This article uses the concept of convenience as an analytical prompt to investigate how ideas abo... more This article uses the concept of convenience as an analytical prompt to investigate how ideas about work organize a cash‐based social assistance program financed through foreign aid. Productive Social Safety Nets (PSSN) is a nationwide program providing small regular payments to very poor households in Tanzania. Cash transfers as components of social assistance not predicated on working confront assumptions many Tanzanians share about the importance of work as foundational to self‐reliance as the bedrock of personal and national development. The program uses existing architectures of community development to creatively combine Tanzanian values around poor people's responsibility for their own development with World Bank conceptualizations of social assistance as a productive investment. Ethnographic research at the interface between program implementors and beneficiaries provides insights into the attitudes many Tanzanians hold about development and their place in it and sheds l...
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2012
Money is a distributed technology for the government of futures. Using ethnographically informed ... more Money is a distributed technology for the government of futures. Using ethnographically informed accounts of social practices around saving and collective remittances in poor countries this paper examines how the malleability of money enables it to have the potential for formalisation which allows it to be brought into formal relations of future-making and foreclosure, at the same time as its potential for investments and reallocation enables it to be the basis of flexible and adaptive strategies of future-making. We show how individuals engaged in development aspirations strive to achieve futures through the collection, care, and use of money, and how strategies of formalisation, discipline, and framing accord money developmental capacities. The liquidity of money renders it a flexible vehicle for personal and collective aspirations while representing risk of leakage to other persons and ventures. The paper examines the strategies used by low-income savers and hometown associations...
ABSTRACT This paper examines the position and role of religious organisations within a wider rang... more ABSTRACT This paper examines the position and role of religious organisations within a wider range of civil society organisations (CSOs) in two districts in Tanzania. We argue that where development agendas are externally generated and civil society is driven by supply-side factors, religious organisations are not very different from other CSOs. Whether faith adherence and religious values and beliefs lead to different kinds of development outcomes is open to question, partly because most Tanzanians claim some kind of religious motivation and partly because there are probably very few institutional settings in which religious attitudes do not have some kind of influence. Cet article examine la position et le rôle des organisations religieuses dans une gamme plus large d'organisations de la société civile (OSC) dans deux districts de la Tanzanie. Nous soutenons que lorsque les ordres du jour de développement sont générés par des entités externes et que la société civile est impulsée par des facteurs liés à l'offre, les organisations religieuses ne sont pas très différentes des autres OSC. La question de savoir si l'adhésion à la foi et les valeurs et croyances religieuses aboutissent à différentes sortes de résultats de développement reste ouverte au débat, en partie parce que la plupart des Tanzaniens revendiquent une forme ou une autre de motivation religieuse et en partie parce qu'il y a probablement très peu de contextes institutionnels dans lesquels les attitudes religieuses n'ont pas une forme ou une autre d'influence. Este artigo examina a posição e papel de organizações religiosas dentro de um espectro mais ampio de Organizações da Sociedade Civil (OSCs) em dois distritos da Tanzãnia. Argumentamos que quando as agendas de desenvolvimento sao geradas externamente e a sociedade civil é orientada por fatores relacionados à oferta, as organizações religiosas não são muito diferentes de outras OSCs. É algo a ser discutido se o respeito à fé e valores e crenças religiosos levam a diferentes tipos de resultados de desenvolvimento, em parte porque a maioria dos Tanzanianos reivindicam algum tipo de motivação religiosa e em parte porque é provável que existam pouquíssimos contextos institucionais nos quais as atitudes religiosas não possuem algum tipo de influência. Este ensayo examina el posicionamiento y el papel de las organizaciones religiosas en un grupo más amplio de organizaciones de la sociedad civil (OSC) en dos distritos de Tanzania. Las autoras sostienen que, cuando los programas de desarrollo se definen en el exterior y la sociedad civil responde a factores de oferta, las organizaciones religiosas no se distinguen de las demás OSC. Cabe preguntarse si profesar una fe o ciertos valores y creencias en particular conduce a resultados de desarrollo diferentes dado que la mayoría de los tanzanos profesa algún tipo de religión y, además, porque son probablemente muy pocas las instituciones que no están bajo la influencia de algún signo religioso.
Smallholder dairying is promoted as a fast track to development for East African farmers through ... more Smallholder dairying is promoted as a fast track to development for East African farmers through schemes which provide dairy cows to poor households. This article explores issues arising in the care of dairy cows distributed through development projects in South Eastern Tanzania. Animal mortality is high and milk yields far lower than expected. Problems of livestock management in the smallholder dairy sector are frequently explained in terms of high production costs and hence as a result of market failure. Research among small farmers suggests that attitudes towards livestock and the values placed on them impact on how animals are cared for. Such attitudes are strongly influenced by the place of livestock in productive relations. Conditions imposed by development programs to enable livestock care can undermine the capacities of poor households to provide it. Technological modeling of livestock development obscures the social contexts in which production is situated and the ways in which livestock affect human behavior and social relations.
