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Pitying the Third World: towards moreprogressive emotional responses todevelopment education in schoolsRachel A.M. Tallona & Andrew McGregorb

a School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, VictoriaUniversity of Wellington, New Zealandb Department of Environment and Geography, MacquarieUniversity, North Ryde, AustraliaPublished online: 03 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Rachel A.M. Tallon & Andrew McGregor (2014) Pitying the Third World: towardsmore progressive emotional responses to development education in schools, Third World Quarterly,35:8, 1406-1422

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2014.946259

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Pitying the Third World: towardsmore progressive emotional responsesto development education in schoolsRachel A.M. Tallona* and Andrew McGregorb

aSchool of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand;bDepartment of Environment and Geography, Macquarie University, North Ryde, Australia

The development sector appeals to emotions in its marketing andeducation material to raise awareness and funds for its work. Muchof this material is now directed at schools, where young people formlong-lasting opinions about development and the developing world.This paper draws upon research with 118 students in five NewZealand/Aotearoa secondary schools to show that young people arenot passive receptors of development marketing and education.Instead, they question the activities of international NGOs involved inaid work and how they are meant to feel or act in response. Weexamine these emotional responses of young people and thedemoralising feelings of guilt, sadness and scepticism that arise, oftenalongside an innocent paternalism and a desire to help. We outlinepossibilities for more socially progressive forms of developmenteducation, based on the recognition that young people are questioningold ways of doing aid work and looking for something new. Wechallenge NGOs to be part of new forms of global connectedness thatdisrupt old ‘us and them’ binaries based on difference, and instead topursue new linkages based on shared feelings of empathy, friendshipand social justice.

Keywords: NGOs; marketing; young people; emotions; campaigns;development; education

It’s a bit heartbreaking knowing, well just knowing that you get better things, thatyou’ve got a warm house, heater...clothes, food, just a place...and yet they proba-bly live in slums or sleep out in the middle of nowhere cus they don’t really havethat kind of thing and it’s just really upsetting and I just...I just don’t knowwhether to donate but yeah...I just feel really guilty when I don’t. (Secondaryschool boy in focus group)

*Corresponding author. Email: Rachel.tallon@vuw.ac.nz

© 2014 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com

Third World Quarterly, 2014Vol. 35, No. 8, 1406–1422, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2014.946259

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IntroductionDevelopment can be thought of as a set of practices, an industry and an imagi-nary. It relies upon and actively cultivates particular emotions and attitudesbased on an imagined geography that divides the world into First and ThirdWorlds, developed and developing countries, and global North and South.1 Suchdivisions, while proving useful for solidarity movements in the South and forhighlighting patterns of global inequality, have also been criticised by activists,post-development and postcolonial scholars for their homogenising tendenciesand for the politics of difference they inscribe.2 The immense diversity of theworld becomes reduced to crude geographic assumptions about the haves andhave-nots, in which class relations, change and diversity within these binary cat-egories are obscured. That such categories endure is not new but there is limitedresearch exploring how these neo-colonial ‘us and them’ mentalities are sus-tained and reproduced amid rapidly changing global economic landscapes. Herewe respond to Baillie Smith’s call for development studies scholars to ‘criticallyanalyse the way in which public imaginaries of development in the GlobalNorth interact with the subjectivities of Northern publics to shape their under-standings and actions with respect to development issues’.3 Understanding howdevelopment imaginaries are created and reproduced provides insights into howthey might be improved and mobilised in more socially progressive ways.

In this paper we are interested in how development imaginaries and emotionsare created and reproduced within schools, a hard-to-access and under-repre-sented area in development studies. Specifically we explore how young peopleare responding to international nongovernmental organisation (INGO) campaignsand educational materials within New Zealand secondary schools, focusing onthe emotions they elicit in regard to development and developing countries. It iswell recognised that INGOs play an important role in development education;however, this role can clash with their drive to raise funds.4 People are oftenportrayed at their most vulnerable in order to elicit interest and funding amongaudiences who may not otherwise know or care about the plight of ‘distant oth-ers’. Previous research has focused on the factors shaping INGO media productionand how adult audiences receive them.5 Far from being docile receptors, audi-ences are active in co-constructing meanings about development, critically inter-preting marketing material according to their own experiences and personaldispositions.6 Dogra found in her analysis of UK INGOs, for example, that, byre-inscribing difference, despite trying to bring people together, INGO marketingcan contribute to negative attitudes towards those in the global South.7 INGOsface a particular dilemma: how to contribute to global solidarity and progressivecollectivist agendas when reliant upon campaigns that are often more profitableif they draw on well established divides of givers and receivers. The dilemmabrings forth wider issues, such as the morality of representation, the dangers ofthe emotive pull and the call for dignity in representation amid paternalisticsubjectivities.8

