Encounter and engagement: negotiating otherness in the Dutch Protestant development cooperation network in Brazil

Abstract

This article investigates encounters occurring in the development cooperation network facilitated by two Dutch Protestant agencies - ICCO and KiA - in Brazil, focusing on the process of negotiating otherness inherent to development initiatives. The text is based on multi-sited ethnographical research conducted in Brazil and in the Netherlands. In its first section, the text introduces the two organisations, highlighting the overlap between religious and secular moralities in their discourses and practices. The second section describes a meeting they promoted with their partners in Brazil, analysing how a grammar of difference is mobilised by the actors to make sense of the world and of the "far-away" other, creating what could be called cosmologies of development cooperation. The text focuses mainly on how concrete interactions influence these cosmologies, actualising, reproducing or contesting them in practice.

Apresentação

“…Uma parte importante dos estudos tem se concentrado em compreender como noções localizadas se tornam universalmente aceitas, especialmente sob custódia e força das entidades vinculadas à ONU, tais como a utilização global de índices e indicadores de desenvolvimento (Ilcan;Phillips, 2010;Merry, 2011), os direitos humanos e suas distintas formas de aplicação (Asad, 2003), as redes de organizações que promovem novas modalidades de doação internacional (Mosse, 2005) -especialmente com o cenário testemunhando o aparecimento de novos países doadores, incluindo o Brasil -, a renovação das instituições religiosas nesse campo (Rickli, 2012) e o crescimento dos formatos de cooperações Sul-Sul.…”