NEW ROADS TAKEN BY FEW : Motorcycle-taxi drivers and neoliberal development in rural Uganda

Abstract: Kisoro, a rural district in Uganda, is undergoing various transformations which could be summarized under the term neoliberal development. This qualitative study, which is based on six weeks of anthropological fieldwork, is focused on how a few individuals working as motorcycle-taxi drivers in the area experience these transformations, and how they deal with them. The results indicate that while they tend to describe them as “development”, they see them as constituting an uneven form of development - not beneficial to all, something which, in their view, makes this development less genuine. It is commonly associated with various “others”; carried out by and for others, while the informants have to live off the leftovers from it, were the motorcycle-taxi job is seen as such a leftover; neither enabling much upward - nor geographical - mobility. In some cases, they feel included in transformations which makes things worse, so it all constitutes not only a limited, but a somehow distorted development, and there is nostalgia around better pasts. But simultaneously, many also feel free, and as their hopes for inclusion in a genuine development erodes while they wait for it, inspiration from an external world makes them strive for a more individualized prosperity.