Context-Sensitive Development: How International NGOs Operate in Myanmar

Development is a difficult endeavor in any environment, much more so in places such as Myanmar with its perfect storm of extreme poverty, international sanctions, and political repression and human rights violations with concomitant conflicts within development organisations over norms and policies. This book examines how to affect successful development interventions in Myanmar. The author points out how practitioners have questioned universal economic prescriptions for development in ways that they have not questioned the normative foundations behind their work. Ware does not argue for a facile moral relativism; he sees Myanmar as an egregious violator of human rights, but he does call for context sensitivity to help organisations adapt their values to meet better the needs of client populations.

Through fieldwork and an extensive series of interviews, Ware brings into focus key issues of perception and practice that are intrinsic to the development enterprise. Although the focus is on Myanmar as a quintessential difficult case, Ware shows how his conclusions can be used elsewhere. His book represents a major contribution to both development theory and practice, vital for both the classroom and the development organisation in situ. See more