The politics of defining and alleviating poverty: State strategies and their impacts in rural Kerala
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a relational approach to the study of poverty, and use this to critically evaluate state strategies for identifying and alleviating poverty in Kerala, India, and trace these from national planning documents through to their point of implementation.
About: This article is published in Geoforum.The article was published on 2012-09-01. It has received 20 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Culture of poverty & Basic needs.
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TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper employed content analysis to analyze the Chinese policies of targeted poverty alleviation using photovoltaic power from two points of view: the basic policy instruments and the project procedures.
84 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors study how these entangled cultures of caste and development translate into social network structures using data on friendship ties from a south Indian village. And they find that although caste continues to be important in shaping community structures and leadership in the village's network, its influence varies across different communities.
Abstract: Cultures of caste in much of rural India have become entangled with institutions of rural development. In community-driven development, emphasis on "local resource persons" and "community spokespersons" has created new opportunities for brokerage and patronage within some villages, which interact with existing forms of authority and community afforded by caste identity and intra-caste headmanship. In this article, we study how these entangled cultures of caste and development translate into social network structures using data on friendship ties from a south Indian village. We find that although caste continues to be important in shaping community structures and leadership in the village's network, its influence varies across different communities. This fluidity of caste's influence on community network structures is argued to be the result of multiple distinct yet partially overlapping cultural-political forces, which include sharedness afforded by caste identity and new forms of difference and inequality effected through rural development.
72 citations
TL;DR: In the global south, a number of governments in the global South have instituted programs which provide regular cash grants to poor people as discussed by the authors. But these programs do not necessarily signal an epochal shift to a post-neoliberal era.
Abstract: Since the mid-1990s, a number of governments in the global South have instituted programmes which provide regular cash grants to poor people. The results of cash transfer programmes have impressed those searching for ways to improve welfare: the depth of poverty has been reduced, more children are being educated and vaccinated, and the poor are more likely to get jobs and start enterprises. Advocates of social democracy are hopeful that this heralds the possibility of comprehensive social protection. Experiments in welfare in the global South do not, however, inevitably signal an epochal shift to a postneoliberal era. They form part of an increasingly heterodox approach which combines an enduring emphasis on liberalized economic growth with bolder biopolitical interventions for the poor.
54 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors carried out an historical, multi-scalar analysis of the politics of urban poverty within the context of urban and global restructuring in Mexico City, where vast wealth has been generated in some sectors, poverty has been chronic and increasing.
Abstract: As the world approaches the point in which urban poverty is to become the primary characteristic of global poverty by 2030, understanding the drivers, contexts, and conditions for urban poverty is increasingly urgent. This dissertation contributes to such needed understandings by carrying out an historical, multi-scalar analysis of the politics of urban poverty within the context of urban and global restructuring. In Mexico City, where vast wealth has been generated in some sectors, poverty has been chronic and increasing. In an effort to explore the fundamental drivers behind poverty, the point of departure for this research is that the global institutional context of political and economic neoliberalism penetrates the context in which urban poverty is produced and resisted at the local level, and that urban poverty is not the result of isolated urban phenomena, but is a reflection of unequal power relations in need of political analysis. Contextualized in extensive literature on political and economic transformations in Mexico from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, this study contributes original insight into the political opportunities and barriers experienced among low-wage civil society organizations, obtained through in-depth interviews, to uncover the meaning of political action. In answering the research question of how political agency among low-wage groups in Mexico City changed during this era of transformation, the dissertation also offers reflections on the theoretical boundaries of International Development Studies and International Relations and gives reason to look beyond them in order to place up-scale poverty from a local to a global phenomenon.
36 citations
TL;DR: This paper studied how these entangled cultures of caste and development translate into social network structures using data on friendship ties from a south Indian village and found that although caste continues to be important in shaping community structures and leadership in the village's network, its influence varies across different communities.
Abstract: Cultures of caste in much of rural India have become entangled with institutions of rural development. In community-driven development, emphasis on “local resource persons” and “community spokespersons” has created new opportunities for brokerage and patronage within some villages, which interact with existing forms of authority and community afforded by caste identity and intra-caste headmanship. In this article, we study how these entangled cultures of caste and development translate into social network structures using data on friendship ties from a south Indian village. We find that although caste continues to be important in shaping community structures and leadership in the village’s network, its influence varies across different communities. This fluidity of caste’s influence on community network structures is argued to be the result of multiple distinct yet partially overlapping cultural-political forces, which include sharedness afforded by caste identity and new forms of difference and inequality effected through rural development.
28 citations
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16 May 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, Tania Murray Li carefully exposes the practices that enable experts to diagnose problems and devise interventions, and the agency of people whose conduct is targeted for reform, focusing on attempts to improve landscapes and livelihoods in Indonesia.
Abstract: The Will to Improve is a remarkable account of development in action. Focusing on attempts to improve landscapes and livelihoods in Indonesia, Tania Murray Li carefully exposes the practices that enable experts to diagnose problems and devise interventions, and the agency of people whose conduct is targeted for reform. Deftly integrating theory, ethnography, and history, she illuminates the work of colonial officials and missionaries; specialists in agriculture, hygiene, and credit; and political activists with their own schemes for guiding villagers toward better ways of life. She examines donor-funded initiatives that seek to integrate conservation with development through the participation of communities, and a one-billion-dollar program designed by the World Bank to optimize the social capital of villagers, inculcate new habits of competition and choice, and remake society from the bottom up.
Demonstrating that the “will to improve” has a long and troubled history, Li identifies enduring continuities from the colonial period to the present. She explores the tools experts have used to set the conditions for reform—tools that combine the reshaping of desires with applications of force. Attending in detail to the highlands of Sulawesi, she shows how a series of interventions entangled with one another and tracks their results, ranging from wealth to famine, from compliance to political mobilization, and from new solidarities to oppositional identities and violent attack. The Will to Improve is an engaging read—conceptually innovative, empirically rich, and alive with the actions and reflections of the targets of improvement, people with their own critical analyses of the problems that beset them.
1,929 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that this convergence has a number of structural predilections which favor the technical and juridical over the political economic, and a disciplinary framework over a practical contest.
340 citations
TL;DR: The article draws on the work of Steven Lukes, Pierre Bourdieu and Arjun Appadurai to argue the need to incorporate a multidimensional conception of power; including not only power as the direct assertion of will but also ‘agenda-setting power’ that sets the terms in which poverty becomes (or fails to become) politicised, and closely related to power as political representation.
Abstract: The article argues for what can be called a ‘relational’ approach to poverty: one that first views persistent poverty as the consequence of historically developed economic and political relations, ...
323 citations
TL;DR: The Thirdway OECD Social Inclusion policy frames claim common purpose to promote "opportunity, empowerment and security" for people and places on the peripheries of global economies and societies.
Abstract: In the wake of frank neo-liberalism, and in the context of rising security fears, ways are being found to provide market liberalism with a more inclusive face. The Poverty Reduction Strategies currently prominent in international development, and Thirdway OECD ‘Social Inclusion’ policy frames claim common purpose to promote ‘opportunity, empowerment and security’ for people and places on the peripheries of global economies and societies. They share commitments to global economic integration and openness, market led growth, ‘good’ and ‘joined up’ governance, local and social partnerships, and wide-ranging activation of ‘capacities’. But the high rhetorical aspirations of liberalism to social ‘inclusivity’ have so far overreached empirical gains for the poor. Drawing on developing country examples of Poverty Reduction Strategy and public policy in New Zealand’s current Labour government, this paper sketches salient features of ‘inclusive’ liberalism. It critically examines its status as a Polanyian turn wit...
269 citations