings of aid work. I argue that the ways in which aid workers are often conceptualised is indicative of a tendency in development studies to foreground the ‘other’, that is, the recipients of aid, while rendering those who deliver aid rather invisible. I identify this as a significant lacuna specifically within the field of development ethics, which so far has failed to convincingly conceptualise development as a shared responsibility. This is problematic—for development ethics, as well as for aid policy and practice more broadly—because a persistent and exclusive focus on the ‘other’ obstructs more open and necessary debates on the role of aid workers. Such academic invisibility allows popular and misleading stereotypes of aid workers to flourish; more pertinently, it hinders honest appraisals of the experiences of aid work and its challenges. These would contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of aid, and might help to devise strategies for how to deal with such challenges. In the following I document public and private uncertainty about aid workers’ lifestyles, and identify possible reasons for it. Drawing on ethnographic material, I illustrate that aid workers are often driven by mixed motivations, and also aim to craft comfortable lives. I then discuss policy responses to the question of their lifestyles, in particular in the form of immersion visits. Finally, I locate these issues in the framework of development ethics, and argue that they require more systematic attention than they have received so far. The material I draw on here arises from a broader project on aid workers as mobile professionals, and is based on ethnographic fieldwork with international aid workers in Cambodia. This consisted of participant observation and interviews with 54 Europeans, North Americans and Australians, who worked for a range of aid agencies, including local and international NGOs, as well as bi-and multilateral organisations. Research was conducted during a series of visits between 2007 and 2011.2 Public criticism and private unease Popular polemics against aid work have become quite frequent, most recently in the form of the ‘Great aid debate’,3 and in books aimed at a wider audience which list the many shortcomings of overseas aid, such as Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden and Moyo’s Dead Aid.4 While these tend to focus on the systematic failures of governments or agencies, aid workers are seen as benefiting from a system that does not deliver for the poor. Notwithstanding many changes that the aid sector has undergone in recent decades, it is useful to remember that these kinds of critiques have been voiced from the early stages of the ‘aid business’ onwards. Most notable among those is Coggins’ poem, ‘The Development Set’.5 An early commentary on aid workers’ lifestyles, it also prefaces Hancock’s book Lords of Poverty.6 The following 1476 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK excerpts are indicative of its overall thrust, as it highlights the discrepancies between the lives of aid givers and aid recipients: The Development Set is bright and noble Our thoughts are deep and our vision global; Although we move with the better classes Our thoughts are always with the masses. Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 The fact that these professionals are ‘doing well out of poverty’ means that the ostensible goal of overseas aid, namely making itself superfluous, moves ever further into the distance: We bring in consultants whose circumlocution Raises difficulties for every solution— Thus guaranteeing continued good eating By showing the need for another meeting. The poem ends with a sarcastic verse on aid workers’ home-making cultures, reinforcing their high social status, while claiming solidarity with the oppressed: Development set homes are extremely chic, Full of carvings, curios, and draped with batik. Eye-level photographs subtly assure That your host is at home with the great and the poor. Following the critical tone set by Coggins, though delivered with more anger, Graham Hancock’s Lords of Poverty (1989) is a powerful, scathing polemic that documents the many faults of the aid industry in painstaking detail. Arguably a seminal book when it was first published, it has since been reprinted several times. Hancock describes the aid industry as characterised by endemic carelessness and greed. While some of this is, he argues, committed by institutions such as the UN and the World Bank, it also includes the selfishness of individual aid workers, which sometimes prevails over their altruistic intentions, assuming these were present in the first place. Probably no other publication since has formulated such a devastating critique of institutional and individual moral failures in the aid industry. Other recent works, such as Bolton’s Aid and Other Dirty Business and Polman’s The Crisis Caravan foreground the structural failures of donors and aid organisations, rather than focusing on the moral shortcomings of individuals within those structures.7 Given the public attention they garner, as visible in their reviews—the Financial Times critics chose The Crisis Caravan as ‘one of the best books so far in 2010’—and the media presence of their authors—Moyo the author of ‘Dead Aid’, makes frequent TV appearances, such as on BBC’s Newsnight, while Polman appeared on the Daily show with Jon Steward in 2010—they clearly strike a chord with their audience. Arguably this is the result of public expectations that the mission of 1477 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER aid work is mainly altruistic; consequently emphasising the selfishness within the sector, and of individual aid workers, is likely to provoke concern among those who provide funds for overseas aid, either through taxes or private donations. A study of public perceptions in the UK of support for overseas aid identified a general sense of aid being wasted, ‘usually with reference to the costs of administration and high salaries for staff’.8 Such instances of popular indignation provide insight into understandings of aid work, and more specifically a tendency to stereotype aid workers as either heroes or villains. In order to move beyond these representations, it is necessary to examine aid workers’ beliefs and practices regarding their moral expectations of themselves and others, and their potential misgivings about ‘living well’ while ‘doing good’. As a starting point it is useful to consider the spontaneous reactions of visitors or newcomers to ‘Aidland’, even though such outside perspectives sometimes resemble the caricatures of the aid sector in popular media. I was presented with such an outside view one evening at a rooftop bar in Phnom Penh, which hosted a concert by a popular band, consisting of Cambodian