Leading while being led: developing the developer at a Catholic NGO in Cape Town, South Africa

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-82).Religion has played a significant role in the historical unfolding of what is now understood as "development." Until recently, however, religious modes of contemporary development have been overlooked in development scholarship. The dissertation uses ethnographic data about the religious ethics undergirding the discourse, and practices of development agents in Catholic Welfare and Development (CWD), a faith-based NGO in Cape Town, South Africa. It explores how the particular modalities for the ethical/moral development of the subjectivities of CWD's developers. Informed by their own development, developers attempted to develop those they considered to be beneficiaries. The dissertation argues, and provides evidence to demonstrate, that, through the shared experience of development as an interpersonal and intersubjective encounter, both developers and beneficiaries were developed and also developed each other