This thesis examines the concept of sustainable development with a primary focus on its advancement and implementation at a local level. The local level is identified as the site where significant potential exists for people to engage directly in the practice of sustainable development. Community is analysed as the social network where meaningful associations between people and place are established. The cultural transformation of values and ideologies that frame development trajectories is examined as an important means for achieving lasting change towards sustainable development. This work is based on original ethnographic research that was conducted on the Isle of Gigha, Scotland following the community buy-out of the island that occurred in 2002. While working with the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust and the development process for the island, research was carried out, employing the methods of participatory action research and co-operative inquiry, over a year and a half. This research concentrated on analysing the social processes that were enacted on the Isle of Gigha to increase the community’s ability to better plan and manage a programme of sustainable development. The idea of sustainable development for Gigha that recognises the natural heritage and cultural heritage as its primary assets is a strongly supported ideal among the members of the community. However, to formulate social processes that allowed for the active participation of the island’s population in development planning proved difficult, requiring regular scrutiny and revision. Community development engenders sustainability because the important criteria for individual support of sustainable development—which includes active participation and citizenship, care for the environment, and human well-being—are learned at a local level through a strong and supportive community. Three social processes are identified from the Gigha case study as significant for the ability of people at a local level to participate in sustainable development: forms of decision making, planning sustainable development, and the professional facilitation of community-led development. These social processes establish the three main themes of this work. Though this work focuses extensively at a local level, it also acknowledges that a thorough examination of sustainable development requires a critical analysis of global development trends and the ideologies that frame and define meanings of development and social progress. Thus, each of the three social processes is approached through three distinct analytical lenses: a critical analysis of socio-cultural development trends, a local analysis based on the Gigha case study, and a discussion of how these processes can be strengthened to establish social systems/infrastructures that encourage sustainable practices and behaviours. The majority of works discussing sustainable development describe the scientific and technological pathways for its increase. It is argued in this work that significant improvements for sustainable development require social change and direct transformation of values/ideologies that frame our understanding of the world and humanity’s development within it. This work examines how the identified social processes can be structured to support experiential learning and critical praxis at a local level thus creating a stronger understanding of the sustainable development imperative. An analysis of the agency and capacity of communities to produce their own programmes of sustainable development is presented in order to demonstrate how individual values of ownership, responsibility and accountability are engendered to create a stronger awareness and commitment towards transformative social change. This analysis also addresses how professionals/practitioners can facilitate this type of lasting change towards sustainability.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-367) and index.

This thesis is a study of ethnicity with specific regard to the pastoral Maasai group of Tanzania, East Africa. I frame the analysis proposed in this study within two sets of anthropological theory: economic anthropology and the literature on African pastoralism, with the former working as the primary theoretical framework to contribute and add knowledge to the latter. The overarching objective of the thesis is to contribute to outline the contemporary state of affairs of the socio-economic position and conditions of the Maasai group in the broader national context of Tanzania, departing from a distinctly spatial investigation across the rural/urban interface. Specifically, I pursue this objective by analysing the local economy of a rural village on the fringes of expanding urban territory. In the thesis I investigate issues that include thrift, exchange, consumption, and the market by making use of these ‘objects’ as analytical devices to explore how Maasai ethnic identity is produced, reproduced, and negotiated across multiple terrains. This study intends to fills the gap that exists within literature on pastoralism and the ‘cash economy’ as regards to these issues and ‘objects’ of analysis. The sequence of the chapters unfolds to show the manifold terrains and domains in which Maasai ethnicity ‘matters’, from everyday actions and practices of consumption to longer-term investments, to conclude eventually with the organization of the livestock market in which Maasai ethnicity contributes to facilitate trading and the building of trust between market actors. In the end, the anthropological enquiry of the ‘cash economy’ intends to enhance the understanding of how forms of ethnic identification, in this case Maasai, are an essential quality and aspect of the contemporary globalised world and that neoliberal market policies, commoditization and urbanization as expressions of globalisation contribute to strengthen rather than lessen their importance.

