Project outline

Poverty politics: current approaches to its production and reduction

Project Leader: Professor Vigdis Broch-Due
Post-Doctoral Researcher: Dr. John-Andrew McNeish
Research Programme (2004-2007)

Concerns about poverty who is the poor, why they are poor, and what can be deemed a proper response to them have long been at the core of discourses about society and its others. This comparative and multi-disciplinary project is a direct response to current discussions in development politics and the difficulties experienced in the implementation of poverty-reducing strategies.

Far from being a straightforward condition of deprivation and destitution that is easily defined empirically or unambiguously detected through standardised indicators and measurement, poverty is a contentious and complex construct. Poverty is entangled in an archetypal thick discourse, encapsulating a vast range of social, political and historical struggles, constantly evolving new values, imagery, social identities and material outcomes. While a lack of key resources is at the core of most poverty registers worldwide - what defines that lack differs widely across societies and over time. The experience of being poor forged from a multiplicity of possible lacks and shortcomings ---- material, moral, social and metaphorical---defined against what constitutes prosperity and success. Poverty is produced through processes of social differentiation and shaped by the politics of wealth and power, both globally and locally. In other words, while the end results of poverty-producing processes are scarcity, suffering and social exclusion - poverty is formed within cultural frameworks and has to be examined in its proper social and historical context.

The core of this project is a comparative exploration of the myriad ways in which poverty is produced in different social, cultural, political and economic settings. Through historical and ethnographic analysis this multi-disciplinary research investigates the specific ways in which global poverty has been constituted as an object of social knowledge with its specific modes of representation and social engineering. We focus on the implications of this for the social identities of the poor and interventions into their lives by states, NGOs and transnational agencies. We combine this more basic research agenda with a critical assessment of the range of policies, strategies and methodologies aimed at poverty reduction. We seek to build a nuanced and contextualized picture of the forces that combine to encourage development, and of the forces that can and do impede poverty reduction. We study the relationships between elites and poor, between social capital and social mobilisation, and between culture and modernity. In order to demonstrate the diversity of the problem of poverty and the particular difficulties faced by the process in-depth qualitative research will be conducted in highly dissimilar countries i.e. Bolivia, Guatemala, Argentina, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco and India. In particular this project seeks to follow the challenge set by internationally approved poverty reduction strategies and to respond directly to the different critiques of their practice. As such we aim to make a co-ordinated evaluation of these processes by conducting comparative research on these strategies local design and application. We ask whether different political values, structures of government and local decision-making can contribute alternative poverty reducing strategies that make significant departures from the tenets of current development practice?

Principal objectives

The key questions we aim to explore in this project are:

"Poverty Politics" is funded by a grant from the Research Council of Norway (2004-2007). At the University of Bergen the project is a significant contribution to the University's major strategic focus on international and development-related research as defined in the University's Strategic Plan 2000-2005 and continued under a new, strengthened institutionalisation as a university-wide research focus. The Department of Social Anthropology has played a central role in the building-up of this research focus through four decades and maintains a leading position in this regard. The present project builds on and further develops the department's global partnerships with universities and other relevant institutions. The project involves the active participation of masters and doctoral students.

THE CHANGING CONTOURS OF POVERTY IN SCHOLARLY MODELS AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES

The global community of multilateral governance is hard at work to re-define their efforts vis-à-vis poverty. All these new strategies, plans, reports and evaluations are to demonstrate a new understanding and commitment on the part of donors to alleviating poverty. If one looks back on certain official documents, issues relating to poverty and welfare have evolved and changed their content and rhetoric through time. The poverty issue was at times invisible or visible, implicit or explicit, in the aid activities and the development discourse. But as we find approach the end of the fourth development decade, several questions about the discourse on poverty -- and, closely related, development -- can and should be raised:

How has the poverty discourse evolved, and how much has changed in descriptions of poverty and the poor in donor policy as well as in the models of social science? How has the concept of poverty been understood and described until now, and is there one understanding or perception of what poverty is and consensus on how it should be tackled? Is there a hegemonic discourse about poverty and, if so, how are structures of power articulated through it? How are alternative voices and dissenting views framed and negotiated? What is the relationship between the poverty knowledge articulated through research and the more official poverty talk and policies designed by national governments and international donors?

The project will these questions through a series of desk-studies of both published literature as well as ‘grey’ material mainly to be undertaken by MA students linked to the project. In organising our data, that is, the discursive evidence, we will examine the poverty discourse through registers of meanings and definitions. The material will be divided into the following broad data clusters: 1) definitions/descriptions of poverty, 2) definitions/descriptions of the poor, 3) policies, plans and practices (or prescriptions of what the issues/problems are, their inherent assumptions, and how to tackle them).

The Poverty Discourse in Development Assistance
The purpose of research is not so much to present one definition of poverty and development. It is rather to illustrate through a historical, discursive analysis how the definition of poverty has been transformed (and perhaps even inflated) throughout the history of development assistance.

The objective of the study is to have a comparative analysis on the discourse of poverty from the mid-1960s to the present and to find shifts in regards to what is spoken about poverty then and now. Through a critical reading of official documentation - primarily the annual OECD/DAC Reviews and the World Bank’s World Development Reports (WDRs) - we will attempt to trace the evolvement of poverty as a concept. We have chosen these two different types of reports precisely because we wanted different types of documentation in order to disaggregate what and how the actors were presenting the problems of development. As such, the WDRs give much more insight and analysis than the DAC Reviews, yet on many levels the DAC Reviews represent the thinking of multiple actors.

