Monitoring Movements in Development Aid ─ Recursive Partnerships and Infrastructures

In Monitoring Movements in Development Aid, Casper Jensen and BritWinthereik consider the processes, social practices, and infrastructures that are emerging tomonitor development aid, discussing both empirical phenomena and their methodological and analyticalchallenges. Jensen and Winthereik focus on efforts by aid organizations to make better use ofinformation technology; they analyze a range of development aid informationinfrastructures created to increase accountability and effectiveness. They find thatconstructing these infrastructures is not simply a matter of designing and implementing technologybut entails forging new platforms for action that are simultaneously imaginative and practical,conceptual and technical.

After presenting an analytical platform that draws onscience and technology studies and the anthropology of development, Jensen and Winthereik present anethnography- based analysis of the mutually defining relationship between aid partnerships andinfrastructures; the crucial role of users (both actual and envisioned) in aid informationinfrastructures; efforts to make aid information dynamic and accessible; existing monitoringactivities of an environmental NGO; and national-level performance audits, which encompass concernsof both external control and organizational learning.

Jensen and Winthereik arguethat central to the emerging movement to monitor development aid is the blurring of means and ends:aid information infrastructures are both technological platforms for knowledge about aid and formsof aid and empowerment in their own right.

Casper Bruun Jensen and Brit Ross Winthereik are Associate Professors in the Technologies Practice Group at the IT University of Copenhagen.