Molly Sundberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 3693938 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Molly Sundberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Molly |
| FAMILY NAME | Sundberg |
| SIGNATURE | SUNDBERG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stockholm University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0801-7451 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Question of Interest: Profits and Morality in Private Sector Aid
Profit-making instruments and institutions are gaining momentum in the international development industry. How is this possibly influencing moral understandings of aid? This essay explores that question through the moral reasoning of some of the professionals charged with managing private sector aid: guarantee experts, investment managers in development finance institutions, and consultants working in development finance in western Europe and Eas…
From non- to for-profits, expats to locals, and the personal to the professional: Relocating the scholarly gaze in “Aidland”
In this paper I reflect on my anthropological research on Tanzanian foreign aid experts and private sector development professionals in Kenya and Europe. Their cases serve as examples of three possible shifts in attention in research on aid workers: from Euro-American expats to development professionals from the global South; from state agencies and NGOs to the growing field of profit-making aid; and from the personal to the professional. The pap…
For the Country, the Corporation and the Métier: Alternative Drivers Among Practitioners in Private Sector Aid
The financialization of development and the outsourcing of aid work to contracted businesses are strengthening the role of alternative drivers among practitioners engaged in international development work. These relate to but also transcend the dichotomy between altruism and personal self-interest, which often frames scholarly research on aid worker motivations. Focusing on consultants and development finance experts, this article highlights thre…
A Quest for State Contracts: Public Procurement and the Shaping of Competitiveness in Development Consulting
Local Recruits in Development Finance Institutions: Relocating Global North-South Divides in the International Aid Industry
This text explores locally recruited staff within a growing category of organisations in the international aid industry: Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). DFIs are banks that offer risk capital to development projects in the global South, increasingly using tax-funded aid money. Based on interviews with 13 DFI investment managers, I show how Kenyan DFI staff challenge three of the signature attributes commonly assigned to local development…
Building Trust, Gaining Truth: The Relational Work of National Staff in Foreign Aid Agencies
This article centers on a particular category of foreign aid workers: the national or local desk officers employed by public foreign donors to run the daily administration of development cooperation in aid recipient countries. These professionals transcend the socio-professional binary between donor and foreign and recipient and local that is often constructed in anthropological research on foreign aid and its individual actors. While officially …
National Staff in Public Foreign Aid: Aid Localization in Practice
This article spotlights national desk officers working in technical positions in public foreign aid agencies. These locally recruited employees share with their posted colleagues the same qualifications, formal rank, and job descriptions. As such, they actualize the concept of aid localization, which is used in donor discourse and scholarly research to describe practices of employing host country staff in partner countries. However, while donors …
Donors dealing with 'aid effectiveness' inconsistencies: National staff in foreign aid agencies in Tanzania
In the name of ‘aid effectiveness,’ public foreign aid is meant to bean equal partnership between donors and recipients of aid, while atthe same time proving its efficiency to taxpayers in donor countries.Moreover, as state institutions, public aid agencies are required tofollow their own bureaucratic regulations, and increasingly so alsothose of their partner institutions, while simultaneously managingaid in the most cost-efficient way. This art…
Par le corps et pour l'État: L' itorero et les techniques réflexives du corps au Rwanda
Lorsque le corps des citoyens devient objet d'instruction idéologique, que pouvons-nous en déduire de la relation entre subjectivités politiques et techniques du corps, ou entre la performance corporelle prise sur l'instant et des expériences politiques passées ? Cet article se fonde sur une analyse ethnographique du programme d'éducation civique appelé itorero au Rwanda. En étudiant la participation de quelques citoyens rwandais à ce programme e…
Training for Model Citizenship: An Ethnography of Civic Education and State-Making in Rwanda
This book explores the state in post-genocide Rwanda through an ethnography of a state-run civic education program and everyday forms of government. In 2007, the Rwandan government introduced a nation
Training for Model Citizenship: An Ethnography of Civic Education and State-Making in Rwanda
This thesis addresses how government in Rwanda plays out in practice and how it affects lived experiences of state power and citizenship. Two decades after the genocide, Rwanda has come to be associated both with security, development, and stability, on the one hand, and with state repression and coercion, on the other. In 2007, a nationwide programme was launched to teach all Rwandans about the politically dominant vision of the model Rwandan ci…
Ethnographic Challenges Encounteredin Rwanda’s Social Topography: The Researcher as Navigator
La recherche sur l’éducation civique présente des défis à l’anthropologue du fait que le programme d’enseignement aborde des sujets délicats comme les identités nationales, l’histoire ou la justice d’un pays. Quand le pays en question a été, dans un passé récent, l’objet de violence de masse et se trouve à présent soumis à contrôle étatique étroit et tatillon, les choses deviennent encore plus compliquées. Si l’on ajoute à cela une chercheure aya…
Donors dealing with 'aid effectiveness' inconsistencies: National staff in foreign aid agencies in Tanzania
In the name of ‘aid effectiveness,’ public foreign aid is meant to bean equal partnership between donors and recipients of aid, while atthe same time proving its efficiency to taxpayers in donor countries.Moreover, as state institutions, public aid agencies are required tofollow their own bureaucratic regulations, and increasingly so alsothose of their partner institutions, while simultaneously managingaid in the most cost-efficient way. This art…
Building Trust, Gaining Truth: The Relational Work of National Staff in Foreign Aid Agencies
