ABSTRACT
As we saw in the previous chapter, land settlement is a popular, expensive and usually unsuccessful strategy for rural development. A massive literature has been produced (most of it ignoring women) by outsiders, experts who seek to be objective, rational and detached in order to establish the ‘truth’. This chapter will describe our field research with women pioneers in Colombia. This, too, was research by outsiders, oriented towards policy. We sought to build up evidence, to be ‘objective’, but at least to examine women’s roles. We shall see the limitations of this approach.
