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This article explores the movement of children between households in Zambia as a site of ‘moral navigation’. Moral navigation extends Henrik Vigh's concept of social navigation from contexts of conflict and migration to more socially... more
This article explores the movement of children between households in Zambia as a site of ‘moral navigation’. Moral navigation extends Henrik Vigh's concept of social navigation from contexts of conflict and migration to more socially stable contexts in which well-being depends critically on people's ability to manage relationships. The live, dynamic and mobile character of these relationships means that they require active, real-time cultivation and response. While having practical objectives, these negotiations are also moral, articulated with ideas of what ought to be, and seeking to fulfil sometimes competing ethical projects. Life history interviews present three main perspectives: recollections of times in childhood spent away from birth parents; birth parents’ reflections on having a child living with others; and adults’ accounts of taking in other people's children. Strong norms of kinship unity and solidarity notwithstanding, in practice terms of engagement are d...
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Gender Transformation, Power and Resistance among Women in Sri Lanka: Fish Don't Talk About the Water. By Carla Risseeuw. New Delhi: Manohar, 1991. xvi, 399 pp. Rs. 350. - Arguing with the Crocodile: Gender and Class in Bangladesh. By Sarah C. White. London: Zed Books, Ltd., 1992, vi, 186 pp. $49...more
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... As always in Bangladesh, poverty Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. *Correspondence to: Sarah White, Department of Economics and International Development, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. E-mail:... more
... As always in Bangladesh, poverty Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. *Correspondence to: Sarah White, Department of Economics and International Development, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. E-mail: SCWhite@bath.ac.uk Page 2. ...
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This chapter reviews the troubled relationship between empowerment and community participation. It considers the history of each concept and some main areas of debate. It then reviews some typologies which seek to identify forms of... more
This chapter reviews the troubled relationship between empowerment and community participation. It considers the history of each concept and some main areas of debate. It then reviews some typologies which seek to identify forms of participation that are and are not empowering, and discusses a series of critiques which suggest either or both concepts have been de-radicalised as they have moved nearer the centre of development thinking. This theoretical discussion is then grounded in a brief review of some examples of participation in development practice. The chapter closes by considering how the representation of and possibilities for participation and empowerment are shaped by the character of the development industry.
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Wellbeing constitutes a key idiom through which therapeutic culture is dispersed in popular and policy discourse. Wellbeing is, however, a notoriously broad and ill-defined concept, which is put to use in many different ways. We begin... more
Wellbeing constitutes a key idiom through which therapeutic culture is dispersed in popular and policy discourse. Wellbeing is, however, a notoriously broad and ill-defined concept, which is put to use in many different ways. We begin this chapter, therefore, by distinguishing between three dominant constructs of wellbeing, and identifying ‘personal wellbeing’ as the one most clearly aligned with therapeutic culture. We draw an analogy with Marx’s discussion of religion as both ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature’ and obscuring the real source of the oppression. This suggests that personal wellbeing discourses speak to real needs that late modern society creates, and yet can simultaneously reproduce the same conditions that generate those needs. We go on to show how the construct of personal wellbeing is bi-furcated, promoting a more individualised bio-psychological ‘high road’ to aspire to and a more socialised and relational ‘low road’ for those finding life a struggle. Interestingly, both contain some recognition of the toxicity of the current system, and so an embryonic critique. The second part of the chapter presents an alternative approach, relational wellbeing, which is based on research undertaken in the global South. This conceives wellbeing as comprised of material, relational and subjective dimensions, and understands it as emerging through the inter-relations of personal, societal, and environmental structures and processes (White, 2017). The conclusion considers how relational wellbeing connects with or challenges therapeutic culture.
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The chapter draws on fieldwork in Chiawa, Zambia, to ask what it means to talk of ‘the good life beyond growth’ in contexts of marginality and economic hardship. The chapter begins with a brief summary of villagers’ own perspectives on... more
The chapter draws on fieldwork in Chiawa, Zambia, to ask what it means to talk of ‘the good life beyond growth’ in contexts of marginality and economic hardship. The chapter begins with a brief summary of villagers’ own perspectives on what a good life (or ‘wellbeing’) means. These emphasise the centrality of material sufficiency but locate this in a relational context: the importance of ‘taking care’ of others. The following section describes how the poverty of local livelihoods is only one part of the economy of Chiawa. It exists alongside, and is deeply intertwined with, a ‘modern’ development sector of high inputs and high profits. The chapter closes by describing what can be learned from the Chiawa case. Theoretically, it suggests the need to make relationality central to understandings of wellbeing. Substantively, it shows that Chiawa villagers do consider economic development to be a vital component of ‘the good life’, but that this needs to take a form that puts people and the environment, not simply growth and profits, at the centre.
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Relational wellbeing is an emergent construct grounded in the interpretivist tradition in social science. It approaches people as subjects, and aims to understand the ways they see the world in as near to their own terms as possible. This... more
Relational wellbeing is an emergent construct grounded in the interpretivist tradition in social science. It approaches people as subjects, and aims to understand the ways they see the world in as near to their own terms as possible. This contrasts with mainstream approaches to subjective dimensions of wellbeing in psychology and economics, which take a positivist approach, positioning people as objects, whose variability is to be investigated through observation rather than inter-locution. Since the recent upsurge in interest in wellbeing has focused on its subjective dimensions, or ‘happiness’, it seems paradoxical that the social science traditions that emphasise subjectivity should thus far have been marginalised in wellbeing debates. This paper draws together recent contributions which take a more relational, qualitative approach, as a step towards reversing this trend. The final section considers how relational wellbeing may be operationalised in policy and practice.
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While gender is highly visible in development theory and practice, race is rarely mentioned. This paper asks why this is, and how far Gender and Development (GAD) itself is implicated in the lack of recognition of race. The paper begins... more
While gender is highly visible in development theory and practice, race is rarely mentioned. This paper asks why this is, and how far Gender and Development (GAD) itself is implicated in the lack of recognition of race. The paper begins by acknowledging the complexity of the question: that race, gender and development are all contested terms and represent continuing sites of struggle. It then explores various aspects of ‘race in GAD’. These include: the charge of cultural imperialism; the false simplicity in the labelling of ‘women’, which masks the very different terms on which ‘third’and ‘first’world women were ‘brought into’development; and the failure of core GAD frameworks to recognize black feminist thought, so critically limiting their analytical power. The paper then goes on to discuss the racial marking of expertise in development and the ambivalent ways in which value is assigned through this. The paper concludes by reflecting on the interplay of identities in development ...
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... go. Sarah White is a lecturer in Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. Tel: (0044) 1603 592327; e-mail: s.white@uea.ac.uk Notes 1 Further examples of this pointare given in an earlier paper (White, 1994). ...
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This paper suggests that sharply divergent images of children in Bangladesh reflect different `imagined communities' of society and polity, local and global. Universal concepts of `the rights of the child' contrast strongly with a... more
This paper suggests that sharply divergent images of children in Bangladesh reflect different `imagined communities' of society and polity, local and global. Universal concepts of `the rights of the child' contrast strongly with a local culture of `guardianship', as the key social institution that governs children's lives. How might bringing these together affect both analysis and action? Engaging with both the politics of development agency and the anthropology of Bangladesh, the paper asks if the boundaries of community might be `re-imagined' to mobilize more positive cultural and material resources for the children at the margins.
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... forward. Guest editors: Robert Chambers, Nicole Kenton and Holly Ashley Participatory Learning and Action (PLA, formerly PLA Notes) is the world's leading series on participatory learning and action approaches and methods. ...