Hybrid accountabilities: When western and non-western accountabilities collide

Abstract

This article critiques the international development sector by questioning the role of western reporting practices in establishing accountability between non-western stakeholders. Homi Bhabha’s theoretical framework on translation and hybridity is applied to understand how recipient NGO workers experience western forms of accountability, such as English-written reports. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out in an Indian NGO, three key findings are outlined. First, reporting subjugates local knowledge leading to workers experiencing disempowerment. Second, reporting in English can give workers a sense of accomplishment precipitating more positive associations with accounting in a western language. Third, workers produce hybrid accounts in response to top-down reporting practices that intermingle donor and local trust-building practices. These hybrid accounts are constituted within multifarious power dynamics, including caste, gender and social status. In conclusion, reporting is highlighted as reflecting far more complex power relations between actors than current understandings of postcolonial stakeholder relations suggest.