Secular Non-governmental Organizations Research Articles

WHEN STRANGERS BECOME FAMILY: THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF AGING POPULATION

Mexico’s rapidly aging population presents serious short and long-term challenges to the state and to families, since relatively few individuals have formal retirement plans. Although health care access is formally universal, and non-contributory retirement income is provided to all elderly in need, the Mexican old-age welfare remains limited. In this study we assess the potential role of civil society organizations (CSOs), a category that includes secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations (FBOs), in advocacy for and service provision to elders in need. Social and demographic changes, including the migration of children away from their parent’s community, the need for women to work, smaller families, and more are undermining the capacity of the family to provide all of the care and support that frail aging parents need. Given the fact that the federal, state, and municipal governments are limited in what they can provide, the role of CSOs is potentially significant.

The social construction of success among leaders of faith-based and secular NGOs in Cambodia: Examining the role of faith

ABSTRACTAlthough faith-based organizations (FBOs) and secular nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide significant social work interventions, and are believed to bring about positive changes in their clients, the literature has not fully explored distinctions between the ways leaders of these organizations socially construct success. Using qualitative data from 41 interviews with leaders of Christian FBOs and secular NGOs in Cambodia, this article explores the ways in which leaders conceived of success, including what success was attributed to, and the extent to which faith was conceptualized as contributing to client change. While the study revealed the multidimensionality of socially constructed success, the “input” of faith in FBOs served as an important conceptual lens through which leaders viewed their work and client change, resulting in a faith-centric ideological environment which significantly accounted for differences in the ways success was perceived in these organizations. The study builds on the theoretical understanding of faith “infusing” FBOs, clarifying distinct differences—not always clearly evident in other locales—between FBOs and secular NGOs that are critical to conceptualizing the importance of faith to FBOs. The findings provide insight into the importance of considering both the organizational ideological context and the wider development context when seeking to compare FBOs and secular NGOs.

Education and the Origins of Quebec’s International Engagement

ABSTRACTThis article examines some of the ways that education has served as a catalyst for the engagement of Quebec and Quebeckers with the broader world, from the educational activities of French Canadian missionaries beginning in the late-nineteenth century to the growing involvement of secular nongovernmental organizations and of the government of Quebec itself in international educational assistance in the mid- to late-twentieth century. For the government of Quebec in particular, jurisdiction over education was integral to the development of Quebec’s own international identity and the Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine that both articulated and bolstered its claim to international competence. The controversy surrounding Quebec’s international educational endeavors has declined since the 1970s, and with it the relative amount of attention and funding devoted to it by the provincial government, yet education broadly defined remains a bridge linking Quebec and Quebeckers to the wider world and catalyzing their engagement with it.

