Reconciling the Needs and Wants of Respondents in Two Rural Ethiopian Communities

Autor/in	Lavers, Tom
Titel	Reconciling the Needs and Wants of Respondents in Two Rural Ethiopian Communities
Quelle	In: Social Indicators Research, 86 (2008) 1, S.129-147 (19 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0303-8300
DOI	10.1007/s11205-007-9110-x
Schlagwörter	Quality of Life; Rural Areas; Foreign Countries; Well Being; Case Studies; Developing Nations; Ethiopia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Lebensqualität; Rural area; Ländlicher Raum; Ausland; Well-being; Wellness; Wohlbefinden; Case study; Fallstudie; Case Study; Developing country; Developing countries; Entwicklungsland; Äthiopien
Abstract	This paper uses the Quality of Life research carried out by the Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD) Research Group to examine the importance respondents have attributed to a variety of goals in two rural communities in Ethiopia. The results are analysed at the community, household and individual levels to expose the contestation involved in expressions of goal preference at different levels, and the power relations that underlie and contribute to the formation of these goal preferences. In this way, taking communities or households as homogenous units is shown to be inaccurate and potentially misleading. Analysis of individual case studies also provides insight into the complex decision-making process where people with access to limited resources are forced to give certain goals priority depending on current exigencies. The fact that the ordering of priorities can change with time highlights the dangers of any one-off measure being considered as a time-independent picture of individuals' goals. By relating the results of the research to Doyal and Gough's Theory of Human Need, the paper considers to what extent "universal" human needs correspond to the most important goals as expressed by respondents in the Ethiopian research. Whilst considerable support is found for needs such as health, food and shelter, several respondents in the two research sites consider needs such as education to be unnecessary. This incongruence between the priority of people's goals and theories of need leads us to question what the aim of development should be: to assist beneficiaries in the pursuit of what they want, or provide the things that they are thought to need. (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10