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The collection, processing, storage and circulation of data is a fundamental element of contemporary societies. While the positivistic literature on ‘data revolution’ finds it essential for improving development delivery, critical data studies stresses the threats of datafication. In this paper, we demonstrate that datafication has been happening continuously through history, driven by political and economic pressures. We use historical examples to show how resource and personal data were extracted, accumulated and commodified by colonial empires, national governments and trade organizations, and argue that similar extractive processes are a present-day threat in the Global South. We argue that the decoupling of earlier and current datafication processes obscures the underlying, complex power dynamics of datafication. Our historical perspective shows how, once aggregated, data may become imperishable and can be appropriated for problematic purposes in the long run by both public and private entities. Using historical case studies, we challenge the current regulatory approaches that view data as a commodity and frame it instead as a mobile, non-perishable, yet ideally inalienable right of people., Dr Katarzyna Cieslik acknowledges the generous support of the Philomathia Social Science Foundation.

Social programs are based on explicit or implicit assumptions of how and why a certain intervention will work. Recently, these assumptions have captured the attention of academics and practitioners alike, sparking sudden interest in the so called theories of change (ToCh). By illustrating how each intermediate outcome links to another in a logical and/or chronological flow, ToCh are explanations of how certain groups of stakeholders expect to reach a commonly understood long-term goal. In this research, we take the comprehensive case study of a recent ecosystem services project in Huamantanga, Peru, as a strategic site to illustrate the diversity of perceptions and assumptions around the project’s theory (ies) of change held by a heterogeneous group of stakeholders. Founded by the British research consortium, Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA), the intervention built upon launching a community-led environmental virtual observatory (EVO): an open technology platform for ecosystem knowledge generation and exchange. While in principle, ToCh represents a welcome effort of organizations to explore and represent change in a way that reflects a systemic understanding of development, practitioners’ experience points to the threats of its unquestioned application. External application of ToChs imposes a pre-defined project logic model and irrevocably reduces complex social reality to a clear-cut range of project deliverables. The pressure to be policy-relevant and to deliver a range of specific impacts, while well-intentioned, may also deter investigation of alternative sets of assumptions about the change process. With the use of ethnographic data, narrative interviews and focus group discussions with the project's stakeholders (Huamantanga community members, the researchers, practitioners and founders), we attempt to explore these ‘alternative assumptions’, conceptualizing ToCh not as a product, but as an ongoing process of reflection and dialogue, a path of practice-informed scientific exploration.

Present-day development theory and practice highlight the potential of micro-entrepreneurship for poverty reduction in least developed countries. Fostered by the seminal writings of microfinance founder Muhammad Yunus and the bottom-of-the-pyramid propagator Krishnarao Prahalad, the new approach is marked by a stress on participation and sustainability, and the new, market-based development models. With the growing popularity of the new approach there has been an increased demand for research on the efficacy and impact of innovations. What has scarcely been addressed, however, is the legitimacy of the new paradigm within its contexts of application. Since engagement and participation have been made the focal point of the new approach, my research investigates how the innovative, mostly market-based models have been received by the local populations on the ground. This doctoral dissertation is looking up-close at the rural populations of Burundi, describing and explaining their perceptions, behaviors and actions in response to the market-based development innovations: microfinance, rural entrepreneurship and community social enterprise. Do the concepts of entrepreneurship, community engagement and participation find a fertile ground among the poorest rural dwellers of sub-Saharan Africa? Can subsistence farmers be entrepreneurs? How to create social value in the context of extreme resource scarcity? It is investigating these and other questions that guided the subsequent stages of my work. I based my dissertation on extensive field research, conducted periodically over the period of four years in the remote areas of rural Burundi.In the first chapter, I question the applicability of entrepreneurship-based interventions to the socio-cultural context of rural Burundi. Basing my quantitative analysis on a unique cross-section dataset from Burundi of over 900 households, I look into the entrepreneurial livelihood strategies at the near-subsistence level: diversifying crops, processing food for sale, supplementary wage work and non-agricultural employment. I find that the farmers living closer to the subsistence level are indeed less likely to pursue innovative entrepreneurial opportunities, unable to break the poverty cycle and move beyond subsistence agriculture. The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on by analyzing its drivers and inhibitors in the context of a subsistence economy. It questions the idea of alleviating rural poverty through the external promotion of entrepreneurship as it constitutes ‘a denial of the poor’s capacity for agency to bring about social change by themselves on their own terms’.Drawing on these findings, the second chapter focusses on the role of local communities as shareholders of projects. The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the agrarian communities in rural Burundi accommodate the model of a community social enterprise. The project understudy, implemented by the UNICEF Burundi Innovation Lab, builds upon the provision of green energy generators to the village child protection committees in the energy-deficient rural regions of the country. The electricity-producing machines are also a new income source for the groups, transforming them into economically viable community enterprises. Since the revenue earned is to directly support the village orphans’ fund, the communities in question engage in a true post-development venture: they gradually assume the role of the development-provisioning organizations.The third chapter of this work focusses on the complex interaction between the microfinance providers and the population of its clients and potential clients: the rural poor. It draws on the existing research on positive deviance among African communities and explores the social entrepreneurial potential of the rule-breaking practices of microfinance programs’ beneficiaries. Using the storyboard methodology, I examine the strategies employed by the poor in Burundi to bypass institutional rules. My results suggest that transgressive practices and nonconformity of development beneficiaries can indeed be seen as innovative, entrepreneurial initiatives to reform the microfinance system from within, postulating a more participatory mode of MFIs’ organizational governance. The three empirical chapters provide concrete examples illustrating the contested nature of the development process. In the last, theoretical, chapter, I examine how the different conceptualizations of social entrepreneurship have been shaped by the disparate socio-political realities in the North and in the South. I then analyze how the process of constructing academic representation has been influenced by the prevalent public discourses.Since doubling or tripling of the external development finance has not sufficed to bring about systemic change, the assumption that technology, managerial efficacy and the leveraging power of financial markets could be applied to solving the problem of persisting global poverty has a lot of appeal. At the same time, my findings point to the fact that if the ultimate objective of development is broadly defined value creation, the definition of what constitutes value should be negotiated among all the stakeholders. The dissertation makes an important contribution to the understanding of participation, entrepreneurship and community engagement in the context of development studies.I strongly believe that development organizations must have a quality understanding of the social and cultural characteristics of the need or problem they are targeting in order to make productive decisions about the application and scaling of interventions. I very much hope that my work can provide some guidance for their work on the ground., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This study explores the social entrepreneurial potential of the rule-breaking practices of microfinance programs’ beneficiaries. We empirically apply the positive theory of social entrepreneurship that views social entrepreneurship as a pursuit of neglected positive externalities. Using the storyboard methodology, the paper examines the strategies employed by the poor in Burundi to bypass institutional rules. We argue that illicit practices can in fact be interpreted as value-creating entrepreneurial acts and be symptomatic of an emergent social-entrepreneurial orientation. Our findings cast a spotlight on issues of agency and empowerment, questioning and contextualizing the definition of social value., info:eu-repo/semantics/published