Our work approaches this topic by drawing upon the renewed interest inemotions within the social sciences, particularly human geography. Previouslyseen as irrelevant or inferior to rational thought, emotional research explores ‘akey area of human experience – one steeped in those feelings and emotionswhich make the world as we know and live it, yet which remain spectacularly

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unacknowledged in much of what we do, and in virtually every “policy” thatwe recommend’.9 Emotional connections and constructions of places and peopleshape human interactions and relationships in ways that continually betray mod-els based on purely rational human behaviour. While this emotional turn remainsat the margins of development studies, we feel it should be much more central,as aid and development programmes are riven with complex feelings such asempathy, compassion, gratitude, pity, guilt, fear, envy and hope. As Wright hasobserved in a rare foray into the emotions of international development:

[emotions] work through boundaries to create like and unlike. They produce divi-sions separating people, cultures and society, they perpetuate and (re)create colo-nialisms and racisms, yet they also bring people, places and things together, andare an important part of the visioning and production of development narratives.10

Indeed, emotional pulls encourage us to care about distant others while at thesame time distancing us from those others in social, cultural and emotional ways– they are thus seen by some in the sector as ‘a double edged sword’.11 AsAhmed writes, ‘emotions may involve “being moved” for some, precisely by“fixing” others as “having” certain characteristics’.12

There is very little research on how young people negotiate developmenteducation and campaigning activities that take place in schools and the alterna-tive readings and emotions they may engender. In these early years young peo-ple are likely to form long-lasting attitudes about development, making schoolsvital spaces for challenging neo-colonial divides. In New Zealand, as elsewhere,INGOs provide development education materials and run aid campaigns throughclassrooms. Our study explores how INGO activities appear to be producing cyni-cal and paternalistic attitudes among young people. Rather than disrupting neo-colonial imaginaries, INGO messages may be entrenching them.13 By presentingthe voice of young people in this paper, we offer INGOs new insights into howtheir marketing is being received and how young people may be looking forsomething more in terms of global relationships. We end with suggestions forINGOs and development educators to adapt their messaging to disrupt, rather thanentrench, negative ways of seeing others. By altering education we see opportu-nities for generating more progressive development imaginaries and, hopefully,improved global social relations.

Development education in the classroomDevelopment education conducted by INGOs originally emphasised social injus-tice, informed by radical theorists such as Paolo Freire.14 Bryan has argued thatsince the 1980s, however, Northern INGOs have lost this radical edge andbecome depoliticised, reducing much of what passes as development educationto campaigns based on ‘fun, fasting and fundraising’.15 The short-term campaignstyle emphasis engages young people for a while, but does not necessarily pro-mote positive long-term attitudes about development or understanding of sys-temic issues and the need for change. The structural causes of poverty and thepractices of Northern people in the global economy are side-lined as the feel-good charitable act becomes prominent. Fundraising often appears to win overcritical and deep thinking about development.

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Bourn has noted that critical debates around what is meant by developmentand its relationship to global social change are largely absent in education set-tings.16 This is a significant observation because such debates usually take placewithin the development sector and within academia through platforms such asthis journal. At the level of educating young people in schools such debatesmay be abbreviated or missing. In-class or school-wide campaigns that offershort-term simplistic solutions based on small financial or time sacrifices avoidmuch more complicated structural issues.17 Bourn cites European Union con-cerns that much of what passes for development education is surface awarenessof issues and INGO campaigning, with ‘minimal attention given to deeper learn-ing and understanding’.18 In Ireland, for example, research indicates that atschool the presence of INGOs does not always deepen understanding and mayreinforce stereotypical thinking and a charitable engagement with the Other thatis primarily one-way.19 Western-led, intervention-style humanitarianism is oftenpresented as the solution to global inequality, obscuring the vital role of theWest in creating the conditions of that inequality. s Ahmed explains, ‘the Westis the one that gives to others only insofar as it is forgotten what the West hasalready taken in its very capacity to give in the first place’.20 INGOs’ campaignefforts with young people can be criticised for enabling a forgetting of history,of complicity, to enable a positive view of the sector and for the funds to flow.

