ABSTRACT

Successful NGO development and academic partnerships have, at their core, effective intercultural and multilingual communication and translation practices and processes, including critical recognition of the role of “fixers”, who act as the “interface” between local participants and academic NGO impact-assessment researchers. Examining what we call the “contrôleuse” in development research projects in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, we show the need, as in journalism, to critically interrogate this intermediary role. Identifying and incorporating the role into research funding and design can be a simple and practical contribution towards challenging inequalities, including contrôleuse perspectives and increasing participatory impact-assessment and development practices.

摘要

成功的非政府组织发展和学术伙伴关系的核心是有效的跨文化和多语言交流和翻译实践和过程，包括对“固定者”角色的批判性认可，他们充当当地参与者和学术非政府组织影响评估之间的“接口”研究人员。通过考察布基纳法索、马里和尼日尔的发展研究项目中我们所谓的“控制”，我们表明，就像在新闻业中一样，需要批判性地询问这种中介角色。确定并将该角色纳入研究资助和设计可以是对挑战不平等的简单而实际的贡献，包括控制观点和增加参与性影响评估和发展实践。