What would development look like if its practitioners and scholars were ‘against NGOs,’ challenging common sense about them? This book presents a critical perspective on NGOs, describing how they emerged as key agents of development over time. Through an interpretative history based on Gramscian concepts it shows how civil society organizations were gradually enlisted in development as non-state technocratic actors. The book argues that management studies and development studies emerged as commonsensical explanations for capitalist crises. Each offered complementary solutions to balance the needs of capital and society, in particular historical circumstances. These solutions also situated civil society as agents of development and vectors of management. Against NGOs fills a gap within the literature of management and development studies through its original discussion of their historical interconnections and shared themes. The book raises provocative questions on what forms of knowledge-politics can respond productively to the crises of our contemporary moment.

Speaker/Author

Nidhi Srinivas

Associate Professor of Management
Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment
THE NEW SCHOOL

Nidhi Srinivas is Associate Professor of Management at Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment. His research centers on social innovation and postcolonial studies, mobilizing critical theory to study a variety of topics, including management history, international development, mutual aid, ecological politics and civic design. He publishes widely and has received several fellowships, including from Erasmus Mundus, the India China Institute, and the BRICS policy center. He has also served as visiting professor at different institutions, including the ITC-ILO, Turin; Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo; Sao Paulo School of Business Administration; and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

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Discussants

Suchitra Vijayan
Author & Researcher
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

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Alf Gunvald Nilsen
Professor, Department of Sociology
UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA

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