and foreign musicians. The venue was very busy, mostly with nonCambodians, many of whom worked in the development sector. They were dressed up, there was drinking, dancing and the bar was bustling. Surveying the scene was Henrik, a Danish guy in his early thirties. He was visiting a college friend of his, who was working for a local NGO in Phnom Penh, and they had just returned from a one-week trip to a rural community. Henrik commented: This is so crass. Especially just coming from the village, and then you see this here . . . I’m glad I’m not part of it. In fact, this is one of the reasons I’m not working in development—I wouldn’t want to be part of this life. In his view, something was ‘not right’ about such a lifestyle—even, and perhaps especially, if one had spent one’s working week in a rural poor community, to return to parties in the capital at the weekend, and generally enjoying oneself. Although he did not elaborate further, his disapproval seemed to stem partly from the fact that aid workers were straddling contrasting worlds; also, in his view, they were complicit, through their daily lives, in the inequities between international aid workers and local poor populations. Henrik explained that, although he had always been interested in overseas aid, he had made a conscious decision to pursue a career as a teacher based in Europe. Being geographically and professionally far removed meant for him that he was less directly implicated in the inequalities he was now witnessing in Cambodia. It was not just outsiders, however, who expressed what could be called ‘moments of unease’ about aid workers’ lifestyles. Such moments appeared in conversations or side remarks among aid workers themselves, who differed considerably in terms of income level, professional status and experience. During dinner at a Thai neighbourhood restaurant, for example, a group of young professionals in their early thirties who were working for European 1478 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK aid agencies were discussing their travel plans, including trips to Bali and New Zealand. One of them was Catherine, who was working for a human rights organisation. At one point she exclaimed, ‘I’m always surprised just what kind of luxury you can have here in Phnom Penh—even on a relatively moderate like income like ours’. The luxury she referred to included regularly dining out at affordable prices; making use of spa and massage treatments; attending Western-style yoga classes; enjoying weekend retreats in coastal resorts; having clothes and shoes made to order; employing a household help who did the cleaning, laundry, and cooking for her, and being able to buy organic vegetables at a wholefood store. Her statement was tinged with bewilderment, even after having spent two years in Phnom Penh. When she applied for her job, she had not expected to lead such a comfortable life. She was driven by a keen interest in transnational justice, and Cambodia seemed an excellent place to contribute to these processes as well as to gain experience. On other occasions some informants seemed to feel uncertain about the privileges they received. Once I accompanied several aid workers on a visit to a project in the provinces, and the conversation in the car turned to their living conditions. One of the party, a middle-aged project manager, turned to me and declared, ‘I have got two kids. That means my government is paying more than US$20 000 per year so they can attend the International School in Phnom Penh’. A brief silence followed, as none of his colleagues offered a comment. Slowly talk turned to other issues. Such moments were sometimes left hanging in conversation, followed by a brief pause, which listeners might seize to express silent disapproval, consider the issue, or move on to other topics. I suggest that such statements can be understood as a way of externalising one’s concerns by sharing them and—by leaving moral judgement to others, perhaps being absolved of having to make this judgement oneself. In addition, making such costs explicit might stem from a desire for transparency—or to be seen to be transparent, especially about issues which one feels unable to resolve. This was also the case with other development workers, who pointed out to me the size of their salary, suggesting how much better off they were than me, a mere researcher. I understood this not as boasting, but perhaps as a manoeuvre to pre-empt potential criticism from my side regarding their comfortable financial position. In another case, Cynthia had been working in a high-profile and well-paid capacity for a UN organisation for several years, and had witnessed the lifestyles of her colleagues in the UN system. When I asked her about how she felt about the discrepancy between their relative wealth and the poor they were assisting, she remarked: yeah, there are things going on that I don’t really approve of . . . like there was a colleague when I was working in Africa—he had some medical issues that meant he had to fly back to the US on a few occasions to get them sorted. Because of this medical thing, he hadn’t used any of the travel allowances he was due for home leave. So at the end of his job, he and his wife took these unused flights to have a round-the-world holiday trip, business class. I didn’t think that was a good use of public money, no. 1479 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER On a different occasion I was talking to John, who worked for a multilateral organisation. He mentioned that he was due to fly to Europe to attend a family celebration and seemed slightly embarrassed, perhaps since flying there from Cambodia, even though paid for by himself, might be considered extravagant. By way of explanation he added, ‘well, my mum is really keen for us to be there, so I don’t really want to say I can’t come because it’s too far’. When his trip came up in conversation with another friend later on, she commented with a mere hint of disapproval, ‘well, he is always so busy, isn’t he’, and left the issue. Explicit judgement, when I witnessed it, was often directed at those in other organisations, in higher positions in professional hierarchies, or those working in other sectors. When I raised the issue with Yasmin, a long-term resident in Cambodia, she stated: yes, there are people who overdo it, where their pay is really not justified. The US military had an academy here in Phnom Penh, to train up Cambodians, and these guys were getting quite a good US dollar salary, and then they were given, I can’t remember how many dollars per day as hardship allowance. Ridiculous! Cambodia isn’t really a hardship post. That was over the top I thought. In this context my own behaviour was not exempt from scrutiny. During several stints of fieldwork, I stayed in shared houses or modestly-priced accommodation typically frequented by NGO workers or consultants. During one trip, however, I stayed for two weeks at a boutique-style guesthouse, where rooms cost about US$40–60 per night, rather than the usual $20–40. On learning where I was staying, one of my informants, Rita, raised an eyebrow and asked, ‘isn’t that quite expensive—how much is a room per night there?’