Gendering Political Agency in the Maghreb

If North Africa is understudied by academics of the Middle East, the Maghreb is more so and Maghrebian women even more (Ennaji, Sadiqi, and Vintges 2016; Moghadam 1993; Sadiqi 2016). The four books under review direct attention to this region and link the multifaceted and gendered histories of the Maghreb to its present. Their local, regional, and transregional approaches make a valuable contribution to North African, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean studies. Employing novel approaches and methodologies, new theories, and new sources in the post–Arab Spring moment, the books highlight the role of gender in the making of the historical and contemporary political Maghreb.Unlike most works on women in Ottoman households that focus on the Middle East, especially Turkey, Amy Aisen Kallander’s Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia spans the period from the sixteenth-century Ottoman conquest of Tunisia to the early nineteenth century. Starting from the premise that palaces are complex domestic spaces where economic and political power is engineered, the author situates the family as the locus of such power and highlights the role and agency of women in the making, development, and transition of this power. Women’s economic and political power was facilitated by gender segregation and their will to maintain political power through their sons, their husbands, and other men. The power of palace women was so pervasive that royal families in Europe emulated it (e.g., the Ottoman-Hapsburg rivalry in the western Mediterranean). The centrality of the family was reflected in architecture. Government administrations were structured as households where diplomatic transactions, government economics, marriages, and circumcisions took place.Although the political role of the family vacillated according to the political context, it never disappeared. Relative political stability in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries led to state consolidation and bureaucratic development that placed family at the center of government. During this period royal and elite women contributed to the prestige of the ruling dynasties. They served as counselors, teachers, and managers. Since political power has always gone hand in hand with religion in the Maghreb and larger North Africa, palace women also contributed to public piety via endowments (waqf), charity, the reception of grievances, the establishment of pious foundations, and the provision of soup kitchens. Through these pious actions, women were part and parcel of the government’s redistribution of wealth contract. Palace women’s political and religious commitments marked stability and grandeur.The political instability of much of the nineteenth century caused by European imperial projects weakened the Ottoman Empire, including the Tunisian province. Financial difficulties paved the way for reforms, for example, the 1861 constitution, which gave more power to the state. Patronage of education and religious endowments, formerly the responsibility of elite women, became state-provided services. The influence of palace families diminished, and as a result, the household model of government lost its relevance. This situation was complicated by modernization projects. These deep changes impacted the role of the household in politics, and the contributions of palace women to the reform were marginalized as women were transformed into a symbol of modernization.Kallander’s brilliant link between the decrease in palace women’s political power and the rise of a polity based on the slogan of fraternity resonates well with what happened in Algeria, Egypt, and other countries of the region: women disappeared from the political scene after the revolution. In Tunis the nineteenth-century reforms turned the family, more specifically the inheritance laws, into equality between men. Kallander also makes a powerful link between the status and role of the family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the so-called Arab Spring. Prior to the Tunisian revolution, the Ben Ali family ruled like a royal family, although it owed its power to the ruling party and not to royal status. This family, including Ben Ali’s wife Laila and in-laws, monopolized Tunisian political and economic life for twenty-three years through corruption and clientalism. The author sees this as a perpetuation of the worst attributes of a royal family (palace building, flaunting of wealth, immunity from legal sanction, use of family connections, and preparation of a hereditary dynasty). Kallander’s dynamic approach to the role of the family and women’s political power in the Maghreb from the sixteenth century to the present analyzes colonial modernity not as rupture but as reorientation of a continuous global process.Amy Young Evrard’s Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement focuses on the Moroccan secular feminist movement. She shows how this movement weaves together the local and the transnational to produce something unique to Morocco and yet resonates with women’s concerns in the region and beyond—the promotion of women’s legal rights and the reform and implementation of the mudawwana (family law). The women’s movement in Morocco is political (Ennaji 2005), allowing it to compromise with Islamic feminist organizations. Secular Moroccan women play a positive role in the struggle for social change (Guessous 2011) and in safeguarding women’s rights. Secularity was crucial to the development of feminist thought in Morocco and North Africa. The post–Arab Spring Islamist government in Tunisia did not remove women from the political scene, and feminists brought back a secular government in the 2014 post-Islamist elections. Evrard convincingly argues that the Moroccan secular feminist movement owes its strength to the political dexterity it acquired through decades of strategizing with the monarchy, political parties, and other social movements. She emphasizes the “urban” nature of the movement and its inscription in the larger Moroccan political framework. Her analysis shows how diverse secular nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Morocco not only feminized the political space but democratized it and opened further decision-making spaces for women. She demonstrates the strength and elasticity of these NGOs as they improved women’s legal rights. Building on these findings, the author broaches issues such as the necessity to problematize the “secular” and go beyond the binary secular-religious as sources for women’s rights. She questions the meanings of secular and elite. Strikingly, Evrard’s book relocates the secular not only as part of women’s lives but also in the larger sociopolitical makeup of the region. In search of a “harmonious family,” the book speaks to Kallander’s by highlighting the flexibility of the women’s secular movement in Morocco, which offers family development programs. Evrard underlines the dual conception of the harmonious family, however defined by women related by blood or marriage. The idiom of family is growing salient in the discourse of associations (including slogans and brochures) as a way of legitimizing women’s rights and discussing issues like the veil.Taking the legal aspect of family law to a more concrete but complex level, that of judicial practices of 2008–9, Maaike Voorhoeve’s Gender and Divorce Law in North Africa highlights the emancipatory reading of judicial law by Tunisian female judges. This is a significant token of agency in a region where law and politics are imbricated (Charrad 2001). Intervening in law to improve it is generally referred to as ijtihad. Classical Muslim Sunni jurists, such as Abu Husayn al-Basri, Abu Hamid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali, and Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, transposed this meaning to the realm of Islamic jurisprudence and defined ijtihad as the exertion of the maximum “mental energy” to first comprehend and then apply fiqh (legal theory) with the aim of discovering the “law of God” (Ali-Karamali and Dunne 1994; Hallaq 1984; Sell 1907). This “law of God” is defined as the “all-encompassing law of Islam” that is based on the Quran, and ijtihad (Coulson 1964). The mutability of Islamic law has long been a point of contention, resulting in a rich tradition of legal theory in Islam. Classical Sunni jurisprudence reserves the right of ijtihad to a few male religious scholars. Focusing on divorce, Voorhoeve uses extensive fieldwork and reflection on norms, legislation, and judicial practices to locate nuances in some judicial practices where female judges adjudicate in a gender-neutral way by applying the constitution and international conventions. These findings are new and relevant to other countries of the Maghreb, also characterized by legal pluralism. Women judges’ mobilization of the emancipatory potential of the law is significant today. Innovating at the legal level, the strongest site of Arab-Muslim patriarchy, is remarkable, especially during the 2010–11 uprisings in Tunisia, where women’s rights and the relation between state, religion, and the judiciary were core political issues.Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s Ideal Refugees explores a different type of female political agency. The prominence of women as “ideal refugees” in the Polisario camps has been crucial for the political survival of the Polisario leaders since 1975. “Fabricated” images of “empowered” and “liberated” women have become part of the textual and visual representations of the refugees and camp life. By capitalizing on refugee women as “ideal,” “free,” “secular,” and “unique,” the Polisario male leaders secure the humanitarian and political support of Western academics, NGOs, civil society, and solidarity networks. Inadvertently, they highlight the central importance of women in any characterization of notions like “democratic,” “equal,” or even “politically credible.” Ironically, the Polisario’s representation of refugee women as “ideal” was not matched on the ground, as women were often marginalized in the allocation of development aid. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh calls this “repress-entations.”These four books break new ground. They use previously untapped sources, point to a number of new theoretical approaches, stress the importance of comparative analysis, and open several new lines of academic research on the Maghreb.

