The Interpersonal and the International: Development, Volunteering and Grassroots Diplomacy in the 1960s

Abstract

This article examines the vexed nature of grassroots diplomacy by tracing the experiences and management of volunteers working in Asia and Africa with Britain’s Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and the United States Peace Corps during the 1960s. Development volunteering blurred the divide between individual bodies and the body politic and rendered the interpersonal relationships of otherwise ordinary individuals into a form of diplomatic encounter. In theory, grassroots diplomacy encouraged positive cross-cultural encounters and overt displays of international friendship. In practice, however, grassroots diplomacy also provided a space for ongoing international tensions around race, development, and neocolonialism to be contested. This article argues that the quotidian behaviour of Western volunteers provided a site of rupture through which alternative discourses and political positions could be advanced, especially by activists in Africa and Asia without access to conventional diplomatic channels. Although grassroots diplomacy was a celebrated ideal in the context of the Cold War and decolonisation, in practice non-elite agency in international relations came to be increasingly regulated by states and non-governmental organisations concerned with defending their nation’s reputation. It could also have serious impacts for individuals whose personal lives were derailed by international incidents.