Podcasts from the SfAA

This was a very popular session and the room quickly filled up with a lot of people.  The excitement and chatter in the room was picked up by the microphone and thus this recording is not the best quality.

This session was organized by the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR). Please visit INDR’s website at www.displacement.net and you may contact Ted Downing, Executive Director, via email downing (at) u.arizona (dot) edu.

Michael Cernea (World Bank)

Building Blocks for a New Resettlement Economics: Investments, Benefit-sharing, Reparations and Enhanced Compensation
What can anthropologists contribute to structurally reforming the recurrent flaws in the planning and financing of post-displacement resettlement? Anthropologists and sociologists should not only criticize the impoverishment risks, but also boldly advance constructive policy recommendations to amend existing policies and practices. The absence of economic feasibility analysis in many RAPs makes the “plans” for livelihood improvement statements untested by rigorous economic/financial analysis and leads to under-financing of resettlement. Social scientists (non-economists) should systematically pursue closer cooperation with their economist colleagues. Anthropologists must advocate new building blocks for sound resettlement economics: 1) Investments in resettlers’ welfare; 2) Allocation of a share of project benefits; 3) Financial reparation to correct wrong-doings; and 4) Enhanced compensation levels.

Chad Dear (U Montana)

Understanding Systems of Impoverishment Risks: Comparing Risks of Displaced People and Those Resisting Displacement

Anthony Oliver-Smith (United Nations U Inst for Env & Human Security)

Behind the Economics of Displacement: Challenging the Philosophical and Ethical Assumptions
This paper frames the issue of impoverishment from displacement and resettlement in terms of the fundamental precepts, and their philosophical origins, behind the economics of displacement and resettlement. The philosophical, ethical and behavioral assumptions behind western economics, including perspectives on land, property, labor and development as they appear Education in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Anthropological engagements with protected area conservation have taken many forms in recent years. As local environmental knowledge continues to decrease among younger generations, education that emphasizes human-environment connections is seen in foundational writings of western economics are scrutinized in terms of their ethical implications for the economics of eminent domain, displacement and resettlement. The paper examines the variety of arguments and assumptions that underlie the various positions on the taking of property by the state or other interests.

Elizabeth M. Kobus (S Methodist U)

email: ekobus (at) smu (dot) edu phone: 214-768-4137

Perceptions of Risk and Their Implications: The Delay of the Bujagali Hydropower Project
Uganda’s Bujagali Falls Hydroelectric Power Project is one of the most ambitious projects planned in sub-Saharan Africa in decades. There has been approximately six years between the relocation of those affected by the dam and the date of this analysis. This paper looks at both the causes of this delay and how it affected the community surrounding the project’s site. It will explore the power relationships between the World Bank, NGO’s, the state of Uganda, and those directly affected by the dam’s construction. Set within the theoretical frameworks of Douglas, Foucault, Beck, and Giddens this paper adds to the understanding of the processes of development and their consequences when lateral organizations are transformed into powerful players in the hierarchy of international development.

David Turton (U Oxford)

Present and Future Displacement Risks Facing the People of the Lower Omo Valley, Southwestern Ethiopia
In 2005, the Ethiopian government handed over the management of the Omo National Park to a Netherlands-based company, in an agreement which gives the company near total control of the park, including law enforcement activities. In April 2007 an Italian energy company was awarded a 10,000ha. site in the far south of the Omo basin for the production of biofuels, with an option to take over a further 60,000 ha. within the next five years. Meanwhile, a 240m high hydro-electric dam on the Upper Omo is scheduled for completion in 2011. This paper will consider the threat of forced displacement and loss of vital economic resources faced by the people of the Lower Omo Valley as a result of these developments.

Theodore Downing (U Arizona)

Discussant

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