'Teach a Man to Fish':
The Doctrine of Sustainability and Its Social Consequences in Malawi
Thursday, December 18, 2008
12:30 - 2:00 pm
Room MC8-100
Speakers:
Ann Swidler is Professor of Sociology at Univ. of California - Berkeley. She studies the interplay of culture and institutions. She asks how culture works–both how people use it and how it shapes social life. Her current research is on cultural and institutional responses to the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently interested in how the massive international AIDS effort in sub-Saharan Africa–interacts with existing cultural and institutional patterns to create new dilemmas and new possibilities. She is exploring these issues from two directions: From the international side, she examines how the international AIDS effort is structured (who provides money to whom, how collaborative networks are structured, how programs get organized on the ground); why some interventions are favored over others; and what organizational forms international funders opt for. From the African side, she is exploring why the NGO sector is more robust in some countries than others; when international AIDS efforts stimulate vs. impede or derail local efforts; and what organizational syncretisms sometimes emerge. She has become fascinated by the “Botswana Paradox”: why Botswana–with ample funding and an honest, effective government committed to fighting AIDS–has utterly failed to slow the epidemic, while other African countries have had substantially greater success despite much more limited efforts. Susan Cotts Watkins is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Research Scientist at UCLA. Her work has focused on large-scale demographic and social change, specifically 1) fertility transitions in historical Europe and the U.S. and in contemporary Africa; 2) the AIDS epidemic in Africa; 3) the role of social networks in these changes . In pursuing these interests, she and colleagues organized two longitudinal survey projects, one in Kenya (www.Kenya.pop.upenn.edu) and more recently a larger project in Malawi(www.malawi.pop.upenn.edu). ___________________________ This paper analyzes the social consequences of the commitment to “sustainability” in donor-funded AIDS programs. Using survey, interview, and ethnographic data from rural Malawi, the authors examine how efforts to mobilize and empower local communities affect three strata of Malawian society: the villagers these programs are meant to help, the insecure local elites whose efforts directly link programs to their intended beneficiaries, and, more briefly, national elites who implement AIDS policies and programs. They describe indirect effects of sustainability on the experiences, identities, and aspirations of Malawians—effects that are much broader and deeper than the direct impacts of funding. If you would like a copy of the paper please contact Maribel Paulina Flewitt at pflewitt@worldbank.org. Please contact Paulina Maribel Flewitt ( pflewitt@worldbank.org) if you wish to be included in our mailing list. Details on forthcoming seminars are provided on the Seminar website |
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