A road to development? Rural perspectives on infrastructure maintenance in Solomon Islands. Issue 6 (18th August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hobbis, Stephanie Ketterer
• Is Part Of: Development in practice. Volume 29:Issue 6(2019)
• Page Start: 748
• Page End: 759
• Publication Date: 2019-08-18
• Subjects: Aid – Development policies -- Environment (built and natural) -- Technology -- Oceania and Japan; Technical assistance -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; Economic assistance -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; Developing countries -- Economic conditions -- Periodicals; 338.91091724
• DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2019.1586832
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0961-4524

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Solomon Islands Government and its development partners are heavily investing in road maintenance programmes to promote development in the small islands least developed state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article challenges the future orientation of these programmes. Instead it emphasises rural Solomon Islanders' past and present experiences with road-based mobilities and state-sponsored road maintenance projects. These experiences reveal roads and road repairs as a source of insecurity, immorality, and potential state violence that sideline, if not obstruct, hopes for any imagined future that a maintained road may (or may not) bring.