ABSTRACT
Governments often implement projects that radically restructure land and water use in the attempt to increase their productivity and achieve national development. The social components of resettlement were clearly recognized in some of the earliest dams: the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s, the Papaloapan in Mexico in the 1940s, and the Kariba dam project in Zambia in the 1950s. These projects each employed anthropologists or sociologists to assess and mitigate the effects of their implementation. The chapter examines the differential impacts of resettlement initiatives on men and women, the factors that lead to these differential impacts. Political action in the early phases of resettlement may include not only actions approved and encouraged by resettlement projects, but also resistance to these plans. Ulla-Marjatta Mustanoja and Kari Mustanoja noted that Karelian men and women both benefitted from the post World War II expansion of the Finnish economy when they resettled in urban areas.
