Power And Poverty by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000307900
Google: XAeiDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-11T03:44:19+00:00

Village Cooperatives

At the village level other types of community organizations existed which were not unique to the Abyei Development Program—consumer cooperatives and group (block) farms. Neither organization was created by the project, but, in the case of the group farms, was inherited by the project from previous government development activity in the area. The consumer cooperatives were never part of the AID project; they were, however, run by the government in some of the same villages that had direct project contact.

Both of these types of village level development cooperatives are common programs throughout Sudan and elsewhere in Africa. And both quite regularly fail to achieve the seemingly modest functional goals set for them, especially in the more remote, poorer and less populous areas. Such programs fail so regularly that one wonders why they are recreated over and over. The answer is that they fulfill an important political function. In the remote pastoral areas of extremely poor countries government resources are unable to provide real services, but the political stability of such nations is too fragile for them to ignore these large open areas completely. And so committees are ordained, promising ‘development’ in various isolated villages. Thus, symbolic gestures frequently serve as a useful style of administrative activity and a minimal hegemony is maintained over vast areas.

Having suggested why such ‘cooperative’ organizations are repeatedly set up, let me turn my attention to why they repeatedly fail. It is because they are simultaneously antithetical to traditional cultural systems, marginal to the market economic system, and incidental to the functioning government bureaucracy. No motives—moral, political or economic—systematically operate to make for success or even institutional survival.

Not all the cooperatives and village development councils in Africa are failures. There are classic cases of ‘successes’ which for good or ill at least functioned vibrantly for quite a time. For instance, the African local government in Busoga, Uganda (Fallers 1965) had its problems, but it was a central part of the bureaucratic enterprise of late colonial Uganda. Or, for an economic example, the system of peanut cooperatives of Senegal (Cruise O’Brien 1975) was a vast exploitive institution, but it was profitable, viable and successful at least for some people for a considerable time. And there are accounts of traditional “councils in action” (Richards and Kuper eds. 1971) adapting deep cultural values and institutions to the changing times. Most such examples come from the more densely populated or more complexly organized societies of Africa, rather than from pastoral areas. However many of the poorest areas of the continent resemble Dinka territory—a remote, sparsely populated region that has now witnessed over two decades of difficult national independence, much of it marred by devastating civil war. One can hardly blame the people there for not believing in the promise of ‘development.’ And yet, we shall see, the village group organizations exhibited more local élan and expertise than anyone could reasonably expect. If they seem to have ‘failed,’ it is not due to lack of effort or skill on the part of the local participants.

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