{"id":16607,"date":"2021-11-10T19:10:41","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T19:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=16607"},"modified":"2025-04-08T10:01:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T10:01:30","slug":"capacity-building-in-ethnographic-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/capacity-building-in-ethnographic-comparison","title":{"rendered":"Capacity Building in Ethnographic Comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Rachel Douglas-Jones and Justin Shaffner, editors of Hope and Insufficiency: Capacity Building in Ethnographic Comparison<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

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We open our new edited collection Hope and Insufficiency<\/a><\/em> by traveling the world in workshops. Three capacity building events, ranging from Paramaribo to Addis Ababa, sketched as thumbnails, form our introductory paragraph. These three events, drawn from thousands, simply demonstrate the breadth of topics to which it is applied. Capacity building, or its more recent iteration as capacity development, is, we argue, both ubiquitous and under-theorised within the social sciences. The title of our book identifies characteristics of capacity building\u2019s intervention: as we put it, hope and insufficiency interplay in a way that makes the idea of capacity building persuasive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Origins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the book sets up a series of\nexamples that bring capacity building into ethnographic focus, it has its\norigins in the doctoral fieldwork of the editors. When we both encountered\ncapacity building organisations during our research, we each sought out\nliterature to answer the questions that arose: How had anthropologists\npreviously engaged with capacity building projects during fieldwork? How to\ndescribe the roles and position of those set up to have their \u2018capacities\u2019\nbuilt? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our questions about what was\nimagined to constitute capacity, and the mechanisms by which it was thought to\nbe built, led us to convene a panel of colleagues who could also speak to the\nquestion of capacity building through ethnography. With a follow up workshop,\nsupported by the Wenner Gren foundation in Copenhagen in 2015, we were able to\ndevelop the chapters found in this collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book exists as a resource for\nunderstanding what capacity building looks like today. Each chapter addresses a\ndistinct encounter with capacity building, and each presents a variation on\nwhat ethnographic attention does for critical analysis. Together, these\nchapters support students and scholars in their own research by exploring three\nareas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 First, what does capacity building look like?\nWho is involved? How does it gain traction and translate into activities,\nevents and policies? Answers to these questions help us consider options for\ntheorising capacity building as policy itself in practice.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Workshop in Kiunga, November 2006. Flipcharts and markers showing prioritisation of strategies for awareness, networking, training, litgation, fund raising, research and information and dissemination. Photo Justin Shaffner. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Second, who gets to define\ncapacities? Closely related is the question of where capacity is thought to\ninhere: in what or in whom? And crucially for any ethnographer, how do these\nclaims gain legitimacy? What material and social technologies ground them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Workshop in Kiunga, November 2006. Manipulating large sheets of paper with columns of categories: mining, strength, legal action and support. Photo Justin Shaffner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Third, what strategies are available\nto analytically address the way those who use capacity building conceptualise\nand enact change? Our interest in the hope of \u2018capacity building\u2019 lies in its\nties to promised futures and the transformations that will (may) ferry\nparticipants there. This requires attending to how possibilities and potentials\nare invoked and mobilised in the pursuit of other ways of doing or being. As\nseveral of the chapters demonstrate, the implication of capacity building in\nmechanisms of measurement means that the transformation it seeks is often\ncomparative, generating (measurable) insufficiencies to make absences into\npotentials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Classroom<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For lecturers and professors, a\nclassroom exercise is a great way into the worlds these chapters describe. Ask\nstudents to search in pairs for instances of capacity building that have taken\nplace in the last month. They can search your or their local area, state, a\ncountry the course has recently discussed. When they find their examples – and\nthey will find them – ask each to present on what they can glean of who is\nbuilding whose capacity, and to what ends. In this way, the various uses of the\nword, and practices it covers, will become rapidly apparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading across\nthe chapters of this collection opens up what capacities, human or otherwise,\nare thought to be. By not taking capacity building\u2019s promises for granted, the\nchapters both advance our understanding of capacity building\u2019s ubiquity and\ndevelop anthropological purchase on its persuasive power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn more about the book here<\/a>.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Rachel Douglas-Jones<\/a><\/strong> is Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, where she is currently the PI of Moving Data- Moving People, a study of emergent social credit systems in China through the lens of trust. Her recent publications include \u2018Committee as Witness\u2019 (The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology<\/em>, 2021) and she is the editor (with Antonia Walford and Nick Seaver) of Towards an Anthropology of Data (JRAI<\/em>, 2021)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin Shaffner<\/a><\/strong> is a Research Associate at the Center for Social Solutions at the University of Michigan where he focuses on issues related to the “future of work” and global commodity chains. He is editor (with Huon Wardle) of Cosmopolitics: The Collective Papers of the Open Anthropology Cooperative, Volume 1<\/em> (OAC Press, 2017); and co-founder of Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by Rachel Douglas-Jones and Justin Shaffner, editors of Hope and Insufficiency: Capacity Building in Ethnographic Comparison We open our new edited collection Hope and Insufficiency by traveling the world in workshops. Three capacity building events, ranging from Paramaribo to Addis Ababa, sketched as thumbnails, form our introductory paragraph. These three events, drawn from thousands, simply… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,1665,135,1971,1594,1973,94,851],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16607"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16778,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16607\/revisions\/16778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}