The interest for international development partnerships has increased within the discipline of cultural anthropology hand in hand with growing globalisation. Through the study of how actors that have engaged in a Ugandan-Swedish Municipal Partnership experience, express and utilise cultural difference, this thesis aims to make a contribution to this research by examine activities that took place in a specific context of cultural intersection. In addition, it aspires to link these experiences in the everyday life to general socio-political discourses. The material that the thesis builds upon was gathered during a total of four months of fieldwork in Manafwa district, Uganda, and the municipality of Åmål, Sweden. The main informants that were consulted during the fieldwork were civil servants, politicians and actors that in other ways had engaged in the partnership or in the several side-projects that were linked to it. In the analysis of their narratives, as well as of observations collected in the two field sites and of official documents that concerns the partnership, inspiration was drawn from previous research in the discipline of applied development anthropology as well as the institutionalised anthropology of development. Theories of intercultural interaction and the work of hegemonies have been used in order to examine development through the study object of cultural difference. The thesis has its starting point in two issues that were high on the agenda during my stay in Manafwa district; the 2014 Anti-homosexuality Act and corruption within the partnership. Through the study of the way that the engaged actors' experiences are used in order to create coherence in relation to these issues, the aim is to reach an understanding of how their world views are simultaneously shaped by and reshaping intercultural encounters. The ways in which claims of universal truths are used in order to install feelings of belonging and to motivate certain actions will be presented. Furthermore, the thesis will show how hegemonies in many ways are used in order to maintain hierarchies within development partnerships that in their official outlines claim that they intend to be equal.

L’hétérogénéité des formes de travail en Afrique subsaharienne conduit à repenser ce que l’on entend ordinairement par « travail » dans la relation entre travail et développement. À la diversité des activités industrieuses répond effectivement une pluralité de cadres normatifs plus ou moins formalisés qu’on ne saurait légitimement passer sous silence. En effet, ces différents systèmes de normes façonnent dans une très large mesure la manière dont se déroule le travail réel. C’est pourquoi nous avons voulu interroger leurs articulations, leurs interférences, voire leurs contradictions que les acteurs doivent surmonter dans l’activité.Pour ce faire, nous avons examiné un projet de transfert de normes organisationnelles au sein du Ministère congolais de l’Environnement, Conservation de la Nature et Tourisme à Kinshasa, en République Démocratique du Congo. Contrairement à l’idée reçue, nous défendons la thèse que le rapport au travail dans les pays d’Afrique subsaharienne n’est pas marqué de spécificités culturelles et d’exotisme ; il est le résultat d’une expérience anthropologique tissée de choix plus ou moins conscients entre des normes vitales, sociales, juridiques, politiques ou techniques, au niveau individuel ou collectif. En tant que lieu de vives tensions normatives, le travail se révèle être une entrée féconde dans l’analyse et la compréhension des changements sociaux, et interroge ainsi les espaces politiques et scientifiques dans lesquels se construisent les savoirs sur et pour le développement. / The diversity of working situations in sub-Saharan Africa requires a re-examination of the common conception of “work” within the relation of work and development. These industrious activities respond to more or less formalized normative systems, which cannot legitimately be ignored. These different systems of norms largely shape the practice of real work. The aim of this research is to question the interferences or the contradictions between these different systems of norms, which the actors are required to cope with in their activity. To this end I examined a capacity building development project inside the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Tourism in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. I defend the thesis that the relation to work in Africa is not characterized by cultural specificities or exoticism. Instead, it is the result of an anthropological experience made of more or less conscious choices among vital, social, legal, political or technical norms, on an individual or collective level. As a locus of intense normative tensions, work appears then as an appropriate point of entry into a broader analysis of social change, and therefore questions the political and scientific institutions where knowledge for and on development is produced.