Understanding faith-based organizations: How FBOs are contrasted with NGOs in international development literature

Organizations with a faith basis play a prominent, sometimes dominant, role within the development sector. In the latter half of the twentieth century, many faith-based organizations (FBOs) – motivated by their religious faith and beliefs – began to work beyond their own borders to improve the material well-being of the world’s poor. However, despite the significant presence of FBOs within the arena of aid and development, little agreement exists within the development literature as to the similarity or distinction between aid agencies that are faith based and secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Drawing on approximately 50 studies, this article reviews the existing literature on FBOs in order to analyze how FBOs are understood in relation to NGOs. This article then suggests a number of different typologies that captures these diverse range of views of how FBOs are understood.

NGOs: Gaining Policy Influence Through Collaborative Networks

Faith-based organizations have been shown to have varying relevance and saliency in urban politics. Past research typically focuses on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as intermediary organizations. The discussions revolve around the distinctly political, financial or administrative/service providing capacities of NGOs. Less explored are the unintended political consequences of their activities.Like their secular counterparts, faith-based organizations can play an essential role in the delivery of local public goods and services. They can become a linchpin of governance, providing much needed social support structures. Faith-based and other non-governmental organizations can act in concert with or under the devolved authority of the government. They can also fill gaps left by both the government and the market. This paper contends that by being consistent and trustworthy service providers, NGOs may change the landscape of stakeholders involved in urban politics. Indeed, even faith-based and secular NGOs that do not explicitly seek to influence policy may do so through the networks in which they affiliate and the entities with which they collaborate to carry out their primary functions.The paper is based on a nested research design with quantitative and qualitative data from public documents, surveys and interviews from several different types of communities, government entities and service providers. This paper examines the degree and extent to which NGOs work with the government and other entities to provide services and how that positions them to influence policy in Michigan’s two largest urban centers. It demonstrates the importance of collaborative networks for a range of governance functions. The paper also illuminates how service provision allows NGOs, faith-based and secular, to gain entree to local political networks and systems and correspondingly parlay that political access into policy influence.