. When I told her, she let the matter rest, but my choice had been noted, and had possibly damaged my credibility. I seemed to have confounded her expectation that I was as committed to living modestly as she was. While she was based in a provincial town, on her visits to the capital she made a point of staying in a guesthouse which charged $15 per night, which she considered the best choice since her income was relatively low, but also, it seemed to me, as a matter of principle. The question can of course be raised as to the extent development researchers are implicated in this, as they similarly make a living out of poverty—relying on public funds to study efforts to combat poverty, while making a livelihood and building a career alongside. I have presented these examples from public and private conversations here in order to document the elusive sense of discomfort or guilt which, I argue, underpins development practice and experience, but which is rarely the object of analysis. In the following, I aim to identify potential sources of such unease. Reasons for unease In the situations described above the reasons for unease were usually left implicit. Even the development economist Kanbur, who publicly addresses his discomfort with being a well-paid poverty specialist, does not delve into 1480 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK its possible roots, beyond a vague sense that ‘this issue makes me uncomfortable within myself’.9 Despite or rather because of this opacity, it is important to consider which beliefs or ideologies might underpin such unease. Most obviously one source of aid workers’ moral discomfort is the notion of altruism, which is conventionally thought to be a key driver for becoming involved in aid work. Such assumptions persist, even though people’s motivations are more accurately described as mixed, including altruistic as well as ‘selfish’ motives.10 Nevertheless, as Redfield notes, ‘humanitarianism lies symbolically embedded in a landscape of altruism and giving, and popular imagination positions the humanitarian worker as figure of virtuous selfdenial’.11 Arguably everyday understandings of altruism—sometimes referred to as ‘psychological altruism’—suppose that an individual’s actions are done without self-interest, and instead foreground the interests of the recipient. This may even extend to a potential disadvantage to the self, as proposed in some theories.12 One might argue that the combination of altruism and self-sacrifice is part of the genealogy of humanitarian thinking, as envisioned by Dunant in his treatise, A Memory of Solferino: ‘what an attraction it would be for noble and compassionate hearts . . . to confront the same dangers as the warrior, of their own free will, in a spirit of peace, for a purpose of comfort, from a motive of self-sacrifice!’.13 In the context of aid work, such notions resonate with popular—and perhaps their own—views of aid workers as selfless heroes, who rescue others while potentially endangering their own lives. This dimension of self-sacrifice matters in this context as, conversely, this might imply that the absence of self-sacrifice—helping others from a position of relative comfort—reduces the moral value of the helper’s actions, even if the outcome for the beneficiary is the same. Such logics are powerfully expressed in aid workers’ memoirs, which describe neglecting their physical and mental health, sometimes leading to burn-out.14 This notion of altruism shares with other, faith-based belief systems an assumption that the result of one’s actions will be beneficial for the aid-giver insofar as ‘pure’ altruistic behaviour contributes to their own spiritual gain. In such belief systems, to be accorded spiritual value, the act of helping must be as free from self-interest as possible. The more pure the compassion, the more valuable it is, and will bring the helper closer to redemption. In the present context this may be a reason for aid workers’ unease, insofar as ‘living well’ while ‘doing good’ implies that the acts of altruism are less pure—tainted by the material benefits one gains—and therefore accumulate less spiritual or moral value for the aid giver. A related, if slightly different source of unease is the idea of development as a gift from richer nations to poorer ones, as proposed by Stirrat and Henkel.15 Based on Mauss’s theory of the gift, there exists a rich literature on whether there is such thing as a gift that does not require reciprocation. As Mauss, Parry and Laidlaw have argued,16 the idea of a pure, disinterested gift is a product of Western modern and particularly Protestant thinking. These (scholarly) debates notwithstanding, Stirrat and Henkel argue that the ‘development gift’ is conceptualised by the wider public—and thus possibly also by aid workers—as being free of self-interest.17 The notion that 1481 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER overseas aid is, or should be, a disinterested gift by governments as well as by individual aid workers might, however subtly, have the effect that the wider public and aid workers themselves are unsure to what extent it is acceptable to benefit from helping others. The academic argument that there is no gift without return, or no disinterested aid, may have little impact on aid workers’ beliefs that, while they are not expected to suffer, they should not gain any advantage as a result of their work either. In addition, I suggest that a further influential doctrine that underpins normative judgements on aid workers’ lifestyles is ‘closeness’, which valorises their physical and social proximity—as opposed to distance—to aid recipients as a vital component of good aid work. To be ‘close to the people’ was the guiding motto for the then German Development Service (DED) and was prominently displayed on its Cambodian country booklets. Such closeness, or rather, the lack of it, is also the driving force behind socalled ‘immersion’ programmes, which I return to below. These are designed to overcome the alienation of aid workers from ‘the poor’, caused partly by comfortable lifestyles in capital cities, a situation which has been critically labelled the ‘capital trap’ by Chambers.18 It is assumed that aid workers who experience immersion will overcome this distance, and be able to deliver better aid. The ideal of ‘closeness’ may be strongly linked to notions of aid workers as saintly and self-sacrificing, as