ABSTRACT
In 1987, World Development published ‘Development Alternatives: the Challenge of NGOs’ (Drabek, 1987). Twenty years later, it has become defensible to claim that ‘there is no alternative’, that the term NGOs has no analytical or even descriptive value, that development is a form of governmentality rather than a project of emancipation and that it is far more important to ask how the term is used to serve particular interests than to ask what it means. This chapter attempts to restate this reflection on the relationship between NGOs and development alternatives. It begins with a reflection on the concept of ‘development’, staking out a terrain that gives the term both analytical and normative force. This lays the base for discussing possible meanings of ‘alternative’ development. Second, it suggests a conceptualization of non-governmental organization and reflects on the meaning of civil society. Third, it places a discussion of NGOs and development in terms of relationships and flows that are as much global as local in their reach, and links processes and actors at different sites across space and time. Fourth, it offers a review of both historical and contemporary experiences of the roles of NGOs in development and the pursuit of something called ‘alternatives’.
