Development and Social Diversity (Development in Practice Readers Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0855983434 ISBN 13: 9780855983437

Verlag: Oxfam Professional, 1996

Inhaltsangabe

Explores people's varied expectations of development.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mary B. Anderson is President of the Collaborative for Development Action, Inc., a small consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. An economist, Mary Anderson has specialized in: rural development strategies that build on local capacities; gender analysis in development programming; the relationships between emergency relief assistance and long-term development; and educational policies as these affect access to primary education in developing countries

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Development and Social Diversity

By Mary B. Anderson, Deborah Eade

Oxfam Publishing

Copyright © 1996 Oxfam (UK and Ireland)
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85598-343-7

Contents

Preface Deborah Eade, 5, 
Understanding difference and building solidarity: a challenge to development initiatives Mary B. Anderson, 7, 
Gender, development, and training: raising awareness in the planning process Naila Kabeer, 16, 
Working with street children Tom Scanlon, Francesco Scanlon, and Maria Luiza Nobre Lamardo, 26, 
Older people and development: the last minority? Mark Gorman, 36, 
Culture, liberation, and 'development' Shubi L. Ishemo, 40, 
The politics of development in longhouse communities in Sarawak, East Malaysia Dimbab Ngidang, 55, 
What is development? Hugo Slim, 63, 
Research into local culture: implications for participatory development Odhiambo Anacleti, 69, 
An education programme for peasant women in Honduras Rocio Tdbora, 73, 
Challenging gender stereotypes in training: Mozambican refugees in Malawi Lewis B. Dzimbiri, 78, 
Defining local needs: a community-based diagnostic survey in Ethiopia Yezichalem Kassa andFeleke Tadele, 82, 
Empowerment examined Jo Rowlands, 86, 
Some thoughts on gender and culture Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay, 93, 
Who is the expert? Valerie Emblen, 95, 
Annotated bibliography, 100, 

CHAPTER 1

Understanding difference and building solidarity: a challenge to development initiatives

Mary B. Anderson

People — as individuals — differ, and peoples — as groups and societies — differ. Those of us who work within the framework of broad social movements, including the area(s) of international social and economic development, must acknowledge that such differences exist, even as we seek to apply encompassing solutions to large and comprehensive problems.

Development theory and practice of the 1950s and 1960s generally assumed that poverty was more or less homogeneous and that effective poverty alleviation efforts would, in a reasonable period of time, spread sufficiently to include most people. Experience showed these assumptions to be mistaken. Increasingly in the last thirty years, therefore, development analysts, policy-makers, and practitioners (very often responding to evidence brought forward by groups who found themselves excluded through development efforts) have identified categorisations of people who are 'left out' of generalised development processes and who, therefore, require special programming attention. Specifically, we have learned through practical experience, and through analysis of this experience, that certain groups — for example, women, the elderly, children, and others who are marginalised by their societies because of race, ethnicity, religion, or language — very often do not participate in or benefit from development programmes that are generally applied, even when these programmes are recognised as 'successful' in meeting their stated objectives. We have learned that awareness of the intrinsic socio-political structures that determine economic and social roles in any society is an essential ingredient of effective development programming.

The papers in this collection deal with a variety of categories of people and analyse the role assignments, both natural and socially-constructed, that make their circumstances of special concern for development practitioners. They raise and examine central issues of cultural blindness on the part of 'outsider' aid providers who fail to recognise the realities of 'insider' aid recipients. And they propose helpful and important shifts in thinking and programming that are required if development assistance is to serve all of the people it is intended to serve. The advantages and fundamental necessity of recognising differences and diversity are amply demonstrated through these articles.

In this Introduction, however, I shall take a somewhat different approach. I shall argue that the current emphases in international development assistance on recognising differences and appreciating diversity have both positive and negative impacts. In the first section, I begin by examining the gains in development programming that are realised from recognising differences. In the second section, I turn to the corresponding examination of disadvantages that have arisen both for programming and for outcomes when development practitioners misapply the methodologies that highlight difference. In the third section, I pull the two together and discuss the importance of programming on the basis of differences — but of doing so in ways that unite, rather than distinguish, people's interests and that advocate shared societal progress, rather than only special (albeit justified) sub-group empowerment. I conclude that those of us who work internationally must find a way to maintain a balance between appreciation of difference and affirmation of sameness, between programming according to special circumstances and programming for commonality.

The 'good' of recognising differences and appreciating diversity

Recognition of differences

As noted above, early development assistance efforts failed to take account of differences within communities and, thereby, failed both to integrate and benefit all parts of society. The result of this failure was that some people gained from international assistance, while others were systematically excluded and disadvantaged. Foremost among groups that were excluded were women. In country after country, through project after project, the evidence mounted during the 1970s and 1980s that development assistance benefitted male members of societies at the expense of female members of societies. Men gained access to technologies, while women did not; boys entered and completed schooling at rates that far exceeded those of girls; cash crops — largely in the domain of male farmers — were encouraged at the expense of food crops, which were the responsibility of women. Furthermore, evidence also emerged that the distribution of the gains realised through development assistance were not shared equally within families and households. Male family members were often fed before their mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters; when family resources were scarce, parents chose to take sons to the clinic when they were ill, but waited, sometimes too long, to see if their daughters would get well without medical assistance; men who earned extra cash through wage labour or the sale of cash crops bought 'luxury' items such as radios and bicycles, while women, whose income sources were shrinking, remained responsible for household food, health, and education and, as they were pressured to meet increasing family needs with fewer resources, favoured sons over daughters, thereby reinforcing the cycle of advantage and disadvantage.

The importance of the recognition of these unintended but systematic consequences of economic change, often brought on and encouraged by external aid, cannot be overemphasised. So long as women, and their roles as producers and distributors in the economic sphere, were 'invisible' to aid planners, the damaging impacts of assistance on them — and, hence, on their families — continued. Many development projects failed because their designers and implementers did not recognise the relevance of gender analysis; as a result, scarce development resources have not produced the broad social and economic benefits that were intended. Attention to women and development, and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Oxfam Professional
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1996
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0855983434
• ISBN 13: 9780855983437
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 109
• Herausgeber: Anderson Mary B.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland