Ben Page

Why do people do stuff? Reconceptualizing remittance behaviour in diaspora-development research and policy

Attempts by policy-makers to encourage diasporas to engage in development in the Global South rely on conceptions of behaviour drawn from economics that emphasize individual choice, stimuli and motivations. This article argues that diasporas are better understood as ‘communities of practice’ in which actions are conceptualized as part of a wider social system based on embodied knowledge acquired through socialization, technology and the habituation of particular lifestyles. Using social theories of practice to analyze remittances draws attention to the symptomatic silences of dominant theorizations of behaviour. Existing theorizations underpin, and thereby uncritically endorse, potentially unsustainable development policies based on remittances. The alternative approach presented here opens up new areas for policy and research based on medium to long-term changes in the socio-technical remittance regime.

Water governance and water users in a privatised water industry: participation in policy-making and in water services provision: a case study of England and Wales

This paper examines how individuals can influence decisions about the delivery of water services in England and Wales. It first examines the capacity of individuals to shape government policy and then turns to an analysis of the private sector. In particular, we ask whether recent restructuring in the water sector – notably changes in business models and governance structures – has increased the opportunity for individuals to influence the investment decisions made by private firms and their plans for restructuring. The paper concludes that privatisation and restructuring have had a limited impact on an individual water users capacity to influence decision-making. Water users remain dependent on penetrating state-controlled lobbying networks via sanctioned pressure groups. Recent changes in ideas about governance might have a much more significant impact on user participation in the future.

African home associations in Britain: Between political belonging and moral conviviality

This paper argues that significant analytical and political possibilities for thinking about the African diaspora in Britain are opened up by shifting the analytical lens from ethnicity to place. Drawing on recent research with Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations in Britain we suggest that the concept of a ‘progressive politics of place’, which distinguishes between ‘political belonging’ and ‘moral conviviality’, can help us to explore the morality of convivial relations in the African diaspora. We highlight the ways in which home associations provide space for debate about what is an intrinsically good way to live together in the diaspora. However, if moral conviviality is about debating the right and wrong ways of living together in a place, then we need to think explicitly about the places inhabited by the diaspora. The paper addresses the ways in which home associations provide a space not only for debate among members, but also a forum for debating how to live in Britain.

Book Review: Participation of the poor in development initiatives: taking their rightful place

yet inaccurately, described – has been inspired by images of remoteness or exoticness that say more about the observers than the observed. Both books address this theme by analysing historic representations of such groups, and (particularly in the case of Michaud) in illustrating how difficult it has been to record where such groups are, and how they live. Secondly, both books question the concept of unity and community in such highland minorities. It has been tempting in the past to refer to upland groups as ‘communities’ in the sense of coherent villages or clearly identifiable ethnicities (because of characteristic clothing, jewelry, etc.). Such notions of unity, of course, were always overstated, and are increasingly challenged by greater possibilities for economic diversification (including travel to cities); yet also possibly supported by greater sedentarization of agriculture in highland locations. Li’s book is perhaps a little more pertinent to debates about ‘institutions’, ‘community’ and local governance of agricultural livelihoods found elsewhere in development studies. Li’s own chapter in her book reflects recent thinking in debates concerning sustainable livelihoods, for example, and the need to see successful governance of changes as a process of inclusion of emerging identities and viewpoints, rather than the rigid adherence to pre-existing models of survival. Michaud’s volume, by contrast, is perhaps more relevant to debates in anthropology, and is perhaps more optimistic about the enduring nature of mountain peoples. In this sense, notions of tradition and identity are redefined to indicate the changing and locally determined approach to livelihood, and to acknowledge what we now understand about the role of past observers on how we see ethnic groups in mountainous areas. Both books are good examples of the kind of work that indicates how development studies might approach mountainous regions. They reiterate the local complexity of villages and ethnic groups, and the need to acknowledge the historical evolution of groups, and the ways they have been represented in the past. They are to be recommended to students of local development in Southeast Asia, and anyone else who wishes to understand problems of highland development.