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Hi all!
I know, I know...I promised a newsletter and today the very first one finally arrives in your inbox! Hopefully you've had a chance to look at the blog once in a while and realized that we're approaching another anniversary: The 300th edition of my weekly link review that started on 17 November 2011!
Previous anniversaries came and went, best synthesized in the 2016 post What I learned from curating thousands of #globaldev articles.
My blog has been a companion to my work for almost 8 years now. I'm happy to share more reflections on those 8 years at some point and right now I feel a bit more optimistic than I did earlier this year lamenting a development blogging crisis. At the end of the day Aidnography is a great public learning tool about communicating development and not feeling defeated by the craziness of our mediatized world.
By the way: I'll be at the AidEx Expo in Brussels next week Wednesday & Thursday and perhaps bump into a reader or two ?!?

Brand new on the blog:
My key learnings about #globaldev 20 years after I took my first undergrad course

And what better way to celebrate 300 #globaldev link reviews than to wrap up this newsletter with an exclusive list of reading recommendations not available on the blog ;)!
Vera Schmitz (MSF) on Iraq: Life after the war with a short post from Northern Iraq that reminded me of the great work MSF is doing both in terms of actual humanitarian work and communicating it. Former Oxfam senior manager Penny Lawrence asks Can big NGOs survive and thrive again?, pointing out a 'trilemma' of finding the perfect spot between international structures, multiple mandates & an urge to stay innovative and agile. Robin Niblett adds a more academic contribution on Rediscovering a sense of purpose: the challenge for western think-tanks asking whether think-tanks need to become more proactive rather than producing (just) 'thinking'. Emmily Kamwendo from the University of Cape Town looks at The political economy of child marriage in Africa and believes that the idea of ‘readiness for marriage’ needs to be understood and interrogated in the context of the communities where the practice continues, e.g. in Malawi. Duncan Green follows up his post from earlier this week reflecting on What did I learn from Wednesday’s arguments over aid, academia and ‘the literature’?. I have many thoughts on this as well, especially when it comes to producing more scholarship that hardly anybody reads anyway...
It's that time of the year again when many of the bad ideas around fundraising are popping up again, so This Christmas, beware evangelical Christians bearing gifts writes Polly Toynbee for the Guardian. Talking about Christmas campaigns:
Iceland's Christmas TV ad banned for being too political (for non-Brits: Iceland is a supermarket chain that used to specialize in frozen food...). But the campaign 'has been banned from TV because it has been deemed to breach political advertising rules. As part of its festive campaign the discount supermarket struck a deal with Greenpeace to rebadge an animated short film featuring an orangutan and the destruction of its rainforest habitat at the hands of palm oil growers' write Sarah Butler & Mark Sweney for the Guardian.
Aftab Nasir from Convivial Thinking shares a reminder Why post-/decolonial perspectives matter!, concluding: 'These perspectives matter because they are embedded in the living realities of those on whose behalf we academics want to speak.' And in Way Beyond Poverty and Injustice: Action Dialogue with John Gaventa and Marina Apgar of IDS Hilary Bradbury, editor of Action Research, talks about participatory research frontiers.
On a happier note: Quartz Africa discovers the growing appeal of Afrobeats thanks to the global Nigerian diaspora.
"Redesign Democracy will appeal above all to people who enjoy indulging in fantasies of omnipotence and are themselves not personally affected by the problems they seek to “solve.” It is a means by which the self-image of a creative elite is cultivated, an elite that fancies itself as standing above the fray, improving society from its privileged position without getting its hands dirty. But who decided that design thinkers should serve as society’s innovation department?"
(Tim Seitz in The “Design Thinking” Delusion)
In other news: I guess we can all agree that It’s time to stop spending billions on cheap conference swag (Elizabeth Segran on Fast Company). Tim Seitz dissects The “Design Thinking” Delusion for Jacobin. And in A PEN Ten Interview with Pussy Riot Founder Nadya Tolokonnikova we are reminded about the importance of satire for resistance:
'In your mind, what is the importance of satire to resistance?  Mostly it’s a question of self-preservation and emotional hygiene. If you’re deadly serious all the time, you have little chance to overcome repressive structures. Being deadly serious is reserved for those structures. They can afford it, you can’t.'
And finally: Helen Kara on The ethics of conference speakers with a reminder to really, really make an effort to plan diverse panels and a research article from First Monday for those who are interested in academia and social media: Scholars’ temporal participation on, temporary disengagement from, and return to Twitter.
That's it for this first newsletter-feedback gladly accepted. Could this format complement or even replace the link review blog post ?!?
Have a great weekend & start into the new week!
"At the end of the day, when all ‘white Land Cruiser’ jokes are told, all ‘white elephant’ projects are evaluated and all voluntouristic photos by white people are uploaded to Instagram, development in general and development communication in particular will continue to have an important role as witness to injustice and marginalization, as an amplifier of dissent and as a connector between cultures, stories and those who need a virtual or physical hand that reminds them of humanity. At least that motivates me to keep going…"
(Aidnography interview in 2015)
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