Theorizing NGOs

Victoria Bernal is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Nation as Network: Diaspora, Cyberspace, and Citizenship and Cultivating Workers: Peasants and Capitalism in a Sudanese Village. Inderpal Grewal is Chair of the Program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms and Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and Cultures of Travel, both also published by Duke University Press.

Acknowledgments vii Introduction. The NGO Form: Feminist Struggles, States, and Neoliberalism / Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal 1 Part I. NGOs Beyond Success or Failure 19 1. The Movementization of NGOs? Women's Organizing in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina / Elissa Helms 21 2. Failed Development and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking Subaltern Consciousness and Women's Empowerment / Lauren Leve 50 3. The State and Women's Empowerment in India Paradoxes and Politics / Aradhana Sharma 93 Part II. Postcolonial Neoliberalisms and the NGO Form 115 4. Global Civil Society and the Local Costs of Belonging: Defining Violence against Women in Russia / Julie Hemment 119 5. Resolving a Gendered Paradox: Women's Participation and the NGO Boom in North India / Kathleen O'Reilly 143 6. Power and Difference in Thai Women's NGO Activism / LeeRay M. Costa 166 7. Demystifying Microcredit: The Grameen Bank, NGOs, and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh / Lamia Karim 193 Part III. Feminist Social Movements and NGOs 219 8. Feminist Bastards: Toward a Posthumanist Critique of NGOization / Saida Hodzic 221 9. Lived Feminism(s) in Postcommunist Romania / Laura GrUEnberg 248 10. Women's Advocacy Networks: The European Union, Women's NGOs, and the Velvet Triangle / Sabine Lange 266 11. Beyond NGOization? Relrections from Latin America / Sonia E. Alvarez 285 Conclusion. Feminisms and the NGO Form / Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal 301 Bibliography 311 Contributors 353 Index 357

"Over the past three decades, NGOs have spread wide and deep over the social and ecological fabric of the world, yet the maps of this seemingly unstoppable diffusion are few and incomplete to this date. Theorizing NGOs is in all likelihood the most persuasive and successful attempt at mapping this veritable 'age of the NGO.' As women have been, along with the environment, the quintessential object of NGO attention, this focus is crucial to our understanding of how these organizations operate as gendered spaces where a diversity of women subjects are constructed. The lessons for feminism are clear, and they are spelled out in terms of the intricate connections between NGOs, globalization, liberalism, and modernity." - Arturo Escobar, author of Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes "With NGOs playing a growing role in women's rights and women's welfare globally, this excellent and timely collection contributes to our understanding of the implications of this change for feminism. Examining what it calls the 'NGO form,' the book analyzes the ambiguous relationship between NGOs and the state in the context of neoliberalism and new configurations of the public and the private. It considers why gender issues are so extensively handled through NGOs and how the move to NGO-ization is reshaping feminism." - Sally Engle Merry, author of Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice