Showing papers in "Development and Change in 2015"

Towards a Radical Re-appropriation: Gender, Development and Neoliberal Feminism

Abstract: Tracing a complex trajectory from ‘liberal’ to ‘neoliberal’ feminism in development, this article argues that approaches to gender which are currently being promoted within neoliberal development frameworks, while often characterized as ‘instrumentalizing’ gender equality, in fact rely upon, extend and deepen gendered inequalities in order to sustain and strengthen processes of global capital accumulation in several ways. This is explored through development discourses and practices relating to microfinance, reproductive rights and adolescent girls. Drawing on examples from India, the article goes on to reflect on experiences of collective movements in which the assumptions underpinning this ‘Gender Equality as Smart Economics’ approach are challenged. Finally, it highlights several concepts associated with Marxist, Black, Post-colonial and Queer feminisms and underlines their importance to projects seeking to critically redefine development, arguing for a radical re-appropriation of gender in this context.

The Economic Logic of Persistent Informality: Artisanal and Small‐Scale Mining in the Southern Philippines

Abstract: This article critically evaluates existing causal explanations for the persistence of informality in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). These explanations share a legalistic focus on entry barriers and political impediments that prevent or discourage the formalization of poverty-driven ASM operators: however, they fail to fully explain cases such as that of the Philippines, where ASM is characterized by differentiation between a poverty-driven workforce and a dominant stratum of ASM entrepreneurs. Even where limited formalization frameworks provide ASM with a degree of legal recognition, this recognition is usually restricted to these more powerful ASM interests, while excluding the workforce at large. This article therefore proposes an integrative approach to analysing informality in ASM, which complements the existing legalistic focus on entry barriers with a structuralist concern over the exploitation of informal labour. Seen from this perspective, the massive expansion of ASM in the Philippines can be seen as the product of a transition away from capital-intensive large-scale mining to a flexible regime of accumulation built around the exploitation of informal ASM labour. This observation highlights the need to pay more critical attention to the economic logic and the vested interests underlying the (selective) persistence of informality in the workforce.

The End of Peripheries? On the Enduring Relevance of Structuralism for Understanding Contemporary Global Development

Abstract: Despite repeated chronicles of a death foretold, centre–periphery analysis remains very relevant for understanding the challenges of contemporary development. It reveals certain common asymmetries and constraints that structure the integration, lagging and subordination of the global South in the current world order through ongoing technological, industrial and financial dissemination. The precise forms of lagging and subordination have changed over time and context, in symbiosis with changes in the overall capitalist system, although the systemic principles remain pertinent. These can be evaluated according to three propositions: technological lagging; declining terms of trade; and pro-cyclical macroeconomic adjustment in the peripheries. Accordingly, global imbalances are better understood as an evolution of US-centred hegemony and the subordinated accommodation of ‘rising powers’ including China, rather than a weakening and rebalancing of US power vis-`a-vis these ‘rising powers’, as per conventional interpretations. The possibility that we might be witnessing a reinvigoration of US hegemony — for a second time in the post-war era — is one that needs to be taken seriously, particularly if this becomes associated with a deepening of imperialism rather than emancipation.

Legal dispossession: state strategies and selectivities in the expansion of Indonesian palm oil and agrofuel production.

Abstract: This article examines the role of the state in the appropriation and control of land in Indonesian palm oil and agrofuel production. Drawing on political ecology and critical state and hegemony theory, it focuses particularly on the legal state strategies that support the hegemonic project of agro-industrial and export-oriented palm oil and agrofuel production. The article analyses the structural, strategic and spatial selectivities — the mechanisms of marginalization and privilege — that accompany the strategies the state employs. Three important strategies are discussed, namely the codification of land ownership, the concentration of land possession and the valorization of natural resources in the context of de- and recentralization. The article concludes that these legal state strategies represent an important means to organize and protect a large-scale palm oil project as they succeed in universalizing dominant interests whilst at the same time (partially) integrating subaltern interests.

Human Development and Decent Work: Why some Concepts Succeed and Others Fail to Make an Impact

Abstract: This article examines the impact of the International Labour Organization's concept of Decent Work on development thinking and the academic literature. We attempt to answer the question of what makes a development initiative successful by comparing the decent work approach to the United Nation Development Programme's Human Development concept (in conjunction with the human development indicator). We consider that the latter has been one of the most successful development concepts ever to have been launched, while the impact of decent work by comparison has been limited. Our hypothesis relating to the question of what makes a development initiative successful has three fundamental components: first, a solid theoretical foundation has to justify the launch of a development concept. A second vital factor is the availability of sufficient national and internationally comparable data that enables researchers and policy makers alike to apply the concept, preferably by means of a synthetic indicator. Third, the political will and institutional structure of the development institution that launches a concept is a key factor, particularly if data availability is limited as countries then have to be persuaded to generate new data.

