“Babylon Makes the Rules”: Compliance, Fear,and Self-Discipline in the Quest for Official NGO Status

As untrained social agents endeavor to create new, grassroots nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), they quickly discover that in order for their nascent organizationsto gain official status, and thus enjoy the benefits that come with it, they must firstdo the compliance necessary to register with the government agency or agenciesresponsible for regulating and monitoring their practices. Although it may not be regardedas such, the official registration process is more than just a means to an end;it has the power to produce new subjectivities that organize and constrain the socialexperience of NGO activism. As discontented citizens attempt to realize their uniquevisions of social justice by entering the field of NGO-based social activism, they“fall into” a habitus that disposes them to certain patterns of thought and behaviorwhile rendering other patterns undesirable. This article uses ethnographic accounts of the evolution of a local development NGO founded and administered by Rastafarielders in Trinidad, West Indies, to illustrate how this habitus, a product of the iterativeexperiences surrounding the establishment and maintenance of an official NGO,structures the way grassroots social activists, with little or no prior administrativeexperience, understand, and respond to the problems and situations they encounteras they attempt to create their own NGOs.[Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),Trinidad, Tobago, Rastafari, habitus, development] Amidst.

‘Babylon Makes the Rules’ Compliance, Fear, and Self-Discipline in the Quest for Official NGO Status