Beyond NGO‐ization?: Reflections from Latin America

Sonia Alvarez reconsiders what she had earlier labelled ‘the Latin American feminist NGO boom’ of the 1990s and proposes that Latin American feminisms and other social movements may be moving away from the particular organizational forms and practices that characterized NGO‐ization in the past.

Abstract

Sonia Alvarez reconsiders what she had earlier labelled ‘the Latin American feminist NGO boom’ of the 1990s. She offers reflections on how and why, at least in that region of the world, we may be moving beyond it. Alvarez revisits the notion of NGO‐ization, then reviews the crucial ‘movement work’ performed by NGOs that was often obscured by that notion. She proposes that Latin American feminisms and other social movements may be moving away from the particular organizational forms and practices – actively promoted and officially sanctioned by national and global neo-liberalism – that characterized NGO‐ization in the past.