ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a relatively small, so called integrated rural development project, in an area which has not been studied before, but one that has long participated in the wider systems of the region's culture, economy, and society. The rural area of the province consists of clusters of villages. A number of households make up a cluster. The village is marked by its geographic boundary, and this serves to delineate also the village as culturally constituted. Blue Nile Integrated Agricultural Development Project was an interdisciplinary development project designed with three major objectives. Agricultural production seems to dominate the primary concerns of the villagers. Newcomers to a village sought from the Sheikh the right to use farm lands in the village. Land was granted to a newcomer after consulting the other villagers. In the Blue Nile Province, villages are well scattered and thus dahari expansion did not use to pose a problem.
