Contributions of Support Functions to the Process of Change

Abstract

This Ph.D study, undertaken within a social constructionist paradigm, is titled newlineContributions of Support Functions to the Process of Change: An Exploration into the newlineAgency of NGOs Providing Support to Grassroots Organizations. It is a qualitative study of the agency of Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing support to Grassroots newlineOrganizations (GROs). Scholarship on NGOization is critical of NGO association with GROs as it argues that this association is one of the causes diluting the transformatory agenda of GROs.This thesis emerged from the need to better understand the work of NGOs providing support, and the association between NGOs and GROs. Accordingly, it aims to develop an understanding of the context, ways and means by which NGOs support GROs and the effects of the support on GROs. In addition to understanding the practices of NGOs providing support functions and the concerns in the NGO-GRO relationship,the study reveals the shifts in the terrain of grassroots politics and its depoliticisation through the eyes of NGO practitioners and grassroots organizers. The thesis takes an actor-oriented approach to NGOs. Such an orientation starts within understanding that NGOs as social actors have agency. An actor-orientated approach to NGOs calls for a focus on: (a) the strategies and rationales of NGOs, and these are seen as embedded in institutional structures and processes, and (b) analysis of the outcomes of newlinestrategies. The actor-orientated approach to NGOs has important methodological newlineramifications for studying NGOs as it focuses on the everyday practices of the social actors in and around the organization and points out that studying NGOs requires doing fieldwork within a web of relationships. The study draws from scholarship on activist milieu research and theorizing which recognizes struggles and movements as sites of knowledge production, and emphasizes the importance of developing an understanding of learning in popular struggles.