Duke noted that the very nature of development education in its charitableform may undo development education in its political form.21 The presence ofINGOs in the formal development education sector is complicated by its assumedmoral authority and the call to feel and act in certain ways. Altruistic emotionssuch as care, empathy, pity and compassion are used and expected in the learn-ing process. Emotions can be used to mobilise students to take action in class-room campaigns, an attractive option for some teachers who wish to encourageactive and caring students. Certainly there are many potential benefits in engag-ing students at an emotional level to become active participants in seeking solu-tions to development challenges, if taught through a lens of social justice,solidarity, respect and commitment. However, as Spelman notes, emotions canbe based on ‘fixing’ difference: ‘compassion, like other forms of caring, mayalso reinforce the very pattern of economic and political subordination responsi-ble for such suffering’.22

There is limited research on the role of emotions in shaping young people’sunderstandings of distant places and spaces, whether related to global geopoli-tics,23 or to school education.24 Todd raises questions about the type of learningthat takes place when empathy for the Other enters the classroom.25 She asks,what are the educational outcomes when emotion is employed in relation tolearning about the global South? How is a student assessed on their responseto need? Taylor is concerned that the emotional campaigns waged by INGOs leadto one-off solutions to global poverty and offer teachers an easy option of clo-sure for a topic.26 The unintended result can be a simplistic model of ‘afterwe’ve fundraised, we can forget about them’ when it comes to learning aboutpoverty. Going one step further, Standish has controversially argued that subjectdisciplines like geography are in danger of being hijacked by sectors such asinternational development.27 Critical thinking about development, aid and char-ity can be erased or reduced to questions about how INGOs spend their money

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and which INGO the class should support. The concern is that, when INGO cam-paigns become education about the Other and how we can help them, certainuncritical ideas are learnt and subjectivities such as givers and receivers areformed. Combined with the moral authority of INGOs these ideas become verypowerful in forming impressions on young people in the North about the globalSouth and about who they are in relation to the global South.28

Andreotti has identified divergent aspects of the dilemma.29 On the one side,learning about the distant and vulnerable Other through a traditional charitableapproach can create unwanted paternalistic attitudes, closing down other waysof thinking about development and distant peoples. Alternatively, a more self-reflexive and critical approach may foster cynicism and apathy towards develop-ment, inadvertently closing down altruism instead of fostering goodwill andaction. While these polar opposites may be simplistic, given the diversity ofviews there are about development, we know from our own experiences as aca-demic educators teaching critical development studies that it is a struggle to bal-ance development critiques with development achievements to avoid thecynicism that can disable the best, brightest and most caring students. Our argu-ment is not that emotion should somehow be deleted from development educa-tion; such an approach is not feasible, nor desirable. Quite the opposite: webelieve development education at schools should create passionate and emotion-ally committed students seeking to overcoming injustice, global inequality anddebilitating stereotypes in progressive and inspiring ways.

Exploring the INGO sector in New ZealandOur case study is based in New Zealand/Aotearoa, a multicultural society with astrong indigenous presence and close ties to nearby Pacific neighbours. The his-tory of INGOs in New Zealand mirrors that of the UK, with strong growth anddiversification after the Ethiopian Famine of 1983–84. Small observed that thenature of the INGO sector was relatively radical until the mid-1990s, when Oxfamentered the New Zealand market and created, according to Small, an era of com-petition.30 This involved increased marketing within schools and the growth ofdevelopment education specialist organisations, such as DevZone, until a changeof government and aid policy in 2008.31 Alongside these changes has been anexpansion of the formal curriculum and qualifications offered to young peopleat school since 2007. Course material and assessments that qualify for theNational Certificate in Education Achievement (NCEA) can be written by thoseoutside the education sector and INGOs have expressed an interest in providingsuch material.32 By engaging with the work that INGOs do, students can gaincredits towards achieving their NCEA. Fundraising for the Other can be an educa-tional outcome.

Within the formal post-primary school sector, World Vision is the largestsupplier of both classroom resources and child sponsorship programmes in NewZealand. They hold an annual event, the 40-Hour Famine, which is well publi-cised across many media platforms. Over one-third of all New Zealand second-ary schools take part in this event, which raises money for a different WorldVision project each year. By most accounts the students enjoy the event,although little research has been done to assess the effectiveness of this national

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campaign in educating young people about global issues. Other INGOs with astrong presence in schools include Amnesty International, Volunteer ServiceAbroad, SurfAid, Rotary, Trade Aid, Caritas and UNICEF. Many of these INGOsprovide classroom resources which often contain contextual information regard-ing current issues. Visiting speakers and events are also offered, as well as sup-port for student-led groups in school.

Many INGOs link their issues with the social sciences learning area.33 Oneof the key educative strategies of INGOs is to provide web-based informationfor both teachers and students on various projects or issues overseas. In theresearch presented below, teachers commented that they drew on INGO web-sites and material for information about issues or places in the global South.Access to a variety of Southern perspectives was seen as difficult to obtainand so the INGO sector supplied most, if not all, the information about aregion or an event for many teachers. INGOs often underestimate their influ-ence, although, encouragingly, many New Zealand INGOs engage with debatesabout representation within education and marketing through workshops andother means.

