I reveal the ideological orientation of a British overseas development agency - Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) - as evolutionary and male-centred, and springing out of European imperialism and a patriarchical social order. Ultimately, this ideology has a detrimental effect on ITDG's appropriate technology project work. I evaluate two improved stove projects, one in Sri Lanka and the other in Kenya, and conclude that while some cooks and stove-makers gained from the project, most of the benefits were unintended and/or inequitably shared. Mistaken assumptions arose out of a process of donors and technicians defining problems, needs and solutions with reference to neatly packaged, unilinear causal chains, and with little recognition of regional diversity. Beneficiaries are apparently passive recipients of the results of expert's decisions for example, in the area of stove technology, the knowledge of cooks is invisible to technicians, and so ignored, because their work is carried out in rural areas, is not part of the market economy, and is considered untidy, unhealthy, and smelly. On the other hand, stove makers and users often resist the interventions of others, and only take on new ideas when they work effectively in practice. Finally, moving further down complex sets of relations in the development process, I describe how the roles of recipients and donors in development agencies are played within a boundary of the 'spirit' of project aid. The power of donors is not simply purchased like a commodity and displayed through the disposal of funds; power relations are observed in the structural relationship between groups or organisations. For example, donors are powerful and so in a position to define policies, rules or conditions attached to aid. Even so, as with any system of rules, it is the appearance, but not the practice, of obedience that is usually the criteria of success. It is this which allows people within recipient agencies to construct their own rhetoric and interpret their own world.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:645142 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Crewe, Emma |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/19655 |
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