Linked in translation: international donors and local fieldworkers as translators of global norms

Abstract

This article conceptualises the agency of the governed as the ability to alter the meaning of travelling norms in ways that make them meaningful within a specific context, and to thereby also change the social and political dynamics that unfold there. These translations do not simply unfold between the global and the local but run along translation chains in which different actors become linked while also translating global norms differently. The article analyses such a process of translation by examining the translation of ‘the rule of law’ within one development project with non-state courts in rural Bangladesh.

Keywords:

• Translation
• rule of law
• non-state courts
• Bangladesh
• norms
• NGOs

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants of the two workshops on ‘the Agency of the Governed’ organised by the Collaborative Research Center ‘Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood’ at the Freie Universität Berlin as well as Alejandro Esguerra, Benjamin Faude, Lea Hartung, Nicole Helmrich, Anne Koch, Alexandros Tokhi, Rabea Heinemann, the editors, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and criticisms.

Notes

1. See also the Introduction and Conclusion in Berger and Esguerra, World Politics in Translation.

2. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics”; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights; and Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, Persistent Power of Human Rights.

3. Krook and True, “Rethinking the Life Cycles of International Norms”.

4. Acharya, How Ideas Spread; and Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter?

5. Berger, Global Norms and Local Courts.

6. Taylor, Philosophical Arguments, 167.

7. Ibid., 170.

8. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, vii.

9. Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 66; my translation.

10. Tsing, “Transitions as Translations,” 253.

11. Kaviraj, “An Outline of a Revisionist Theory,” 519.

12. Ricœur, On Translation, 22; see also Draude, “Translation in Motion: A Concept’s Journey towards Norm Diffusion Studies”.

13. Holzscheiter, “Discourse as Capability”; and Lukes, Power.

14. Latour, Science in Action, 132–44.

15. Rao, Third World Protest, 55; and Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence, 100.

16. Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed, 4.

17. Bose, Dead Reckoning; D’Costa, Nationbuilding, Gender, and War Crimes; Mookherjee, The Spectral Wound; and Siddiqi, “Left Behind by the Nation”.

18. van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh, 107.

19. Karim, Microfinance and Its Discontents, 6.

20. van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh, 181.

21. Pereira, “Legal Empowerment and the Rule of Law”.

22. Karim, Microfinance and Its Discontents, 1–35.

23. Ahasan and Gardner, “Dispossession by ‘Development’”; and Lewis, “On the Difficulty of Studying Civil Society”.

24. White, “NGOs, Civil Society, and the State in Bangladesh”.

25. Lewis, “Exchanges of Professionals”.

26. Karim, Microfinance and Its Discontents, 33.

27. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

28. White, “Depoliticising Development”.

29. White, “NGOs, Civil Society, and the State in Bangladesh,” 311.

30. Karim, Microfinance and Its Discontents, 4.

31. Lewis, Bangladesh, 109.

32. Lewis and Mosse, Development Brokers and Translators.

33. Carothers, “The Rule of Law Revival”.

34. Sage and Woolcock, “Introduction”.

35. UNDP, UNICEF, and UN Women, “Informal Justice Mechanisms”.

36. Ibid., 7.

37. Khair, Legal Empowerment for the Poor and Disadvantaged.

38. Berger, “Global Village Courts”.

39. What follows is based on several interviews conducted with high-ranking members of NGOs in Dhaka as well as with their mid- and grassroots level employees in several districts in rural Bangladesh. The interviews on which the following information are based have been conducted between November 2011 and December 2012. They have been part of a larger research project; see also Berger, Global Norms and Local Courts.

40. Ricœur, Interpretation Theory; see also Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory.

41. Ehm, “The Rule of Law”.

42. http://delbgd.ec.europa.eu/en/projects/gov_humanrights_projects2.htm, accessed June 25, 2012.

43. Dezalay and Garth, Global Prescriptions.

44. Nader, Harmony Ideology; and Nader, The Life of the Law.

45. Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects,” 393.

46. Berger, Global Norms and Local Courts.

47. Shehabuddin, Reshaping the Holy.