For the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World. By Shawn Teresa Flanigan. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2009. Pp. 184. $75.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewFor the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World. By Shawn Teresa Flanigan. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2009. Pp. 184. $75.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).Megan MeyerMegan MeyerUniversity of Maryland Search for more articles by this author University of MarylandPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreDuring the past decade, support has grown in the United States for efforts to increase participation by faith-based organizations (FBOs) in the delivery of social services. This began with the Charitable Choice provision of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA; 110 Stat. 2105). Opportunities for FBOs to compete with secular and large human service organizations for federal funding increased with President George W. Bush’s executive orders to establish a White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and executive-department centers for faith-based initiatives (Executive Orders 13198 and 13199, 66 Fed. Reg. 21 [January 31, 2001]: 8497−8500). Later, another executive order created a similar office in the U.S. Agency for International Development to increase the access of international FBOs to U.S. funding (Executive Order 13280, 67 Fed. Reg. 241 [December 16, 2002]: 77145–46). Since then, there has been an expansion in social service provision by FBOs as well as lively scholarly debate about the benefits and limitations of this trend.Proponents of faith-based services suggest that FBOs are more deeply rooted in the communities they serve than are secular human service organizations, that FBOs are more cost-effective, and that FBO staff are more caring and committed because they are driven by their faith to serve others. Those critical of expanding FBO service provision caution that staff in service organizations hold implicit power over service recipients and that this makes clients especially vulnerable to conscious or unconscious evangelizing by FBO staff. Critics also worry that federal support for FBOs blurs the line between church and state.For the Love of God addresses some of these issues in an international context. It explores the role that FBOs play in the provision of social services in three countries with recent histories of significant ethnoreligious conflict and violence: Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Flanigan analyzes qualitative data from interviews with more than 100 management-level staff members of 70 social service organizations across the three countries and takes a critical view of FBO behavior. She suggests that FBOs “can be particularly problematic in contexts of religious and ethnic conflict” (2–3).The staff she interviews work in both international and locally controlled organizations. Some are in secular nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and others are in FBOs. Flanigan primarily investigates how FBOs’ religious affiliations and the religious beliefs of their staff influence access to services by individuals of all faiths. She explains that certain groups may be excluded from receiving social services either because the FBO only reaches out to and serves its own ethnoreligious community or because individuals view the FBO with suspicion and do not seek its services. Ultimately, Flannigan seems most interested in how exclusive service provision and attempts by FBOs to evangelize while providing services affect clients’ trust of and participation in their country’s civil society organizations and political processes. However, because she does not interview clients themselves, she admits that her data do not allow her to explore this question.The relatively short book comprises five chapters. In the introductory chapter, Flanigan reviews how processes of “polarization” and “boundary activation” (5) lead to collective violence. She suggests that “FBOs may mirror, reinforce, and reproduce societal divisions that are present in the cultures in which they operate” (3). Each subsequent chapter examines one of Flanigan’s countries of interest, providing first an overview of the political and ethnoreligious history of each country. Each chapter also details the development of the NGO and FBO sectors in that country before analyzing interview data. Specifically, each chapter explores the extent to which staff members are motivated by their faith to work at their agencies, what they perceive the benefits of faith-based service provision to be, whether their organization serves one or more ethnoreligious community, and the extent to which their organization is the sole provider of social services in its target community.In her final chapter, Flanigan adopts a comparative perspective, examining the countries in relation to each other and to her data in the aggregate. One of her conclusions is “that FBO service provision in the contexts of violence will be exclusive based upon ethno-religious identity” (139). She concludes that nonprofit managers and public and private donors should strive to foster inclusive service provision by NGOs and FBOs in developing nations. She offers several practical suggestions for how this can be accomplished: “increasing the sustainability of local secular NGOs, encouraging relationships between local and international NGOs, increasing outreach and referrals among different ethnic and religious groups, initiating joint service provision by FBOs of multiple faiths, providing services in ‘neutral’ locations with approval from ‘neutral’ officials, and creating fair and balanced restrictions on proselytization” (140).For the Love of God presents a rich, contextualized portrait of the attitudes and practices of NGO and FBO staff delivering social services in conflicted regions. In doing so, it provides a window into three emerging and complex civil societies. Grounded in extensive fieldwork, this book contributes to the knowledge base about NGO and FBO social services outside European and American contexts. Overall, the book is interesting reading, but it also has important limitations that cast doubt on its conclusions and implications for future development practice.First, the book’s back cover and introduction lead one to expect a damning critique of FBO activities. For instance, the back cover mentions “dubious and harmful undercurrents,” as well as the “darker more ambivalent side of altruism,” but all the data really indicate is that locally controlled