This article centers on a particular category of foreign aid workers: the national or local desk officers employed by public foreign donors to run the daily administration of development cooperation in aid recipient countries. These professionals transcend the socio-professional binary between donor and foreign and recipient and local that is often constructed in anthropological research on foreign aid and its individual actors. While officially …
National Staff in Public Foreign Aid: Aid Localization in Practice
This article spotlights national desk officers working in technical positions in public foreign aid agencies. These locally recruited employees share with their posted colleagues the same qualifications, formal rank, and job descriptions. As such, they actualize the concept of aid localization, which is used in donor discourse and scholarly research to describe practices of employing host country staff in partner countries. However, while donors …
Ethnographic Challenges Encounteredin Rwanda’s Social Topography: The Researcher as Navigator
La recherche sur l’éducation civique présente des défis à l’anthropologue du fait que le programme d’enseignement aborde des sujets délicats comme les identités nationales, l’histoire ou la justice d’un pays. Quand le pays en question a été, dans un passé récent, l’objet de violence de masse et se trouve à présent soumis à contrôle étatique étroit et tatillon, les choses deviennent encore plus compliquées. Si l’on ajoute à cela une chercheure aya…
Training for Model Citizenship: An Ethnography of Civic Education and State-Making in Rwanda
This thesis addresses how government in Rwanda plays out in practice and how it affects lived experiences of state power and citizenship. Two decades after the genocide, Rwanda has come to be associated both with security, development, and stability, on the one hand, and with state repression and coercion, on the other. In 2007, a nationwide programme was launched to teach all Rwandans about the politically dominant vision of the model Rwandan ci…
Training for Model Citizenship: An Ethnography of Civic Education and State-Making in Rwanda
This book explores the state in post-genocide Rwanda through an ethnography of a state-run civic education program and everyday forms of government. In 2007, the Rwandan government introduced a nation
Par le corps et pour l'État: L' itorero et les techniques réflexives du corps au Rwanda
Lorsque le corps des citoyens devient objet d'instruction idéologique, que pouvons-nous en déduire de la relation entre subjectivités politiques et techniques du corps, ou entre la performance corporelle prise sur l'instant et des expériences politiques passées ? Cet article se fonde sur une analyse ethnographique du programme d'éducation civique appelé itorero au Rwanda. En étudiant la participation de quelques citoyens rwandais à ce programme e…
National Staff in Public Foreign Aid: Aid Localization in Practice
This article spotlights national desk officers working in technical positions in public foreign aid agencies. These locally recruited employees share with their posted colleagues the same qualifications, formal rank, and job descriptions. As such, they actualize the concept of aid localization, which is used in donor discourse and scholarly research to describe practices of employing host country staff in partner countries. However, while donors …
Donors dealing with 'aid effectiveness' inconsistencies: National staff in foreign aid agencies in Tanzania
In the name of ‘aid effectiveness,’ public foreign aid is meant to bean equal partnership between donors and recipients of aid, while atthe same time proving its efficiency to taxpayers in donor countries.Moreover, as state institutions, public aid agencies are required tofollow their own bureaucratic regulations, and increasingly so alsothose of their partner institutions, while simultaneously managingaid in the most cost-efficient way. This art…
Building Trust, Gaining Truth: The Relational Work of National Staff in Foreign Aid Agencies
This article centers on a particular category of foreign aid workers: the national or local desk officers employed by public foreign donors to run the daily administration of development cooperation in aid recipient countries. These professionals transcend the socio-professional binary between donor and foreign and recipient and local that is often constructed in anthropological research on foreign aid and its individual actors. While officially …
Local Recruits in Development Finance Institutions: Relocating Global North-South Divides in the International Aid Industry
This text explores locally recruited staff within a growing category of organisations in the international aid industry: Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). DFIs are banks that offer risk capital to development projects in the global South, increasingly using tax-funded aid money. Based on interviews with 13 DFI investment managers, I show how Kenyan DFI staff challenge three of the signature attributes commonly assigned to local development…
From non- to for-profits, expats to locals, and the personal to the professional: Relocating the scholarly gaze in “Aidland”
In this paper I reflect on my anthropological research on Tanzanian foreign aid experts and private sector development professionals in Kenya and Europe. Their cases serve as examples of three possible shifts in attention in research on aid workers: from Euro-American expats to development professionals from the global South; from state agencies and NGOs to the growing field of profit-making aid; and from the personal to the professional. The pap…
For the Country, the Corporation and the Métier: Alternative Drivers Among Practitioners in Private Sector Aid
The financialization of development and the outsourcing of aid work to contracted businesses are strengthening the role of alternative drivers among practitioners engaged in international development work. These relate to but also transcend the dichotomy between altruism and personal self-interest, which often frames scholarly research on aid worker motivations. Focusing on consultants and development finance experts, this article highlights thre…
A Quest for State Contracts: Public Procurement and the Shaping of Competitiveness in Development Consulting
A Question of Interest: Profits and Morality in Private Sector Aid
Profit-making instruments and institutions are gaining momentum in the international development industry. How is this possibly influencing moral understandings of aid? This essay explores that question through the moral reasoning of some of the professionals charged with managing private sector aid: guarantee experts, investment managers in development finance institutions, and consultants working in development finance in western Europe and Eas…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · International Development and Aid (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Public relations (5 works) · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development (5 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (4 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (4 works)