Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Institutionalizing inequality

Electronic data

  • orgstud institutional inequality published

    Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Organization Studies, 39 (9), 2018, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Organization Studies page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/OSS on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/

    Accepted author manuscript, 986 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Institutionalizing inequality: calculative practices and regimes of inequality in international development

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/09/2018
<mark>Journal</mark>Organization Studies
Issue number9
Volume39
Number of pages24
Pages (from-to)1203-1226
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date22/06/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This paper focuses on the institutionalization of inequality in relations between donors and NGOs in the international development sector. We argue that these relations operate within a neoliberal and competitive marketplace, which are necessarily unequal. Specifically, we focus on the apparently mundane practice of impact assessment, and consider how this is fundamental to understanding the performative enactment of institutional inequality. For our analysis we draw upon Miller and Rose’s work on governmentality and calculative practices. We develop our argument with reference to a case study of a donor driven impact
assessment initiative being conducted in India. Specifically, we consider an impact assessment initiative that the donor has piloted with one of the NGOs they fund that seeks to improve the livelihoods of Indian farmers. We will argue that institutional inequality can be understood in the way the market as a social institution becomes enacted into mundane calculative practices. Calculative practices produce different kinds of knowledge and in so doing becomes a way in which subjects position themselves, or become positioned, as unequal.

Bibliographic note

The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Organization Studies, 39 (9), 2018, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Organization Studies page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/OSS on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/