Social Policy for Neoliberalism: The Bolsa Família Programme in Brazil

Abstract: The Programa Bolsa Familia (PBF) is one of the largest conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes in the world. CCTs have been described as a ‘magic bullet’ for development, and PBF is widely regarded as an exemplary programme. Examination of its conceptual underpinnings, features, impact and limitations shows that PBF provides substantial income support to the poorest. However, PBF is also self-limiting and it can offer only limited long-term gains to the poor. More significant outcomes require the expansion of the scope of PBF and other social programmes towards the universalization and decommodification of social provision in Brazil.

The People and their River, the World Bank and its Dam: Revisiting the Xe Bang Fai River in Laos

Abstract: Sustained criticism in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in a decline of World Bank funding for large hydropower dams. The Bank subsequently participated in the World Commission on Dams process, which set higher global standards for hydropower dams. In 2005, the World Bank agreed to support the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project (NT2) in Laos, and in 2010 NT2 began diverting water from the Theun River into the Xe Bang Fai River. The World Bank has promoted NT2 as a successful model of poverty alleviation, justifying support for other large dams. Assessing actual impacts and associated mitigation and compensation is thus timely. This article presents qualitative field research from early 2014 about the downstream impacts of NT2 in the Xe Bang Fai River basin and a description and analysis of efforts to compensate for losses. The authors consider the situation with the assistance of baseline data collected in 2001, before project approval. Findings suggest that NT2 has had a significant negative impact, including on the livelihoods of large numbers of people dependent on the river’s resources. Many of those impacted view compensation and mitigation efforts as having failed to adequately address their losses. Further independent investigation and documentation are needed.

Post‐Development: Premature Burials and Haunting Ghosts

Abstract: While the Post-Development school in development theory tried to bury the concept of ‘development’, this attempt turned out to be unsuccessful. A closer investigation reveals that different post-development texts reproduce the polysemy of ‘development’ in their criticism of it, attacking different phenomena subsumed under this heading. Development theory, on the other hand, was also premature in declaring post-development obsolete fifteen years ago. By examining the works of two prominent authors, this contribution shows that the critics of post-development have adopted central arguments of that approach. It concludes by identifying some points of convergence between post-development and its (progressive) critics in development theory.

Does Diversification Improve Livelihoods? Pastoral Households in Xinjiang, China

Abstract: Diversification is routinely promoted to improve poor rural peoples’ livelihoods. However, policy recommendations for livelihood diversification based on evidence from crop-cultivating sedentary rural societies may not work for mobile pastoral communities, where socio-ecological conditions predetermine livestock herding as the preferred livelihood strategy. Using survey and semi-structured interview data collected from 159 households in the Altay and Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, China, this study applies cluster analysis to identify six distinct groups based on livelihood strategies: pastoralists, agropastoralists, crop farmers, wage labourers, hired herders and mixed smallholders. Although pastoralism is the least diverse of these in terms of sources of income, it is significantly more diverse in ecological dimensions such as spatial movement, land use pattern and livestock portfolio. Patterns of livelihood diversification and their relationship with household incomes indicate that pastoralism, although preferred, is unattainable for 55 per cent of households given their meagre asset endowments and the pressure of government policies toward sedentarization. The results strongly suggest that livelihood diversification does not improve welfare for pastoral households. Future development interventions should promote policies that enable households to regain flexible access to pastures and should aim to correct the imbalance of opportunities that exists in northern Xinjiang.

