Help Age Talanoa Session 13th February 2019 Chris Roche Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University

1. Help Age Talanoa Session
13th February 2019
Chris Roche
(Institute for Human Security and
Social Change, La Trobe University)
Identity, Politics and Doing
Development Differently

2. Thinking About Identity
• Identity politics and the
politics of identity;
• Material explanations vs
those related to dignity,
respect and belonging ;
• Fragmentation vs
collective action;
• Used as a term of abuse
by those seeking to
preserve and extend
privileges they already
hold

3. DLP’s work on Gender
• Gender aware & politically informed
approaches both aim to engage with
and ultimately reform unequal power
relationships
• There is much to be learned from the
decades long experience of successful
women’s campaigns
• Both approaches are challenging to
implement – easily reduced to top-
down, donor-driven, technical inputs
• Bringing these approaches together
creates the potential for mutual
learning, better and deeper analysis,
strengthened practice and improved
results http://www.dlprog.org/gender-and-politics-in-practice.php

4. Ageing Policy Issues
• Decline in working age population
• Increase in dependency ration
• Increase in health costs
• Changes to economy: services, age
care, labour, housing markets &
financial markets
Implications for:
• Migration and national identity;
• The politics and sustainability of social
security, health & pension systems;
• Inter-generational equity, political
fracture, and conflict – compounded
by climate change and other short
term political considerations;
• Perceptions and stigma; grey panthers
vs selfish baby boomers vs helpless
victims

7. Thinking and Working Politically

8. Doing Development Differently/PDIA
• Systems thinking
– zooming out
• Emergence and
Positive deviance
• Uncertainty,
learning and
adaptation
• Context centred
and locally-led

9. Possible implications for Practice
• Seeing age(ing) as an identity,
as well as a process;
• Recognising it is therefore
subject to similar forms of
visible, hidden and invisible
power, as well as politics;
• Exploring the links to the
broader complex, contextually
shaped system(s) of which it is
a part;
• May require intersectional
interests to come together for
systemic reform.

10. Possible Organisational implications
• Diversity, values & HR;
• Culture and cross-cultural
understanding;
• Business practices, purpose
and branding;
• M&E and learning;
• Navigation by Judgement:
motivation, autonomy and
trust
Dan Honig & Nilima Gulrajani (2018) Making good
on donors’ desire to Do Development Differently,
Third World Quarterly, 39:1, 68-84,

11. Resource to use if needed

12. Dan Honig & Nilima Gulrajani (2018) Making good on donors’ desire to Do Development
Differently, Third World Quarterly, 39:1, 68-84,