Text in English / Sustainable development empowers poverty-affected people and communities by strengthening their capabilities. HRDP, a Bangladeshi development agency aims to achieve this goal by offering literacy classes and primary school edu-cation. In recent years, they have encountered obstacles to their empowerment strategy. Socio-cultural mediated expectations and moral obligations impeded the capability approach. This case study seeks to research the effects of entitlement and patronage on the empowerment of people in one of their projects. To be able to understand these structures and to determine possible implications for the asset-based ap-proach, 14 interviews and two focus-group discussions with local stakeholders have been conducted in the village of Gabtali, Bangladesh. Findings revealed that people desire to invest their own assets to increase their well-being, but expect assistance for this to happen. The study suggests align-ing expectations and obligations with the capability approach and also suggests a few ideas how this could be accomplished. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development studies)

published_or_final_version / Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

L'avènement des changements climatiques a donné lieu à l'émergence d'une nouvelle problématique, soit celle des migrations environnementales. Longtemps méconnu, ce phénomène complexe pose des difficultés au niveau de la terminologie et du statut juridique, ce qui complique la mise en place de politiques d'adaptation. Face à cette situation, ce mémoire s'est donné comme objectif d'évaluer l'impact des stratégies d'adaptation aux migrations environnementales sur les régions d'accueil et leur population. Pour ce faire, un portrait de l'évolution des stratégies d'adaptation aux changements climatiques et aux migrations environnementales a d'abord été dressé. Par la suite, l'accent a été mis sur les cas des migrations environnementales en provenance du Bangladesh et celles provenant de la région du Sahel. Durement touchés par les changements climatiques, le Bangladesh et le Sahel ont assisté, impuissants, à la migration de milliers de leurs citoyens vers de nouveaux cieux. La politique de restriction des migrations mise en place par l'Inde en réponse aux migrations bangladaises et la stratégie d'accroissement des connaissances sur les migrations environnementales encouragée par les pays du Sahel ont donc été analysées pour en déterminer les impacts environnementaux et sociaux. Le recours à l'observation documentaire a été privilégié pour la réalisation de cette étude de type qualitatif. Au terme de l'analyse, il a été démontré que, quoique différentes, les stratégies d'adaptation mises en place respectivement par l'Inde et les pays du Sahel ont une portée limitée puisque l'urbanisation a connu une croissance importante et que les risques de conflits demeuraient prépondérants. De plus, en Inde comme au Sahel, la migration s'est accompagnée d'un afflux de main d'oeuvre peu qualifiée plutôt que qualifiée. Néanmoins, la politique restrictive indienne s'accompagnait davantage de répercussions négatives sur l'environnement, alors que la stratégie sahélienne a permis quant à elle le développement d'un réseau de connaissances favorisant la restauration environnementale dans les régions d'origine. Les résultats de cette étude ont toutefois rencontré certaines limites, notamment en termes de validité de la documentation et de terminologie.L'analyse conclut qu'en l'absence d'une définition claire du phénomène des migrations environnementales, toute étude portant sur le sujet risque de se buter à d'importantes difficultés. Ainsi, il est recommandé d'établir d'abord et avant tout un consensus sur la terminologie et la définition qui l'accompagne, de façon à permettre l'élaboration d'un statut juridique clair. De plus, il est suggéré de favoriser les migrations volontaires tout en réduisant les migrations forcées, ce qui permettrait d'optimiser les bénéfices entourant les migrations environnementales. Afin d'accroître la portée des stratégies d'adaptation aux migrations, le recours à une action concertée aux niveaux international, national et régional est finalement encouragé.

