Kastom and Bisnis: Towards integrating cultural knowledge into rural development in the Solomon Islands [microform]
- Bib ID:
- 3287832
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Gegeo, David Welchman
- Description:
- 684 p.
- Summary:
-
Participatory development is currently being promoted as one alternative model for bringing about effective rural development in the Third World. However, merely having rural villagers more fully participate in projects is not likely to solve the problems of rural development as long as goals and strategies are still defined and shaped by outside forces and knowledge. This dissertation in radical political economy argues that indigenous experience, understanding, knowledge, and ways of knowing must be incorporated in rural development discourse and practice if rural development is to successfully meet local needs. The dissertation focuses on rural development in the West Kwara'ae district of Malaita, Solomon Islands. In arguing for a holistic model of rural development based on indigenous knowledge, the dissertation examines rural, peri-urban, and urban West Kwara'ae people's accounts of their experiences with two large-scale and several individual development activities.
Several factors identified in previous development studies (e.g., lack of management skills, abuse in the allocation of government grants) are found to underlie failure of West Kwara'ae villagers' development projects. However, among other factors identified by this study are project redundancy, in which government and other agency policies influence the kind of projects to be promoted through financial support; and imitative development, in which villagers duplicate one another's projects, causing all of the projects to fail. An examination of Kwara'ae indigenous knowledge and concepts reveals that villagers' understanding of business and development differs from Anglo-European understandings. Moreover, interviews revealed a great diversity among villagers in their understanding of rural development, and this understanding in turn shapes their goals, approaches to and level of participation in development activities.
On the basis of these and other findings, the dissertation argues that development goals and strategies incorporate indigenous knowledge, and that villagers themselves play the leading roles in designing and implementing projects.
- Notes:
-
- (UnM)AAI9519445
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-02, Section: A, page: 0686.
- Chairperson: Michael Haas.
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawai'i, 1994.
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.
- Subject:
- Other authors/contributors:
- University of Hawai'i
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Unpublished
- Creation date:
- 1994
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