Materiality, structures and ideology : poor and orphaned children’s lifesituations in the Bagamoyo District in Tanzania

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the lives of poor and orphaned children in the Bagamoyo District in Tanzania and the way in which global structures influence their realities. The children’s experiences are at the forefront of this thesis. Empirical data has been gathered through meetings with street children, and children living in extreme poverty. I have aimed for a multisided ethnography. This multisided approach was conducted in order to show the interconnectedness between the various social and structural levels affecting the realities of the children. I have therefore also included local government representatives, CBO employees and employees of international NGOs present in Bagamoyo, and the various arenas in which they operate. In addition I visited UNICEF’s offices in Dar-es-Salaam. The macro-structures involved are of a historic and economic character. The current reign of neoliberalism and the values embedded in the ideology are being globally distributed through policies, laws and regulations. The discourses and practices involved are based on certain types of knowledge or ‘regimes of truth’ which deem all other knowledge systems and realities ‘wrong’ or ‘abnormal’. Global discourses and practices are currently shaped by neoliberal ideas and I argue that the development industry plays a central part in processes of global governmentality. This affects all levels of the development hierarchy, down to the Community-based organizations which are caught between issues of being responsible for direct assistance, seeing the suffering up close, and at the same time having their hands tied by and strict control and management routines, and severe under-funding. Global governmentality forms specific types of knowledge that has as one of its effects concealment of the lived realities of children. The framing of one set of truths as valid and universal, manifested through a system of professionalism, experts and economic logic hide the life of children as lived. Life of children disappears in the Western-based children’s rights discourse, and only stereotypical stories are brought to the fore. This strips the children of agency and acknowledgement for who they are and what they do. The other form of concealment happens when the historic and economic links between wealth and poverty are kept out of the picture, and blame of failure is often put on the poor themselves.