Doing Missionary Work: The World Bank and the Diffusion of Financial Practices »

Elizabeth Ocampo is a PhD candidate in the department of education policy at the University of Alberta. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta. Dean Neu is a professor of accounting and the director of the Centre for Public Interest Accounting at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. He is the author of Accounting for Genocide and Truth or Profit? He lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Through a study of education reform in Latin America, this inquiry examines how the World Bank functions like a modern-day missionary. Analyzing the accounting procedures embedded in the Bank's loan agreements, this account illustrates how the institution diffuses its neoliberal perspective on development throughout the world, arguing that the Bank does not just lend money—it imposes its ideology on its recipient countries as well. Thus the tools of missionary work have changed: while the promise of betterment and salvation remains, a testament of planning mechanisms, performance indicators, and financial reports has replaced the Bible.