represented in the bestselling novel, City of Joy.19 Inspired by the life of Swiss nurse Gaston Grandjean, the novel describes how a young Polish priest heroically makes a Calcutta slum his home, living under the same destitute conditions as the people he is setting out to help. This argument also underpins policy and practice in certain sectors of aid—especially in relation to volunteers—in the sense that their living conditions are supposed to approximate those of aid recipients. This takes into account the perception of aid workers within communities: being seen as being close to recipients, and thus earning trust, is considered conducive for aid work at the grassroots level. The rationale might be that aid workers’ commitment to recipients is most convincingly demonstrated if they are not seen to be ‘doing too well out of poverty’. At the same time, living in poor, local conditions may adversely affect impact aid workers’ mental and physical capacity to perform their job well. In this sense, close proximity is not conducive, as expressed in one of the following case studies. Mixed motivations and crafting comfortable lives The material presented above suggests that notions of altruism, development as a gift, and an ideal of ‘closeness’ between aid givers and recipients among others are influential in shaping public and private understandings and misgivings about overseas aid. This is evident in recurrent popular critiques, as well as in the unease voiced by some aid workers themselves. In order to understand the significance of these debates, they need to be placed in the context of the everyday lives of aid workers, who are troubled by such moral uncertainties to varying degrees. During my fieldwork among a wide range of aid workers it emerged that many were engaged in crafting comfortable lives, 1482 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK that is, combining professional interests in aid work and wanting to make a difference to Cambodian people’s lives, with opportunities to establish rewarding, socially and materially comfortable lives for themselves and their families. This meant ‘taking care of their selves’, but did not imply neglecting ‘the other’ or their professional duties. It is worth noting that people held a wide range of ideas of what was considered necessary to achieve ‘well-being’. Similarly, the arguments which underpinned their efforts to craft comfortable lives, and the rhetorical strategies they adopted to present these arguments varied considerably. The following cases illustrate these points. While some aid workers emphasised the primacy of their work which had brought them to Cambodia and gave meaning to their stay there, others explained that, while their work was important to them, being able to carry it out under comfortable conditions was key to their decision to engage in overseas aid in the first place. Matt, for example, used to run his own business before accompanying his wife to Cambodia, where she took up a job with an aid agency, leading to a stay of over four years. Matt began working as a consultant locally and was developing several of his own projects. While he and his wife were not living lavishly, he once remarked, ‘we wouldn’t have done this if it had been the whole mud-hut experience in Africa. But living like we are, this is just fine.’ While people like Matt readily pointed out that despite the challenges, they very much enjoyed their life in Cambodia, the need to be ‘living well’ was embedded in a different discourse by some informants based in Phnom Penh. As they explained, they needed to create a ‘comfort zone’ for themselves, as this was essential to being able to work effectively. Simon, for example, who was employed by a local mental health NGO, had previously spent six months in Sierra Leone, in the aftermath of the civil war there. He recounted: it was my first time working overseas, and I was fully immersed—I lived in the house of the Sierra Leonian guy who was also the leader of the NGO I was working for. My life was not separated from my work at all; I had Sierra Leoneans and their issues, their traumas, around me all the time. I didn’t have anything to do with other foreigners, I had to negotiate with locals all the time. It was totally exhausting, and I nearly caved in before the six months were over. After that, I knew I couldn’t do it like this again. I need my comfort zones to function. That means, I need my own flat to go home to at the end of the day; hanging out with people who speak my own language or English; to create a distance, an emotional comfort zone. Otherwise I wouldn’t survive here long. The rationale given here for ‘creating a comfort zone’ is pragmatic, as ‘living well’ is defined as a prerequisite to sustaining one’s ability to work. This is interesting, as ‘being close to the people’ is advocated as essential for doing good aid work, while Simon emphasised the need to create distance from the local people in order to function effectively as an aid worker. This highlights an tension inherent in the narrative of ‘closeness’: while material and symbolic ‘closeness’ is presented as an ideal, it might also hamper aid work in practice, by being physically and psychologically overly taxing and thus unproductive. 1483 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 A different situation was presented by Amelie, who had been working in the aid sector for over 15 years, as a consultant and then as part of a UN agency, including postings in West Africa, South America, Geneva and Cambodia. Her husband worked as a freelance consultant, and their children attended an international school in Phnom Penh. They lived in a spacious villa in Phnom Penh, including a roof terrace and small swimming pool. She declared: let’s face it, we are having a great life here. I love my job, it’s interesting and I can make a real difference here. My husband is able to work too, my kids go to a great school and probably get a better education than they would at home in Europe. And I love living and working abroad—the constant challenges, the discoveries. Everyday life in Geneva would be a lot more hassle, especially with two working parents. The traffic, the accommodation, and we wouldn’t have the household help that we have here. Phnom Penh is like a village, a very manageable one. It makes life easy. For Amelie and her family pursuing a career in overseas aid was thus also a lifestyle choice. Knowing that this would provide a stimulating work experience as well as a materially comfortable life provided a reason to maintain a career in overseas aid. Overall Amelie did not appear troubled by moral qualms about her ‘good life’. She did, however, make a point of telling me early on in our conversations that she was well aware of her privileged situation, which might be understood