Participação dos chefes tradicionais no processo do desenvolvimento rural: o caso do distrito de Cheringoma, 1994-1999

Abstract

The failure of development programs and projects in Mozambique, particularly in rural areas, confirmed by the increasing impoverishment of a large part of the rural population, leads to the questioning of their own discourses and recurrent practices on development and to postulating other types of approaches that it made it possible to understand the process of rural development as something complex, where we found not only a diversity of actors, but also logics and strategies for interaction. It is at this level that the present Research Project is located, in which we seek to analyze the participation of traditional chiefs, as partner actors, in the process of rural development in the district of Cheringona. The work seeks to understand the extent to which the traditional chiefs participate in the rural development process and what relevance their participation has for the dynamization of this process in their communities. Taking situational analysis as our main theoretical perspective, the results of the pre-survey (fieldwork) largely corroborate our working hypothesis. Thus, the study shows that traditional leaders recreate, reinterpret, negotiate their political-religious functions, their status, in the context of rural development discourses and practices and become an important reference point for the participation of their communities in the development process. In this sense, traditional power / authority appears as something dynamic in constant recreation, negotiation, in the rural world, incorporating new meanings throughout the historical process. The work is divided into four chapters, in which, in addition to describing the location of the investigation, we seek to do a bibliographic review, the construction of the theoretical framework and the analysis of the material collected in the pre-survey phase (fieldwork) . In addition to the four chapters, there is an introduction where we put our problem, the objectives of the study, the delimitation of the object of study, the starting point, the working hypothesis presents some final considerations, which, more than conclusions, constitute clues of reflection for future works related to the theme.