This thesis explores the social and political relations of an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Senegal. NGOs and international development have been the subject of research from a number of different perspectives, including the politics (and anti-politics) of development, post-development, structural violence and the ‘everyday lives' of NGO participants and workers (Ferguson 1990; Escobar 1995; Farmer 2004; Bornstein 2005; Hilhorst 2003). The present study builds on this scholarship through an ethnographic exploration of the networks of people involved with Tostan, an American NGO based in Senegal whose developmental objective is to engender social change among rural groups in Senegal (particularly those that practice female genital cutting), using a human rights education framework. Through identification and scrutiny of the organisation's macro- and micro-level social relations, I critically examine how ‘development' operates as a cultural and political process. I focus analytically on conceptions of knowledge and ignorance, particularly the ways in which these constructions are acted upon and utilised by different actors within the organisation. I argue that, as an NGO (and thus a ‘moral actor,' Guilhot 2005: 6) within the contemporary donor-driven development industry, a key preoccupation for Tostan as an organisation is the management of perception, or a concern for the ‘spectacle of development' (Allen 2013). Flowing from this argument is the assertion that the activities carried out by actors at every level of the organisation to produce and re-produce particular narratives through strategic knowing and unknowing are as significant (if not more so) as the formal programmatic activities implemented by the organisation ‘on the ground.' As David Mosse argues, development involves not only social work, but also the conceptual work of ‘enrolment, persuasion, agreement and argument that lies behind the consensus and coherence necessary to sustain authoritative narratives and networks for the continued support of policy' (Mosse 2005: 34). As I argue here, NGO actors work to (re)produce, project and protect particular narratives, through the strategic exercise of knowledge and ignorance, in order to access or consolidate positions of power within the politics of aid. Drawing on critical theories of development and human rights (e.g. Sachs 1992; Escobar 1991, 1995; Guilhot 2005, inter alia), within a political context succinctly described by Ellen Foley (2010: 9) as ‘the neoliberalization of just about everything,' I explore how actors across the organisation are linked in a web of cultural and political presuppositions, values, and motivations.

O trabalho elabora a etnografia de uma relação de parceria entre três grupos populares que trabalham com crianças e adolescentes de seus bairros em Recife e Olinda o Galpão dos Meninos e Meninas de Santo Amaro, o Grupo Comunidade Assumindo suas Crianças e o Grupo Sobe e Desce de Olinda e a agência católica de desenvolvimento internacional com sede em Londres, CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), que os financia desde o final da década de 1980. A parceria é intitulada pelos próprios atores de Projeto Tarrafa, em homenagem à pequena rede usada por pescadores em Pernambuco. A pesquisa valeu-se de extenso trabalho de campo em cada um dos três grupos em Recife e Olinda, junto a educadores populares; no escritório da seção da América Latina na CAFOD em Londres, junto a funcionários que gerenciam os programas do Brasil; e no escritório regional da CAFOD na diocese de Westminster, no norte de Londres, junto a voluntários católicos. O deslocamento pelos canais institucionais que ligavam doadores a beneficiários revelou que a apreensão da singularidade de cada parceria transnacional depende da identificação de quais partes das organizações estão conectadas imediata e mediatamente à parceria, ou seja: a) de que atores específicos os emaranhados institucionais de longo alcance são constituídos; e b) como um ponto distante afeta, mesmo que involuntariamente, outros pontos do mesmo emaranhado institucional. A etnografia explora os efeitos que a conexão através de emaranhados institucionais opera nos seus diferentes pontos. Demonstra-se, em primeiro lugar, como emaranhados institucionais de longo alcance se constituem concretamente através da conexão entre fragmentos de organizações; em segundo lugar, como canais institucionais