Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates the role of narratives in international development through an ethnographic analysis of a cash transfer program. Tanzania’s Productive Social Safety Net makes small. Regular payments to some of the poorest households in the country. Implementation centers on public activities accompanying payouts where beneficiaries recount changes they have been able to make through their productive use of program money. Narratives are fundamental to cash transfer programs where agencies have to show that the very small payments poor households receive lead to the substantial changes made in policy claims. Development programs invoke distinct rhetorical forms in order to make hyperbolic claims about the changes people needing development are expected to achieve, despite limited resources. Transformational accounting adopts the dramaturgical conventions of ‘relational accounting’ to situate aid recipients in tales of self-generated transformation that provide the basis for ongoing improvement. The systematic overstatement of impacts from interventions perpetuates longstanding discourses about personal and financial responsibility, sustaining political economies of aid and its organizational arrangements which benefit vested interests.

Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.