The Sociology of Development

Abstract

Two stories separated by the five years that have elapsed since producing the first edition of this book: a period through which we move from a drought-stricken Ethiopia to a flooded Sudan, whose own refugees search for a safe haven, perhaps in a neighbouring state. Drought and flood can bring famine and both are ecologically linked: desertification and flash flooding are the twin results of farming practices that remove trees and allow top-soil erosion. Yet these human disasters are as much to do with complex social and economic processes as they are with environmental management. The scale of these disasters seems to get worse as time passes: in September 1988, 75 per cent of the entire country of Bangladesh was under water, with 25 million homeless. Future tragedies on a bigger scale are likely, perhaps most particularly in Latin America.

The tragedy of famine in Ethiopia will have serious consequences for its neighbour, Sudan, as new refugees flow into the country … [in Port Sudan] 45000 Ethiopians are spontaneously settled in a community of about 350 000 people who have an area of wasteland called Kuria. There is no sanitation in Kuria. There are no taps, and families can spend up to a third of their income buying water brought round in an oildrum on a donkey cart. All the children suffer from malnutrition and there is one small UN clinic with two staff to deal with the entire population.

(Guardian, 29 March 1983)

Sudanese relief workers distributed flour to people displaced by flooding yesterday as the Blue Nile continued rising and overflowed into new areas of Khartoum. But fears receded of epidemics following earlier floods in which 1.5 million people lost their homes in the Sudanese capital.

(Independent, 25 August 1988)