ANTH 320/DEVS 321 PEOPLE AND DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Nov. 1, 6 Getting people involved

    READ: Green, Maia (2010) Making development agents: Participation as boundary object in international development, The Journal of Development Studies, 46(7): 1240-1263, DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2010.487099

    Boesten, Jelke, Anna Mdee and Frances Cleaver (2011) Service delivery on the cheap? Community-based workers in development interventions, Development in Practice, 21(1): 41-58, DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2011.530230

Note: StFX graduate and current Care Canada Gender Program Officer Sarah Anderson will join us by Skype on November 8. On Monday, November 6, we will generate some questions for Sarah. Glance at the article by Campbell and Nair, and think about what you would like to ask a graduate from here who has worked in various development contexts on gender-related issues.

Are participatory approaches to development “bottom- up” or “top-down”?

What is the history of “participation” in development practice?
    - Robert Chambers
    - critiques of participatory practice:
        - who is involved?
        - who decides on the process?
        - “tyranny”: invited and claimed/created spaces
    - link to neoliberalism

Green: participation

 - vocabulary questions from Green’s article?
- who was Paolo Freire?

- why is participation valued in development? In Tanzania?
- what is a “boundary object”?
- what are the costs of participation, in terms of time and money?
- how does participation happen in Tanzania, according to her three cases? What similarities do they share?
    - how is the group of people defined who are the targets of these participatory exercises?
    - what is involved in the participatory process?
    - what are the participatory exercises expected to produce?
    - what is the purpose of the reports and other forms of documentation?
- what does Green conclude about the effects of these processes?
    - why do people engage?
    - how do they reproduce the usual relations of development?
    - how do they bring about consensus on problems and solutions, in ways that may not engage with the confused, diverse, politically challenging issues that exist?


Boesten et al.
- note placement of community-driven development (CDD) and community based workers (CBW) within participatory approaches
- what is a CBW?
- why are CBWs being instituted?
- what do the authors say about the training of CBWs, or the balance between volunteerism/professionalism?
    - is it adequate or available?
- what do they say about accountability?
    - to whom?
- why do people get involved?
    - what are the compensations/rewards? What are the altruistic reasons?
    - what are the forms of inequality within communities that may intersect with this strategy?
- is this model sustainable and effective?


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