Irrigating lives: Development intervention and dynamics of social relationships in an irrigation project

This study is about rural agricultural development and social processes of change in rural Zimbabwe. It is aimed at understanding how irrigation intervention in a remote rural context changed the cultural, social, political and farming lives of people. It is a study of people coping with changes in their livelihoods which had been introduced from outside by development intervention. The study was sustained by the realisation that irrigation is not just a matter of technical artefacts, but has much to do with people, especially the people it is meant to benefit. Development practitioners and researchers should be interested not only in irrigation performance, but also in how people manipulate the irrigation resources available to them. How does irrigation development change the lives of the irrigators over time? How is it transformed and adapted by them? How does it change their perceptions of each other in view of their local social identities and differences? What do irrigation farmers use to gain improved access to irrigation resources? How do they manipulate their social, political, technical and management environments to their benefit? What lessons can we derive from "targeted" beneficiaries' analyses of how their lives have been transformed by development intervention?