Content uploaded by Kamanzi Adalbertus
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Kamanzi Adalbertus on Apr 12, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Victor victim and Victim victor. Speaking the languages in the era of the discontents of globalisation
Abstract
This article, based in Bukoba District, Kagera Region, Tanzania, is about how the powerless in the discontents in donor globalisation processes manage to promote their livelihoods through engaging in organising practices. It is guided by the question: How do the powerless aid recipients manoeuvre their way out in the discontents of the donor globalisation processes of rural development in order to promote their livelihoods in their encounter with the powerful donors? This study explores the encounter between the donors and aid recipients in development and demonstrates how within the aid fabric as a social arena, the aid recipients are able to take advantage of the modernising development discourse to manoeuvre their way out in obtaining resources from the donors in order to promote their livelihoods through the speaking of three main languages: the language of the people, the official language, and the language of the leaders. The question as to whether these three languages, which are organising practices (diligent responses or manoeuvres to access resources from the donors), are right or wrong is surpassed by the argument that in power asymmetrical situations and livelihoods promotion, there is need to go beyond right and wrong and look at ethical issues in terms of "reasonableness".
... Moreover, the deontological and normative perspectives assume fixed standards and clear distinctions, situations of which, in a morally fragmented and pluriform society and in everyday practice of institutional life, cannot meet ethical challenges (Idem). It is for this matter that ethical judgement should not get closed in a system of right and/or wrong, but more to judgement in terms of reasonableness (Kamanzi, 2008). This is because the negotiating actors are not at the same power levels. ...
With the liberalisation of the economic and political structures, Tanzania has experienced an outbreak
of complex amalgamations, among which the farmers’ organisations. With these organisations, however,
farmers are faced with a siphoning system from their representatives. Nonetheless, farmers, as active agents,
are able to engage in organising practices to busy these representatives in making use of the available
opportunities in the organisations. The phenomenon of organising practices raises an ethical question as to how
justifiable they are, given their character of manipulating or manoeuvring the other. The response to this ethical
question is based on the suggestion of going beyond the right and/or wrong dichotomy to a reasonableness
framework in ethical judgement.
Empowerment has become rather a buzz word for the 1990s. As well as now being used by Western politicians, it was a word frequently heard at the UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and at the World Population Conference in Cairo in 1994. Current use of the word remains ill-defined, however, in the development context: its users tend to assume that the appropriate meaning will be understood without being explained. It is used by people representing a wide range of political and philosophical perspectives, from the World Bank to feminists. In a book considering empowerment, then, it is crucial to start by paying attention to the meaning(s) of empowerment as an idea. This chapter explores the way that the term has come to be used in the development discourse,2 and proposes a ‘meaning’ for the term that will help in the consideration of the chapters that follow, as well as assisting in the development of appropriate policy and practice aimed at women’s empowerment.
This paper explores how professionals’ universal, reductionist and standardized views of poverty differ from those of the poor themselves. Poverty line thinking concerned with income-poverty and employment thinking concerned with jobs, project Northern concerns on the South, where the realities of the poor are local, diverse, often complex and dynamic. Examples illustrate how poor people’s criteria differ from those assumed for them by professionals. The paper also discusses neglected dimensions of deprivation including vulnerability, seasonality, powerlessness and humiliation. In the new understandings of poverty, wealth as an objective is replaced by wellbeing and “employment” in jobs by livelihood. The final sections argue for altruism and reversals to enable poor people to analyze and articulate their own needs, and they conclude with the implications for policy and practice of putting first the priorities of the poor.
This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions inter-penetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its "iterational" or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a "projective" capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a "practical-evaluative" capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment).