Showing papers in "Development and Change in 1985"

The Politics of Development Policy Labelling

Abstract: Labelling a feature of all social communication is an aspect of public policy (utterance and practice) an element in the structure of political discourse. Contributors to this volume have become more sharply aware of this through their preoccupation and experience with development issues in various parts of the 3rd world. The purpose of this focus on labelling is to reveal processes of control regulation and management which are largely unrecognized even by the actors themselves. The significance of labelling has been underestimated as an aspect of policy discourse and especially for its structural impact upon the institutions and their ideologies through which people are managed. Since the process of labelling affects the categories within people are socialized to act and think the object of this concern is fundamental rather than peripheral. Labelling refers to a relationship of power in that the labels of some are more easily imposed on people and situations than those of others. Focus here is on the particular kind of labels or abstractions which arise in development policy areas as an aspect of the donative political discorse associated with the 3rd world development agenda. The interest is in how specific acts of designation or classification reflecting specific interests become universalized. It is not sufficient to say that concept of the state (as an endorsement or imposition of legitimate public actions) is "a condensate of class relations" or is "derived from thelogic of capitalist production relations" "a particular from because of the contradictions of its peripherality." It is necessary to understand how this endorsement actually occurs and can continue to do so how it comes to be constructed and then persists. The process is insidious and centrally involves "labelling." Labelling is the attribute of a certain kind of public management of resources i.e. bureaucratic professional formal institutionalized and often central. It is the counterpart of access in that the authors of labels of designations have determined the rules of access in that particular resources and privileges. A central feature of the labelling proces is the differentiation and disaggregation of the individual and the individuals subsequent identification with a principal label e.g. "landless" or "single parent." Labelling refers to the weighting applied the differentiated elements. "Problems" calling for attention and policy are constructed and defined in this way leading to 1 label or element representing the entire situation of an individual family. Exercises required in an attempt to demcratize the "which" and "whose" aspects of public policy labelling are identified.

Single-parent families: choice or constraint? The formation of female-headed households in Mexican shanty towns

Abstract: Using material collected in a survey of 244 low-income owner households in three irregular settlements in Queretaro Mexico the purpose of this article is to show firstly how female-headed households survive in comparison with male-headed household and secondly to clarify the various reasons for the formation of single-parent units indicating that they often result from female initiative. (EXCERPT)

To Feed or to Educate: Labelling in Targeted Nutrition Interventions

Abstract: This discussion focuses on the common phenomenon of the targeting of nutrition programs on groups which are supposed to contain physically malnourished persons taking child feeding and nutrition education programs as examples. An attempt is made to make explicit the uses of some labels which are wIdely used in health and nutrition education. Many nutrition programs have been targeted on the preschool children in a given area. A well documented example of this in India in the 1970s was Project Poshak. Through this program run in Madhya Pradesh it was planned to distribute a free take-home food supplement to all preschool children and pregnant and lactating mothers. This targeting of nutrition programs on mother-child pairs where the children are already malnourished carries a considerable stigma. The question arises as to why is this when there is no particular stigma involved in taking a child to hospital with fever or a fracture. The ideology of child feeding in many cultures can be summarized as "good mothers have plump well fed children." By focusing on the malnourished child and "training" its mother nutritionists reinforce the opposite dictum that "bad or at least culpably ignorant mothers have malnourished children." Focus on the physiological target the mother-child pair thus tends to obscure the possibility that a "good" mother (a conscientious caring skillful mother) might have a malnourished child simple because her environment was too poor and her resource base too low for anything else to happen. In addition it obscures the embarrassing possibility that a "bad" mother might have a healthy well fed child. The experience of Poshak has led other program planners to attempt targeting of supplementary feeding programs on mother-child pairs in low income groups in the effort to address the accepted malnutrition-poverty connection. Again the target for education is the mother rather than those who might deal with the local bacterially contaminated water supplies: men and especially local village "leaders" and officials. This point raises the wider problem of what may be termed "sectoral targeting." Sectoral programs are so constructed that for a woman or child to join a farmers extension training group or a male to attend a nutrition education class is perceived as ridiculous or faintly unrespectable. Another approach to supplementary feeding is that which recognizes that food is not managed at an individual but at a household level. If governments or agencies are trying to reduce levels of malnutrition by direct subsidies in the form of food then to direct this to the household rather than the individual avoids some of the problems identified here. Rations and food stamps are examples of this approach. Household targeting singles out whole classes of people but can help to counter the sectoral carve-up of the household even encouraging agricultural workers to address women and health workers. Although a label may be 1 obvious and factual way of describing a person or a group its choice and use simultaneously obscure and facilitate the processes by which access to scarce and important resources are controlled.