A road to development? Rural perspectives on infrastructure maintenance in Solomon Islands

Stephanie Ketterer Hobbis*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)748-759
Number of pages12
JournalDevelopment in Practice
Volume29
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Aug 2019

Keywords

  • Aid–Development policies
  • Environment (built and natural)
  • Oceania and Japan
  • Technology

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