Being harmed while doing good: affective injuries in a community development programme, Medan, Indonesia

Complaints, accusations, and failures of gratitude are everyday experiences for volunteers in community‐driven development in Medan, Indonesia. In this article I develop the analytic of ‘affective injury’ to describe the force of such encounters: the sensation of having one's ethical self questioned or put at risk that manifests as an immediate force or lingering hurt. While humanitarian and development workers are all susceptible to affective injuries, I argue that they operate on a different register for developers who belong to, and have an enduring relationship with, the ‘community’. The ways local volunteers respond to, and seek to recover from, affective injuries are distinct from reflective responses to ethical dilemmas. The suppression of, or diversion from, thoughts that could derail self‐understanding is a hindrance to reflexive development practice

The Familiar Face of the State: Affect, Emotion and Citizen Entitlements in Dehradun, India

Municipal Councillors (MCs) are the ‘familiar face of the state’ in Dehradun, India: the first port of call for citizens seeking to claim entitlements from the state. The way MCs respond to the requests of their constituents is a major factor in the uneven distribution of government welfare and services. This article seeks to contribute to understandings of citizen entitlements by drawing attention to the role of affect and emotion in shaping the interactions between MCs and voters. I examine the ways citizens consciously or unconsciously engender emotions and affective responses, and the effect these have in mobilizing MCs. Attention to the, at times, involuntary nature of these responses suggests a need to go beyond the instrumental and calculating motivations of municipal councillors, to consider the way they are compelled and animated to meet the demands of some citizens, but not of others. The capacity to affect, and the ways one is affected, are tied to the social identities and self‐making projects of both the MC and the voter, resulting in an uneven (mal)distribution of state resources. A focus on affective configurations in urban governance thereby reveals heretofore overlooked determinants of unequal access to urban resources and services

Beyond ‘State Ibuism’: Empowerment Effects in State-led Development in Indonesia

This article examines the ways women's processes of self‐formation are indicative (or not) of new possibilities for women's gendered selves in the post‐Reformasi period in Indonesia. It focuses on the development arena to reveal how shifts in state rhetoric, from top‐down guidance based on a patriarchal familial model to bottom‐up, inclusive development based on empowerment, have transformed what is referred to as the ‘topography for self’. The article draws upon theories of personhood a) to show how gendered selves emerge and are contested within particular historical conditions; and b) to develop an alternative framework of ‘empowerment’ that focuses not on capabilities and choice, but on an expansion in the possibilities for self. It argues that models of community‐driven development have provided new opportunities for women to hold and enact socially recognizable subject positions. This constitutes a form of empowerment for individual women but does not necessarily reflect challenges to patriarchy in Indonesia

A moral atmosphere of development as a share: Consequences for urban development in Indonesia

Corruption is a social preoccupation in Indonesia, receiving as much attention in the media as it does in journals such as World Development. The consequences of this preoccupation have escaped the attention of scholars however, a lacuna that this article addresses. Through ethnographic research of sites of state-led welfare and community driven development in Medan, Indonesia, I trace the emergence of a moral logic characterised by bagi-bagi, or development as a share. National anti-corruption discourses, lived experiences of petty corruption, and the failures of development projects to bring meaningful benefits encourage various stakeholders to manoeuvre to get a share, or take their part from the resources that flow from the state. The impact of this logic exceed its practices, however. I advance the concept of moral atmosphere to reveal the emotional and affective consequences, the ways the ever-present possibility of bagi-bagi permeates development encounters and marks individuals as objects of suspicion. Through the empirical material, I demonstrate the ways the moral atmosphere of bagi-bagi influences subjectivities, social relations, and the distribution of resources, and hence the importance of examining it as an element of the development arena

NGOs, ‘Straddler’ Organisations and the Possibilities of ‘Channelling’ in Indonesia: New Possibilities for State–NGO Collaboration?

The Badan Keswadayaan Masyarakat (BKM—Board for Community Self-reliance) are organisations established by the state as implementing agents of a community-driven development programme in Medan, Indonesia. Members are elected from the local population, but they continue to be supported by, and associated with the state. They are therefore ‘straddler’ organisations: organisations that span the state–civil society divide. This paper seeks to answer two questions. First, can BKMs’ positioning between the state and civil society facilitate new forms of state/non-government organisations (NGO) collaboration, and if so, what is the nature of partnerships established through such collaborations? We find that straddle organisations offer a way for NGOs to collaborate with the state in the achievement of development objectives. Second what is the possibility and desirability of arrangements in which NGOs ‘channel’ funds to BKMs as a means to ensure the sustainability of the latter? We argue that while there is considerable promise in such arrangements, these should be designed around a model of ‘working together’ rather than merely ‘channelling’

Gaji Sejuta: Moral experiences and the possibilities for self in a community-driven development program in Indonesia

This article explores the moral experiences of volunteers working in a ‘community driven development’ program in Medan, Indonesia. Reframing development as a moral experience helps to illuminate its potential as a site for self-becoming: a potential that lies not only in the ethical dilemmas that development provokes but also in the affective and emotive responses made possible in scenes of development. For low class volunteers who are excluded from other forms of virtuous action, their participation provides an opportunity to enact an understanding of self in relation to others, and before God. It is in the minutiae of acts of care that overt representations and affective responses bear upon the ‘self-in-relation’, and as such, invite possibilities for new self-imaginaries. A focus on the experiences of local volunteers who come from modest socio-economic backgrounds reveals an unacknowledged consequence of community driven development: the expansion of possibilities for self

Risking the Self: Vulnerability and Its Uses in Research

As researchers, we aim to reduce emotional risk, in essence our vulnerability, that comes from empathising with others. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in India and Indonesia, and drawing on concrete examples of research with community volunteers and women municipal councillors, this chapter challenges the assumption that vulnerability in research is negative. My chapter argues that heightening one’s vulnerability is a necessary aspect of ethical knowledge production. Vulnerability means being purposefully open to being affected by the other, to have one’s very core sense of who one is and is becoming challenged in our encounters with others (e.g., research participants and research partners). While vulnerability in this sense increases risk, the benefits of becoming more not less vulnerable enriches our research and is pivotal to understanding the way power operates in the field