The intent of this study is to provide a comparison study of art education philosophies, methods, and practices in Bangladeshi schools to schools in the United States. This is a descriptive study with an intensive examination of curriculum materials and textbooks from the education system in Bangladesh as well as narrative based on my past experiences as a student in Bangladeshi primary schools. After translating and analyzing Bangladeshi middle school curriculum, I compared and contrasted art education philosophies, objectives and practices in Bangladesh with those in the United States.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Urban Planning and Environmental Management / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Microfinance has attracted, since its inception at the end of the seventies, the attention of many people and institutions, both at academic and donor levels. However, evidence is mixed so far and no definitive conclusion has yet emerged with respect to the positive effects of microfinance, in part because of the great differences among the different microfinance schemes but also because of methodological issues. This work aims to add some further evidence to the impact debate, with three studies in two different rural areas from Bangladesh and India. The first study is based on the second round of a survey in Bangladesh undertaken by the World Bank. A Propensity Score Matching approach was chosen to study the impact of borrowing on household income and expenditures per capita. In this case positive impact can only be seen in extraordinary expenditures, in particular in house extensions and investments in houses and land, but not in current expenditures or food expenditures. The second and third studies analyse a dataset collected in five districts of Andhra Pradesh, India. The former tries to answer the question of whether borrowing from Self- Help groups (SHGs) has any effect on income and income per capita at household level. Pooled ordinary least squares and difference in differences approaches are used to that end. A significant impact is found in this study on income and income per capita. In the last empirical work the main interest is focused on the distributional impact, on the understanding that anti-poverty measures should be focused on households at the bottom tail of income and income per capita distributions. Its analysis is based on quantile regression, with cross sectional and panel data approaches. Distributional impact shows, however, that the poorest might not be benefitting from these interventions as much as better-off or not-so-poor households.

This thesis is concerned with the dynamics and social morphology of resistance to mining in Bangladesh. Using the case of on-going resistance to a government supported open-pit coal mine project proposed by Asia Energy Corporations in Phulbari, Northwest Bangladesh, it considers the resistance within a particular context while investigating how the ideas held by various groups intersect and conflict in developing networks of resistance. Through ethnographic engagement in a particular ‘community', as well as with the activism at the national level, the research attempts to explore how and to what extent the connection and disjuncture of observations and experiences of particular groups shape the resistance movement. The aims of this thesis are two fold. Firstly it expands on anthropological accounts of social movements' rootedness in patterns of daily life. As such I examine how local resistance to mining initiatives emerges in specific contexts and around such located concerns that often remain unexpressed in the public discourse of protests. I show how resistance builds around anxieties of losing ‘home' and accompanying rights and claims. Secondly, this research contributes to the anthropological analysis of ‘connection' and ‘network' in this ‘global' era. Through an ethnographic study of the resistance movement against mining I show how the movement's network is not a smooth integration of groups and actors; tension and ambiguity is central to it. I look at the ways in which friction of disparate ideas attached to different level of analysis, i.e. ‘local', ‘national' and ‘universal', pave way for the formation of tentative alliances as the differential observations come to fit into the common discourses of protest.

This dissertation is about major natural disasters, and how they contribute to legitimacy crises of governments. Three major factors explain the emergence of a legitimacy crisis in a post-disaster context: the frequency of disaster occurrence, the quality of the government response to disasters, and the type of regime within which the government operates. Employing a large-N statistical analysis of data on major natural disasters and anti-government domestic political activities for the years between 1990 and 2010, I show that higher counts of disasters, as a rule, increase the risks of anti-government demonstrations, revolutions, riots, guerrilla warfare, and intrastate conflict. The disaster-political opposition relationship is conditional upon the characteristics of political regimes. No regime is entirely free from the political dangers of disasters. Consolidated autocracies and well established democracies are less likely than mixed regimes to observe political crises in the context of a higher frequency of natural disasters. To evaluate the quality of government response and how it mediates the disaster-legitimacy relationship, I conduct a qualitative analysis of news reports on four major disaster events in South Asia - cyclone Sidr of 2007 and cyclone Aila of 2009 in Bangladesh and cyclone Aila and the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 in India. The case studies reveal that poor preparedness and inadequate immediate and long-term response of a government invite public criticism of the incumbent, antigovernment protest movements, and anti-incumbent voting in elections. When opposition parties translate this public frustration into broader political mobilization, the moral claim of the incumbent to remain in power diminishes substantially, sometimes causing a legitimacy crisis. As opposed to common expectations, democracy may not provide the best political environment for effective disaster response. The quality of government response is influenced rather by a regime's security concerns, the level of administrative efficacy and corruption, the military's role in the disaster response process, socio-economic conditions of the affected people, and leadership competition over the disaster management process. This study has broader implications for understanding the kinds of political strains that disasters create in a society and how governments function in Bangladesh and India. Much of these governments' energy is devoted to managing disasters, which diminishes their capacity to govern. Political elites in Bangladesh and India use disaster events as opportunities to strengthen clientelism and exclude political opposition in the affected areas

