Mercer, C (2002) The Discourse of Maendeleo and the Politics of Women’s Participation on Mount Kilimanjaro. Development and Change, 33 (1). pp. 101-127.
![[img]](http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png) |
PDF
- Published Version
Restricted to ICRISAT researchers only |
Abstract
Studies of participatory development and empowerment often fail to place people’s actions and motivations within their wider cultural, social, political and economic context. Drawing on fieldwork which looked at village-based women’s groups on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, this article deconstructs the dominant discourse of development on the mountain (maendeleo) to show how women’s participation in their local organizations is used as a strategy to boost their social status and financial gains. Local, national and global discourses on development, modernity and gender are reappropriated by Chagga men and women to produce a normative Chagga developmental subjectivity which women can demonstrate by participating in women’s groups. The over-representation of better-off and higher-status women in these groups suggests that, in excluding the poorest women, participation in women’s groups is serving to legitimate, and perpetuate, existing inequalities within Chagga society.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Author Affiliation: | University of Leicester, UK |
| Subjects: | Social Sciences > Management |
| Divisions: | General |
| Depositing User: | Mr Siva Shankar |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Apr 2012 10:14 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Apr 2012 10:14 |
| Official URL: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-7660.00242 |
| URI: | http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/id/eprint/4783 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
