 Community Participation the Tanzanian Way: Conceptual Contiguity or Power Struggle?Rebecca Marsland Oxford Development Studies, 2006, vol. 34, issue 1, 65-79 Abstract: In Tanzania, at least two contradictory meanings of participation are circulating amongst development workers. One, concerning “empowerment” and the facilitation of local decision-making, is associated with international development discourse; the other, concerning the obligation of Tanzanian citizens to contribute to the development of the nation, can be traced back to the philosophy of Julius Nyerere. This article explores these meanings through an ethnographic study of a community malaria control project in the south-west of Tanzania. The practices of Tanzanian and expatriate development workers are distanced enough for these disparate versions of participation to run together without difficulty; but, when the two versions were brought together, tensions between community and local politics resulted, as there was competition to gain control and take the credit for the commodities associated with development. Nevertheless, this fissure did not prevent the project volunteers from taking on the locally prevailing discourse of development experts, which disparages local knowledge. Date: 2006 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:34:y:2006:i:1:p:65-79 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/13600810500496053 Access Statistics for this article Oxford Development Studies is currently edited by Jo Boyce and Frances Stewart More articles in Oxford Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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