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" Culture, power and development disconnect in the central highlands of Madagascar "
Verma, Ritu
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Latin Dissertation
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1097714
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TLets521111
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| Main Entry
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Verma, Ritu
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| Title & Author
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Culture, power and development disconnect in the central highlands of Madagascar\ Verma, Ritu
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| College
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School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London)
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| Date
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2009
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2009
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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In order to understand why development projects fail on a regular basis - or at least fail toachieve their intended goals - it is important to investigate not only the apparatuses ofdevelopment (work related aspects such as documents, reports, policies, programmes andprojects), but also the social and cultural worlds of the different actors involved. This meansexpanding the analysis beyond critiques of development that focus on discourse analysis ofproject documents and interface analysis which produce in-depth ethnographies of thosebeing "targeted' for development; it means also focusing attention on those who are doing theactual "targeting'.This thesis studies how different groups of actors engage in the same material reality - that ofthe natural environment in rural Madagascar. It is a multi-sited ethnography that explores theculture and lives of Betsileo farmers living and working in the Central Highlands ofMadagascar, as well as various development practitioners living and working on developmentprojects and programmes concerned with the management of those same natural resourcesand livelihoods. The research focuses on three inter-related sites and traces developmentrelations and interactions from the central locations of the development machine to itsextremeties: several villages around one rural town in the Central Highlands calledAmbalavao, the provincial capital of Fianarantsoa, and the capital of the country,Antananarivo. And it maps out the social and work relations of various actors as they engagein rice cultivation and the management of dams and irrigation works with various degrees ofknowledge, capacities and power. The focus is not on anyone development project orprogramme, but the various relationships - or lack thereof - between different actors, domainsof science, knowledge and various meanings given to them. It is also a commentary on thewider global and bilateral political-economic relations that both limit and structure whatdevelopment ends up doing - or not doing.
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School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London)
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