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- Convenor:
-
Jelke Boesten
(King's College London)
- Stream:
- Environment, development and human rights
- Location:
- G50
- Start time:
- 13 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
none
Long Abstract:
Exploring the interlinkages between institutions, community-based workers, and participants in the community-based management of water and HIV/AIDS home-based care in sub-Saharan Africa.
Community participation and ownership are current paradigms for a majority of development interventions. This panel discusses community action in the context of such ideal types of ‘good practice’ in Tanzania and South Africa. Three papers will be presented to discuss the characteristics of community-based workers, the institutional environment in which such locally-based community activities are carried out, and the relation between such interventions and the participants and beneficiaries. Mechanisms of in and exclusion will be explored, accountability and ownership interrogated through a decentred and multidimensional analysis of development interventions. From this analysis, the current ‘consensus’ on the decentralised, facilitating state and the equity and sustainability of community action is found to be limited.
Space for one more paper.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Jelke Boesten (King's College London)
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at how community-based initiatives can influence care and prevention in a Tanzanian roadside town. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the study uncovers the individual, social, economic and political interests that play in the local politics with regard to prevention and care. Solidarity and professionalism often clash with more mundane interests. Nevertheless, small groups of people fight against the tide in order to help each other and their community towards a less precarious future.
Anna Toner (Bradford University)
Paper long abstract:
Lack of community ownership is often sited as a reason for the poor sustainability of programmes to provide clean and accessible water in Africa. Whilst it is assumed in policy that community management will lead to more sustainable, equitable and efficiency, recent research suggests this link is unproven. This paper offers a comparative analysis of some different models of community participation in the management of water in Tanzania and South Africa. It seeks to understand the tension between cost recovery (payment for water) and basic needs provision to reduce poverty and considers how community management mechanisms or state subsidy might work to resolve this tension.
Frances Cleaver ( University of Sheffield)
Paper long abstract:
Participatory approaches to development have gained increased prominence over the past decade, encompassing ideas about the desirability of citizens actively engaging in the institutions, policies and discourses which shape their access to resources.
Central to participatory approaches is the concept of human agency. Purposive individual action is seen as potentially radical and transformatory. Through everyday social practices, participation in public institutions and political engagement people can re-negotiate norms, challenge inequalities, claim and extend their rights.
In this paper, I draw on previous work on natural resource management and current work on community based workers to explore understandings of the ways in which individual human agency shapes and is shaped by institutions and social structures. The intention is to explore the factors which constrain and enable the exercise of agency for different people (participants and community workers). Why are some individuals better placed to participate, politically engage and shape decision-making than others? And what are the implications for interventions to facilitate such participation?
Catherine Campbell (LSE)
Paper long abstract:
The importance of building 'multi-stakeholder partnerships' is an article of faith in HIV/AIDS management policy in Africa. At the level of policy, 'partnerships' between representatives of grassroots community residents, civil society, the private and the public sectors are regarded as a vital strategy for ensuring effective and sustainable community health programmes. However the challenges of building and sustaining such partnerships are immense. We present a longitudinal study (covering the period from 2004-the present) of an intervention that seeks to build partnerships to support a community-led AIDS-care program in a rural community in South Africa. The aim of this case study is to highlight factors which facilitate or hinder the progress of this challenge, in the interest of (i) sharing lessons for future programmes that seek to support effective community action in rural communities with high levels of HIV/AIDS; and (ii) expanding understandings of the possibilities and limitations of the partnership strategies in community strengthening efforts.