FBOs may be more likely than secular NGOs and international FBOs to provide services exclusively to their own ethnoreligious groups. The author’s conclusion that her data paint a “dismal portrait of religious exclusion” (140) is thus a bit overstated. Although some NGOs and FBOs in her sample (the book is not clear on how many exactly) have clear goals to serve one ethnoreligious group, most of the interviewees express clear desires to decrease ethnic tensions and serve people of all faiths. Most appear to be open to serving any individual who is suffering or disadvantaged. It also appears that many groups, both FBOs and secular NGOs, serve a mixed recipient base. The conclusion that organizations in Flanigan’s sample show “little evidence of active attempts to generate ‘bridging social capital’” is therefore somewhat perplexing (147). Those that are exclusive in their service provision (again, the exact numbers are unclear, but both FBOs and secular NGOs figure among the exclusive organizations) cite a variety of reasons for being exclusive. These reasons include their inability to reach other ethnoreligious groups because of geographic segregation.A further limitation of the book is the absence of a chapter or well-developed section detailing the author’s core research questions, definitions of terms, and data collection and analysis methods. Such a discussion could clarify a number of methodological questions. Why does she choose those three countries? What is her sampling strategy? Were each country’s interviewees chosen intentionally to represent a range of social service types that exist in that country? What was the format of the interviews? For instance, it is unclear if all the interviews were open-ended. Flanigan does not indicate how long they lasted, whether they were tape-recorded, whether a similar interview guide was used for each, or what types of questions were asked. What was the data analysis strategy? The only thing that is clear is that 102 staff members were interviewed across 70 organizations.A section of this sort could also have provided definitions for a number of specialized or specific terms that are left unclear in the book. For instance, one never finds out exactly what the author means by “identify salience” (132), though it figures prominently in her concluding chapter. Even the term “faith-based” could be better defined; the author defines as faith-based those organizations whose members “self-identified the NGO as faith-based” (13). The absence of a well-developed methods section or chapter is puzzling, as it would not only provide transparency but help the reader to understand the extensive nature of the author’s fieldwork.The book would also benefit from a presentation of information on the basic characteristics of the groups examined, particularly as one delves into the final chapter and attempts to understand the author’s conclusions. Because the study’s sample is made up of individual staff, not organizations, it is unclear how many NGOs and FBOs are examined or how many are in each region. How many are locally or internationally controlled? How many are exclusive in their provision of services, and how many are inclusive? What ethnoreligious groups are represented in each country? All these characteristics are central to the author’s arguments, and the concluding chapter shifts back and forth from talking about staff to talking about organizations. It would be useful to have a chart or appendix with these details.Also relevant but missing, albeit not as central to the book’s argument, is information about the range of services that the groups provide, the range of sizes and ages among the groups, and their funding sources. Providing this background information would flesh out the picture that is only partially drawn by the qualitative interview data presented.Ultimately, the scope of the book does not extend to whether service exclusivity among FBOs reinforces or fuels ethnoreligious conflict in these nations. It also does not extend to whether service exclusivity in these locales has negative implications for clients’ perceptions of civil society organizations and their participation in civil society and politics. The author clearly acknowledges that these questions can only be answered by interviews with service recipients and other observational data. This acknowledgement sits oddly with the clear assumption in her introductory and concluding chapters that inclusive social service provision is always to be preferred. But she nowhere fully makes the case that inclusivity is the best choice or even realistic in contexts with recent and wide-scale ethnoreligious violence, significant geographic segregation along ethnoreligious lines, or weak, state-run social service sectors. If the primary goal in the aftermath of violence or natural disasters is to serve the greatest number of people in need, then resonating with a specific ethnoreligious group or tailoring services to one group may be both realistic and effective, especially in the early stages of building or rebuilding civil society. Indeed, in each country-specific chapter, the author details benefits that FBO staff associate with their organization’s faith-based orientation. Some of the benefits include “added credibility” (30) in the community, “increased safety for service recipients” (33), “less conflict and greater trust among staff” (34), and “more effective service provision” (80) because of their ability to use religious networks. This is not to imply that Flanigan is unreasonable in her claim that exclusivity may reinforce or heighten existing divisions. Nor do I suggest that her proposals to increase the inclusivity of services are poorly conceived. However, the book would be enriched by a more critical exploration of the assumptions that exclusive service delivery in these regions is dangerous and that inclusivity in all contexts is most effective or necessary for the development of a healthy civil society.Like all qualitative studies, For the Love of God raises many interesting questions, and the interview data presented for each country are varied as well as rich. This work clearly reinforces the need to examine the efficacy and pitfalls of faith-based initiatives within a contextual analysis. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Social Service Review Volume 85, Number 1March 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/660079 Views: 146Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A NAHḌA OF CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS? HEALTH SERVICE PROVISION AND THE POLITICS OF AID IN PALESTINE

