Dorothea Hilhorst provides for the first time an empirically rooted and theoretically innovative understanding of the actual internal workings, organizational practices, and discursive repertoires of NGOs. Her evidence and insights lead to a different picture of NGOs from the one prevailing in the literature. Her model of NGOs--not as clear-cut organizations, but often with several different faces, fragmented, and consisting of social networks whose organizing practices remain in flux--is helpful to understanding not just these bodies, but official development agencies too.

1. Introduction: The Politics of NGO-ing
2. Damning the Dams: Social Movements and NGOs
3. The Power of Discourse: NGOs, Gender and National Democratic Politics
4. Village Experts and Development Discourse: Progress in a Philippine Igorot Village
5. Modelling Development: NGO Room for Manoeuvre
6. Whose Reality Counts: Issues of NGO Accountability
7. Making Sense of NGOs: in Everyday Office Life
8. NGO Leaders: A Social Analysis of Fairly Unusual Human Beings
9. Funding Agencies and NGOs: Peeping Behind Paper Realities
10. Conclusion: NGO Everyday Politics
11. Epilogue: The Politics of Research

Dorothea Hilhorst is Lecturer at the Centre for Rural Development, Waginingen Agricultural University, The Netherlands.