これまでの自分のキャリアを振り返りながら、「開発」の定義、開発コンサルタントの業務内容、開発コンサルタントになるために求められる素養、学生のうちに学んでおくべきことなどについて、学生向けのメッセージとしてとりまとめた。

Ms. Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), said in 1992, “We not only want a piece of the pie, we also want to choose the flavor, and to know how to make it ourselves.” Even today, a woman is often seen as a receiver and not a learner and decision maker. This paper shows how donors ignored their own gender mainstreaming policy in rural development projects in Timor-Leste and analyzes how women farmers can acquire capability in order to solve critical engineering problems caused by authoritarian donors and the government, which cannot challenge the donors’ intentions.

Section I presents my previous field research on the irrigation development projects in Lao PDR, in which some donors promoted women’s participation in Water Users Associations (WUA), recognizing women as stakeholders who provided substantial resources and labor for the development of irrigation systems. It was observed in 1997, two years after the UN Conference on Women was held in Beijing. This was the period when donors began to integrate the gender mainstreaming goals into their policy for assuring gender equality to be promoted in every sector/field.

Section II describes how Timorese women, through the National Congress of Women, raised their concern about the lack of access to trainings, facilities, and the decision-making process regarding farming and natural resource management including irrigation. Section III shows the results of a two-year field research that I conducted together with women farmers on the Caraulun Irrigation Rehabilitation Scheme in Manufahi district. The EC-funded project was coordinated by the World Bank. The research showed that there was no intervention on participation of women, including widows and/or female household heads, into WUA and that their most pressing problem, the irrigation system malfunction, was caused by the donors’ neglect of farmers’ requests and the design’s incompleteness, which was attributable to the donors’ erroneous cost-cutting policy. However, the women struggled to participate in the WUA and the newly elected WUA leadership stood up to raise its voice against the donors and the government.

This paper explains why majority of Filipinos have come to tolerate President Duterte’s violence in the name of “discipline.” His “war on drugs” is estimated to kill almost 20,000 people but nearly 80 percent of Filipinos have supported him. To explain his popularity, previous studies have pointed out such factors as failure of the existing liberal democracy and Duterte’s penal populism. However, these studies do not explain why these issues have come to the forefront only in the mid-2010s although they are the long-standing problems. This paper argues that it is because the neoliberal governmentality has increasingly penetrated into societies and constructed new moral subjectivities among Filipinos as “virtuous citizens” who embrace discipline and diligence in the 21^st century.

Neoliberalism propagates the doctrine that people’s economic status and welfare are dependent on individual’s responsibility, shifting the blame for misfortunes of lives from the state to individuals. Thus, people are required to discipline themselves to become “virtuous citizens” independent from the state and skillful in the market for subsistence and opportunities. However, despite efforts of self-disciplining, they usually remain helpless to overcome socio-economic inequality and precariousness in the society where the state does not fully function. This shared frustration of disciplined “good citizens” has created a popular resentment against undisciplined “evil others” at the top and bottom: the elites who abuse the state power and resources, and drug users who put danger to their families and communities. It is their resentment that has justified Duterte’s violence.

Lower middle class who have emerged in the global service industry in the 21^st century mainly constitute the “virtuous citizens.” Based on annual research in Western Leyte, however, this paper argues that struggling poor in rural societies have also developed the moral subjectivities as “virtuous citizens” strengthening resentment against “evil others.” In the localities, the super typhoon Yolanda devastated the feudal coconut agriculture in November 2013. Those who lost the main livelihood have become dependent on resources provided by NGOs, the private sector and the state. Their programs have the neoliberal characteristics to require the beneficiaries to become independent, disciplined and diligent “virtuous citizens” in exchange for resources. While many struggle to live a disciplined life for subsistence, others found alternative source of income in the illegal drug trafficking. The former developed their frustration against the latter and became ardent supporters of the war on drugs in a situation where drugs and violence are perpetrated by a drug lord family.