Methodological approachThe research presented here was conducted in New Zealand schools in 2011–12as part of a broader doctoral project that analysed how students and teachersused and responded to INGO material in classrooms.34 An innovativemethodology employed focus group discussions involving 118 year 10 students(aged 13–15 years) drawn from social studies classes, alongside separateinterviews with their teachers. All data collection activities were carried out onlocation at the schools. The participants shared their thoughts and opinionsaround a variety of issues concerning development, charity, imagery and inter-national relations. For the students there was an individual questionnaire,designed as an ‘opener’ to the research, followed in the next lesson by a focusgroup activity which involved answering 15 questions concerning the topic. Intotal five schools and six classes were part of the study. The schools were pur-posively selected for diversity in terms of geography, multicultural mix andsocioeconomic status.

For each class a brief explanation of the research and relevant terms wasgiven verbally at the beginning of the exercise. The emphasis was on informingthe students that there were no right or wrong answers; instead we were inter-ested in their opinions. The teacher was absent from the classroom for both theactivities and the students were reminded that they remained anonymousthroughout the research. In total 98 questionnaires were collected and 28 focusgroups of around 30 minutes were recorded. The student-moderated focusgroups varied in size from two to six, with the average being four. Bothactivities had open-ended questions and images (some supplied by INGOs) tostimulate discussion. The students were asked to discuss development educationbased on written questions and prompts provided by the researchers. Theteachers were interviewed for a separate component of the research and are notreported on here. The transcripts and questionnaires were analysed using theNvivo programme, with our findings described below.

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Mapping the emotional response towards the global South and towardsINGOsA standard coding format was developed to identify various emotions and attitudes,such as sadness, guilt and a desire to help. Berg makes a recommendation that con-tent analysis of transcribed text should be inclusive of both manifest content, thoseelements that are evident and easily expressed, and latent content, the deeper morenuanced meanings.35 Emotions such as anger, annoyance, sadness and pity weremeasured through the nature of the voice and the feelings being expressed. Duringthe transcribing process extra notation was developed to ensure that a systematicprocess was followed so that, if a chuckle or small laugh was heard it was correctlyidentified according to its intent. This identification needed to be verified at a laterdate so that, on a second or consequent hearing, the same intent was identified. Theemotions and attitudes identified are listed in Appendix 1.

In Figure 1 we detail the emotions expressed by students when discussingthe developing world. From this mapping it can be seen that young peoplerespond to the vulnerable depictions of people and places in the global Southwith feelings of sadness and a desire to help in some manner. These includedusing phrases such as ‘I feel so sad when I see…’ and ‘I feel really sorry forthem’. At the same time students expressed disbelief about the scale of poverty,with some questioning why the situations were often so precarious for people.As the focus group questions proceeded to discuss the INGO sector, a turn in theemotional account was clearly observable (Figure 2). Students displayed anincreasing amount of scepticism towards the sector and a conflict of desires: onthe one hand, wanting to help; on the other hand, showing feelings of guilt andannoyance at having to negotiate the demand to help.

Figure 1. Emotions and attitudes evident in talk about the developing world (actualnumber of references).

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Students often expressed negative emotions and attitudes towards the INGO

sector, while also believing INGOs ‘did good work’ in developing countries.These complex responses mirror findings involving older audiences, withstudents using similar repertoires or tropes to defend themselves against takingany action.36 In work by Seu three common repertoires were identified: attack-ing the message, attacking the messenger and attacking the nature of the actionon offer.37 All three were in evidence in our research.

First, in attacking the message, the students found fault with the images usedand were very media-savvy concerning the marketing methods INGOs use:

B2: But ads are advertising World Vision and stuff and always they get the worstB4: Yeah they always show the worst things and make you…and then they make you

think it’s like that all around the world.

[School B, Group E]

G1: Some organisations always use the same pictures of the same places and it getskind of old and outdated.

B2: They don’t really show the difference that they’re making.

[School B, Group D]

In both these extracts, the students question the imagery, leading them to beconcerned not so much about the plight of the Other, but about the way inwhich the INGO is using marketing as a tool. They have started to see themselvesas targets of emotional manipulation, as this extract shows:

Figure 2. Emotions and attitudes evident in talk about INGOs.

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B1:I don’t really like these photos cos they’re all kind of depressing and they kindof make you feel guilty and bad and that’s not very nice. But they work, butotherwise they’re gloomy to have around in our classroom.

[School C, Group B]

While this is not the response INGO marketers are seeking it is hopeful for thoseseeking to break down neo-colonial imaginaries. The young people are seeingpast the message and recognising that there is much more diversity in countriesthan what is represented in INGO campaigning. In this case their criticism is beingused to legitimise inaction. However, we will return to the more positive ele-ments of this response in the conclusion.

In attacking the messenger students displayed conflicting opinions. Generallythey agreed that the sector, on the whole, did good work but could stillimprove:

B2: I reckon they do lots. They make wells and that, in those countries.

