Governing rural development: Discourses and practices of State and Donor sponsored programs for rural development in Fiji

Abstract

Amidst global aid debates about the effectiveness of aid and its impact on poverty reduction and achieving improved quality of life, the principle of 'country ownership' has been reiterated at several international conventions. It has committed development partners to the use of country systems as the default approach to the provision of development assistance. Drawing on 'country ownership', this thesis focussed on the country ownership process in Fiji's rural development machinery (rural development administration structure) from an analytics of government perspective. Development programmes with a rural community focus have acquired a major importance in Fiji. They involve a variety of institutional arrangements, programmes and projects for accelerating national development. Fiji's rural development strategies are based upon notions of integrated rural development, which encourage local contributions and empowering rural communities with access to development opportunities. It is argued that an integrated approach can minimise the heavy-handed backing of government. While integrated rural development is not entirely new to Fiji, it has been inadequately theorised to date, with the misconception that it encourages and maximises the participation of rural communities in driving their own development. Using Foucault's 'governmentality' perspective, this thesis explores government and 'expert' discourses of rural development in Fiji and suggests, instead, that the discourses inherent in the ideas and practices adopted for rural development perpetuate the misconception of empowering rural communities. Drawing on a Fiji case study using qualitative methods, the thesis shows how the centralised control of rural development shape the discourses of rural development and normalise the discursive conditions under which rural people operate. These wield very specific rationalities (specific ends) that define the parameters of rural development and the boundaries of action of rural communities and how they organise themselves for their own development.