as a similarly pre-emptive strategy to those discussed above, when drawing attention to one’s benefits might be deployed to stave off anticipated or unspoken criticism. A friend of Amelie, Kate, also a highly qualified and well-paid professional, offered a slightly different perspective. A married woman in her early forties, with two small children, she had been working abroad for more than 10 years, including in Latin America and Africa. She specialised in governance programmes, and described herself as a ‘governance expert’. In conversation and demeanour she emphasised her professional expertise, status and success. When it came to issues of aid workers’ lifestyle and remuneration, Kate, who had a two-year contract with a government agency, unapologetically told me, ‘yes, I am paid very well, and I’m worth it’. At the end of the spectrum of being ‘paid well’ are those who freely admit to perhaps being overpaid. John pointed this out to me, as he commented on some of his UN colleagues: It can be a trap. I call them development refugees. Working for the UN means a good life, but you can get caught up in it. I get about US$100 000 a year, taxfree. Why should I ever look for another job? Why should I even consider going back to work in my home country? In a way, you get trapped in the system. Even if I might be able to get a job with overseas qualifications, which isn’t necessarily straightforward, I’d probably be lucky to be paid this much, and life would be a lot less fun. In a way, you can’t leave because you are earning too much. These responses demonstrate a range of understandings and strategies relating to the issue of ‘living well while doing good’. For Matt, a level of personal comfort was a prerequisite for moving to a developing country in 1484 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK the first place. Simon identified a ‘comfort zone’ as a professional necessity in order to be able to work effectively, while for Amelie, aid work, with its professional and personal benefits, could possibly be described as a lifestyle choice. In Kate’s narrative, her remuneration was justified by her status as a highly skilled expert, whereas John critically reflected on the effects of a system which keeps aid workers in privileged positions, even though they may be uncomfortably conscious of the inequities which it perpetuates. These narratives illustrate the ways in which aid workers are concerned with crafting comfortable lives. The motif of ‘living well’ features in all of them, even though how this is understood or presented varies. The differences between them further complicate popular imaginations of aid workers, and demonstrate a level of reflection and awareness which is not adequately addressed within current research or policy. As their stories show, uncertainties about how ‘well’ aid workers should be living are not only voiced in the public sphere, but are experienced by aid workers themselves. Such ambivalences are not necessarily shared by all, and the extent to which they matter to aid workers differs. Nevertheless, their attitudes indicate that many are driven neither exclusively by altruistic motives nor by self-serving career ambitions. Instead, in many cases their involvement in aid is driven by both professional and personal interests, some of them directly concerned with helping the world’s poor, others perhaps less so. Further, their interests often gradually change over time. This fluid mixture of professionalism and altruism would not be considered surprising by anyone with experience in the aid sector. While this might be unremarkable as such, it becomes significant with regard to how it has been framed within development policy, practice and theory. Policy responses: immersion and remuneration A key sentiment evoked by the introductory scenario is that some aid workers benefit from their work to an extent which contrasts with, and perhaps undermines their mission to assist the country’s poor. As mentioned above, this quandary is articulated by Kanbur, as he admits that those ‘who analyze poverty and discourse about poverty, seem to do rather well out of it’. He notes that, ‘what is striking about the class of poverty professionals (of whom I am one) is that the good living . . . is made through the very process of analyzing, writing, recommending on poverty’.20 Some agencies consider this problematic, and attempt to redress this imbalance through ‘immersion’ programmes. Without being able to discuss this approach in full detail here, the ‘immersion’ or ‘exposure’ approach as described by Bhatt, Chambers, Eyben, and Osner is based on the assumption that certain groups of aid professionals, as a result of heir comfortable ways of working and living, have become distanced from the realities of the poor.21 Immersion programmes can be an antidote to this, with aid workers spending short time periods in a poor household, in order to appreciate the realities and challenges faced by them, and to improve their aid work as a result. 1485 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER In the present context, one question is whether this alienation from those the aid workers are supposed to be helping constitutes a moral or a practical problem, or both. It seems that in Chambers’ and Eyben’s accounts, this distance, while perhaps morally problematic, is detrimental mainly because it hampers good aid practice. If only aid professionals were mindful of, or were regularly reminded, what the lives of the poor were really like, they would implement more effective aid. Such immersions may well have the intended outcomes and improve aid delivery. It is noticeable, however, that immersions, by their very nature, remain singular events within the context of professionals’ everyday lives. But it may be precisely because they do not—and are not meant to—fundamentally question or alter the comparatively privileged socioeconomic position of the aid workers, that their function is also a symbolic one. I suggest that these visits, while reminding aid workers of poor people’s realities, symbolically redress the disparity in lifestyles between poverty specialists and poor individuals, and temporarily atone for the fault of aid workers having become distant and alienated from aid recipients; perhaps also, one might speculate, for the global inequalities that their comfortable lives represent. In addition to immersion programmes, another area of policy response concerns remuneration strategies. How well aid professionals should be paid is debated, for example, by human resource managers in aid organisations. A recent report indicates that, in the wake of the professionalisation of aid work, the question of appropriate remuneration strategies has come to the fore, including whether high salaries for a top tier of professionals