The Decimation and Displacement of Development Economics

Abstract: Contemporary mainstream development economics is an overdetermined product of three historical processes: the late neoclassical turn within mainstream economic theory; transformations within the institutional-discursive matrix of development, from growth-centred policies to poverty alleviation- and good governance-oriented policies; and a broader transition from post-war Keynesian developmentalism (with its variants in the second and third worlds) to existing varieties of neoliberal governmentality. This article assesses the trajectory of development economics through two historical shifts in the theoretical field. The first is from the ‘old’ school of structural transformation with a focus on sectoral balance and shifts to the ‘new’ school of structural adjustment programmes with a focus on micro-level incentive problems. The second shift is from the aggressively neoclassical orientation of the ‘new’ school to that of the contemporary constellation, where what is considered to be ‘good’ development economics has been gradually reduced to micro-level impact appraisals of developmental projects (the so-called ‘randomization approach’), while the broader macro-economic and historical questions are being increasingly handled through methodologically-individualist, late neoclassical models of institutions and growth (the so-called ‘new institutionalism’). The article concludes by insisting on the need for a new paradigm of development economics that would not only unearth the conflictual and antagonistic nature of development, but also render it an indispensable dimension of the study of development in a pluralist manner.

What is the Alternative? Youth, Entrepreneurship and the Developmental State in Urban Ethiopia

Abstract: This article investigates the implementation of small-scale entrepreneurship programmes in inner-city Addis Ababa. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, it discusses the failure of these programmes to open up opportunities for social improvement for young people. It also analyses how young people confronted with this failure suggest ways of conceptualizing ‘alternatives’ to established development concepts of poverty reduction, such as microfinance and small-scale entrepreneurship. In doing this, the author does not pretend either to offer a grand solution or to invent a brand new developmental concept. Rather, the aim is to provide a critical commentary on the reasons why some of the current academic debate on alternatives to neoliberalism have, de facto, amounted to an endorsement Ethiopia's political authoritarianism.

Critique, Rediscovery and Revival in Development Studies

Abstract: This article acts as the Introduction to the Debate that follows. It contends that the so-called impasse in development has been a constant feature of the field and is an indicator of its self-critical outlook rather than any deep-seated existential crisis. It unpacks the various dimensions of ongoing debate regarding the future of development studies, probing its policy relevance and legitimacy, interdisciplinarity, geographic focus and relationship with post-structuralist and Marxist thought. In order to revive and reorient the field in line with the contemporary world, the article proposes to return to an explicit Marxist/Marxian political economy framework to analyse the dynamics of capitalism in its local, national and global dimensions. Such a move would entail turning away from the increasingly dominant approach of critique for the sake of critique. Instead, the article argues that development studies can only fulfil its mission if scholars keep the goal of emancipatory development and change in mind when they engage with contemporary capitalist processes.

The Social Regulation of Markets: Why Microcredit Fails to Promote Jobs in Rural South India

Abstract: There is growing evidence that microcredit does little to support self-employment. Two main explanations are typically emphasized: from a microeconomic perspective, the poor have been argued to lack the skills, resources and motivation to start their own businesses; from a macroeconomic perspective, local markets are often saturated. This article uses first-hand data from rural South India to explore a third explanation which focuses on the social regulation of markets. Drawing on a household survey, the authors show that self-employment and microcredit are uncorrelated, and that women and lower castes have a significantly lower chance of starting up a business. The businesses they do start tend to be smaller, less profitable and based in very specific sectors. Qualitative insights into the workings of local economies show that caste and gender-based social regulations influence local markets determining who can produce or sell what, to whom, and at what price. The authors observe that real markets are affected by power relations and structured through social institutions rather than being the sum of interactions between free and competitive individuals. These findings show the importance of integrating self-employment programmes into broader policies for transforming the social regulation of markets and for eradicating discrimination against women and lower castes.

Capitalizing on Desire: Reconfiguring ‘the Social’ and the Government of Poverty in the Philippines

Abstract: Tracing the contours of ‘the social’ is of critical importance today, since there is a widely shared understanding that ‘the social’ has been undergoing a fundamental mutation under the encroaching influence of globalization and neoliberalism. This mutation means that a population and its risks are increasingly administered and managed through the nurturing of free subjects, productive citizens and active communities. By focusing on conditional cash transfers as a poverty-alleviation programme in the Philippines, this study examines how the contemporary government of poverty attempts to realize social inclusion through the nurturing of desires, habits and dispositions that are conducive to an ‘investment in human capital’. The study argues that such regimes produce various forms of exclusion and counterclaims by the beneficiaries, and that these counterclaims, which reflect the popular notions of patronage and clientelism, have serious implications for envisioning the alternative configuration of ‘the social’.

