Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T18:20:53.760Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Nothing but Time”: Middle Figures, Student Pregnancy Policy, and the Malawian State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2019

Rachel Silver
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article explores state/NGO/funder relations in Africa through an ethnographic case study of Malawi’s Readmission Policy. The Policy, which banned the permanent expulsion of pregnant girls from school in 1993, underwent a formal, government-led review in 2016. By focusing attention on the daily work of “middle figures”—the mid-level civil servants, NGO representatives, and consultants who participated in the policy reform process—this article shows how state disempowerment in Malawi was not wholesale, even as aid funding for development policymaking bypassed government. Rather, government actors deployed key strategies, including time (mis)management, to reclaim moral authority over Malawian schools.

Résumé:

Cet article explore les relations État / ONG / organismes subventionnels en Afrique à travers une étude ethnographique de la politique de réadmission du Malawi, qui interdisait l’expulsion permanente de filles enceintes à l’école en 1993 et qui a fait l’objet d’une révision finale en 2016. En concentrant l’attention sur le travail quotidien des « personnes de rang intermédiaire » comme les fonctionnaires de niveau intermédiaire, les représentants des ONG et les consultants ayant participé au processus de réforme des politiques - cela montre à quel point la désautonomisation de l’État au Malawi n’a pas été totale, même en tant que source financière d’aide pour l’élaboration de politiques de développement qui contourne le gouvernement. Les acteurs gouvernementaux ont plutôt déployé des stratégies clés, y compris une gestion (temporelle) du temps, pour recouvrer l’autorité morale sur les écoles malawiennes.

Resumo:

Partindo de um estudo de caso etnográfico relativo à Lei da Readmissão no Malawi – que em 1993 proibiu que as jovens grávidas fossem expulsas das escolas para sempre e que sofreu uma revisão formal em 2016 –, o presente artigo explora as relações entre Estado, ONG e financiadores no contexto africano. Com enfoque no trabalho diário das “figuras do meio” – funcionários públicos de nível intermédio, representantes de ONG e consultores que participaram no processo de reforma legislativa –, demonstramos que não houve uma total desautorização do Estado malawiano, nem mesmo quando as ajudas financeiras para a implementação de políticas desenvolvimentistas contornaram o governo. Em vez disso, os membros do governo recorreram a estratégias-chave, incluindo a (má) gestão do tempo, de modo a reivindicarem para si a autoridade moral sobre as escolas do Malawi.

