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http://hdl.handle.net/11375/15588
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DC Field | Value | Language |
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dc.contributor.advisor | Eyles, John | - |
dc.contributor.author | Butz, David Aaron Otto | - |
dc.date.accessioned | 2014-08-05T16:01:42Z | - |
dc.date.available | 2014-08-05T16:01:42Z | - |
dc.date.issued | 1993 | - |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/15588 | - |
dc.description.abstract | Conventional approaches to evaluating international development programmes undervalue the local contexts within which development initiatives occur. Programmes are most often assessed according to economic criteria, which do not fully represent the aspirations and concerns of community members. Consequently, formal development evaluations are poor reflections of a programme's total influence on the social organisation of communities and the daily lives of community members. Two objectives guided my research. The first was to develop an approach to evaluating rural development programmes, at the level of individual communities, which was more sensitive to indigenous social contexts and priorities than are conventional approaches. My second objective was to demonstrate the utility of this new approach by using it to evaluate the influence of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) initiatives on Shimshal community, Pakistan. The first objective was theoretical; the second, empirical. The study begins by addressing the initial objective with two major theoretical points. First, draw from the critical social theory of Habermas to develop the concept of community sustainability, which I offer as a universally acceptable standard against which to evaluate the results of development programmes. Community sustainability is defined as follows: (a) a universally desirable, ideal state; (b) in which community members' shared norms and supporting institutions are established consensually; (c) where decisions are validated according to those shared norms within accepted institutions; and (d) where those norms and institutions, and changes to them, are supported through time by the material resources available to the community. According to this conception programmes should be evaluated in tenns of their influence on community decision making processes, and not on specific technical innovations. Second, I employ Matthews' sociological work to suggest that we can evaluate the contribution of development programmes to community sustainability by examining their influence on decision making in four areas of organisation: social, political, economic, and ecological. These, when integrated with the larger concept of community sustainability, facilitate the identification and definition of four categories according to which community sustainability can be empirically evaluated: social vitality, political validity, economic viability, and ecological volition. I applied this framework to interpreting the nature of sustainability in Shimshal community, in northern Pakistan, and to evaluating the influence of an initiative by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme to create village organisations in Shimshal. Two main research strategies were employed. First, I analysed historical and contemporary texts to provide the following contextual understandings: (a} Shimshalis' formal interpretation of their community; (b) outsiders' historical and contemporary perspectives on Shimshal; (c) the history of community sustainability in Hunza (of which Shimshal is a part) over the past two centuries; and (d) the objectives and achievements of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in the villages of northern Pakistan. Second, I engaged in seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in the community of Shimshal. Field notes collected during my two visits were coded along two dimensions: (a} into four theoretically-derived categories (social, political, economic or ecological); and (b} into inductive categories, each of which represented some theme or narrative of Shimshali lived experience {eg. formal education} relating to the creation of AKRSP village organisations. These two dimensions of analysis integrate in an interpretation that utilises small case studies to assess the influence of AKRSP initiatives on the sustainability of Shimshal's four areas of social organisation. This process of evaluation reveals that Shimshal has become more sustainable in the past half decade because village organisations created by the AKRSP have facilitated an increasingly consensual form of decision making within an increasingly rationalised culture and society. That AKRSP village organisations have facilitated this change is due mainly to the social and cultural context of Shimshal, particularly an indigenous tendency toward community autonomy and collective decision making. The study's significance relates to its initial objectives. First, the approach to evaluating agency development I advanced improves on conventional approaches to programme evaluation, and also contributes to the evaluation of social change more generally. Second, the application of this evaluation approach to AKRSP development in Shimshal contributes to AKRSP's practical understanding of the influence of its endeavours in Shimshal, and provides guidance for improving development efforts in Shimshal and elsewhere within its programme area. | en_US |
dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
dc.subject | Sustainability | en_US |
dc.subject | Community | en_US |
dc.title | Developing Sustainable Communities: Community Development and Modernity in Shimshal | en_US |
dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
dc.contributor.department | Geography | en_US |
dc.description.degreetype | Thesis | en_US |
dc.description.degree | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | en_US |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Butz David.pdf | 24.61 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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