The work of class: Cash transfers and community development in Tanzania

From Wiley via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: pub-electronic 2021-05-29Article version: VoRPublication status: PublishedThis article uses the concept of convenience as an analytical prompt to investigate how ideas about work organize a cash‐based social assistance program financed through foreign aid. Productive Social Safety Nets (PSSN) is a nationwide program providing small regular payments to very poor households in Tanzania. Cash transfers as components of social assistance not predicated on working confront assumptions many Tanzanians share about the importance of work as foundational to self‐reliance as the bedrock of personal and national development. The program uses existing architectures of community development to creatively combine Tanzanian values around poor people's responsibility for their own development with World Bank conceptualizations of social assistance as a productive investment. Ethnographic research at the interface between program implementors and beneficiaries provides insights into the attitudes many Tanzanians hold about development and their place in it and sheds light on the ambivalent feelings of insecure middle classes about changing forms of state‐managed social assistance. Implementation involves an intricate orchestration of prescriptive ideals about labor, entitlement, and value organized around labor‐intensive bureaucratic procedures, public works, and community sensitization sessions. Labor making and making visible different kinds of work characterize program implementation. Prevailing attitudes toward social assistance, and the class relations through which they are realized, are perpetuated through ostensibly novel programs

The construction of 'religion' and the perpetuation of 'tradition' among Pogoro Catholics, southern Tanzania.

This thesis is an ethnographic account of contemporary religious practice among a Bantu agricultural people in Southern Tanzania, the majority of whom are affiliated to the Roman Catholic Church. It examines the dialectic between Christianity and what the Pogoro consider to be 'traditional' practice as resulting in a locally defined Catholicism and in the separation of formal, official Christianity from 'traditional practice'. The thesis looks at how the existence of an institutional religion, in this case Catholicism, defines some aspects of local practice as traditional in opposition to it, while, at the same time, elements of Christian practice have been adopted by the community in a non institutional way. The thesis describes Pogoro Christianity, the role of the Church and Pogoro perceptions of it and gives an account of that which they consider to belong to the realm of 'tradition'. Traditional practice is not in actuality unchanging, but any changes in traditional practice must be legitimated by the authority of the dead and the spirits. The first part of the thesis provides the historical and geographical background. This is followed by a chapter on the Catholic Church in the area and official Catholic practice. Local Catholic practice and perceptions of the church and Christianity are described and accounted for. The next section looks at what is constituted as belonging to the realm of 'tradition'. The core chapters in this section describe girls puberty rites, funerals and the relationship with the dead. It is here that Catholic practice enters the realm of 'tradition'. A chapter examines the place of witchcraft eradication movements among the Pogoro, and in East and central Africa, to demonstrate how 'tradition' can and does change, and to provide a contrast with the position of Christianity among the Pogoro. This is dealt with in the final chapter in which I argue that there are limits on the 'traditionalisation' of Christianity among the Pogoro, and in other similar societies, and that these limits are to some extent a function of the institutional nature of Christianity

Living with HIV/AIDS : an ethnograpy of care in Western Kenya

This thesis, 'Living with HIV/AIDS: An ethnography of care in Western Kenya', is based upon 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Central Nyanza, Kenya, between 2005-2007. It studies practices of care against the backdrop of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has impacted the region severely. The thesis explores how home and hospital are established as domains of care through practice. It draws upon ethnographic material collected from within a District Hospital, a Community-Based Organisation and people's homes. The thesis follows practices of care across divergent domains of social life to consider how practices of care within Luo networks of kinship and relatedness intersect with governmental interventions to manage HIV/AIDS. The thesis describes two governmental projects introduced to administer HIV/AIDS care in this region. It considers Home-Based Care, an HIV/AIDS response in which Community Health Workers are trained to support particular aspects of care at home, focusing on the practices of care employed by Community Health Workers as they visit sick people at home and attend organisational meetings. The thesis also describes the landscape of HIV care in the District Hospital, including the delivery of antiretroviral therapy. The focus here is on the relationships between caring practices in the hospital and at home, and the divergent responsibilities to care experienced by hospital staff and family members. The main argument of the thesis is that care is a particularly useful analytical tool for anthropology because practices of care take place across many different domains of social life, cutting across the boundaries that have formed the traditional focus of anthropological study. Studying practices of care illuminates the production of bounded domains of social life whilst simultaneously drawing attention to similarities of practice across different domains. Care provides a way of understanding the complex social landscape that has developed as people in Western Kenya endeavour to live with HIV/AIDS.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Effectiveness of Interactive, Collaborative vs. Traditional, Lecture-Based Educational Interventions for Adolescents in Low-Income Areas to Increase Knowledge Regarding Sexually Transmitted Infections

Aim: To assess whether teens who live in low-income areas who participate in interactive, collaborative sexually transmitted infections (STI) prevention education will have a significant increase in learning outcomes in comparison to students who participate in a traditional, lecture-based approach. Background: More STIs are reported each year. Among those infected, young people are of the highest incidence at 50% of new STIs in the US annually. High STI incidence is an unintended health outcome as a result of engaging in risky sexual behaviors. This highlights the need to improve STI education among adolescents. Methods: A quasi-experimental method will be used to evaluate the effect of student participation in the two educational teaching interventions about STI knowledge and prevention. Students in both experimental groups will complete A Survey of Current Knowledge on Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Sexual Behaviour in Adolescents (Drago, 2016) questionnaire before and after each teaching intervention is presented. Analysis: Paired sample t-tests will be used to evaluate individual difference on STI knowledge pre- and post-intervention. A total of 60 adolescents (ages 13-19) from low-income areas in Hampton Roads will be recruited for this study, with a goal of 30 in each experimental group. Expected Findings: It is expected that the group who participates in the interactive, collaborative educational intervention will have a more significant difference in scores between the pretest and posttest

