| Summary/Abstract |
The development remix, a project initiated at Georgetown University, is a six- to eight-minute-long digital narrative that mixes or edits existing literary or audiovisual representations. The remix project enables development students, scholars, and practitioners to prepare their own narratives about the developing world, through experiencing existing narratives closely, and makes them empathic and critical while humanizing the cultural conditions of poverty in the developing world. The digital remix also actively engages scholars and practitioners with audiovisual representations, rather than as silent observers or readers of fictional texts and visual dramas. After a brief conceptualization on circulation of narratives about the developing world, the article presents the remix technique for the development scholar. The remix is, in effect, a translation with several strengths: it foregrounds the remixer's reflexivity, humanizes the conditions in the developing world, locates voice and agency in development narratives, and presents all narratives as culturally hybrid. These issues have been the subject of not just development research but also social sciences in general, especially on the use of films and fiction in pedagogic practices. Therefore, the usefulness of preparing remixed narratives extends beyond international development studies.
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