To kick off summer, we have compiled the essential reading list for Global Development, Social Justice, Impact. These books challenge thinking, share stories of determination, and help understand how our world and our sector work.
- ‘Redundant Charities’ by Weh Yeoh
- ‘The Defiant Optimist’ by Durreen Shahnaz
- ‘White Saviorism in International Development’ edited by Themrise Khan, Dickson Kanakulya, and Maïka Sondarjee, PhD.
- ‘Reframing Aid’ by Keren Winterford, Deborah Rhodes and Chris Dureau
- ‘Dear Development Practitioner’ edited by Simon Milligan and Lee Wilson
- ‘Don’t Lead Alone’ by Cleveland Justis, Daniel Student
- ‘How Migration Really Works’ by Hein de Haas
- ‘The Consul’ by Ian Kemish
- ‘An Unlikely Prisoner’ by Sean Turnell
- ‘The Queen is Dead’ by Stan Grant
Books are in no particular order
Redundant Charities
by Weh Yeoh
Charities aren’t geared to ever stop. They’re geared to continue. The fundamental design of charities hasn’t shifted much since their inception decades ago.
But, in a number of grassroots charities, change is afoot. These are charities that defy the limitations of this design by setting end goals and clear exit strategies. They are more interested in finishing the job than creating dependency. They are more interested in shutting down than growing. These charities are known as Redundant Charities.
In this book, Weh Yeoh builds on his experience working globally with international and grassroots charities. This book is for those looking for a new approach to charity work. An approach that starts by recognising that a successful charity is one that makes themselves redundant.
The Defiant Optimist
by Durreen Shahnaz
Global inequality is growing. Financial markets disenfranchise women, the 99 percent, and the planet itself. But what if we found the source of power and turned it inside out? What if we made the tools of the system available to all?
When she launched the world’s first stock exchange for social enterprises, Durreen Shahnaz started more than a new financial system; she sparked a movement. Defiant optimism–the stubborn belief that systems that enrich the few can be transformed for the good of the many–requires an indomitable spirit. In these pages, Shahnaz illuminates what investing in those excluded from networks of power and opportunity requires.
Changing how systems work–and who they work for–isn’t for the faint of heart. But The Defiant Optimist offers strategies for placing women, the underserved, and the planet at the heart of systems. Together we can locate the levers of power and pull them defiantly in a new direction.
White Saviorism in International Development
Edited by Themrise Khan, Dickson Kanakulya, and Maïka Sondarjee, PhD
Given the growing interest in understanding the meaning, manifestations, analyses and implications of racism in North/South relations, White Saviorism in International Development seeks to remedy the shortcomings of the development studies literature on the prevalence of White Saviorism in Western development initiatives in the Global South. The volume comprises theoretical chapters, testimonies, stories and lived experiences from 19 contributors from across the Global South. With sensitivity and intelligence, these practitioners and academics create a tapestry that unveils the implicit and explicit forms of White Saviorism in international development.
Reframing Aid
by Keren Winterford, Deborah Rhodes and Chris Dureau
The practice of international development continues to change as more is understood about what works. A shift from a deficit or problem-solving approach to a strengths-based approach is a significant reframing for international development. A strengths-based approach aims to reveal assets, strengths or what is working within an individual, group, community or organization, then uses these strengths as a way to achieve change and preferred futures. This book sets out the thinking, practical action and evidence-base to inform a sector-wide transformation. For many, this is a radical or even revolutionary shift, but for others, the writing is already on the wall.
The authors set out the strong theoretical and practical basis of a strengths-based approach; explore insight through the lens on power, culture and psychology; and provide examples of how the approach is already applied in practice within the project cycle, monitoring and evaluation, dominant current approaches and sectors of international development.
The theory and rich descriptions of how a strengths-based approach works, will give development workers, governments, researchers, policy makers and donors in the global north and south the confidence to continue or try new this approach to creating change. These fresh perspectives offer a much-needed alternative to the deficit-based/problem solving paradigm that dominates, but is no longer relevant to shared global efforts for social justice and environmental sustainability.
Dear Development Practitioner
Edited by Simon Milligan and Lee Wilson
In this book, influential development practitioners reflect on their careers by writing letters of advice to their younger selves. Sharing their successes and failures, the challenges and barriers they have encountered, and the changes and continuities within their work, these deeply personal accounts provide an invaluable window into the world of development practice.
The authors come from nearly 20 countries. They have held a rich mix of jobs across a range of sectors and organisational types, bringing a long-term perspective to the sector’s contemporary challenges. The distinguished list includes a Nobel Peace Prize winner, senior figures in government and international organisations, those working at the frontline of humanitarian aid and civil society organisations, and those who might not even have thought of themselves as “development professionals”, such as technologists and social entrepreneurs. Despite the differences, common themes emerge: the pursuit of meaningful change, the navigation of barriers, and the ongoing sense of hope.