alimentam reciprocamente as composições de mundo dos atores neles envolvidos; e em terceiro lugar, como são tais composições enleadas que permitem que a relação se sustente. A Tarrafa mantém-se quando a luta dos educadores populares pelos meninos do seu bairro torna-se parte da estratégia dos funcionários de desenvolvimento para a redução da pobreza e violência no continente, e da promessa do Reino de Deus na terra para os católicos doadores. / This work offers an ethnographic account of a long-term partnership between London-based Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and three grassroots organizations, one in Recife and two in its neighbouring town Olinda. The three groups Galpão dos Meninos e Meninas de Santo Amaro, Grupo Comunidade Assumindo suas Crianças and Grupo Sobe e Desce de Olinda have been working with young people in their own neighbourhoods since the late 1980s when the numbers of street children in poor areas of the Greater Recife rose significantly. CAFOD has funded them since the early stages of their work through its connection with a parish priest, as was the case of many partnerships facilitated by priests supporting social movements in Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early 2000s the partnership underwent changes as a consequence of CAFODs adoption of a programmatic approach, an attempt to push its international work into becoming more result-oriented. Funding was directed to wider programmes instead of individual projects and there were more demands on partners for a higher standard in programme design, implementation and accountability. As part of the process, CAFODs Brazil programme officer encouraged the groups to work more closely in a network which they dubbed Tarrafa, in a poetic reference to a small fishing net used by local fishermen. This research is based on extensive fieldwork, first, among educators and coordinators in each of the groups in Recife and Olinda; second, among the Brazil team staff at CAFODs head office in Brixton, London; and third, among Catholic volunteers in one of CAFODs regional offices, CAFOD Westminster. Following institutional paths that connect beneficiaries to donors proved to be, rather than a movement within a development chain, one through what could be described as institutional entanglements. An ethnographic approach reveals how partnerships are sealed and kept between interconnected teams and departments across different organizations, which may hold closer bonds than they would with other teams in their own organizations. Every development partnership entails institutional entanglements of different shapes and forms, depending on the specific cross-organizational links involved. Thus in order to comprehend a development partnership in its singularity, one is faced with the task of identifying: a) what teams across organizations are connected; and b) how different nodes in these institutional entanglements, often beyond the view of the actors immediately involved in the partnership, affect one another. The entanglements of the Tarrafa network are of two kinds. One is the concrete institutional entanglements which it originates. These contribute to another sort of entangling, that of the symbolic realm of actors connected by these relationships. The Tarrafa network is maintained when the fight of grassroots educators for the children in their neighbourhoods becomes part of the strategy of development experts for the reduction of poverty in Latin America, and part of the promise of Gods Kingdom on Earth for Catholic donors in England and Wales.

Ce travail analyse les dynamiques de reconfiguration socio-économique et identitaire auprès des groupes pastoraux habitant les régions rurales au sud de l’Ethiopie, à la frontière avec le Kenya. Les formes d’organisation sociale qui règlent l’accès à l’eau sont considérées en tant que principal outil d’analyse pour comprendre les dynamiques socio-culturelles de ces régions, et cela par la mise en exergue des relations, historiques et contemporaines, entre les populations locales, les autorités étatiques et les organisations internationales du développement et de l'aide humanitaire.Nous analysons les formes d’organisation sociale chez les populations nomades en prêtant une attention particulière aux problématiques d’eau, et plus largement au rapport entre « nature » et « société », dans l’étude de ces groupes. La complexité de l’imbrication sociale de