Syndicate: Paul Stubbs on NGOs, Ljubljana May 23, 1997

[inke@is.in-berlin.de (Inke Arns)]

Dear all,

this is Paul Stubbs' blitz statement on the Role of NGOs presented at 
Nettime conference 'Beauty and the East', session on 'Power Politics: 
virtual Europe, ministate thinking and the construction of the data East', 
Ljubljana 23 May 1997.

More soon. Greetings to all,
Inke
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>From: PAUL.STUBBS@ZAMIR-ZG.ZTN.APC.ORG (Paul Stubbs)
>Path: bionic.zerberus.de!zamir-zg.ztn.apc.org
>Organization: Za Mir Transnational Network (Zagreb)
>Subject: NETTIME.TXT
>Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 22:50:00 +0100
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>## Forwarded message of 24 May 97
>## Origin   : geert@xs4all.nl
>## Creator  : paul.stubbs@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.apc.org
>
>Blitz statement on the Role of NGOs
>presented at Nettime conference 'Beauty and the East'
>session on 'Power Politics: virtual Europe, 
>ministate thinking and the construction of the 
>data East'
>Ljubljana 23 May 1997
>
>Paul Stubbs, Zagreb and Leeds
>paul.stubbs@zamir-zg.ztn.apc.org
>
>I.
>My concern is primarily with the way in which the fashion 
>for NGOs presents the end of history and ideology in a 
>region where histories and ideologies, what in pre-post-
>modernist terms used to be called debate, clearly continue 
>to perform work, including the work of killing people.
>
>In a sense, I follow Ivan Szelenyi's argument that NGOs, in 
>their local variants, are a part of a survival impulse of what 
>he calls 'the dominated fraction of the dominant class' since 
>they allow this group to exchange global cultural capital for 
>(minimal) economic capital and security. The rate of 
>exchange between economic and cultural capital for local 
>NGO workers in the East is poor - this is the exploitation 
>and colonialism which others have referred to. But, in 
>countries where poverty and insecurity touches fairly 
>directly over 90% of the population, it becomes one of the 
>only options.
>
>Indeed, in the absence of crisis and war which attracts 
>(northern and western) donors and international NGOs 
>whose money, of course, carries with it its own very 
>particular problems (cf. my text 'Humanitarian 
>Organisations and the Myth of Civil Society'), and being, 
>perhaps, unwilling to take the leap in the dark into the 
>world of true free market, for profit, private enterprise, it 
>remains true that forming regional or even global 
>initiatives, networks or alliances (the conglomerates of the 
>NGO world), represent the best way of converting cultural 
>capital into economic capital.     
>
>II.
>The phenomenon of George Soros and his Open Society 
>Foundation, which I want to term the Uncle George 
>Syndrome is one which is only now attracting critical 
>scrutiny from commentators on the NGO scene in the 
>virtual East. Indeed, the lack of critical attention to Uncle 
>George has echoes of the self-censorship found in many of 
>the closed societies which his open society vision precisely 
>wishes to transform.
>
>For me, notwithstanding the many positive effects of Uncle 
>George's funding, one problem is that, in the absence of 
>alternative sources, there is a pull towards a kind of anti-
>political cultural bureaucratism which stifles not only truly 
>political and truly aesthetic innovations but, perhaps more 
>importantly, snuffs out embryonic forms of new cultural 
>politics which might transcend these divisions.
>
>Images of an anti-nationalist elite in Slovakia, surely the 
>worst non-war regime in the region, content to run their 
>literary magazines funded by Uncle George, eschewing 
>direct criticism of the regime ... and of the leading theatre 
>director in Albanian and Macedonian languages in 
>Macedonia heading (I think the term is Executive Director) 
>the Open Society Foundation which meant performing 
>closed society tasks of sitting behind a computer tracing 
>budget lines and project proposals, continue to trouble me.
>
>I have begun to liken all of this to a sausage factory. All of 
>the diverse ingredients within a society, the composite 
>social movements, campaigns, artistic endeavours and so 
>on, are squeezed, more or less willingly, through the 
>sausage machine to become the NGO sausage. Of course, 
>the sausages taste different in different places, since the mix 
>of ingredients are very different. But they remain more 
>recognisable as part of the NGO sausage family than of 
>anything else. And, whilst this may be purist, I happen to 
>believe that the original ingredients contain more flavour. 
>Uncle George, in his self image a philanthropist, philospher 
>and entrepreneur, may be nothing more or less than a 
>sausage maker.  
>
>III.
>All of this begins to take on a great deal of importance if 
>Katherine Verdery's suggestion (in her book What Was 
>Socialism, and What Comes Next Princeton UP, 1996), 
>that the metaphor of feudalism is actually, with few (and 
>perhaps one could say ever fewer) exceptions, the best way 
>of understanding the reality of post-socialism in what 
>Uncle George and his foundations call 'the region'. What if 
>it is not 'open societies' which are being created but mini-
>states controlled by mafias in which personalism and 
>patronage combine with the exclusion of outsiders, the 
>'alien others', and in which there is a fundamental lack of 
>clarity about where government and authority reside. 
>
>What if post-socialism can be seen as some kind of new 
>feudalism in the age of globalism in which a new 
>transnational city state elite, armed with modems and 
>laptops, are able to escape (at least virtually) the daily trials 
>of everyday existence. It is exactly these everyday local 
>realities which I see as untouched by Uncle George's 
>financial construction of the 'data East' with the notable 
>exception of zamir bbs which precisely connects local, 
>regional and global networks in a specific crisis context.
>
>The question, at least sociologically, becomes how to 
>analyse what I want to term, as neutrally as possible!, 
>Uncle George's mafia, and to discuss ways in which they, 
>perhaps I mean we, can be accountable, and to whom.
>
> 
>
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Inke Arns * Pestalozzistr. 5 * D-10625 Berlin * Germany
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