The work that NGOs now do has undergone significant change since they came to prominence as devel... more The work that NGOs now do has undergone significant change since they came to prominence as development actors in the 1980s. NGOs in Africa are shaped by a development donor civil society template that provides the resources and the training to produce a distinct sector made up of recognizable and formalized organisations which are to be organised in country-wide networks to play anticipated roles in pro-poor policy-making and holding government to account. Realizing this template in the forms of organisations demands specific kinds of work through which civil society comes to be enabled as an actor in development. This work can be characterised as contracting, volunteering, and scalar work. Civil society work demands the performance of certain subjectivities amenable to interstitial positionality. Contracted cosmopolitanism plays an important role in the constitution of civil society working and in the differentiation of civil society actors from the communities which are the object of their endeavour. This paper examines the scope and constitution of civil society work in two rural districts in Tanzania.
Interest in faith-based organizations as development actors and partners has increased in the pas... more Interest in faith-based organizations as development actors and partners has increased in the past few years. However, systematic evidence is lacking on their supposed advantages (and possible disadvantages), distinctive characteristics and approaches, and different (especially more pro-poor) outcomes in comparison with secular civil society organizations. This paper examines the position and role of religious organizations within a wider range of civil society organizations (CSOs) at the local level in two rural districts in Tanzania. We argue that where development agendas are externally generated and civil society is driven by supply-side factors, religious organizations are not very different from other CSOs. Whether faith adherence and religious values and beliefs lead to different kinds of development outcomes is open to question, partly because the majority of Tanzanians claim some kind of religious motivation and partly because, as a result, there are no institutional settings in which religious attitudes do not have some kind of influence.
This article uses the concept of convenience as an analytical prompt to investigate how ideas abo... more This article uses the concept of convenience as an analytical prompt to investigate how ideas about work organize a cash‐based social assistance program financed through foreign aid. Productive Social Safety Nets (PSSN) is a nationwide program providing small regular payments to very poor households in Tanzania. Cash transfers as components of social assistance not predicated on working confront assumptions many Tanzanians share about the importance of work as foundational to self‐reliance as the bedrock of personal and national development. The program uses existing architectures of community development to creatively combine Tanzanian values around poor people's responsibility for their own development with World Bank conceptualizations of social assistance as a productive investment. Ethnographic research at the interface between program implementors and beneficiaries provides insights into the attitudes many Tanzanians hold about development and their place in it and sheds l...
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2012
Money is a distributed technology for the government of futures. Using ethnographically informed ... more Money is a distributed technology for the government of futures. Using ethnographically informed accounts of social practices around saving and collective remittances in poor countries this paper examines how the malleability of money enables it to have the potential for formalisation which allows it to be brought into formal relations of future-making and foreclosure, at the same time as its potential for investments and reallocation enables it to be the basis of flexible and adaptive strategies of future-making. We show how individuals engaged in development aspirations strive to achieve futures through the collection, care, and use of money, and how strategies of formalisation, discipline, and framing accord money developmental capacities. The liquidity of money renders it a flexible vehicle for personal and collective aspirations while representing risk of leakage to other persons and ventures. The paper examines the strategies used by low-income savers and hometown associations...
