The right "to know how to understand": Coloniality and contesting visions of *development and citizenship in the times of neo-liberal civility.
Item
-
Title
-
The right "to know how to understand": Coloniality and contesting visions of *development and citizenship in the times of neo-liberal civility.
-
Identifier
-
AAI3189028
-
identifier
-
3189028
-
Creator
-
Medeiros, Carmen.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Vincent Crapanzano
-
Date
-
2005
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Anthropology, Cultural | Sociology, Social Structure and Development | History, Latin American
-
Abstract
-
This study, based on multi-sited ethnographic research, explores the actions and motivations of the various actors involved in the development encounter: indigenous communities, policy makers, and development experts working for development aid agencies. Examining the case of indigenous communities of the Arque Province, in the highlands of Cochabamba, Bolivia, the study focuses on the processes of participatory development planning as undertaken by a German funded rural development program in compliance with the regulations stipulated by the 1993 law for popular participation. The analysis of the reconfiguration of local social/power relations and of the interactions between development experts and the local population shows that the process of implementation of development projects and legal reforms functioned as an arena of contestation where every step of the process was susceptible of contradictory interpretations and where old social/racial/ethnic tensions were recast in new terms.;While the description of the obstacles encountered by Arque indigenous peasants to exert their rights to political participation stipulated by the law reveals the persistence of discriminatory practices from citizen's rights, the description of development planning events points to the reproduction of power/knowledge asymmetries in spite of 'participatory' planning methodologies and a populist rhetoric promoting local agency. Through the discussion of the ambivalent and contradictory perceptions of and responses to development initiatives, this study argues that in their own situated visions of development, the indigenous local communities articulate their historical experience within modernity and coloniality; denounce what they view as the oppressive terms under which they have been incorporated as citizens of the Bolivian state; and propose to link development and citizenship rights. In the process, these indigenous actors simultaneously redefine the notion of development to include the acquisition of those elements of the dominant knowledge systems that will empower them with the instrumentalities by which to envision a viable future and the reconstruction of the notion of citizenship rights.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