[School E, Group A]

B2: I reckon some of them [INGOs] are scammers, I really do, cus they say ‘Oh, all themoney will go to them’, but to be honest, how much actually does go towardsthose who need it? Because they probably spend about three-quarters of it onthemselves and only a quarter of that goes to the people who need it and that’squite sad because that means there’s less for them but more for those...for thosewho say they’re gonna give the money to someone else.

[School C, Group B]

Criticism of INGO expenditure was the most common in terms of attacking themessenger, a raison d’être for not donating that is well established among adultNorthern audiences.38

In attacking the action, students criticised both child sponsorship initiativesand more general INGO campaigns oriented towards financial donations:

G1: I think that the words on the poster ‘Donate now, you can make a difference’ areall bullshit really. I think that we can’t make a difference as one person to oneperson. They say that if you provide $40 a month you’re going to make a changeto the whole community and yet they only have one person showing on the pos-ter. I don’t think that anyone can make a single difference to the whole country,there’s probably a million people that are in poverty in that one single commu-nity...yet they’re only showing one person that looks the worst and I think that’sunfair not only to the person but to everyone else in their little village.

B1: I um...also agree with that opinion, but then, there’s another way of looking atit...if you are helping um...one child, one community, one town or city that’s oneless that you’ll need to help in the future, or hope that you won’t need to help.But also, that there may not be as much money as we think going into it.

G2: Yeah you can help one person, but you have to keep helping them.

[School B, Group D]

Young people also drew upon their age and life situation as a defence not totake action, even though they were concerned about the situations of others:

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G3: I get it how they keep wanting to put the photos up there but it kind of does comea point where you kind of stop telling us to do something about it.

G2: Cus we can’t really do anything.G4: Only adults can do something.G2: Yeah, and adults influence us and then they can’t just take a picture and then,

‘Kids, do something now!’G3: Yeah, we’re not the ones that have jobs.G2: Yeah, we’re not even old enough to get jobs to pay for like...to sponsor a child...

[School E, Group D]

Our research suggests that the defensive attitudes evident in adult responses toINGO marketing are being learnt at school age. Students adopt these attitudes asthey tire of INGO-style development education and continual demands for assis-tance.39 Audiences may feel ‘bad’ that they have these antagonistic feelings, butthis only fuels further resentment of the INGO making the demand. They resentbeing made to feel that saving others is their responsibility. Some young peoplemay be becoming disillusioned and turning away from the sector as the narrowsubjectivity of a fiscal global citizenship is presented uncritically. Such responsesare concerning for those seeking to engage youth and inspire new ways ofaddressing global inequalities.

Paternalistic attitudesWhen students did engage and want to help, their discussions often took on apaternalistic tone. Andreotti suggests paternal attitudes derive from feelings ofwanting to assist those who are considered needy and also feelings that, as onecan help, that one is superior in some manner.40 It is this complexity that presentsboth a possibility for care and engagement and, conversely, feelings of arroganceand distance. Jefferess has written on this complexity, arguing that some INGO

campaigning emphasises the inferiority of the Other to mobilise the audience intoaction, inadvertently creating a sense of superiority in the audience.41 In thisresearch the young people expressed encouraging signs of empathy towards dis-tant and vulnerable Others, often identifying in some way with young people inother places. Attitudes of callousness, racism or negativity were not present inany significant number. Most of the young people, on encountering typical INGO

images, expressed sadness and pity. This caring disposition expressed itself sev-eral times in the focus group discussions. It also led, for some, to a desire tohelp. The following extracts illustrate that the students had a sense of injustice,plus compassion and the desire that, if they could help, they would.

G: And it isn’t really right because we have like...proper resources and they don’t.B1: Yeah I think thatB3: They need toB2: I just want to pick them up and have a beer with them.

[School B, Group C]

G1: Shh…I feel sad but...like I feel really sorry for them and I feel like why...whydoesn’t their government help out or why doesn’t all the money that we donatelike...change the difference to all of them. Like why don’t we just get a giant

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orphanage, put them in it and then people can like, yo! I’m gonna take 10 chil-dren.

[others laugh]

G1: Y’know like an orphanage if their parents have died. But I feel really sorry forthem and like knowing that it’s not their fault that they’re born there and like it’snot their fault they live in this life, this cruel world.

G2: Um, I feel whenever I see photos like that I feel like I should donate money orlike go over there to help or something…

[School C, Group A]

From the same group, this following comment reveals that the student is con-cerned about difficult living conditions, but would like to assist.

G3: Well, yes and no, like to be honest I would want to go there, but I’m scared oflike, the diseases or like getting caught or something...that’s really, really mean...-but like I’d like to go over there and be really nice to them and give them foodand water and stuff.