Taking Natural Limits Seriously: Implications for Development Studies and the Environment

Abstract: This article explores how thinking about ecological limits, thresholds and boundaries has evolved in the last few decades, and explores the analytical and political possibilities that emerge if development studies scholars engage with these ideas. It makes the case for an engaged political economy approach, which focuses on understanding how finite resources at a variety of scales are shared between the competing claims of different groups in society. The article suggests that, while the science of planetary limits is important, the most significant societal challenges are not about how close we are to the limits, but involve finding mechanisms to reconcile the difficult trade-offs that inevitably arise when we consider alternative human pathways in the present and the future. Choices are ubiquitous, even when there may be no immediate ecological tipping point, and a political economy perspective focuses on the ways in which humanity prioritizes different, often irreconcilable, objectives and interests in relation to the environment. The productive consequence of this thinking for development studies is the need for a renewed focus on the key issues that define prosperity and well-being, as well as the political and moral economy within which human society governs itself, and its relationships with nature.

Transitions to Formality and Declining Inequality: Argentina and Brazil in the 2000s

Abstract: Fil: Maurizio, Roxana del Lujan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economia Politica de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Economicas. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economia Politica de Buenos Aires; Argentina

Hybrid Uptakes of Neoliberal Conservation in Namibian Tourism‐based Development

Abstract: Neoliberal conservation schemes involving nature-based tourism are implemented throughout the developing world to address rural poverty. Drawing on socio-economic surveys and in-depth interviews, this article uses the case of Uibasen Conservancy in Namibia to investigate social responses to neoliberal conservation. We find that people's aspirations for upward economic and social mobility lead them to participate in neoliberal conservation projects in an attempt to combine economic opportunities created by nature-based tourism with traditional livelihood strategies. In this case, certain aspects of neoliberal conservation are perceived as a source of hope for non-elites seeking to achieve economic self-sufficiency and to ascend social hierarchies. We find that intra-community power struggles dominate discourses of discontent and local-level conflict which consequently masks the disruptive and anomic forces of the global tourism industry. We additionally provide insight into specific social contexts that may increase the allure of neoliberal conservation and explain why marginalized individuals may embrace some neoliberal logics despite — or, perhaps, because of — their disruptive tendencies.

Filling the Institutional Void in Rural Land Markets in Southern China: Is there Room for Spontaneous Change from Below?

Abstract: Deng Xiaoping's market reforms have unleashed an irresistible drive towards urban expansion in China over the last three decades. Yet despite the relentless expansion of urban boundaries and the rapid growth of a property market in China, land transactions that involve the surrender of land leases by Chinese peasants are conducted in an unstable institutional setting. Increasingly, people are questioning the existing regulatory framework for rural land transactions, with the result that an institutional void is threatening to open up. This article focuses on one of the most important spontaneous efforts to fill this void in recent years: the Nanhai land-based shareholding cooperative experiment in southern China. This is a story of institutional change at the grassroots level. The article identifies the source of institutional entrepreneurship, evaluates the dynamics of the insider-driven process, and explains how and why the experiment is failing. An ineffective monitoring mechanism, growing conflict over the allocation of returns, a changing social landscape, and pecuniary temptation all play a role, while the ad hoc nature of the experiment also fails to instill the confidence and stability necessary for long-term investment.

Rights, Development and Critical Modernity

Abstract: The march of rights into international development offers, on the face of it, a more progressive and transformational paradigm. Contemporary rights expressions are more expansive and diverse than their nineteenth-century forebears. Inevitably though, rights-based approaches have been criticized, with claims that rights have contributed to a minimization and individualization of distributive justice and participatory democracy or even been appropriated for profoundly anti-transformational ends. This article argues that the critics need to be taken seriously, but that their complaints suffer from many of the familiar problems with critical theory and post-developmentalism. Instead, it is posited that the frame of critical modernity allows scholars and practitioners to better understand, chart and constructively critique the uptake of rights in development. This reflexive standpoint also allows one to focus on those dimensions of rights approaches that remain under-developed but carry the greatest potential, namely notions of citizenship, agency and accountability.

Ecological Functions and Functionings: Towards a Senian Analysis of Ecosystem Services

Abstract: Ecosystem services are part of a growing trend within environment and development to analyze environmental change within the context of socially valued outcomes. Yet, ecosystem services-based policies and analyses are increasingly criticized for failing to connect with, or even restricting, development outcomes. This paper seeks to connect environmental analysis with development outcomes better by applying the Capability Approach of Amartya Sen and others to demonstrate how scientific analysis of ecosystem services sometimes conflates pathways of ecosystem management with development outcomes, but can be reconfigured to include more diverse values and objectives. The paper argues that ecosystem services should be identified more as ‘functionings’ (in the Senian sense of valued development outcomes) rather than ‘functions’ (in the sense of biophysical, apolitical ecosystem properties) in order to indicate that ‘services’ always reflects social values, and that values and scientific explanations of underlying biophysical properties evolve together. Environmental science for socially valued outcomes such as ecosystem services is therefore an important site of political inclusion and exclusion. The paper illustrates this analysis with examples of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change from the World Bank and government of Bangladesh, and in contrast to differing approaches from the field of sustainability science.