ABSTRACT This paper examines the position and role of religious organisations within a wider rang... more ABSTRACT This paper examines the position and role of religious organisations within a wider range of civil society organisations (CSOs) in two districts in Tanzania. We argue that where development agendas are externally generated and civil society is driven by supply-side factors, religious organisations are not very different from other CSOs. Whether faith adherence and religious values and beliefs lead to different kinds of development outcomes is open to question, partly because most Tanzanians claim some kind of religious motivation and partly because there are probably very few institutional settings in which religious attitudes do not have some kind of influence. Cet article examine la position et le rôle des organisations religieuses dans une gamme plus large d'organisations de la société civile (OSC) dans deux districts de la Tanzanie. Nous soutenons que lorsque les ordres du jour de développement sont générés par des entités externes et que la société civile est impulsée par des facteurs liés à l'offre, les organisations religieuses ne sont pas très différentes des autres OSC. La question de savoir si l'adhésion à la foi et les valeurs et croyances religieuses aboutissent à différentes sortes de résultats de développement reste ouverte au débat, en partie parce que la plupart des Tanzaniens revendiquent une forme ou une autre de motivation religieuse et en partie parce qu'il y a probablement très peu de contextes institutionnels dans lesquels les attitudes religieuses n'ont pas une forme ou une autre d'influence. Este artigo examina a posição e papel de organizações religiosas dentro de um espectro mais ampio de Organizações da Sociedade Civil (OSCs) em dois distritos da Tanzãnia. Argumentamos que quando as agendas de desenvolvimento sao geradas externamente e a sociedade civil é orientada por fatores relacionados à oferta, as organizações religiosas não são muito diferentes de outras OSCs. É algo a ser discutido se o respeito à fé e valores e crenças religiosos levam a diferentes tipos de resultados de desenvolvimento, em parte porque a maioria dos Tanzanianos reivindicam algum tipo de motivação religiosa e em parte porque é provável que existam pouquíssimos contextos institucionais nos quais as atitudes religiosas não possuem algum tipo de influência. Este ensayo examina el posicionamiento y el papel de las organizaciones religiosas en un grupo más amplio de organizaciones de la sociedad civil (OSC) en dos distritos de Tanzania. Las autoras sostienen que, cuando los programas de desarrollo se definen en el exterior y la sociedad civil responde a factores de oferta, las organizaciones religiosas no se distinguen de las demás OSC. Cabe preguntarse si profesar una fe o ciertos valores y creencias en particular conduce a resultados de desarrollo diferentes dado que la mayoría de los tanzanos profesa algún tipo de religión y, además, porque son probablemente muy pocas las instituciones que no están bajo la influencia de algún signo religioso.
Smallholder dairying is promoted as a fast track to development for East African farmers through ... more Smallholder dairying is promoted as a fast track to development for East African farmers through schemes which provide dairy cows to poor households. This article explores issues arising in the care of dairy cows distributed through development projects in South Eastern Tanzania. Animal mortality is high and milk yields far lower than expected. Problems of livestock management in the smallholder dairy sector are frequently explained in terms of high production costs and hence as a result of market failure. Research among small farmers suggests that attitudes towards livestock and the values placed on them impact on how animals are cared for. Such attitudes are strongly influenced by the place of livestock in productive relations. Conditions imposed by development programs to enable livestock care can undermine the capacities of poor households to provide it. Technological modeling of livestock development obscures the social contexts in which production is situated and the ways in which livestock affect human behavior and social relations.
The work that NGOs now do has undergone significant change since they came to prominence as devel... more The work that NGOs now do has undergone significant change since they came to prominence as development actors in the 1980s. NGOs in Africa are shaped by a development donor civil society template that provides the resources and the training to produce a distinct sector made up of recognizable and formalized organisations which are to be organised in country-wide networks to play anticipated roles in pro-poor policy-making and holding government to account. Realizing this template in the forms of organisations demands specific kinds of work through which civil society comes to be enabled as an actor in development. This work can be characterised as contracting, volunteering, and scalar work. Civil society work demands the performance of certain subjectivities amenable to interstitial positionality. Contracted cosmopolitanism plays an important role in the constitution of civil society working and in the differentiation of civil society actors from the communities which are the object of their endeavour. This paper examines the scope and constitution of civil society work in two rural districts in Tanzania.
Interest in faith-based organizations as development actors and partners has increased in the pas... more Interest in faith-based organizations as development actors and partners has increased in the past few years. However, systematic evidence is lacking on their supposed advantages (and possible disadvantages), distinctive characteristics and approaches, and different (especially more pro-poor) outcomes in comparison with secular civil society organizations. This paper examines the position and role of religious organizations within a wider range of civil society organizations (CSOs) at the local level in two rural districts in Tanzania. We argue that where development agendas are externally generated and civil society is driven by supply-side factors, religious organizations are not very different from other CSOs. Whether faith adherence and religious values and beliefs lead to different kinds of development outcomes is open to question, partly because the majority of Tanzanians claim some kind of religious motivation and partly because, as a result, there are no institutional settings in which religious attitudes do not have some kind of influence.
This article challenges how mainstream development policies and practices seek to shape the colle... more This article challenges how mainstream development policies and practices seek to shape the collective futures of the world’s lowest-income people through various forms of planning, programming and reorganisation. These future-oriented policies conceal poor people’s capacities to aspire, imagine their own futures and take actions to realise these. Through an exploration of money as a distributed technology for the government of futures, we highlight how low-income people accumulate, keep safe and use money and in so doing, are able to take advantage of the potentiality of money to secure their versions of the future even in contexts that are highly circumscribed. Based on research with African hometown associations and Shack/Slum Dwellers’ International savings groups we conclude that money is central to the strategies of individual and collective actors as they realise their development visions.
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