are necessary in order to reward and retain what are considered ‘the best people’.22 As Kanbur argues, ‘if highly skilled personnel are needed to attack poverty, then what’s wrong with paying the market rate for that skill?’23, although the applicability of such market logics has been critically questioned.24 The situation is complicated by the possibility that the ‘best people’ might not be very employable outside the aid sector, thus undermining the argument that these individuals could earn as much or more in private-sector jobs. Further, it is not clear whether high salaries are the most appropriate form of reward, given that aid workers are often motivated by factors other than financial ones, such as the desire to make a difference, job content, and personal challenge, according to a recent report.25 A further argument is presented by Carr et al, who studied the effects of salary discrepancies between international and national aid workers, and found, among other issues, that low wages for local staff were detrimental to the aid process.26 They conclude that low wages caused resentment and lack of motivation among local staff, who felt that their work was not adequately rewarded. As these responses indicate, the practical relevance of the differences in pay and living conditions between international aid workers and local populations has been recognised in some areas of policy and practice. One might assume that the moral salience of these issues would make it a core concern for development studies, given its overall mission to reduce inequality and to empower the poor. In the following I therefore attempt to locate these issues in current debates on development ethics. 1486 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 Development ethics While there is substantial work within development studies on values and ethics, the moral dimensions of aid workers’ lives are strikingly absent from these accounts. The overarching theme at the annual conference of the Development Studies Association in November 2010 in London, for example, was ‘Values, Ethics and Morality’. Some 16 panels addressed topics such as ‘aid values in delivery’, ‘religious values’ and ‘poverty reduction as development morality’. Among the nearly 80 papers given, none dealt with how values and morality might play out in international aid workers’ lives. I suggest that such omissions are not incidental, but that development studies have been profoundly silent on this subject, and more broadly on the issue of professionalism and altruism among the development workforce. It would seem that the reasons for this silence are structural and have both broader political roots, and implications. Within development studies issues of values and morality arguably fall into the remit of development ethics, a subfield which initially arose from the work of Goulet,27 and which has recently received increased attention;28 a comprehensive overview is provided by Gasper and Lera St Clair.29 Development ethics as a field is concerned with the moral responsibility to help those in poverty; its main focus is the role of values in the development process, especially with regard to the means which it employs. Taking a wider view, it appears that development ethics is characterised by a very particular set of perspectives. Since it is normative rather than descriptive, one might not expect it to provide empirically based discussions on values in aid practice. More importantly, however, it maintains a near-exclusive focus on the moral duties of the rich towards the world’s poor. This was pertinently formulated by the philosopher Singer, who raised the issue of ‘the obligations of the affluent to those in danger of starvation’.30 Similarly, Chambers’ concept of responsible well-being ‘recognizes obligations to others, both those alive and future generations, and to their quality of life.31 Further, existing approaches to development ethics usually prioritise collective responsibilities, including those of societies, governments and aid organisations, rather than those of individuals. More generally one could argue that development ethics is preoccupied with the same beliefs which provide the ‘reasons for unease’ discussed above. Belief or value systems such as altruism, development as a (disinterested) gift, or even the ideal of ‘closeness’ are all oriented towards an ‘other’, the recipients of aid. It thus emerges that the overarching narrative of development theory and practice—the concern for the ‘world’s poor’— remains firmly at its base. I contend that this is problematic, because a persistent focus on the ‘other’ amounts to a compartmentalising of ‘aid givers’ and ‘aid recipients’ into separate categories—a practice that has been extensively criticised, and which development studies were challenged to overcome.32 In the present context this foregrounding of the needs of the other, alongside the assumed necessity to ‘obliterate the self’,33 means that not much attention has been paid to aid givers—except in their narrowly defined capacity of caring for others. Such theoretical emphasis may explain 1487 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER the relative silence of development ethics on matters concerning aid workers. I suggest that this approach is unproductive, as it not only fails to acknowledge social realities, such as the relevance of altruistic and professional interests among aid workers, but also cannot provide guidance on questions such as how well aid workers should live. As a result, this leaves public debate wide open to the polemical critiques that I invoked at the beginning, as well as offering no assistance to individual aid workers and their managers to negotiate these questions in their own organisations and everyday lives. Finally, a comparison with academic work in other ‘helping professions’ proves insightful. In fields such as nursing and social work there is sustained awareness that the well-being of the carer matters—not only for moral, but for pragmatic reasons such as staff recruitment and retention. This includes studies on the altruistic values held by trainee nurses at different stages of their careers,34 the ‘ambiguous’ altruism of nurse trainees, who combine a desire to help with the aim of gaining recognition from patients,35 and findings that ‘although a service orientation remains a key factor in choosing nursing, students also look for a career which matches their interests and attributes, as well as offering professional values and rewards’.36 It is indicative of the narrow focus of development ethics that such studies are only just beginning to emerge, notably from scholars outside development studies, such as in political science, medical studies and organisational psychology.37 A notable exception in development studies is the work