[School C, Group A]

In our first reading of the students’ comments we surmised that the studentsexpressed empathy towards those in the South. The depth of compassion wasevident and the desire to take action was strong, even if at times their goodwillappeared misdirected or naive. Two aspects of paternalism were also present.First, confirming Jefferess’ concerns, in expressing a desire to help the Other,the capability of the Other was diminished. The Other was seen as passive andincompetent, and expected to be grateful for student actions:

G2: Cause like, you can ask them how they feel about all this happening, you can helpthem, you can help...help them somehow, even for the little basics.

G4: Provide them with food water, shelter, basic needs of a human being.G3: You can’t bring them a house.G4: You can’t bring them a house. You BUILD them a house for goodness sake! Use

your common sense.G2: A simple house, or build them a well, provide water.

[School D, class A, Group A]

In the extract above the students do not consider the Other is capable: the evi-dence they are presented with suggests to them that the Other is waiting forsuperior knowledge and skills. A second assumption was that ‘our’ lifestyles areunquestionably superior, and that INGOs should export Northern ways of life toother places:

B2: I reckon they’re good [the INGOs], they help out the poorer countries that can’tafford the luxuries that we have over here.

B1: And they sort of take our way of living over there and are helping to improvetheir way of living.

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[School B, Group F]

In this following extract, in response to an image showing an African child in abarren landscape, the boys discuss their conflicting emotions, when asked whatthey feel on seeing such imagery:

B3: I feel sad and...empathetic if that’s a wordB1: Isn’t empath...B3: empathy, yeah cool...and it just makes you think how much better living condi-

tions we have compared to them and most of them...there’s no water in the picturecus they have to travel ages to get water and it’s usually like just bare land, custhey have no crops in these places. It’s just a really moving experience.

B2: Well, I would’ve said that but you kind of said everything that I was gonna sayso...

B1: Yeah it just makes you kind of…feel bad...for how much better your conditionsare than them and they would probably do anything to just like have a day inyour house or living your life…um...yeah and it kind of makes you want toum...do something for them.

B2: It’s a bit heartbreaking knowing, well just knowing that you get better things thatyou’ve got a warm house, heater, um...clothes, food, just a place...and yet theyprobably live in slums or sleep out in the middle of nowhere cus they don’t reallyhave that kind of thing and it’s just really upsetting and I just...I just don’t knowwhether to donate but yeah...I just feel really guilty when I don’t.

[School C, Group B]

While the assumed cultural superiority of developed world lifestyles has beenheavily critiqued in the post-development literature, as has the idea that ThirdWorld countries are ‘catching up’ along some linear development pathway,42

these old development tropes clearly influenced how feelings of compassionwere experienced within the groups. Largely absent was any questioning ofWestern values or awareness that they might be able to learn from the lifestylesand knowledge of other people and places. In caring for and helping people inthe global South it was not readily conceivable by the students that an equalexchange of ideas could occur, creating a dangerous unbalanced relationshipwhich, as the extract above reveals, becomes shaped by guilt. The South is seenas passive, awaiting help, while the young people, by virtue of their locationand state of economic development, were assumed to be superior. The teachersdid not necessarily see this as a bad thing, and one suggested that ‘paternalismis empowering’ because it meant students felt they could feel compassionateand care for the distant Other through the opportunities INGOs provide, a balanceto the paralysing effects of guilt and inaction.

The paternalism expressed by the students was shaped by their emotionalresponses to INGO material about the global South. They are saddened by whatthey learn about Third World countries, some feel guilty, others feel pity, andmany have a passionate desire to help. They are moved to action, but thepathways that they are presented with are limited. Children in the North canchoose to sponsor Southern children, save lives with their pocket money, fastfor fun, all actions which position them in ways as able, as superior, and asdifferent from those they are helping. Those they are helping cannot feasiblyreturn the gift, creating inequality in the learning of ‘those people over there’.

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Their position as citizens of the global North who have certain duties andresponsibilities to help those in the global South is reified. While paternalisticattitudes are preferable to apathy in that they result in action, they are likely tolead to misdirected neo-colonial development fantasies of ‘going over to savethem’ and to stereotypes that champion Western charity and aid while obscuringthe structural causes of inequality. Paternalism is, in some ways, an escape routefrom delving into our own histories, our own practises that continue to supportglobal injustice. The charitable route is the easiest form of action but one thatraises questions about long-term educational outcomes.43

ConclusionHow we feel about another – or a group of others – is not simply a matter of indi-vidual impressions, or impressions that are created anew in the present. Rather,feelings rehearse associations that are already in place, in the way in which they‘read’ the proximity of others, at the same time as they establish the ‘truth’ of thereading. The impressions we have of others, and the impressions left by others areshaped by histories that stick, at the same time as they generate the surfaces andboundaries that allow bodies to appear in the present.44