Keywords

middle figuresMalawidevelopmentaidpolicystate/NGO/funder relationsresistancesexualitypregnancyeducation
Type
Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 62 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 110 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anders, Gerhard. 2010. In the Shadow of Good Governance: An Ethnography of Civil Service Reform in Africa. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartlett, Lesley, and Vavrus, Frances. 2017. Rethinking Case Study Research: A Comparative Approach. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bierschenk, Thomas, Jean-Pierre Chauveau, , and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, . 2002. “Local Development Brokers in Africa: The Rise of a New Social Category.” Arbeitspapiere/Working Papers Number 13, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Institute fur Ethnologie und Afrikastudien.Google Scholar
Biruk, Crystal. 2018. Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blundo, Giorgio, and Le Meur, Pierre-Yves, eds. 2009. The Governance of Daily Life in Africa: Ethnographic Explorations of Public and Collective Services. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Lydia. 2015. Preaching Prevention: Born-Again Christianity and the Moral Politics of AIDS in Uganda. Athens: University of Ohio Press.Google Scholar
Bratton, Michael. 1989. “The Politics of Government-NGO Relations in Africa.” World Development 17 (4): 569–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cammack, Diana. 2012. “Malawi in Crisis, 2011–12.” Review of African Political Economy 39 (132): 375–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnoy, Martin. 1995. Structural Adjustment and the Changing Face of Education. International Labour Review 134 (6): 653–73.Google Scholar
Chafulumira, Wanangwa. 2016. “Donors not Head Teachers—Woeste.” Lilongwe, Malawi: Malawi Daily Times, June 2.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 1994. “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History.”American Historical Review 99: 1516–45.10.2307/2168387CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrick, Jonathan. 1983. “The ‘Native Clerk’ in Colonial West Africa.” African Affairs 82: 61–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupuy, Kendra, Ron, James, and Prakash, Aseem. 2016. “Hands off my Regime! Governments’ Restrictions on Foreign Aid to Non-Governmental Organizations in Poor and Middle- Income Countries.” World Development 84: 299–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Andreas. 2006. “Cultural Commuters: African Employees in Late Colonial Tanzania.” In Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa , edited by Lawrance, Benjamin N., Osborn, Emily L., and Roberts, Richard L., 248–72. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Escobar, Arturo. 1994. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Esser, Daniel. 2014. “Elusive Accountabilities in the HIV Scale-up: ‘Ownership’ as a Functional Tautology.” Global Public Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy, and Practice 9: 1–2; 43–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fechter, Anne-Meike, and Hindman, Heather, eds. 2011. Inside the Everyday Lives of Development Workers: The Challenges and Future of Aidland. Boulder, Colorado: Kumarian Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, James, and Gupta, Akhil. 2002. “Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality.” American Ethnologist 29 (4): 981–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Government of Malawi (GoM). 2016. Malawi Demographic and Health Survey 2015–2016 Key Indicators Report. Zomba, Malawi: National Statistics Office.Google Scholar
Health Policy Project. 2015. “Evaluation of Youth-Friendly Health Services in Malawi.” Washington, D.C: USAID. http://www.e2aproject.org/publications-tools/pdfs/evaluation-yfhs-malawi.pdf.Google Scholar
Hunt, Nancy Rose. 1999. A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyden, Goran. 2008. “After the Paris Declaration: Taking on the Issue of Power.” Development Policy Review 26 (3): 259–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson-Hanks, Jennifer. 2006. Uncertain Honor: Modern Motherhood in an African Crisis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kadzakumanja, Paida. 2016. “Malawi Faces EU Aid Test.” Lilongwe, Malawi: The Nation.Google Scholar
Kadzamira, Esme, and Rose, Pauline. 2001. “Educational Policy Choice and Policy Practice in Malawi: Dilemmas and Disjunctures.” Working Paper Number 124, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.Google Scholar
Kendall, Nancy. 2007. “Education for All Meets Political Democratization: Free Primary Education and the Neoliberalization of the Malawian School and State.” Comparative Education Review 51 (3): 281–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, Nancy, and Silver, Rachel. 2017. “Mapping International Development Relations Through Meeting Ethnography.” In Meeting Ethnography: Meetings as Key Technologies of Contemporary Governance, Development, and Resistance , edited by Sandler, Jen and Thedvall, Renita, 24–45. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Martin. 2006. “African Participation in Colonial Rule: The Role of Clerks, Interpreters, and Other Intermediaries.” In Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa , edited by Lawrance, Benjamin N., Osborn, Emily L., and Roberts, Richard L., 273–88. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin N., Osborn, Emily L., and Roberts, Richard L.. 2006. “Introduction: African Intermediaries and the ‘Bargain’ of Collaboration.” In Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa , edited by Lawrance, Benjamin N., Osborn, Emily L., and Roberts, Richard L., 3–36. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Levine, Ruth, Lloyd, Cynthia B., Margaret Greene, and Caren Grown. 2008. Girls Count: A Global Investment and Action Agenda. Washington DC: Center for Global Development.Google Scholar
Lewis, David, and Mosse, David, eds. 2006. Development Brokers and Translators. Bloomfield, Conn.: Kumarian Press.Google Scholar
Liwewe, Olivia. 2012. Re-entry Policy: The Case of Malawi. Report, Forum for African Women Educationalists Malawi.Google Scholar
Mercer, Claire. 2002. “NGOs, Civil Society, and Democratization: A Critical Review of the Literature.” Progress in Development Studies 2 (1): 5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mkandawire, Lucky. 2016. “Govt Cries for Mercy: Pleads for Delayed Refund of Abused K400m.” Lilongwe, Malawi: The Nation, September 22.Google Scholar
Mkandawire, Thandika. 2010. “Aid, Accountability, and Democracy in Africa.” Social Research 77 (4)1149–182.Google Scholar
Moeller, Kathryn. 2018. The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Corporate Politics of Development. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parikh, Shanti. 2015. Regulating Romance: Youth Love Letters, Moral Anxiety, and Intervention in Uganda’s Time of AIDS. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek. 2004. Creating Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Ponje, Alick. 2016. “Envoy Urges Self Reliance.” Lilongwe, Malawi: Malawi Daily Times, December 6.Google Scholar
Reimers, Fernando. 1994. “Education and Structural Adjustment in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.” International Journal of Educational Development 14: 119–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resnick, Danielle. 2013. “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Limits of Foreign Aid on Malawi’s Democratic Consolidation.” In Democratic Trajectories in Africa: Unraveling the Impact of Foreign Aid, edited by Resnick, Danielle and van de Walle, Nicolas, 110–38. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samati, Madalo. 2013. “At the Interface of Policy and Cultural Change: Engaging Communities in Support of Girls’ Education in Malawi.” In Improving Learning Opportunities and Outcomes for Girls in Africa, edited by Ackerman, Xanthe and Abay, Negar Ashtari, 69–100. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute.Google Scholar
Samoff, Joel. 1999. “Education Sector Analysis in Africa: Limited National Control and Even Less National Ownership.” International Journal of Educational Development 19 (4): 249–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Jen, and Thedvall, Renita, eds. 2017. Meeting Ethnography: Interrogating Meetings as Key Technologies of Contemporary Governance, Development, and Resistance. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James. 1987. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shore, Cris, Wright, Susan, and Però, Davide, eds. 2011. Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Stambach, Amy. 2000. Lessons from Mount Kilimanjaro: Schooling, Community, and Gender in East Africa. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stambach, Amy. 2010. Faith in Schools: Religion, Education, and American Evangelicals in East Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sutton, Margaret, and Levinson, Bradley A. U., eds. 2001. Policy as Practice: Toward a Comparative Sociocultural Analysis of Educational Policy. Stamford, Conn.: Ablex Publishing.Google Scholar
Swidler, Ann, and Watkins, Susan C.. 2017. A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Lynn M. 2003. Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Lynn M.. 2007. “Gendered Reproduction: Placing Schoolgirl Pregnancies in African History.” In Africa After Gender? edited by Cole, Catherine M., Manuh, Takyiwaa, and Miescher, Stephan F., 48–62. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Unsworth, Sue. 2009. “What’s Politics Got to Do with It? Why Donors Find It So Hard to Come to Terms with Politics, and Why This Matters.” Journal of International Development 21: 883–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vavrus, Frances. 2003. Desire and Decline: Schooling Amid Crisis in Tanzania. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2017a. Malawi. Washington D.C.: The World Bank. https://data.worldbank.org/country/malawiGoogle Scholar
World Bank. 2017b. Net Official Development Assistance Received (Current US$). Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CDGoogle Scholar
Wroe, Daniel. 2012. “Donors, Dependency, and Political Crisis in Malawi.” African Affairs 111 (442): 135–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar