Montreal, Canada, November 2011.

The papers in the two halves of the double panel dealt with capacity building in distinct ways. The first half engaged it as an ethnographic problem encountered in projects oriented towards development, both contemporary and historical. Who or what had the right and the ability to define what capacities were desirable?

Felistas Njoki Osotsi Trapped in the Unilinear Path: The NGO’s Maendelo Discourse in Kenya

Harriet Boulding Political Bodies: The Awkward Relationship between ‘Politics’ and service provision in Malian Health Care

Susan H. Ellison El Alto, Problem City: The Politics of Capacitacion for Conflict Resolution in Bolivia

Kristin LaHatte Professionalizing Persons: Building Capacity in Post Earthquake Haiti

Kathleen O’Reilly Building Capacity, Extracting Labor: The Management of Emotions in NGOs

Lucas Carneiro de Carvalho Colonising the White Man’s World: The Makushi Experience in NGO Building and its Relationship to the Nation State

The second half approached its generative potential in ‘doing knowledge’, and the building of capacity as an act of reforming social relationships, affective and perspectival capacities of the person. In this way, the body also emerged as a site of politics and capabilities.

Chris Hewlett  Learning to Live Together: Capacity Building and Social Shifts among the Amahuaca of Eastern Peru

George Mentore Against the “Self Centered” in Capacity Building                                                                  

Rachel Douglas-Jones An Addition Which Subtracts? Building Persons & Systems of Capacity in Biomedical Research Ethics

Viktoryia A Kalesnikava Building Capacity, Building Love. SOS Children’s Villages in Australia and Russia

Justin R. Shaffner Capacities Diminished: The Body, Environment and Ontological Predation in Papua New Guinea

Laura H. Mentore Capacity Building as Ontological Disassemblage in Amazonia