School of Geography - Theses
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ItemPrivatisation and grassroots development in Zambia( 2002)The central principles of grassroots development are increasingly accepted within the international development community, but have so far failed to influence the design or evaluation of the powerful macro-policy agenda of privatisation. This research therefore aims to evaluate the impact of Zambia's privatisation program on 'grassroots empowerment', thus contributing a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of privatisation programs on development, and enabling their design to more effectively support the empowerment needs of grassroots stakeholders. The failure of past research to apply grassroots theory to the evaluation of privatisation policy can be attributed in large part to the serious analytical weaknesses afflicting current formulations of such theory. This thesis therefore begins by developing a normative and analytic framework of 'grassroots empowerment' that transcends existing theoretical limitations. This framework is then applied to an evaluation of Zambia's privatisation program, drawing both on qualitative interview-based data collected as part of this study in August- September 2001, and on quantitative data collected by both the Zambian Privatisation Agency and the World Bank. This research indicates clearly that privatisation has impacted at all levels of Zambia's socio-economic system, affecting individuals and communities far beyond the narrow groups of stakeholders generally acknowledged, and transforming the macro-structures through which these agents interact. Such changes have been empowering for many among the grassroots, enabling significant resource transfers to grassroots workers, firms and communities, and greatly expanding the range of business opportunities available to many grassroots firms. Others, however, have suffered diminished access to empowering resources and opportunities as a consequence of privatisation - particularly those workers and communities affected by large-scale redundancies. It is concluded that policy-makers, researchers, and non-governmental actors who support the agenda of grassroots empowerment must work towards the explicit incorporation of grassroots-oriented objectives into a range of policies designed both to assist negatively affected grassroots agents, and to target structural barriers to empowerment.
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ItemUneven development in Fiji: a critical approach to the core-periphery paradigm( 1987)The penetration of the Fijian islands by Anglo-Australian capitalism laid the foundations for an externally orientated and internally unequal and dependent .form of development. After contact with capitalism, and particularly after the establishment of colonial rule, the process of economic integration was dominated by the invading forces. Consequently, the modification of the village mode of production, and its subsequent marginalization, was not the result of self development processes in the periphery, as defined sectorally and spatially, but was determined by the dominant mode of the overall system. The resulting colonial pattern of a polarized economy remained largely unmodified after independence. Significant in the pattern of unevenness is the correlation between low level of economic welfare and the concentration of the village mode of production. In order to operate more easily within the inherited core-periphery structure, the Fijian village sector evolved various responses to its marginal position. The responses are part of a process of change, in which the production system is preserved in its generally communal form in one area, while causing a distinctive change towards individualism in another. This has been primarily brought about by a practice of selective involvement of the state. The discussion and analysis of the pattern of uneven development in Fiji is largely based on the core-periphery concept as developed within the dependency perspective. The analysis involves a critical evaluation of this concept by incorporating some of the main issues raised by the articulation of modes of production perspective. In addition, considerations is given to physical and environmental conditions ; often a neglected issue in development studies within radical geography. Hence, within the core-periphery paradigm, the explanation of dependency conditions in the Fijian periphery is wanting and some complementary explanation is sought. The analytical consequence thus is a call for the development of an approach combining major issues from the different perspectives in development studies.