of van Ufford and Giri, who articulate an ‘emergent ethics’ for development interventions.38 They point out that ‘development can be seen as having transformed from the shared concern of our global selves into an ethics of care for the other/‘the Third World poor’, which they consider problematic.39 Instead, they argue that ‘the challenge of an ‘‘emergent ethics’’ in global development is to dislodge the ‘‘othering’’ perspectives of development’s ‘‘orientalist ethics’’’.40 Consequently they propose that development should not just be thought of as ‘care of the other’, but also as ‘care of the self’. This resonates with existing attempts to place aid givers and receivers in a shared analytical framework. Somewhat incongruently, however, they then categorise ‘care for the other’ as an ethical concern, while declaring ‘care of the self’ a matter of aesthetics.41 Even though this distinction is further elaborated on, the justification for its introduction remains unconvincing. Indeed, it contravenes their stated intention to overcome notions of development which are exclusively trained on the ‘other’, by placing ‘care for the other’ in the realm of ethics, as noted, while defining ‘care for the self’ as a matter of aesthetics. Without pursuing their argument in detail here, one might reasonably assume that ‘care of the other’ and ‘care of the self’ are ethical matters—indeed why they should not both be treated as such should require justification. While their approach promises to be very productive, the authors at the same stroke disable it by interpreting ‘care of the self’ as merely being sensitive to the needs of non-intervention, and thus as restraint of the self .42 In contrast, I propose that thinking about care for the other and the self are both legitimate and relevant ethical concerns in the shared project of development. 1488 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 Conclusion I have argued that debates in development ethics fail to address the moral dimensions of international aid workers’ lifestyles and the fact that poverty specialist workers are ‘doing well out of poverty’. This is the subject of scathing critiques in the public domain, but is also felt to be problematic by some aid agencies and their employees themselves. Drawing on fieldwork with aid workers in Cambodia, a complex picture emerges, which suggests that many of them experience moments of unease with regard to these issues, and respond to them in a variety of ways. Perhaps most notably, a recurrent feature of conversations on this topic was the unsolicited, emphatic insistence by my informants that they were having a good life, independent of their professional status, benefits or income. This is borne out by their everyday practices, insofar as they are engaged in crafting lifestyles which combine their professional interests with personal, social and emotional ones. I propose that the intertwining of altruistic and professional motives is not only significant in what it tells us about aid workers, but reveals a lacuna in development ethics. This is the failure—or refusal—to consider the ‘care for the self’ as well as the ‘care for the other’. The comparative lack of debates on altruism and professionalism in aid work is all the more surprising since related sectors, such as nursing or social work, have produced substantial work on these issues. I argue that the absence of equivalent research in development studies is partly the result of a pervasive tendency to foreground the ‘other’—the world’s poor— while rendering those who deliver aid less visible. This is problematic insofar as it does not encourage critical examination of their motives, or of the challenges and benefits that result from their involvement. This does not mean that a potentially apolitical concern with the aid worker self should replace a concern for the other, but that they both need to be brought into view. A consistent focus on the other might also fuel unease among some aid workers, as notions of altruism, disinterested giving and ideals of closeness make ‘doing well out of poverty’ morally questionable. Placing aid recipients and aid givers in separate categories, together with an emphasis on collective rather than individual moral responsibilities, not only hinders necessary debates on the role of altruism and professionalism among aid workers, but also exemplifies how practices of ‘othering’ continue to inform aspects of development theory and practice. Notes I am sincerely grateful to my informants in Cambodia for their openness and patience, as well as to colleagues and students at Hull, East Anglia and Sussex Universities, where versions of this paper were presented, for their critical and constructive comments. The research was enabled by a grant from the Economic and Social Science Research Council. 1 R Kanbur, ‘Poverty professionals and poverty’, in A Cornwall & I Scoones (eds), Revolutionizing Development, London: Earthscan, 2011, pp 211–216. 2 See also AM Fechter & H Hindman, Inside the Everyday Lives of Development Workers: The Futures and Challenges of Aidland, Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2011. The research was supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Science Research Council (RES 00-22-3481), whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. 3 N Gulrajani, ‘Transcending the great foreign aid debate: managerialism, radicalism and the search for aid effectiveness’, Third World Quarterly, 32(2), 2011, pp 199–216. 1489 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 ANNE-MEIKE FECHTER 4 W Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, London: Penguin, 2006; and D Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How there is Another Way for Africa, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009. 5 R Coggins, ‘The Development Set’, Adult Education and Development, 30, 1988, p 56. 6 G Hancock, Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business, Boston, MA: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989. 7 G Bolton, Aid and Other Dirty Business: How Good Intentions Have Failed the World’s Poor, London: Ebury Press, 2008; and L Polman, The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. 8 S Henson, J Lindstrom, L Haddad & R Mulmi, Public Perceptions of International Development and Support for Aid in the UK: Results of a Qualitative Enquiry, IDS Working Paper 32, Brighton: IDS, 2011. 9 Kanbur, ‘Poverty professionals and poverty’, p 2. 10 S de Jong, ‘False binaries: altruism and selfishness in NGO work’, in Fechter & Hindman, Inside the Everyday Life of Development Workers; M Barnett & TG Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008; and M Bjerneld, ‘Images, motives, and challenges for Western health workers in humanitarian aid’. