Civilizing Interventions: Development & Humanitarianism

This chapter historicizes the emergence of child marriage as an object of developmental concern in contemporary Bangladesh, illuminating new power constellations and frames of intervention in the process. The analysis locates the rise of this “unanticipated category” within evolving rationales of corporatized neoliberal development agendas and corresponding shifts in gendered figurations at the turn of the millennium. Highlighting new players within the global constellation through which GBVAW (gender-based violence against women) circulates, the chapter shows how international organizations pull in and rally state agencies, local activists, and NGOs to produce a new common sense around child marriage. To unravel these larger operations of power, the analysis centers women's activisms in Bangladesh; the gendered social worlds that shape young women's desires; and the ways local NGOs and activists negotiate need and skepticism in relation to global agendas