Constructing the Self through the Other: How beliefs about the Other inform international NGO approaches to development

Abstract

The perspectives of development organizations and workers regarding recipients of international development inform their practice and approach to development work. The recent surge of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in development work around the world provides a rationale for examining how the accounts of members of such organizations reflect beliefs about themselves and about those they serve. This study sought to explore some of the beliefs and perspectives of volunteers of an international NGO headquartered in the United States and how these perspectives influence their projects and interactions with local peoples. Thirty in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted of members of Rotary International, one of the largest NGOs in the world. Interviewees were asked to talk about their experiences with international service through Rotary International. Using an open and axial coding technique (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002; Miles & Huberman, 1994), this study revealed that these volunteers' accounts of their experience in international service serve to position volunteers and recipients of service in a relationship. Volunteers, through their accounts of their perspectives and experiences, describe recipients of service projects in ways that serve to affirm the desired self-understanding the volunteers have of themselves. Furthermore, this relationship between understanding the self and others was found in this study to reveal a contradiction between expressed values and practices. These volunteers gave accounts of their approaches to international service in which their descriptions of themselves and recipients as well as the projects actually carried out contradicted their preferred approach to service. In analyzing these volunteers' accounts, this study makes theoretical contributions by a) demonstrating how social groups can enact ingroup favoritism and positive group distinction in a context of helping rather than competing; b) revealing how in the context of international service and development volunteers construct a dialectical understanding of the self and the international recipient; and c) explaining the process of Othering as not only for domination but in a complimentary fashion that constructs the other as wanting and needing what the self wants to give.