Reimagining Aid: Foreign Donors, Women’s Health, and New Paths for Development in Cambodia

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Mary-Collier Wilks, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu.

Abstract

Through a multi-sited ethnography, Reimagining Aid analyzes international development organizations funded by the U.S. and Japan that advance women’s health in Cambodia. The book documents how foreign donors from the U.S. and Japan brought distinctive priorities that modified their women’s health programming, with the U.S. emphasizing market-based empowerment and Japan, state-based development. In response, development actors in Cambodia use donor differences to argue for two model paths to development: one they call a “Western” path, the other an “Asian” one. Combining elements of each, Cambodians construct their own hybrid visions of the role that the state, market, civil society, and gender should play in development. This research illustrates the on-the-ground processes through which contemporary notions of global development, long associated with traditional Western donors, are coming undone, and the important role that practitioners in recipient nations play in imagining new paths to advancement.

About the Speaker

Mary-Collier Wilks is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her research examines gender, foreign aid, international development, and global health in Cambodia.