<p>GIS can be used in tourism as a decision supporting tool for sustainable tourism planning, impact assessment, visitor flow management, and tourism site selection. Therefore, the potential for GIS applications in tourism is significant. The purpose of the study was fixed to explore the potential of using GIS for planning resources pertinent to ecotourism development. The study investigated a case study in Sundarbans which is the largest mangrove forest region of the world, located in the southern part of Bangladesh and the Indian region of west Bengal. However, the current study considered only the Bangladesh part of Sundarbans for study and prepared ecotourism planning for this region. The Sundarbans plays an important role for the national economy of Bangladesh because of its natural resources and tourism activities. Moreover, this forest has been facing some problems due to unplanned development and tourism activities. The ultimate result of unplanned development is land use change, increasing deforestation, biodiversity losses and decreasing upstream flows. Therefore, the study considered this mangrove for ecotourism planning and development and GIS used as decision supporting tools. Moreover, this study tried to find some answers from the research questions. Tourism is a phenomenon, which often highlights that lack of planning and management in terms of environmental concern. For ecotourism planning this thesis quantifies land use change in the Sundarbans over 33 years (1977-2010) using Landsat TM, ETM & MSS satellite imagery and prepared vector maps based on LGED map for ecotourism mapping in Sundarbans, GIS assist in this process. The study found that, the land use of Sundarbans changed over the study period and the density of forest declined at the same time. However, the change occurred because of various human activities and climate change effects. Tourism has a little bit of contribution in the periphery area for this change but tourism has not yet been considered responsible for these effects largely as it is at a very early stage. This research proposed for community development and involvement for local people as a part of hospitality services in ecotourism industries in this region because they can assist tourists according to their experience as guides in the forest. Moreover, they can be employed in the service industries operating or accompanying jungle boat trips and wilderness trails and assisting in transport operation. For ecosystem protection in Sundarbans this study proposed a 300 meters buffer zone around the sanctuaries. Finally, this study proposed an outline for ecotourism planning in the Bangladesh part of Sundarbans where GIS assist in the planning process.</p>

<p><p>Drawing on participatory knowledge creation, this thesis examines the diverse ways in which social capital of poor, rural women in Bangladesh serve as a “capacity of individuals to command scarce resources, by virtue of their membership in networks or broader social structures” (Portes 1995:120). It addresses how women’s capacity to command resources, needed for their livelihood and for a dignified life, is influenced by cultural practice, power and gender relations, which interplay within and around their networks. Women are represented as active participants who are shown to celebrate, adapt, sustain, negotiate and resist the circumstances of their lives. Women find space to manoeuvre in the situations they face, strategize in their dealings with various actors, and manipulate resources and constraints.</p></p><p><p>The author argues that the social capital of women and the portfolio of bonding, bridging and linking relations that women have, or do not have, are keys to an understanding of the bargaining processes in their households and communities. Among the research participants, women’s ability to eventually change cultural practice, power- and gender relations depends upon whether women, individually or collectively, have a variety of bonding, bridging and linking relations to strengthen their bargaining power.</p></p>