Another weekend, another set of links to keep you thinking about development right through ‘til Monday.
Following on from our In Brief about media and aid earlier this week, Humanosphere has been crowd-sourcing a list of reporters whose coverage of aid and humanitarian affairs stands out. Further suggestions are welcomed!
Speaking of communication, Emily Troutman of Aid Works offers a critique of ‘The secret language of aid’, examining how the language used in donor and agency reports can distort or disguise what it is that agencies are actually doing.
The Guardian Development Podcast recently discussed interest in the virtual currency bitcoin from developing countries, among them Tonga. For those still trying to wrap their brains around the bitcoin concept, check out this article explaining how Yap stone money might serve as a fitting analogy.
Also from The Guardian, a longer exposition of the history of the East India Company, extracted from William Dalrymple’s forthcoming book The Anarchy: How a Corporation Replaced the Mughal Empire, 1756-1803, offers sobering reflections on the tyranny perpetuated by the EIC and its entanglements with the British state.
Finally, there is no shortage of debate over so-called ‘poverty tourism’, which has occasionally been justified on the basis that it can be a means of directly providing income to people living in impoverished neighbourhoods. A group of Cape Town photographers recently threw into relief some of the other, more intractable aspects of ‘township tours’ by staging an alternative ‘suburb tour’ (video).
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