In this paper we have shown how students in New Zealand are emotionallyresponding to development education and campaigning within schools. We havedemonstrated how divisions between North and South are reinforced, even in acountry strongly connected to its ‘Southern’ neighbours. Students draw fromestablished developmental imaginaries in which the South is seen as poor and inneed of help, subtly reinforcing difference as well as the power and dominanceof the North. The elision of history, complexity and of current complicity, furthersimplify the message, limits the type of learning occurring. Students felt sad-dened by the conditions in the South and felt a strong desire to help. They didnot uncritically interpret development messages; instead their diverse responsessuggested that the defensive attitudes of adults towards INGOs are learnt young.45

While some students positively engaged with the opportunities being pro-vided, others reacted negatively, attacking the message, the messenger and theactions being offered. Many of them associated feelings of guilt with the infor-mation they received about the Third World. Guilt can be both a barrier and anenabler for social justice action. Among those students who reacted positivelytheir well-meaning intentions were often channelled in ways that emphasiseddifference and contributed to unconscious paternalistic attitudes rather than torelations of solidarity. Hence, we argue that in these 13–15 year old students weare seeing the development of attitudes that prolong neo-colonial imaginaries,attitudes that are most probably sustained through their adult lives. The gaze isone-way and the subjectivities, of donor and receiver, are restrictive. Alarminglyyoung people’s first learning of a distant people is often through the ‘deficitlens’ that the INGO sector provides. This negative dualistic framing is a powerfulindicator of future attitudes.

Despite this rather gloomy prognosis we also see reason for hope. First, wewere pleased to see critical attitudes among the students. They questioned whatthey were being taught and often rejected the stereotypes of poverty which creepinto development education. They exhibited critical thought and agency when

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questioning INGOs and debating the types of actions they recommended. Theyquestioned whether helping one person was worthwhile, why things aren’timproving despite the money being donated, and why INGOs focused only on themost marginal and deprived. There was frustration with the development educa-tion and campaigning they were receiving and a sense that the messages wereconvenient for INGO fundraising but did not necessarily fix the problems of pov-erty. While this can be seen as a defensive mechanism to legitimise inaction, wesee it as evidence of critical thinking and dissatisfaction with the types ofactions, explanations and imaginaries students are being presented with. Second,we similarly see the emotional responses of sadness, pity and a desire to help aspotentially useful mobilising emotions. Currently these emotions are being chan-nelled into activities that implicitly emphasise difference and often rely on guiltbut this need not be the case.

Ahmed writes that ‘emotions do things’.46 We see opportunities for emotionalresponses to be channelled in different ways. If, as Cohen suggests,47 INGOs canmove from being agents of misery to soldiers of solidarity, their role in develop-ment education could seek to elicit different emotions based on hope, empathy,friendship, passion and even outrage or anger. We imagine different forms ofdevelopment education in which modern technologies like social media are usedto link students in diverse countries, possibly facilitated by INGOs but not medi-ated by them. Email and Skype© exchanges between student groups across conti-nents can be used to develop friendships and relationships, while focusing on thesimilarities and differences in the types of development challenges in each coun-try. Rather than isolating issues and promoting poverty in the South throughimages of suffering and statistics of deprivation, the focus could instead be onlinkages and the processes that contribute to global inequalities, something that ismuch more in line with the broader mandates that lie at the heart of many INGOs.

We call on INGOs to consider moving beyond fundraising with young peopletowards more socially progressive agendas. The emphasis could be on breakingdown North–South divides rather than on sustaining them, in order to producemore aware, active and radical subjectivities. Young people need to know ofrelationships that are more than those structured for the philanthropic choice ofthe powerful. In settler societies like New Zealand, and in the increasingly mul-ticultural, mobile and networked diversity of most countries, there are ampleopportunities to emphasise connections and similarities over differences, and tocontribute to new ways of seeing development within education. Our researchhas shown that students are critical of the materials they currently receive butfeel compassion and a desire to help. The challenges for researchers, INGOs andothers involved in development education is to divert scripts from tired ThirdWorld imaginaries infused with difference, which shelter the rich, to more crea-tive and progressive narratives that provide alternatives to development, andnew radical opportunities for change.

Notes on ContributorsRachel AM Tallon is a trained teacher interested in issues of development andrepresentation. She has worked as an education resource writer and researchassistant and is currently teaching in education and geography at VictoriaUniversity of New Zealand.

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Andrew McGregor is Associate Professor at Macquairie University, North Ryde,Australia and has a background in human geography, development and politicalecology. His research focuses on Southeast Asia and Australasia. He is authorof Southeast Asian Development (2008).

