Playing with power : a strengths-based approach to local economic development in the Philippines
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2010
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Cahill, Amanda
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This thesis explores the contested nature of power relations in community development. It draws on an ethnographic account of the Jagna Community Partnering Project (JCPP) implemented on the island province of Bohol in the Philippines to stimulate local economic development. The project applied post-development principles using participatory, strengths-based and action research approaches that built on informal economic practices to establish community enterprises. Through this process, the JCPP disrupted the hegemony of local development discourses, catalysing profound changes in the lives of project participants who moved from perceiving themselves as passive and dependent recipients of development to self-reliant and active decision-makers. This thesis examines the varied, complex and sometimes hidden ways participants exercised the power available to them in both formal and informal arenas to create alternative development pathways aligned with their own interests and agendas. Drawing attention to the multiple and often contradictory ways in which different development actors are simultaneously enabled and constrained in any given moment, this place-based analysis offers a nuanced conceptualisation of power as more dynamic than general accounts of Philippine politics often suggest. Findings raise questions about the assumption commonly held by policy makers that capitalist economic development will inevitably expand the power and influence of marginalised groups and show how informal economic practices can provide a platform for individual and collective action.
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Thesis (PhD)
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