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 453, 2009, 65pp. 11 P Redfield, ‘Sacrifice, triage and global humanitarianism’, in T Weiss & M Barnett (eds), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008, p 202. 12 Such as R Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 13 H Dunant, A Memory of Solferino, Geneva: ICRC, 1986, p 27, at http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/ documents/publication/p0361.htm. 14 CB Eriksson, JP Bjorck, LC Larson, SM Walling, GA Trice, J Fawcett, AD Abernethy & DW Foy, ‘Social support, organizational support, and religious support in relation to burnout in expatriate humanitarian aid workers’, Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 12(7), 2009, pp 671–686; and People in Aid, What is Wellbeing? January Newsletter, 2007, at www.peopleinaid.org/pool/files/newsletter/2007jan-en.pdf.pdf. 15 RL Stirrat & H Henkel, ‘The development gift: the problem of reciprocity in the NGO world’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 554(1), 1997, pp 66–80. 16 M Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, London: Routledge, 1990; J Parry, ‘The gift, the Indian gift and the ‘‘Indian gift’’’, Man, 21, 1986, pp 453–73; and J Laidlaw, ‘A free gift makes no friends’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6(4), 2000, pp 617–634. 17 Stirrat & Henkel, ‘The development gift’. 18 R Chambers, Ideas for Development, London: Earthscan 2005, p 43. 19 D Lapierre, City of Joy, New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 1985. 20 Kanbur, ‘Poverty professionals and poverty’, pp 2–3. 21 E Bhatt, ‘Conceptual blocks’, in M Chen et al (eds), Reality and Analysis: Personal and Technical Reflections on the Working Lives of Six Women, Working paper 2004–06, Department of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, at http://aem.cornell.edu/research/researchpdf/wp/ Cornell_AEM_wp0406.pdf; R Chambers, Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1997; R Irvine, R Chambers & R Eyben, Learning from Poor People’s Lives: Immersions, 2004, at http://www.exposure-dialog.de/english; K Osner, ‘Using exposure methodology for dialogue on key issues’, in Chen et al, Reality and Analysis; SEWA, Exposure and Dialogue Programmes: A Grassroots Immersion Tool for Understanding Poverty and Influencing Policy, 2006, at http://www.sewaresearch.org/pdf/researches/member/FINAL-WORD-BANK-BOOK.pdf; R Eyben, ‘Immersions for policy and personal change’, IDS Policy Briefing, 22, 2004; and ActionAid, Immersions: Making Poverty Personal, 2010, at http://www.actionaid.org/main.aspx?PageID¼571. 22 M Dickmann, B Emmens, E Parry & C Williamson, Engaging Tomorrow’s Global Humanitarian Leaders Today, Report published by People in Aid and Cranfield University, School of Management, 2010, http://www.elrha.org/?q=node/76. 23 Kanbur, ‘Poverty professionals and poverty’, p 4. 24 On the problems of ‘professional humanitarianism’, see S Hopgood, ‘Saying ‘‘no’’ to Wal-Mart? Money and morality in professional humanitarianism’, in Barnett & Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question. 25 Dickmann et al, Engaging Tomorrow’s Global Humanitarian Leaders Today, p 15. 26 SC Carr, I McWha, M MacLachlan & A Furnham, ‘International–local remuneration differences across six countries: do they undermine poverty reduction work?’, International Journal of Psychology, 45(5), 2010, pp 321–340. 27 D Goulet, The Cruel Choice, New York: Atheneum, 1971; and Goulet, ‘Tasks and methods in development ethics’, Cross Currents, 38(2), 1988, pp 146–163. 28 DA Crocker, ‘Insiders and outsiders in international development’, Ethics and International Affairs, 5(1), 1991, pp 149–173; Crocker, Ethics of Global Development—Agency, Capability and Deliberative 1490 (MISSING) DEBATES ON ALTRUISM AND PROFESSIONALISM IN AID WORK 29 30 Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 08:57 13 June 2013 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008; D Gasper, The Ethics of Development, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004; N Dower, ‘The nature and scope of development ethics pages’, Journal of Global Ethics, 4(3), 2008, pp 183–193; and C Schwenke, Reclaiming Value in International Development: The Moral Dimensions of Development Policy and Practice in Poor Countries, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. D Gasper & A Lera St Clair (eds), Development Ethics, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. P Singer, ‘Reconsidering the famine relief argument’, in PG Brown & H Shue (eds), Food Policy: The Responsibility of the United States in Life and Death Choices, New York: Free Press, 1977, p 36. See also Crocker, Ethics of Global Development; and Gasper & Lera St Clair, Development Ethics. Chambers, Ideas for Development, pp 193–194, emphasis added. E Crewe & E Harrison, Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid, London: Zed Books, 1998; B Rossi, ‘Aid policies and recipient strategies in Niger’, in D Lewis & D Mosse (eds), Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Development, Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2006; T Yarrow, ‘Paired opposites: dualism in development and anthropology’, Critique of Anthropology, 28, 2008, pp 426–455. T Vaux, The Selfish Altruist: Relief Work in Famine and War, London: Earthscan, 2001, p 7. M Johnson, C Haigh & N Yates-Bolton, ‘Valuing of altruism and honesty in nursing students: a 2 decade replication study’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 57(4), 2007, pp 366–374. MK Rognstad, P Nortvedt & O Aasland, ‘Helping motives in late modern society: values and attitudes among nursing students’, Nursing Ethics, 11, 2004, pp 227–239. M Miers, C Rickaby& K Pollard, ‘Career choices in health care: is nursing a special case?’, International Journal of Nursing Studies, 44(7), 2007, pp 1196–1209. See also SYS Ngai & CK Cheung, ‘Idealism, altruism, career orientation and emotional exhaustion among social work undergraduates’, Journal of Social Work Education, 45(1), 2009, pp 105–121. de Jong, ‘False binaries’; Bjerneld, ‘Images, motives, and challenges for Western health workers in humanitarian aid’; and Carr et al, ‘International–local remuneration differences across six countries’. PQ van Ufford & AK Giri, ‘Reconstituting development as a shared responsibility’, in van Ufford & Giri (eds), A Moral Critique of Development, London: Routledge, 2003, pp 22–25. Ibid, p 23. Ibid, p 24. Ibid, p 23. Ibid, p 25. Notes on contributor Anne-Meike Fechter is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. She has studied corporate expatriates as migrants, resulting in a book, Transnational Lives: Expatriates in Indonesia (2007), and her current work focuses on aid workers as mobile professionals. She is coeditor of Inside the Everyday Lives of Development Workers: The Futures and Challenges of Aidland (2011). 1491