This article discusses the modalities through which religious and secular nongovernmental medical organizations frame their work in relation to their constituencies. It argues that their discourses exemplify a differentiated approach to social work that can be explained in the context of massive aid disbursed to the occupied Palestinian territories. To understand how the political economy of aid impacts the framing of socioreligious movements, this article focuses on a case study of health organizations operating in the Hebron district, where a mixed matrix of charitable organizations, Islamic institutions, and zakat committees work along secular nongovernmental organizations. In the past decade, there seems to have been a revival of charitable organizations, which may shed light on current political victories of the Islamic sector. If Islamic socioreligious movements have been successful in promoting discourses of common good that attract more popular support than secular organizations, it is precisely because such discourses are in open (and sometimes conscious) tension with liberal conceptions such as good governance, strong civil society, and democracy promotion that are relayed generally by secular and professionalized nongovernmental organizations

The contribution of international health volunteers to the health workforce in sub-Saharan Africa.

BackgroundIn this paper, we aim to quantify the contribution of international health volunteers to the health workforce in sub-Saharan Africa and to explore the perceptions of health service managers regarding these volunteers.MethodsRapid survey among organizations sending international health volunteers and group discussions with experienced medical officers from sub-Saharan African countries.ResultsWe contacted 13 volunteer organizations having more than 10 full-time equivalent international health volunteers in sub-Saharan Africa and estimated that they employed together 2072 full-time equivalent international health volunteers in 2005. The numbers sent by secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is growing, while the number sent by development NGOs, including faith-based organizations, is mostly decreasing. The cost is estimated at between US$36 000 and US$50 000 per expatriate volunteer per year. There are trends towards more employment of international health volunteers from low-income countries and of national medical staff.Country experts express more negative views about international health volunteers than positive ones. They see them as increasingly paradoxical in view of the existence of urban unemployed doctors and nurses in most countries. Creating conditions for employment and training of national staff is strongly favoured as an alternative. Only in exceptional circumstances is sending international health volunteers viewed as a defendable temporary measure.ConclusionWe estimate that not more than 5000 full-time equivalent international health volunteers were working in sub-Saharan Africa in 2005, of which not more than 1500 were doctors. A distinction should be made between (1) secular medical humanitarian NGOs, (2)development NGOs, and (3) volunteer organizations, as Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and United Nations volunteers (UNV). They have different views, undergo different trends and are differently appreciated by government officials.International health volunteers contribute relatively small numbers to the health workforce in sub-Saharan Africa, and it seems unlikely that they will do more in the future. In areas where they play a role, their contribution to service delivery is sometimes very significant.

