The concepts of 'empowerment', 'agency' and 'gender' have been variously interpreted and applied by donors and development actors, and in largely instrumental terms. Theoretically, these concepts - as well as gender mainstreaming, the primary tool proposed to achieve gender equality - have drawn criticism for being disassociated with the original political intent to transform power relations. Practically, the current state of knowledge around the outcomes of gender and development programming is rife with institutional perspectives of donors and NGOs reflecting in the short-term, with voices of the constituents of development conspicuously absent. Understanding how gender and development interventions are perceived and experienced by recipients in the context of their life course is an urgent task required not only to improve the current state of knowledge, but also to understand what kinds of measures lead to positive societal changes. Drawing from ten life histories of recipients of gender mainstreamed development programming in Northern Sri Lanka, this dissertation probes how recipients situate and make sense of gender mainstreamed development programs as they navigate a post-war reality. Findings show that encounters with development programming and the development apparatus in general contributed to some positive social changes, with certain groups of women expressing agency and even moments of empowerment. However, the longitudinal scope of this study reveals that these experiences take place within the prevailing structural confines of insecurity that take place at the macro (state), meso (development apparatus) and micro (community) levels. These findings uncover how gender hierarchies and factors of identity influence these limits on choice, and therefore challenge current understandings of agency, empowerment, and the role of development programming within society. This research points to the limitations of donor-driven development programs that are ill-equipped to address structural issues of gendered insecurity, patriarchal societal norms, and deep-seated trauma. Further, this research offers new dimensions to existing frameworks around the interaction of masculinities, femininities, identity and conflict, suggesting that factors of identity must be complemented with significant experiences across a life course in order to understand how constituents receive and perceive development interventions, and to what extent these interventions are ultimately equipped to facilitate change. Methodologically, this dissertation offers innovative feminist approaches to foregrounding recipients' knowledge and experience of the development process, including pursuing more partnership approaches that include development actors, constituents, and researchers.

Drawing on ethnographic and visual anthropological data, this dissertation explores the anticipated and unanticipated effects of youth-targeted health and development programmes in rural Malawi. Contemporary development programmes are anticipatory in nature: they are focused on managing health, behaviour, education and social relations today in ways that are believed to open opportunities for some distant and better future. Working with rural youth who “just stay,” an idiom youth use to describe their “failure” to make progress towards desired futures, I show how discourses and ideals espoused in anticipatory programmes including human rights, education, gender and love are slippery concepts. As they percolate through this particular social, political, historical and demographic context and into the imaginaries of young people, these discourses often become something new and unexpected. In particular I show how: i) a discursive elision occurs between the rights discourse and other markers of modernity and youth take up their “right” to wear modern clothing and drink commercial alcohol, ii) selfish behaviours including alcoholism and womanising surface in boys’ self-constructions as innate tendencies rather than part of a socially produced and constantly shifting construction of masculinity, iii) audit cultures, critical to the operation of anticipatory programmes, reduce gender equality to something “countable,” which, in turn, alters programme activities, leads to performances by participants and filters into youth subjectivities, and iv) discourses on modern and “healthy” loves, free from HIV/AIDS, lead to re-arrangements in romantic relations and friendships that provide new and positive opportunities for women not always available in customary marriages. By privileging the future over the present and the past, programmes overlook numerous structural barriers to improving the lives of the youth who “just stay.” I argue that the unanticipated effects of these programmes constitute and give rise to several invisible forms of violence. On the other hand, however, some effects are generative of new and positive subjectivities and relationships that are egregiously overlooked by programmes. This ignorance prevents programmes from building upon positive effects to generate desired change and sometimes even undermines their own stated goals.

Drawing on ethnographic and visual anthropological data, this dissertation explores the anticipated and unanticipated effects of youth-targeted health and development programmes in rural Malawi. Contemporary development programmes are anticipatory in nature: they are focused on managing health, behaviour, education and social relations today in ways that are believed to open opportunities for some distant and better future. Working with rural youth who “just stay,” an idiom youth use to describe their “failure” to make progress towards desired futures, I show how discourses and ideals espoused in anticipatory programmes including human rights, education, gender and love are slippery concepts. As they percolate through this particular social, political, historical and demographic context and into the imaginaries of young people, these discourses often become something new and unexpected. In particular I show how: i) a discursive elision occurs between the rights discourse and other markers of modernity and youth take up their “right” to wear modern clothing and drink commercial alcohol, ii) selfish behaviours including alcoholism and womanising surface in boys’ self-constructions as innate tendencies rather than part of a socially produced and constantly shifting construction of masculinity, iii) audit cultures, critical to the operation of anticipatory programmes, reduce gender equality to something “countable,” which, in turn, alters programme activities, leads to performances by participants and filters into youth subjectivities, and iv) discourses on modern and “healthy” loves, free from HIV/AIDS, lead to re-arrangements in romantic relations and friendships that provide new and positive opportunities for women not always available in customary marriages. By privileging the future over the present and the past, programmes overlook numerous structural barriers to improving the lives of the youth who “just stay.” I argue that the unanticipated effects of these programmes constitute and give rise to several invisible forms of violence. On the other hand, however, some effects are generative of new and positive subjectivities and relationships that are egregiously overlooked by programmes. This ignorance prevents programmes from building upon positive effects to generate desired change and sometimes even undermines their own stated goals.

The theme of the thesis is the subsidy possibilities in the period 2007-2013, wchich can be used by the municipalities and the use subsidy titles by the town Český Krumlov. The thesis is divided into four parts, namely the literary overview, the methodology, the practical part and the summary of the results. In the first part, the pocics of regional development, regionla policy, financig of municipalities and the possibility of using subsidy titles by municipalities are analyzed. The next part is focused on the determination of the goals of the thesis and the hypotheses based on it. There is set the methodology according to wchich the data will be analyzed and the results presented. In the practical part, the axquired data are presented, both within the individual years as well as over the entire programmatic period. There is evaluate what subsidy titles to wchich sphere and what funds the town Český Krumlov received. The fourth part summarized the results obtained from the research and refuted or confirmed the established hypotheses.