Good Will Corrupting

A fascinating investigation of the social norm movement and the implications of a powerful collective pursuing radical social change through contentious interventions across the Global South.

Social change is slow and difficult to achieve. Dissatisfied with the lack of progress in eliminating inequalities, a powerful collective has converged around social norms as the next silver bullet to accelerate social change around the world. The movement is currently mobilizing immense funding, garnering the attention of powerful policy makers, and experimenting with radical interventions across the Global South.

In Good Will Corrupting, Adam Fejerskov takes us from the Ethiopian highlands to convention halls in Marrakech, and from fourteenth-century palazzos in Florence to both the West and East Coasts of the US, to understand this growing movement pushing social norm interventions in the name of progress, development, and health. A powerful scientific and moral project, the social norm collective harnesses insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, and game theory in its attempt to radically improve the lives of people in poor communities around the world.

Good Will Corrupting traces not just the ambitions and impacts of the collective but also its inherent struggles to give meaning to this idea and bring it to life through interventions. Rooted in empirical explorations and feminist thought, this book shows just how incremental, nonlinear, and endogenous social and normative change often turns out to be and argues for a decolonization of efforts to change social norms around the world.Contents
Preface
1 A Global Behavioral Revolution?
2 Stickleback Science
3 “We Think in the US and Act in Malawi”
4 Benevolent Strangers
5 Setaweet
6 Amharic Hope
7 Good Will Corrupting
Notes
Index“Fejerskov's book shows brilliantly that eliminating violence against women is a collective struggle in which, rather than being relegated to participation in a randomized control trial, victims-survivors must be at the center of social change.”
—Jacqui True, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW); author of Violence Against Women: What Everyone Needs to Know

“Good Will Corrupting offers important insights into power and decolonization of development.”
—Rachel Hall-Clifford, author of Underbelly: Childhood Diarrhea and the Hidden Local Realities of Global HealthAdam Moe Fejerskov is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He has authored books on inequality, norms, technology, and violence against women.