Abstract

Over the past few decades, the development discourse has been subject to various criticisms. Instead of rejecting these criticisms, however, the discourse absorbed at least parts of them. This led to discursive incoherencies. These appear as new concepts that seem incompatible with the initial development discourse and the power relations on which it relies. The notion of partnership, which refers to mutual trust and respect, is one of the discourse’s most prominent incoherent features. In the everyday cooperation between Jordanian women’s organisations and their North-based donors, however, partnership is an ideal, rather than an actual practice, and is frequently arbitrarily misinterpreted and misused by the donors. Through a case study grounded in a two-month participant observation of one Jordanian women’s organisation and a series of qualitative interviews with their staff members and donor representatives conducted in Jordan in 2017 and 2018, the paper explores how the organisation and their staff members intentionally resist their donors’ behaviour by performing acts of rightful resistance.

摘要

在过去的几十年里，发展话语受到了各种批评。然而，话语并没有拒绝这些批评，而是至少吸收了其中的一部分。这导致了话语的不连贯性。这些似乎是与最初的发展话语及其所依赖的权力关系不相容的新概念。伙伴关系的概念是指相互信任和尊重，是该话语最突出的不连贯特征之一。然而，在约旦妇女组织与其北部捐助者之间的日常合作中，伙伴关系是一种理想而非实际做法，经常被捐助者任意曲解和滥用。通过进行正当的抵抗行为来故意抵抗捐赠者的行为。