ABSTRACT

The American sociologist, C. Wright Mills, wrote that the sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two. In my generation a significant number of European and North American development practitioners had Protestant missionary parents, and found employment with NGOs such as Christian Aid or with organization's whose origins lay in humanitarian relief in Europe following the First World War. The European colonisation of much of Africa and Asia was a capitalist enterprise facilitated by the state. Industry in Europe and North America demanded the raw materials the colonies could provide. Moral and charitable interest in the colonies continued to be counterbalanced by Western governments and businesses on-going interest in them as a source of raw materials. Dazzled by the government discourse of participation and grassroots democracy, they failed or did not wish to notice the growing authoritarianism of the state, suppressing the very values in which Oxfam believed.