The Pen and the Plough: Balanta Young Men in Guinea-Bissau

Abstract: Up until the late 1990s, the Balanta of Guinea-Bissau constituted what could be described as a ‘deep rural society’, whose central identity was linked with rice production and cattle accumulation. At the same time, it could be argued that even in the early days after Independence in 1974, the social aspirations of Balanta young men matched those of other Guinean youths in their shared desire to get away from the strictures of gerontocracy and of rural life. Surprisingly, however, this study documents the agency of many rural Balanta young men in changing oppressive social rules, and in using agriculture as a means to fund their education, to feed their families and as a route to prosperity. The authors conclude that the persistent political instabilityinthecountry(mostacutelyfeltinthecapitalcity)andthenational and global economic crises, together with the Balanta agricultural ethos and the softening of gerontocratic power, are at the root of this revaluing of rural livelihoods. This article challenges current dominant narratives about the crisis of young men in contemporary Africa and highlights the need to study the aspirations and achievements of youth in their rural‐urban nexus from a historical and holistic perspective.

‘Beltway Bandits’ and ‘Poverty Barons’: For-Profit International Development Contracting and the Military-Development Assemblage

Abstract: This article examines the political economy of for-profit international development contracting and its growing convergence with private military contracting. It attempts a genealogy of contemporary for-profit development contracting, underlining how the ability of for-profit development firms to leverage their simultaneous integration into the global corporate-financial architecture and the global development regime has been central to their spectacular growth. The article maps specific modalities and opportunity structures — contracting vehicles and procurement practices; the politics of the market structure; the contract culture and vendorism; shared circuitries of knowledge and power — which are enabling for-profit contractors to consolidate their influence over the international development regime. It also traces the blurring of boundaries between development and security and how this is shaped and used by development contractors and private military firms alike. The author highlights how a combination of corporate diversification and mergers and acquisitions has paved the way for a market-led development-security assemblage and the birth of the ‘private military-development corporation’, which profits equally from war, peace, reconstruction and development. The study focuses largely on the USA and UK owing to the scale of their international development regimes and for-profit development markets.

Interrogating the Limits of Welfare Reforms in Singapore

Abstract: As population demographics change and economic crises spread and deepen, welfare reform has become an urgent problem in many developed countries. As elsewhere in East Asia, the state in Singapore has in recent years stepped up its efforts to deal with issues of healthcare, education, support for care, retirement and even unemployment. Much of this has been in response to demographic shifts, economic trends and, importantly, political pressures. This article evaluates the possibilities and limits of recent reforms. It looks at some promising aspects of reform, such as increases in spending in certain areas, before examining the limitations of the reforms. These include the fact that most resources have been directed toward supporting businesses, while increases in direct spending on citizens have been limited and conditional rather than universal; furthermore, little or no attention has been paid to the issue of women's underemployment. These features suggest constraints within the logic and principles of welfare, which continue to define citizens as having limited rights and entitlements, and citizenship as entailing regular employment and heavy obligations toward the family. The analysis of reforms sheds light on how the appearance of expansion can mask continuing limitations. The case of Singapore illustrates the importance of looking not just at expenditure but also at the principles and logics in which welfare reforms are embedded, in a variety of national contexts.

The Land that Disappeared: Forceful Occupation, Disputes and the Negotiation of Landlord Power in a Bangladeshi Bastee

Abstract: Through the lens of the ‘disappearance’ of a piece of land, this article analyses land relations in a Bangladeshi bastee (slum). The author builds an understanding of the local negotiation of ownership in an area where dakhal (forceful occupation) is the main starting point for the assessment of ownership. The property regime in the bastee emerges out of a web of relationships between different landlords, strongmen, elected officials and (local and national) politicians. These relations are not only crucial for maintaining existing dakhal patterns, but also for guaranteeing land sales, negotiating and settling disputes and, in the final instance, for negotiating power relations in the bastee itself.

