Aid and the HelpDinah HannafordLabel: Stanford University PressDescription: Hiring domestic workers is a routine part of the expat development lifestyle. Whether working for the United Nations governmental aid agencies or NGOs such as Oxfam Save the Children or World Vision expatriate aid workers in the developing world employ maids nannies security guards gardeners and chauffeurs. Though nearly every expat aid worker in the developing world has local people working within the intimate sphere of their homes these relationships are seldom if ever discussed in analyses of the development paradigm and its praxis. Aid and the Help addresses this major lacuna through an ethnographic analysis of the intersection of development work and domestic work. Examining the reproductive labor cheaply purchased by aid workers posted overseas opens the opportunity to assess the multiple ways that the ostensibly giving industry of development can be an extractive industry as well.