l’eau, ressource dont le caractère naturel et ici mis en question, nous porte à focaliser sur d’autres domaines « extra-hydriques » : les processus de construction des identités ethniques dans les régions du sud-est éthiopien ; les enjeux liés aux intérêts de l’Etat éthiopien visant à incorporer les nomades dans l’ordre politique national ; les stratégies de contrôle du territoire mises en place par les populations locales vis-à-vis de l’Etat et des opérateurs des organisations internationales. Dans ce cadre, l’intervention d’acteurs internationaux est examinée en prenant en compte l'histoire des relations entre populations locales et ONGs – qui se trouve inscrite dans les points d’eau – et en situant les projets de développement dans la perspective dynamique d'une interaction et négociation matérielle et symbolique. / This thesis analyzes socio-economic reconfigurations among pastoral groups living in the southern Ethiopian lowlands on the border with Kenya. Forms of social organization that regulate water access are considered as the main analytical tool for understanding the socio-cultural dynamics in these regions, highlighting historical and contemporary relationships between pastoralists, state authorities and international aid actors.Our approach consists of merging two research axes: the analysis of pastoral social systems and the importance of water issues as part of a wider relationship between nature and society. The social embeddedness of water leads us to focus on the processes of ethnicity, which is used as a tool to analyze nomads’ incorporation in a national political order as well as their local strategies vis-à-vis the State. In this context, the involvement of international aid actors is examined, taking into account the history of NGO intervention and by locating development projects in a dynamic perspective of a material and symbolic negotiation. / « Antropologia politica della gestione dell’acqua in contestopastorale. Riconfigurazioni socioeconomiche ed identitarie presso i Garri del sud Etiopia traStato e ONG »Questa tesi analizza i processi di riconfigurazione sociale ed economica presso lepopolazioni pastorali nelle aree rurali del sud Etiopia, al confine con il Kenya. Le formed’organizzazione che regolano l'accesso all'acqua sono considerate come il principalestrumento per comprendere le dinamiche socio-culturali di queste regioni, evidenziando lerelazioni storiche e contemporanee tra le popolazioni locali, le autorità statali e leorganizzazioni internazionali dello sviluppo dell’aiuto umanitario.La nostra problematica é stata formulata analizzando, da un lato, i sistemi socialipastorali e, dall’altro lato, l’importanza della gestione dell’acqua e più in generale delrapporto tra natura e società nello studio di queste popolazioni. La complessità sociale dellarisorsa idrica ci porta a considerare il processo di costruzione delle identità etniche, l’interessedello stato etiope ad incorporare i nomadi nell'ordine politico nazionale e le strategie dicontrollo del territorio messe in atto dalla popolazione locale. In questo contesto, analizziamoil ruolo delle ONG e le dinamiche di negoziazione materiale e simbolica che hanno luogo nelquadro dei progetti di sviluppo.Se la gestione dei sistemi di irrigazione rappresenta il centro di interesse predominantenella letteratura antropologica sull’acqua, la gestione delle risorse idriche fornisce unaprospettiva di ricerca centrale per lo studio delle società pastorali. Il nostro punto di partenzaè la decostruzione della categoria analitica del « pastore nomade » per rendere conto deifattori economici, politici e socio-culturali in gioco nell’organizzazione dei sistemi sociali edelle pratiche di mobilità pastorali. A tal proposito mostriamo come gli stereotipi riguardol’irrazionalità ecologica della popolazioni pastorali hanno legittimato progetti di sviluppoagricolo e programmi di sedentarizzazione. Adottando un approccio simile a quello utilizzatoper la categoria di « pastore nomade », critichiamo un’idea dell’acqua come semplice risorsanaturale o come risorsa rara per analizzare il rapporto tra la gestione dell’acqua e ledinamiche più ampie di cambiamento sociale. In particolare, sviluppiamo l'analisi dell’acquacome operatore simbolico: a causa dell’associazione tra fattori socio-culturali e ambientalinell'organizzazione dell’accesso ai pozzi, l'acqua rappresenta una risorsa vitale per i pastori eper la riproduzione della comunità.