Political Structure and the Limits of Recognition and Representation in Ghana

Abstract: Recent studies of democratization in sub-Saharan Africa often focus on government recognition granted to traditional authorities. This article examines northern Ghana, where chiefs of a minority group are denied formal recognition but pressure state officials to recognize their status as land custodians. This leads to contests and debates between state officials, chiefs and communities over whether the customary institutions have in fact been recognized for what they claim to be. The article uses episodes of contention to nuance conceptualizations of recognition as a specific relationship between actors and institutions, and as a question of government policy or choice. Recognition and non-recognition are contested in a grey zone of social constructions. Non-recognition persists as a continuation of colonial policy, state law path trajectory, and state officials’ endeavours to stay out of ‘traditional’ affairs. However, customary rights to land are validated by the new local government institution, and chiefs use newfound positions to expand their jurisdictions. Stakeholders affirm unequal social categories underpinning different understandings of recognition. The article examines contentions that hinge on interpretations of who is recognizing and not recognizing whom, and actors’ efforts to reshape and reproduce political structures.

On the Limits of Liberalism in Participatory Environmental Governance: Conflict and Conservation in Ukraine's Danube Delta

Abstract: Participatory management techniques are widely promoted in environmental and protected area governance as a means of preventing and mitigating conflict. The World Bank project that created Ukraine's Danube Biosphere Reserve included such ‘community participation’ components. The Reserve, however, has been involved in conflicts and scandals in which rumour, denunciation and prayer have played a prominent part. The cases described in this article demonstrate that the way conflict is escalated or mitigated differs according to foundational assumptions about what ‘the political’ is and what counts as ‘politics’. The contrasting forms of politics at work in the Danube Delta help to explain why a 2005 World Bank assessment report could only see failure in the Reserve's implementation of participatory management, and why liberal participatory management approaches may founder when introduced in settings where relationships are based on non-liberal political ontologies. The author argues that environmental management needs to be rethought in ways that take ontological differences seriously rather than assuming the universality of liberal assumptions about the individual, the political and politics.

The Future Post‐Growth Society

Abstract: Discontent with the economic system amongst those living in the richest nations has not been as prevalent since the early 1970s. The 2008 financial crash has led to many books that are critical of both the economy and economists. A common retort to critiques is, ‘what is your alternative then?’, as if there were none. There are many alternatives and an increasingly active research agenda looking at what a society would be like without a growth imperative. Ecological economics is part of the academic move in this direction, despite its continuous struggles with avoiding capture by mainstream economic thought (Spash, 2013). In ecological economics there is radical grassroots activism (Cattaneo and Martı́nez López, 2014; Healy et al., 2013), and connection to the postgrowth community that includes degrowth/décroissance (Muraca, 2013), along with concepts such as basic income, sufficiency and voluntary simplicity (Alexander, 2013; Kallis, 2011; Paech, 2012). In this mix of postgrowth ideas the steady-state economy appears and is sometimes linked with degrowth (Kerschner, 2010). The book Enough is Enough by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill (hereafter the authors) calls the steady-state economy the ultimate goal of degrowth (p. 53). They present a critical perspective on materialism, population growth, income distribution, debt, measures of well-being, employment, commerce, individual behaviour, the media and unilateralism. Many academics are themselves open to criticism for attacking modernity while enjoying all its benefits, failing to live an activist’s life or refusing privilege. Dietz is trying to put his concerns into practice by living in an

Hungry for Justice: Social Mobilization on the Right to Food in India

Abstract: This article explores the potential and limits of contemporary economic rights-based social activism by analysing an ongoing ‘Right to Food Campaign’ in India While social movement theory often positions radical and reform strategies as alternatives, the RTF campaign has adopted a hybrid strategy: it has made a radical legal demand that the right to food be recognized as intrinsic to the right to life, while seeking implementation of this right through reform of existing government feeding programmes The campaign's dual strategy reflects two distinct logics of human rights: a logic of non-derogable rights that are immediately actionable (such as the right to life) and a logic of progressive implementation of rights that can only be realized fully over time (such as economic rights) This article draws on original data to demonstrate that the campaign's radical legal demands framed around the non-derogable right to life have come closer to fulfilment than its reformist demands around progressive implementation The RTF campaign's relative success in galvanizing legal action on hunger is tempered by ongoing challenges in sustaining grassroots-level mobilization and influencing public policy implementation