Desire and Decline: Schooling Amid Crisis in Tanzania (Society and Politics in Africa, Volume 13)

Book Description
Desire and Decline explores the privileged place of education in local, national, and global development discourses about population, HIV/AIDS, and environmental conservation. "Desire" signals the global consensus on the view that education is central to solving problems of development. "Decline," on the other hand, draws attention to the growing gap between those who have access to basic social services—such as education—and those who do not. Based on multiple periods of fieldwork on Mount Kilimanjaro, Frances Vavrus links local and global narratives about the potential of education to enhance development but also reveals its limitations in postcolonial countries experiencing the pressures of globalization. Vavrus concludes with portraits of local development initiatives that leave readers with a clear sense of the complexity of education’s role in development, and the importance of political economic analysis for global population, health, and environmental policy.


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There is an enduring faith among a wide range of social actors that formal education will effect profound social change in the Third World, even in places where declining economic opportunity makes that unlikely. Mapping the reasons for and impacts of the desire for formal education among villagers living on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Vavrus (education, Columbia U.) describes the evolution of social policy with respect to education in Tanzania during the 20th century. She then presents an ethnography of schooling, arguing that the desire for schooling (rather than schooling itself) is responsible for declining fertility rates and rising HIV/AIDS rates. She then explores the impact of economic policies on the ability of parents to send their children to school. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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