A Novel Ruminant Emission Measurement System: Part I. Design Evaluation and Description

Methane (CH4) generated by cattle is both a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and a powerful indicator of feed conversion efficiency; thus, accurate quantification of CH4 production is required for addressing future global food security without neglecting environmental impacts. A newly developed Ruminant Emission Measurement System (REMS) supports research on the relationships between bovine nutrition, genetics, and management strategies by measuring eructated CH4 emissions from ruminal activity. REMS is a substantial improvement and extension of the chamber technique, which is considered the standard method to quantify ruminant CH4 generation. Part I of this two-part series describes the design and evaluation of REMS. An uncertainty analysis of chamber emission rate (ER) was conducted to identify critical measurement component contributions to overall ER uncertainty and guide component selection. In Part II, REMS commissioning was performed and a method for system validation including overall emission uncertainty is reported. REMS consists of six positive pressure ventilated hood-type chambers individually equipped with a thermal environmental control subsystem, fresh air supply control subsystem, and gas sampling subsystem. Estimates of the standard uncertainty for each measurement parameter were quantified and propagated through the ER equation derived from CH4 and air mass flow balances. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the contribution of each parameter to the emission rate standard uncertainty (absolute = ΔER; relative = %ΔER) under predicted normal operation by varying gas analyzer and ventilation measurement uncertainties as anticipated with REMS use. Results showed that expanded %ΔER (~95% confidence level) associated with the methane ER computation was approximately 5.9% for ER values between 3.5 and 17.2 g h-1. Ventilation rate and gas concentration measurements were the major sources of uncertainty, contributing about 69% and 29%, respectively, to the uncertainty associated with methane ER values. This work provides the foundation for future studies using respiration chambers to include a stated standard uncertainty associated with animal emission measurements

At the Service of Community Development: The Professionalization of Volunteer Work in Kenya and Tanzania

This article explores the changing nature of the “volunteer” as an official role within health and development interventions in East Africa. Contemporary development interventions require the engagement of volunteers to act as links between project and community. This role is increasingly professionalized within development architectures with implications for the kinds of people who can engage in volunteering opportunities. Volunteers in development interventions are likely to be drawn from public sector staff and from educated youth seeking access to positions of paid employment. Volunteering as a formal status within the organization of development programs is recognized as a kind of professional work by those seeking to engage with development organizations. Volunteers perform important work in linking development programs with beneficiaries. At the same time, volunteering provides opportunities for personal transformation

History of adversity, health and psychopathology among prisoners: comparison between men and women

Adversity in childhood, risk behaviors and psychopathology are highly prevalent phenomena in inmate populations and have a strong impact on health. Knowing the differences in these variables between the sexes is most important in order to develop appropriate intervention strategies in a prison context. By administering the Socio-demographic and Life History Questionnaire and the Brief Symptoms Inventory, we sought to characterize adverse childhood experiences and relate them to risk behaviors and to psychopathological symptoms, and study the differences between the 65 male and 42 female detainees in Portuguese prison establishments. Men and women report a complex web of adversity in childhood. In a range of ten possible categories, a medium value of 5.05 (DP = 2.63) in total adversity for women and 2.63 (DP = 2.18) for men was encountered, with the prevalence being significantly higher within the female population (Z = -4.33; p = .000). A high prevalence of risk behaviors and psychopathological symptoms was found in both groups, the latter being higher among females. We concluded that the differences between men and women calls for in depth studies in order to provide guidelines for intervention projects in specific populations.Adversidade na infância, comportamentos de risco e psicopatologia são fenómenos muito prevalentes na população reclusa e com forte impacto na saúde. Conhecer as diferenças entre sexos, no que diz respeito a tais variáveis, é de elevada importância no sentido de adequar estraté- gias de intervenção em contexto prisional. Utilizando o Questionário Sociodemográfico e Histó- ria de Vida, o Questionário de Adversidade na Infância e o Brief Symptons Inventory, procuramos caracterizar a adversidade na infância, os comportamentos de risco e as dimensões psicopatológicas, e averiguar as diferenças entre 65 homens e 42 mulheres reclusos em estabelecimentos prisionais Portugueses. Homens e mulheres relatam um quadro complexo de adversidade na infância. Num total possível de dez categorias, verificamos uma média de adversidade total de 5.05 (DP = 2.63) para as mulheres e de 2.63 (DP = 2.18) para os homens, sendo a prevalência significativamente mais elevada junto da população feminina (Z = -4.33; p = .000). Foi ainda encontrada uma elevada prevalência de comportamentos de risco e de sintomatologia psicopatológica em ambos os grupos, sendo esta última superior nas mulheres. Concluímos que as diferenças entre sexos devem ser estudadas para guiarem a adequação dos projetos

On Applications of Campbell's Embedding Theorem

A little known theorem due to Campbell is employed to establish the local embedding of a wide class of 4-dimensional spacetimes in 5-dimensional Ricci-flat spaces. An embedding for the class of n-dimensional Einstein spaces is also found. The local nature of Campbell's theorem is highlighted by studying the embedding of some lower-dimensional spaces.Comment: 17 pages, standard Latex sourc