This study is a critical ethnography of my professional career as an educator
born and raised in the Shona culture in Zimbabwe. In this metaphysical study I
reconstruct a worldview that I consider to be representative of Shona customs and
beliefs. Doing this project has challenged my own ethnic identity as I struggled to
position myself on the emic-etic continuum. As a young educator, I believed my
professional practice was rooted in the high professional ethics of "modern
science." Today as I come to the end of this particular journey, I have raised more
questions than answers. To what extend does "modern science" represent the
worldviews of indigenous people like me? More still, to what extent does the
development of knowledge and technology engage rural indigenous communities?
Is it possible for rural indigenous communities to achieve sustainable development
as outsiders to the "scientific" community? The questions I have raised in this study
have led me to understand that the current state of "development" as a concept and
discourse needs to be redefined from the perspective of ordinary rural people.
Universal notions of development have failed to inform policy makers and
researchers on how to solve social problems of poverty and access to basic services
like clean water, food, shelter, and affordable health care and education.
Globalization as the new manifestation of "modernity" is leading to increased
exclusion of disadvantaged communities, mostly women and indigenous rural
people, from enjoying the benefits of new knowledge and advanced technology.
In this dissertation, I review the main paradigms of community development
from 1884 when Africa was officially "christianized" at the Berlin Conference. The
epistemology of community development gave me a unique opportunity to propose
a grassroots model to community development that I refer to as the "G Community
Development" theory (or simply the GCD theory). The GCD theory is grounded in
the Zimbabwean context and my woridview. This theory is my tentative approach
to make sense of the state of the development of indigenous communities in rural
Zimbabwe. Under no circumstances do I seek to generalize the application of this
theoretical artifact. / Graduation date: 2004
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/30414 |
| Date | 01 August 2003 |
| Creators | Munyaka, Golden |
| Contributors | Suzuki, Warren N. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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