Peoples of the Gran Chaco

Historians interested in Native Americans will find valuable the seven contributions by anthropologists in this book. Examining several groups of the 260,000 indigenous peoples of the Gran Chaco, most authors concentrate on developments of the 1980s and 1990s.The introduction by José Braunstein and Elmer S. Miller surveys the post-contact ethnohistory of the Chaco, now in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay. They outline its geography, ecology, and subsistence patterns. They provide new information on recent Chaco missions and on increasing contacts between indigenous peoples and dominant societies, mostly resulting from military clashes and wage labor. The environmental decline of the Chaco in the late twentieth century has coincided with new Argentine, Paraguayan, and Bolivian policies favoring indigenous autonomy.John-Åke Alvarsson explains how the ‘Weenhayek (Mataco) of Bolivia and Argentina have adapted aboriginal foraging patterns to urban life. He concludes that the pressures of modernity have strengthened the ‘Weenhayek as an ethnolinguistic group.Stephen W. Kidd shows that the Enxet (pejoratively known as Lengua), threatened by development, have resisted assimilation and retained an indigenous morality. They have struggled for the land essential “to resist the forces of globalization that threaten their culture” (p. 57), although the ethnocentric assumptions of official Paraguay are troubling.Silvia María Hirsch reveals the growing political sophistication of the Guaraní, as they identify themselves, of eastern Bolivia. They have evolved new leadership patterns that provide an opportunity for their self-determination and, encouraged by clerical and secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have experienced an ethnic revival.Marcela Mendoza examines family life among the western Toba, formerly hunter-gatherers now largely sedentary. Her impressive contribution summarizes Toba history, their relations with neighbors, and seasonal economic activities. She analyzes traditional male and female roles and shamanic activity. On gender differences, she shows that “girls actually engaged in physical aggression more often than boys” (p. 103), which contradicts “our traditional views about the adaptive value of males as more aggressive than females” (p. 104). She shows the survival of Toba patterns of aggression in sedentary settings.Miller analyzes ethnic consciousness among eastern Toba, whose culture he has investigated over the course of his distinguished career. Observing recent missionary activity, he concludes that many Toba accept the Pentecostal message because it is compatible “with a traditional shamanic ideology that stressed direct encounter with spiritual powers” (p. 114) and “has provided a haven” (p. 130) for Toba traditions.Pablo G. Wright sees the Toba struggle to remain Toba through the experience of Valentín Moreno, who moved from the Chaco to Buenos Aires in 1954 and with whom Wright has maintained a close relationship since 1980. The biographical approach illumines the nature of work, religion, adjustment to urban life, and a new Toba awareness of other indigenous peoples.Many contributors are unapologetic advocates for the people they study, applauding their struggles for human rights and access to land. Reassessing older assumptions, Miller concludes that anthropologists can serve “best as partners, not leaders, in this process” (p. 158).Themes common to these articles include the positive though limited impact of late-twentieth-century missions and other NGOs and the effective resistance of Chaco cultures to the pressures of assimilation. Sadly one concludes with the contributors that the possibilities for future reform are finite. To study the indigenous peoples of the Chaco today, I can recommend no better starting point than this volume. Each essay is meritorious. The contributors represent several nations and a full range of scholarly generations. The coherence of the findings testifies to the reliability of the work.