Rural Construction Management for Developing Economies: Implications for Professional Education - the Case of Assam

17 pages•Published: October 23, 2017

Abstract

The authors are engaged in a three-year project, funded by the State of Assam, India, to develop new postgraduate qualification in construction management for Assam, and to research housing and infrastructure strategies aimed at improving rural life. The collaboration between the University of Melbourne and the State mirrors a common arrangement in international development assistance in which an institution from the Global North is invited to assist an institution from the Global South in improving the wealth and welfare of certain constituencies of the latter. However, the historical relationships between the North and South, and the way in which they play out in such arrangements has been critiqued from multiple perspectives. Those critiques suggest that the North-South divide is rooted in colonial history, is based on a privileging of the North over/against the South, and works to place the South at a perpetual disadvantage. It is important in undertaking this work for Assam that such critiques be acknowledged, and that educational products developed be as free as possible of such biases. This paper outlines the process by which the Project seeks to identify Assamese problems interests, source useful examples globally, and collect and synthesise them to create products that are tailored to Assam. The key findings: standard professional education is Eurocentric and does not relate to the construction needs of Assam's population, helps drive rural-urban and South-North brain drain, but that models are available to counter these tendencies, and can be used to create Assam-centric construction management education.

Keyphrases: construction management, developing economies, professional education, rural development.

In: Marsha Lamb (editor). AUBEA 2017: Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference 2017, vol 1, pages 439-455.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/rMdc
	https://doi.org/10.29007/p7bw

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{AUBEA2017:Rural_Construction_Management_Developing,
  author    = {David Week and Hemanta Doloi},
  title     = {Rural Construction Management for Developing Economies: Implications for Professional Education - the Case of Assam},
  booktitle = {AUBEA 2017: Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference 2017},
  editor    = {Marsha Lamb},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Education Science},
  volume    = {1},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2516-2306},
  url       = {/publications/paper/rMdc},
  doi       = {10.29007/p7bw},
  pages     = {439-455},
  year      = {2017}}

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