Dear all
Happy to read the contributions so far!!
Development interventions become effective if they also take due considerations of the contexts where they will be implemented. More recent research outcomes increasingly pointed out that individual’s (for whom interventions are intended) attitude and behavior can limit development outcomes.
In general, poor people often do not make investments, even when returns are high, as they have low aspirations and form mental models which ignore some options for investment. Based on the logics of Apparduria (2004) some argue that while aspirations about the ‘good life’ exist in all societies, the ‘’capacity to aspire’’ is unevenly distributed; the rich are more aware of the various manifestations of the good life, which they use to improve their material conditions, while for the poor, they are likely to be more rigid, and less strategically valuable -- not because of any cognitive deficit on the part of the poor but because the capacity to aspire, like any complex cultural capacity, thrives and survives on practice, repetition, exploration, conjecture, and refutation. In a detailed study, CHF (2007) reported a much more convincing findings of ‘aspiration failure’ among the very poor from a detailed qualitative and quantitative survey conducted in the five biggest regions of Ethiopia. The study strongly argues that due to ‘satisfaction’ (or ‘happiness’) with one’s circumstances, and absence of ‘role models’ in the localities, there is a widespread occurrence of aspiration failure – individuals being unwilling to make pro-active investments to better their own lives....
Yet, more recent research experiments, including that of IFRPI (Bernard et al, 2014) demonstrated that aspirations ‘’can be influenced’’ with effective interventions. Individuals who watched documentaries (for two hours) about peer group ‘role model’ people from similar communities who had succeeded in agriculture or small business, have, after six months, higher aspirations or forward-looking behaviour on savings and credit behaviour, children’s school enrolment, and were induced for more work and less leisure. The role models all took slightly different courses of action to those around them, such as starting or expanding a small business, diversifying their source of income, improving their farming practices, or acting outside cultural norms or by adopting non-traditional divisions of household responsibility between spouses. Also, spouses featured in the documentaries highlighted the personal qualities of the subjects, such as perseverance, determination and reliability.
References:
Apparduria, Arjun (2004): ‘’The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition,’’ in Culture and Public Action, edited by V. Rao and M. Walton (Stanford University Press, 2004)
Bernard, Tanguy, Stefan Dercon, Kate Orkin, and Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse (2014): The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Forward-Looking Behaviour in Rural Ethiopia, Centre for the Study of African Economies, CSAE Working Paper WPS/2014-16
Buvinic, Mayra and Megan O’Donnell (2016): Revisiting What Works: Women Economic Empowerment and Smart Design, Centre for Global Development, Data2 and United Nations Foundation.
CHF Partners in Development (2007): ETHIOPIA: The Path to Self-Resiliency, Final Report, July 2007
Mr. Getaneh Gobezie