Trust Inverted : Dynamics of Trust and Power in Transnational NGO Cooperation in Burkina Faso

Title data

Kalfelis, Melina C.:
Trust Inverted : Dynamics of Trust and Power in Transnational NGO Cooperation in Burkina Faso.
In: Kaag, Mayke ; Thiel, Alena ; Tarrósy, István (ed.): Trust and Trust-Making in Africa's Global Connections. - Boston ; Leiden : Brill , 2025 . - pp. 17-36 . - (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies ; 36 )
ISBN 978-90-04-73476-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004734777_003

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Abstract in another language

Trust-making is commonly considered something good. Scholarship has hardly reflected on the ways it might stabilise unequal relations of power or weaken social ties. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in NGO offices in Burkina Faso, Sweden, and Switzerland, this chapter investigates trust-making within transnational NGO partnerships in West Africa. By examining the history of civil society and everyday practice of social workers in Burkina Faso, it explores the link between trust and power, to illuminate how trust-making is central to and changing through Africa’s global connections. Based on an analysis of three ethnographic examples, the chapter argues that there is an inverted side of trust-making, one that reproduces (neo)colonial hierarchies and disrupts sociality.