O trabalho elabora a etnografia de uma relação de parceria entre três grupos populares que trabalham com crianças e adolescentes de seus bairros em Recife e Olinda o Galpão dos Meninos e Meninas de Santo Amaro, o Grupo Comunidade Assumindo suas Crianças e o Grupo Sobe e Desce de Olinda e a agência católica de desenvolvimento internacional com sede em Londres, CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), que os financia desde o final da década de 1980. A parceria é intitulada pelos próprios atores de Projeto Tarrafa, em homenagem à pequena rede usada por pescadores em Pernambuco. A pesquisa valeu-se de extenso trabalho de campo em cada um dos três grupos em Recife e Olinda, junto a educadores populares; no escritório da seção da América Latina na CAFOD em Londres, junto a funcionários que gerenciam os programas do Brasil; e no escritório regional da CAFOD na diocese de Westminster, no norte de Londres, junto a voluntários católicos. O deslocamento pelos canais institucionais que ligavam doadores a beneficiários revelou que a apreensão da singularidade de cada parceria transnacional depende da identificação de quais partes das organizações estão conectadas imediata e mediatamente à parceria, ou seja: a) de que atores específicos os emaranhados institucionais de longo alcance são constituídos; e b) como um ponto distante afeta, mesmo que involuntariamente, outros pontos do mesmo emaranhado institucional. A etnografia explora os efeitos que a conexão através de emaranhados institucionais opera nos seus diferentes pontos. Demonstra-se, em primeiro lugar, como emaranhados institucionais de longo alcance se constituem concretamente através da conexão entre fragmentos de organizações; em segundo lugar, como canais institucionais alimentam reciprocamente as composições de mundo dos atores neles envolvidos; e em terceiro lugar, como são tais composições enleadas que permitem que a relação se sustente. A Tarrafa mantém-se quando a luta dos educadores populares pelos meninos do seu bairro torna-se parte da estratégia dos funcionários de desenvolvimento para a redução da pobreza e violência no continente, e da promessa do Reino de Deus na terra para os católicos doadores. / This work offers an ethnographic account of a long-term partnership between London-based Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and three grassroots organizations, one in Recife and two in its neighbouring town Olinda. The three groups Galpão dos Meninos e Meninas de Santo Amaro, Grupo Comunidade Assumindo suas Crianças and Grupo Sobe e Desce de Olinda have been working with young people in their own neighbourhoods since the late 1980s when the numbers of street children in poor areas of the Greater Recife rose significantly. CAFOD has funded them since the early stages of their work through its connection with a parish priest, as was the case of many partnerships facilitated by priests supporting social movements in Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early 2000s the partnership underwent changes as a consequence of CAFODs adoption of a programmatic approach, an attempt to push its international work into becoming more result-oriented. Funding was directed to wider programmes instead of individual projects and there were more demands on partners for a higher standard in programme design, implementation and accountability. As part of the process, CAFODs Brazil programme officer encouraged the groups to work more closely in a network which they dubbed Tarrafa, in a poetic reference to a small fishing net used by local fishermen. This research is based on extensive fieldwork, first, among educators and coordinators in each of the groups in Recife and Olinda; second, among the Brazil team staff at CAFODs head office in Brixton, London; and third, among Catholic volunteers in one of CAFODs regional offices, CAFOD Westminster. Following institutional paths that connect beneficiaries to donors proved to be, rather than a movement within a development chain, one through what could be described as institutional entanglements. An ethnographic approach reveals how partnerships are sealed and kept between interconnected teams and departments across different organizations, which may hold closer bonds than they would with other teams in their own organizations. Every development partnership entails institutional entanglements of different shapes and forms, depending on the specific cross-organizational links involved. Thus in order to comprehend a development partnership in its singularity, one is faced with the task of identifying: a) what teams across organizations are connected; and b) how different nodes in these institutional entanglements, often beyond the view of the actors immediately involved in the partnership, affect one another. The entanglements of the Tarrafa network are of two kinds. One is the concrete institutional entanglements which it originates. These contribute to another sort of entangling, that of the symbolic realm of actors connected by these relationships. The Tarrafa network is maintained when the fight of grassroots educators for the children in their neighbourhoods becomes part of the strategy of development experts for the reduction of poverty in Latin America, and part of the promise of Gods Kingdom on Earth for Catholic donors in England and Wales.

During the 2013/16 Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa, numerous restrictions were placed on the movement and public gathering of local people, regardless of if the area had active Ebola cases or not. Specifically, the district of Koinadugu, Sierra Leone, preemptively enforced movement regulations before there were any cases within the district. This research demonstrates that ongoing regulations on movement and public gathering affected the livelihoods of those involved in agricultural markets in the short-term, while the outbreak was active, and in the long-term. The forthcoming thesis details the ways in which the Ebola outbreak international and national response affected locals involved in agricultural value chains in Koinadugu, Sierra Leone.