State-NGO Relations in Africa

Beyond Civil Society: An Organizational Perspective on State–NGO Relations in the People's Republic of China

In the last two decades, the People’s Republic of China has witnessed an explosion of NGOs. What will the implications be for state–society relations? This article, drawing upon research conducted at seven Chinese NGOs, critiques two approaches to analysing this problem: the civil society framework and the privatization perspective. It then proffers a third way: an approach based on organizatio...

Empowering Africa: Normative Power in EU-Africa Relations

The EU’s identity construction as a normative power has often been described as a practice by which the EU portrays itself as a force for good while at the same time depicting other actors as inferior, thereby disempowering them rhetorically. In contrast to this, our findings indicate that in its relations to SSA, the EU intends to empower African countries by referring to them in a framework o...

Intergenerational Relations in Africa with a Focus on South Africa

NGO Sector in Bangladesh

The social development scene in Bangladesh is characterised by a strong presence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The NGOs emerged following the war of liberation to help the communities in distress as part of post-war rehabilitation. Afterwards, with assistance from foreign donor agencies, they expanded their activities to deliver a variety of services including microcredit, essential...

Caring for Xate, caring for Xateros: NGO monitoring, livelihoods, and plant-human relations in Uaxactún, Guatemala

In Uaxactún, a community forest concession inside Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve, three species of xate palm, a non-timber forest product, are at the heart of quickly evolving webs of knowledge, identity, institutional alliances, and livelihoods. Xate palms are simultaneously the "daily beans" for the majority of Uaxactún residents, the object of intense study and regulation, a commodity ma...