Overview

"The image of ""Third World Woman"" victimhood is one common to discourses in Western feminism, gender and development and also the activities of NGOs. Tamsin Bradley deconstructs this through her exploration of the relationships between NGOs and the people they target, using a unique multi-disciplinary perspective focused on the interfaces between anthropology, development and religion. She argues that dominant approaches in development practice see women as a singular and weak ""other"" which obscures the complexities of communities and the ability to respond to real needs. Bradley's extensive fieldwork, on grassroots NGOs in rural Indian Rajasthan and Western donor organisations, combines with a compelling critique of development theory and practice. She constructs a more inclusive methodology, to encourage development workers to listen to the needs of those they seek to help."

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9781848859678

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'This volume offers a ground-breaking interdisciplinary perspective on how development agendas are formulated and impact on local people. Specifically Bradley explores how the lives of rural women in Rajasthan are often distorted and homogenised into helpless images that then form the basis of projects. Bradley highlights how money is wasted funding interventions that fail to meet the needs of local women, not to mention patronise and disempower them.' - Jeffrey Haynes, Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University; '[This book] cuts through unproductive binaries which treat feminism and religion as irremediably at odds with one another. Through a process in which Tamsin Bradley listens closely to women's actual voices we learn how women creatively reconfigure the cultural materials which constitute their heritage. Attention to this creative reconfiguration holds important practical lessons for NGOs, generally, but most especially for those who engage with women who experience domestic violence.' - Eileen O'Keefe, Professor of Public Health, London Metropolitan University

Author Information

Tamsin Bradley is Lecturer in International Development at the University of Portsmouth. She has taught Anthropology and Development at London Metropolitan University and Religion and Gender at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where she completed her PhD. She is also the author of Religion and Gender in the Developing World: Faith-Based Organizations and Feminism in India (I.B.Tauris, 2011).

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