Customer Reviews

Nongovernments: Ngos and the Political Development of the Third World (Kumarian Press Books on International Development)

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Fisher's book does have some interesting information in it but overall the book lacks intellectual rigour and a more hard-nosed and detached approached to her topic.

Still, the book is probably worth a read.

is the topic of Julie Fisher's second book Non Governments: NGOs and the political Development of the Third World (Kumarian Press, 14 Oakwood Ave., West Hartford CT 06119-2127 USA; 1998) Fisher does not write in an anatomical metaphor; nor does she use the jargon of complexity theory with its "self-organizing on the edge of chaos." But it is all there. A living body of networking organizations has emerged to fill the niche produced by dysfunctional post-colonial governments. A plethora of unique interdependent organs assuming specialized functions which serve the whole have almost magically become the body that promises better life for the people in developing countries, and the whole Earth. Grassroots Organizations (GROs) formed by the people in remote villages, have risen by the tens of thousand to solve local problems with local skills and local resources. They network horizontally with one another to provide mutual aid. Grassroots Support Organizations (GRSOs) have emerged independently in the cities, capitols and universities to answer their own need for social usefulness by providing information, material and services, to the remote and the disadvantaged GROs. Overseas International NonGovernmental Organizations (INGOs) have recognized the failure of Governments and U.N. run "Development Decades" to provide "direct aid" to the people in their villages. This whole global Civil Society is a new phenomena. It was not planned by the bureaucrats, not even by the participants themselves. It emerged and self-organized as a working whole within the last two decades. It is now composed of hundreds of thousands of new organizations each playing a unique role in the new body politic. Fisher writes with more humility than she deserves. The book is filled with statistics and case studies of this emerging political and social phenomenon in the Third World. Perhaps, like David Korten, who cut his teeth by leading the Third Word movement for self-help development, or like Francis Moore-Lappé, who spent her early years dissecting the myths of Third World hunger, Fisher will next turn her microscope and scalpel to dissecting the emerging Civil Society in the industrial world. For it is the Industrial Culture's transition to Gaian Cultures which is required if human civilization is to continue, and it is our Civil Society which must lead, and is leading, the way.