This book will inspire those about to embark on their professional careers and remind new entrants and current development practitioners alike how much there remains to be done.
Don’t Lead Alone
by Cleveland Justis, Daniel Student
Think. Act. Lead.
It seems simple enough. But understanding your desired impact and how it fits into a larger picture, connecting your work to others and finding new collaborators, and bringing those collaborators together and moving them in a unified direction is never easy.
Governments, businesses, and nonprofits all have unique approaches and ideas that many of us learn through our work. Yet, we rarely consider the skills needed to create and maintain the partnerships between them. Most of us learn those skills through trial, error, and often, failure. Worse, we typically stay in our self-reinforcing silos, sharing perspectives and frustrations with like-minded people, limiting our vision of what our work can become. By partnering with other sectors, we combine and adapt approaches to solve complex problems, and leaders in any industry can create large-scale change.
Cleveland Justis and Daniel Student share a road map for effective partnerships that increase impact and profitability. Using real-life examples and practice exercises, the authors teach how to acquire and use skills to solve complex problems and propel your organization forward by combining a multitude of perspectives, split into three sections:
-Think Like a System
-Act Like a Network
-Lead Like a Movement
It’s time to get out of our silos. Don’t lead alone.
How Migration Really Works
by Hein de Haas
An authoritative guide to global migration that corrects decades of misunderstanding and misguided policy, “defying orthodoxy on all sides of the debate” (Yascha Mounk, author of The Identity Trap).
As debates on immigration have reached fever pitch, so has political and media fearmongering. But what are the facts behind the headlines?
Drawing on three decades of research, migration expert Hein de Haas destroys the myths that politicians, interest groups, and media spread about immigration. He reveals:
- Global migration is not at an all-time high
- Climate change will not lead to mass migration
- Immigration mainly benefits the wealthy, not workers
- Border restrictions have paradoxically produced more migration
- Ultimately, de Haas shows migration not as a problem to be solved, nor as a solution to a problem, but as it really is.
This book is an essential guide to one of our most divisive political issues, showing how we can move beyond today’s deeply polarized debate and make migration work better for everyone.
The Consul
by Ian Kemish
As head of Australia’s consular service, Ian Kemish played a central role in the nation’s response to some of the most dramatic events of the early twenty-first century, including the September 11 attacks and the Bali bombings. He led the small band of Australian consuls as they confronted the new challenges of global jihadism, supporting families who lost loved ones, and negotiated the release of Australians unjustly detained abroad.
In The Consul, Kemish offers a unique and personal perspective on Australia’s foreign affairs challenges of the last two decades, from hostage diplomacy to natural disasters and evacuations from war zones. This timely and engaging book also asks us to consider how world events have changed the way we travel now and in the future.
An Unlikely Prisoner
by Sean Turnell
How hope became one man’s closest companion in his darkest hour.
For 650 days Sean Turnell was held in Myanmar’s terrifying Insein Prison on the trumped-up charge of being a spy. In An Unlikely Prisoner he recounts how an impossibly cheerful professor of economics, whose idea of an uncomfortable confrontation was having to tell a student that their essay was ‘not really that good’, ended up in one of the most notorious prisons in South-East Asia. And how he not only survived his lengthy incarceration, but left with his sense of humour intact, his spirit unbroken and love in his heart.
Sean Turnell is Honorary Professor of Economics at Macquarie University. In 2009 he published an influential book on Myanmar’s financial system, Fiery Dragons, which made him an internationally recognised expert on the subject and one of Aung San Suu Kyi’s most trusted advisers. He was arrested in Myanmar in 2021 following a military coup and imprisoned for 650 days. Sean lives in Sydney with his wife, Ha Vu, who campaigned tirelessly for his release.
The Queen is Dead
by Stan Grant
From Stan Grant, leading journalist and author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers Talking to My Country and Australia Day, comes an extraordinary and powerful call to action.
‘History is not weighted on the scales, it is felt in our bones. It is worn on our skin. It is scarred in memory.’
The Queen reigned for seventy years. She came to the throne at the height of Empire and died with the world at a tipping point. What comes next after the death of what Stan Grant calls ‘the last white Queen’?
From one of our most respected and award-winning journalists, Stan Grant, The Queen is Dead is a searing, viscerally powerful, emotionally unstoppable, pull-no-punches book on the bitter legacy of colonialism for indigenous people. Taking us on a journey through the world’s fault lines, from the war in Ukraine, the rise of China, the identity wars, the resurgence of white supremacy, and the demand that Black Lives Matter, The Queen is Dead is a full-throated, impassioned argument on the necessity for an end to monarchy in Australia, the need for a Republic, and what needs to be done – through the Voice to Parliament and beyond – to address and redress the pain and sorrow and humiliations of the past.
Momentous and timely, The Queen is Dead carries an urgent, undeniable and righteous demand for justice, for a reckoning, and a just settlement with First Nations people.
Happy Reading!
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