Faith Hawolti Curry Department of Sociology University of Connecticut

MA Thesis Defense

Tuesday, October 20, 2020 11:00am - 1:00pm Zoom Link

Committee Members Dr. Elizabeth Holzer (Chair) Dr. Manisha Desai Dr. Bandana Purkayastha

Abstract

In the hopes of adding to the literature on Ethiopian subjectivity within the larger African experience of colonization. As well as its’ present locality as experiencing coloniality through the operations of development schemas. This study utilizes the coloniality of power framework to understand the ways in which coloniality exists within development schemas in the Ethiopian development project known as Koga Irrigation and Water Management Project. Which is an agricultural development schema that has been implemented in Amhara, Ethiopia through the cooperation of international and domestic investment since 2001. The study investigates the ways in which elite development industry operates within the Eurocentric epistemological grounding of modernity. My question guiding this study is how do farmers as development subjects experience development projects, and in what ways does KIWMP institutionalize Ethiopian farmers in the folds of the global agricultural system? Using institutional ethnographic methodology for data collection and analysis I investigate the ways that this project operates and is experienced by the local farming community.