Notes1. We use these terms interchangeably here as each reinforces a binary separation of ‘us and them’, despite

the differing connotations of each.2. McGregor and Hill, “North/South.”3. Baillie Smith, “Public Imaginaries of Development,” 402; Andreotti, “Development vs Poverty.”4. See, for example, Arnold, “Constrained Crusaders?”; Lidchi, All in the Choosing Eye; Lissner, The Poli-

tics of Altruism; Smillie, The Alms Bazaar; and more recent work by Orgad and Vella, Who Cares?5. Carr and Rugimbana, “Marketing and Development out of Poverty”; See also Dogra, “Reading NGOs

Visually”; and Versi, “Rebranding Africa.”6. Seminal research in this area includes Radley and Kennedy, “Charitable Giving by Individuals”; and,

more recently, Seu, “Doing Denial”. See also van Heerde and Hudson, “The Righteous Considereth theCause of the Poor?”

7. Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty.8. Discussed by Jefferess in “Humanitarian Relations”, as well as by Wehbi and Taylor, “Photographs

Speak Louder Than Words.”9. Anderson and Smith, “Editorial.”10. Wright, “Emotional Geographies of Development.”11. Orgad and Vella, Who Cares?12. Ahmed, “Collective Feelings,” 3.13. See, as an example, Tallon, “Creating ‘Little Sultans’ in the Social Sciences.”14. Bourn, “Discourses and Practices around Development Education.”15. Bryan, “Another Cog in the Anti-politics Machine?”16. Bourn, “Discourses and Practices around Development Education,” 12.17. Andreotti, “Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education.”18. Bourn, “Discourses and Practices around Development Education,” 14.19. Bryan and Bracken, Learning to Read the World?20. Ahmed, “Collective Feelings,” 36.21. Duke, “The Discourse of Development Education.”22. Cited in Ahmed, “Collective Feelings,” 34.23. Pain et al., “Moments in Everyday/Distant Geopolitics.”24. For discussion concerning emotions, see Kenway and Youdell, “The Emotional Geographies of Educa-

tion.”25. Todd, “Facing Humanity.”26. Taylor, “Beyond Paternalism.”27. See Standish, The False Promise of Global Learning; and Standish, Global Perspectives in the Geogra-

phy Curriculum, for his critique of the NGO sector in formal schooling.28. For discussion concerning the moral imperative of giving, see Hattori, “The Moral Politics of Foreign

Aid.”29. Andreotti, “Soft versus Critical Global Citizenship Education.”30. Small, “Development Education Revisited.”31. See McGregor et al., “Developmentalities and Donor–NGO Relations.”32. For example, World Vision has developed a course for use in schools that earns students credits towards

their NCEA level 1. See http://email.worldvision.org.nz/mail/view/st3ItMN2UUu6bwjO3IFxgw.33. This learning area includes history, geography, economics, civics education and social studies.34. Tallon, “What do Young People Think of Development?”35. Berg, “An Introduction to Content Analysis.”36. Seu, “Doing Denial.”37. Ibid.38. Ibid.39. For further discussion, see chaps. 6 and 7 of Cohen, States of Denial.40. Andreotti, “Development vs Poverty.”41. Jefferess, “Global Citizenship”.42. Escobar, Encountering Development, begins the discussion. McGregor continues it in “New Possibili-

ties?”43. Plewes and Stuart, “The Pornography of Poverty.”44. Ahmed, “Collective Feelings,” 39.

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45. Seu, “Doing Denial”; and Radley and Kennedy, “Charitable Giving by Individuals.”46. Ahmed, “Collective Feelings.”47. Cohen, States of Denial.[apx] Appendix 1 here [apx]

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Carr, S., and R. O. Rugimbana. “Marketing and Development out of Poverty: Introduction to the SpecialIssue.” International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing 14 (2009): 95–100.

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Appendix 1

Description

Anger This was a strong, felt emotion, of raised voices. It included statements by thestudents, such as ‘I feel angry’

Annoyance Similar to anger, students would explain that something really annoyed themDesire to help A strong sentiment present that was about helping other peopleDisbelief, incredulity,

doubtAny expression of amazement and incredulity was often around lack ofinfrastructure or how people could survive in certain conditions

Fatigue This sentiment was a general weariness with a topic, such as giving, or seeingINGO advertising

Gratitude Gratitude is a deeper appreciation than just feeling luckyGuilt A term often used by the students themselves.Happy This word referred to talk that was positive and happy in outlook on any topicJust don’t like This was a negative sentiment about something that they did not likeLucky This sentiment was expressed more lightly and freely than feelings of gratitudeMocking On occasion there was a distinctive tone that was a mocking of something,

sometimes light-hearted, at other times less so.Pity Different to sadness, this emotion was more of an empathy towards something or

peoplePleasantly surprised When the students expressed a positive surprise about somethingRejection of emotional

experienceStudents who articulated that they did not like or wish to have the intendedemotion (usually of pity) of an image or INGO text.

Sadness This was a common term describing their feelingsScepticism Different from ‘disbelief’, this attitude or disposition included some questioning

by the students as to how the situation could be so

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