Maia Green

Participatory Development and the Appropriation of Agency in Southern Tanzania

Ideologies of participatory development promoted by development organizations in Tanzania are at odds with popular aspirations. Popular understandings of development emphasize individual achievement in a context of social differentiation, in what amounts to a recognition of the importance of individual agency in bringing about social transformation. Despite the claims of participatory development ideologies to foster the empowerment of the poor, the interventions it promotes are premised on a denial of poor people’s capacity to bring about change for themselves. Agency can only be effected through the imposed institutional structures for participation.

Representing poverty and attacking representations: Perspectives on poverty from social anthropology

Abstract This article considers the potential contribution of social anthropology to understanding poverty as both social relation and category of international development practice. Despite its association with research in communities and countries now considered poor anthropology has remained disengaged from the current poverty agenda. This disengagement is partly explained by the disciplinary starting point of anthropology which explores the processes though which categories come to have salience. It is accentuated by the relationship of anthropology as a discipline to the development policy and the research commissioned to support it. An anthropological perspective on poverty and inequality can shed light on the ways in which particular social categories come to be situated as poor. It can also reveal the social processes through which poverty as policy objective becomes institutionalised in development practice and in the social institutions established to monitor, assess and address it.

Globalizing development in Tanzania: Policy franchising through participatory project management

This article explores the social processes through which projects and programmes in international development become standardized in the context of global social policies. The striking similarity in development projects in diverse settings occurs despite the introduction of participatory planning methodologies which are intended to constitute the mechanism through which beneficiaries can become involved in the design and implementations of interventions which affect them. An anthropological account of stakeholder workshops in the development sector of Tanzania shows how the workshops facilitated by those defining themselves as development professionals create the social space of projects as envisioned in documentation and how the management models which inform development planning create development, not as failure as other anthropological accounts would have it, but as success in relation to the achievement of their planned objectives.

Making Development Agents: Participation as Boundary Object in International Development

Abstract Despite high transaction and financial costs participatory approaches to development are now standardised across a range of organisations internationally. Participatory planning in various forms is widely used in donor funded local government projects worldwide. This article critically explores the reasons for the continued popularity of participatory approaches. Using examples of cognate participatory processes in Tanzania I show how the outputs of participatory approaches do not justify their continued popularity for development stakeholders. Analytical frameworks from science studies on the social process of collaboration provide insights into the persistence of participatory forms. Participation operates as a boundary object enabling diverse stakeholders to temporarily align themselves around a common project for the purpose of development implementation.

Recentring care: interrogating the commodification of care

We trace how the category of care comes to be constituted historically and in social theory in ways that privilege the autonomous individual as economic agent and, in the process, renders care a problematic residual to social order and social theory. We investigate how theoretical categories, social relations, institutional orders and discursive practices separate care and economy in ways that constitute those in need (including the impoverished) as less valuable, subordinate and a drain on society. We then highlight a global trend towards the commodification of care within market logics of choice, even as the particular expression of these processes is worked out in and through the histories and cultures of places. We further argue that this repositioning of care within market relations of exchange obscures the fundamental interrelatedness of all humans and obscures the possibility of thinking more inclusive and less hierarchical forms of sociality.

Anticipatory Development: Mobilizing Civil Society in Tanzania

This article examines the globalization of civil society through the proliferation of non-governmental organizations in developing countries. By focusing on the technologies and methods through which these new forms are globalized their expansion becomes explicable without recourse to theories of neoliberal governmentality. New organizational templates and the role of writing are highlighted in the dissemination of civil society forms in developing countries. These organizations do not represent an extension of state power but a multiplicity of peripheral positions from which actors seek contractual engagement in development relations.

Resilience among asylum seekers living with HIV

BackgroundA small body of evidence demonstrates the challenges faced by migrant communities living with HIV but has yet to consider in-depth the experience of asylum seekers whose residency status is undetermined. The overall aim of our study was to explore the experiences of those who are both living with HIV and seeking asylum. This paper focuses on the stressors precipitated by the HIV diagnosis and by going through the asylum system; as well as participants’ resilience in responding to these stressors and the consequences for their health and wellbeing.MethodsWe conducted an ethnographic study. Fieldwork took place in the UK between 2008–2009 and included: 350 hours of observation at voluntary services providing support to black and minority ethnic groups living with HIV; 29 interviews and four focus group discussions with those who were seeking asylum and living with HIV; and 15 interviews with their health and social care providers. Data were analysed using the constant comparative method.ResultsThere were three main stressors that threatened participants’ resilience. First, migration caused them to leave behind many resources (including social support). Second, stigmatising attitudes led their HIV diagnosis to be a taboo subject furthering their isolation. Third, they found themselves trapped in the asylum system, unable to influence the outcome of their case and reliant on HIV treatment to stay alive. Participants were, however, very resourceful in dealing with these experiences. Resilience processes included: staying busy, drawing on personal faith, and the support received through HIV care providers and voluntary organisations. Even so, their isolated existence meant participants had limited access to social resources, and their treatment in the asylum system had a profound impact on perceived health and wellbeing.ConclusionsAsylum seekers living with HIV in the UK show immense resilience. However, their isolation means they are often unable to deal with their treatment in the asylum system, with negative consequences for their perceived health and wellbeing.

Saving, Spending, and Future-Making: Time, Discipline, and Money in Development

Money is a distributed technology for the government of futures. Using ethnographically informed accounts of social practices around saving and collective remittances in poor countries this paper examines how the malleability of money enables it to have the potential for formalisation which allows it to be brought into formal relations of future-making and foreclosure, at the same time as its potential for investments and reallocation enables it to be the basis of flexible and adaptive strategies of future-making. We show how individuals engaged in development aspirations strive to achieve futures through the collection, care, and use of money, and how strategies of formalisation, discipline, and framing accord money developmental capacities. The liquidity of money renders it a flexible vehicle for personal and collective aspirations while representing risk of leakage to other persons and ventures. The paper examines the strategies used by low-income savers and hometown associations in their concerns with establishing rules and discipline around the flexibility of money.

Remembering Christ and the Economy of Salvation: Interpreting Communion in Southern Tanzania

Abstract The present article explores the apparent universality of Christian symbols with reference to the ritual of communion in part of Catholic Southern Tanzania. Despite the significance of ideologies of salvation in both Christian doctrine and social theory, many popular interpretations of core Christian rituals in Africa and elsewhere emphasise the remembrance of Christ rather than his resurrection. Theories of Christianity as a universal religion may have overplayed the extent to which Christian symbols are universally interpreted.