I recently sent a proposal for the designers of a project which aims to demonstrate a particular approach to the completion of development work in a geographical area in a developing country, and if it was a success which is then intended to "expand" the model other districts. This was, they said, to overcome the fragmented approach of just working at the village level, which led to uneven development. The models covering both technical and social – in terms of technical engineering solutions, but also social, in the way that they intended to work with different groups to encourage them to engage with engineering solutions. The idea of the model assumes that the same results were achieved with standard methods for objects and people.
One difficulty that this presents is to evaluate the effectiveness of the models in their own right, unlike the staff of the organization to take on these models with others, the local population. The premise seems to be that if the models work, ’then nobody can take them elsewhere with the same effect. This, of course, is the basis of scientific thought, since it implies that the natural world. One method is generalizable, if one can apply with the same results. However, if efficiency is largely due to both the quality of thought on the method (models), but also the caliber of people working and the quality of relationships that are forming with others to help them work, then there is no separating the context of the generalized. Success is derived from a variety of local and national factors, while the idea of "extension" implies that it is generalizable factors that are most important. What is emphasized, then, is the abstraction of context and privilege of the general regard.
However, in a different district, if local players are forced to adopt the model and are not compatible, it will be working with the same initial starting conditions. In trying to extend this project can only bring them the uneven development at the district level instead of uneven development at the village level. In the absence of a similar intervention in a different district by the same organizations, or a strong state that can impose ways of working in different districts and can match this with resources, can be difficult to achieve the same effect elsewhere, and to separate the effect of the organization is involved and staff of what is happening.
In this modeling approach can see the vestiges of the ideas contained in a message in Hannah Arendt wrote that where there is already a concept of a real foundation, a first cause can be discovered, and in this case "applied" elsewhere .
If we were to take the arguments of William Easterly, in the white man’s burden, then we would abandon the ideas of replicability at a utopian myth. ’Success’ in a district, it depends on a number of factors including the level of education of the population, the prevalence of the required skills and expertise, local availability of this approach, cultural norms, struggles policies, in other words what is known in sociology as habitus. What we want to achieve, what local people want to achieve, and what is possible, all may be irreconcilable. We have sustainable services in the developed world, but an explanation of how they came to say that the "readiness" of society, began to blow sustainable services such as health and education rather than the reverse, or at least co-creator yes. In Western societies, the combination of a strong state tax increase, the level of education among the population, the development of thinking about social services all the progress made at widely as possible, which in turn promoted the thinking about social services, which never ceases to this day. The "model" services, which in turn is in constant change, was only one factor among a number of factors have contributed to the development of services over a long period of time.
This is not an excuse for doing nothing, nor is it an argument that there is nothing generalizable to the experience that is useful and applicable elsewhere. It is, however, an argument for paying attention to what James C. Scott had to say in view as a state, we have explored in other posts. A large-scale abstract plans all planned changes "are fraught with difficulty, and there is no basis for thinking that because it has proven x also can be x to the power 10. In complex starting different initial conditions can cause all type produced different results, which may or may not get what he wants this particular organization.
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