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    Power, empowerment and children in Dhaka's poor urban communities : understanding and measuring children's empowerment : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of International Development at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Hamilton, Harley
    This thesis is about children, power and empowerment. It seeks to both understand and measure power and empowerment from the perspectives of poor urban children living in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Children have been largely overlooked in development studies literature and although empowerment and measurement have been mainstreamed into development practice, children’s perspectives on these two essentially contested concepts are marginal. This thesis contributes to existing understandings of children’s power and empowerment, with a specific focus on poor urban children living in Dhaka. To do this, this thesis draws on two competing research paradigms, those of interpretivism and positivism respectively. I show how these two research paradigms can be brought together into a single mixed methods methodology when employed to answer distinct, but related research questions. This enabled me to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and analytical strategies: task-based visual methods employed in a creative art and storytelling workshop; a qualitative thematic analysis; indicator construction; a survey and a descriptive statistical analysis. Bringing together these two competing research paradigms allows for the in-depth, contextual knowledge that qualitative research uncovers, with the ability to use this knowledge as a basis for measurement. In this thesis, I draw on empirical evidence uncovered through my research methods and insights from post-structuralism, development sociology and the literature on the relationality of childhood to argue that power can be viewed as boundaries to action. Boundaries of power exist as social structures that demarcate fields of action, possibility and imagination and are not resources that any actor has or uses but instead exist as boundaries which constrain all actors. I explore five boundaries of power that were highlighted by my research participants: personal relationships with family and friends; access to material and financial resources; the natural environment; education and children’s work. I present 34 indicators of empowerment I created that were derived from these boundaries of power. I discuss the survey and descriptive statistical analysis I undertook to measure these indicators with a small group of poor urban children. These indicators are therefore context specific and intended to be relevant and meaningful to those who are to be affected by development. They are a tool that could be used by development practitioners to measure a baseline of the relative empowerment or disempowerment of children in Dhaka and to track and measure change over time. Drawing on both my qualitative and quantitative findings, I show that viewing power as boundaries is not to claim that all power relations are equal. Instead I show that actors are placed in differential positions within power’s boundaries and have different channels for action. I suggest, therefore, that empowerment can be reconceptualized as a temporal issue that should first seek to expand the channels for action available to actors within power’s existing boundaries, and second, to shift the formation of the boundaries themselves to provide new conditions for future agency.
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    Japan's official development assistance : its shape and implications for recipients : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies, Massey University
    (Massey University, 1996) Scheyvens, Henry
    Japan's ODA programme is surrounded by controversy regarding the motives that propel it forward and the degree to which it meets recipient needs. This study hopes to add to the debate regarding Japanese ODA by uncovering those factors that shape Japan's contemporary aid activities and to interpret their implications for recipients. Rather than adhering to any one particular view of Japan's international relations to explain Japanese ODA, an inductive approach is used to identify the contextual mix in which aid policy is formulated. Japan's cultural legacy and development experience are found to define the broad boundaries that ODA policy must operate within and these factors continue to colour Japan's unique brand of foreign aid. An analysis of the evolution of Japan's contemporary aid programme also shows that ODA has been used to promote Japan's national interests in a variety of ways as international circumstances have changed. Economic and security needs have played influential roles in the size and direction of aid flows throughout the evolution of Japan's aid programme. More recently, a growing desire for an international leadership role explains why Japan's ODA programme continues to expand at a time when many other major donors are suffering 'aid fatigue'. Although Japan's ODA activities undoubtedly promote the country's foreign interests, this study has also found that the aid programme has undergone a process of reform to better attune aid to recipient needs. The quality of Japanese ODA has steadily improved over time and many popular development themes have been incorporated into Japan's ODA policy. A desire to present Japan as a responsible member of the international community, combined with ideological development as Japan's aid agencies have gained greater experience, are used to explain this reform process. Previous studies of Japan's ODA programme have largely been a study of Japan as a donor with little consideration given to the impact of aid activities on recipients. To help fill this void a case study of Bangladesh was undertaken and Japanese projects, project evaluations and country reports analysed. In this study the empowerment approach was used to identify how appropriate and effective Japanese aid is in assisting impoverished peoples in Bangladesh. The findings were that, despite the extent of reform in Japan's aid policy, aid practice in Bangladesh is dominated by Japan's traditional aid activities, that is, the construction of large-scale economic infrastructure projects. An analysis of Bangladesh's recent development history reveals that the production-based, trickle-down growth strategy that these aid activities are founded upon has little to offer the poor. In contrast, this thesis suggests that the poor will only be included as active agents in the development process when they have been politically, socially and economically empowered. Recent reforms within the Japanese ODA programme make it more receptive to the needs of the poor. However, it is likely that Japan's national interests, rather than those of the poor, will remain the main determinants in shaping aid activities.