We will also examine the workings of bilateral plans to find nuances in how the general category known as the "donors" approach these issues. A review of some of the policies of the Scandinavian donors -- Norway, Sweden and Denmark -- will be undertaken to demonstrate how bilateral donors were reacting to the debate as laid out by the multilateral donors. The purpose here is to investigate how much the discussion as presented by the bilateral donors resembles the arguments of the World Bank and OECD/DAC, or whether there is a different perspective on poverty represented by the "like-minded" countries.

In order to test the reception and various interpretations of the discourse by those targeted, we focus on the development plans created by highly contrasting Latin American, Indian and African governments. It is hoped that this diversity of cases will help the research to come behind the facade, disaggregate the concept of poverty even further and actually deal with the heterogeneity of developing countries,. When compared with donor statements, do we find repetition in the presentation of the problems, the methods for presenting the problems, the same understanding of what the problem is? Is there a parroting or repetition of slogans, in the same way that one copies fashion designers? Or is there a difference depending upon whether the focus is on donor or recipient viewpoints? We will also look at what happens with poverty more locally by including the study of selected district plans Where appropriate, examples will be taken from their respective national development plans in order to demonstrate and/or counter the claim that there is a world view.

The Poverty Discourse In Social Science
The poverty research industry has played an important role in delivering models, measurements and theoretical justification for poverty politics both international as well as on the various domestic arenas. Yet the institutional/professional memory amongst social scientists tends to be as shallow as that of development agencies.

We urgently need to chronicle and critically review the thinking behind what has historically been very different perceptions of the poverty problem. There has been a transformation in the study of poverty from the more reform-mined inquiry into the political economy of industrial capitalism, (like the ones of Eilert Sundt, Torsten Veblen, Gunnar Myrdahl to mention some of ‘the natives’), - to the highly controversial “culture of poverty” notion of Oscar Lewis (1965)- and to the detached and very technical analysis of the present focus on income, demography and nutrition and finally capacity. In short, poverty knowledge has been produced through very different models, spanning psychosomatic profiles, social surveys, ethnography and statistical aggregations and so on.

The major tension in poverty research over time has been between approaches addressing structural inequality against those focusing more on altering individual and/or group behaviour. Our study of past and present approaches to poverty will also explore the wider context - the politics, institutions, ideologies and social science that shaped poverty research and influenced policy.

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Research

India

Vigdis Broch Due. Project Leader.

The regional state of Kerala, India provides a unique setting for exploring both the complexity of factors embedded in poverty-producing processes, and the impact of poverty reducing polices on very different groups of poor peoples (the so-called “scheduled casts”, “tribals” and the “impure”). Not only does this heterogeneous category labelled “the poor” contain groups with radically different socio-cultural profiles in terms of ethnicity, class, religion, kinship, gender and property-rights regimes, it also embrace very complex livelihood systems. The natural environment is at the interface between the land and the sea, where a wide array of ecosystems of terrestrial, inter tidal, riverine and marine origin meet and interact. To survive, poor peoples draw on a diversity of activities work such as fishing, fuelwood collection, farming, animal husbandry and petty trading. This complexity increases greatly at the household level where members typically engage in different income-generating activities. Moreover, much of the poverty in Kerela is “interstitial” - pockets of poverty hidden amidst the development and relative wealth that is often found in coastal areas in India.

All these factors combined create a particularly interesting mix of the dynamic relations between poverty and prosperity, but also produce a particularly complex policy environment for those attempting to address regional poverty. While policy responses to poverty typically depend on simplification and streamlining, one would expect that the complexity embedded in the Kerela poor greatly complicates policy planning and increases the chance for unintended outcomes. Thus the case of Kerela is particularly suited to study in more detail the widespread challenge to policy-making of designing measures that can adequately address the diverse situation of poor peoples.

In short, Kerela has been chosen as a case-study because of its particular history and record in poverty reduction. In Kerala local politics and culture have been combined to form a distinctive brand of participatory local democracy and development planning. Along with the state of West Bengal and Porto Alegre in Brazil, Kerala has been hailed by the international research community as one of the great alternative success stories of recent local development (Fung & Olin Wright 2003). We ask whether the example of Kerala can really suggest an alternative basis for poverty reduction? Are there good practices in Kerala that are generalisable? Furthermore, it will study how poverty reduction in Kerala has been achieved through a combination of cultural and political values?

Kristina Jones. Masters Student.

Thesis submitted in June 2006.
For abstract, see here

Stian Krog. Masters Student.

Thesis submitted in June 2007.
For abstract, see here

Ingrid Jæger. MPhil Graduate

Thesis submitted in June 2007.
For abstract, see here

Joakim Ophaug. Master student

Dalits on the edge of globalized economy: The implications of economic globalization on access to public spaces.

The project focuses on the social and economic situation of lower-caste “Dalit” groups in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, especially in the southern parts of Bangalore district, where both western and Indian IT-companies have established themselves as substantial employers in the last decade, and which is growing by the numbers every day. Dalits have traditionally been locked into different forms of manual labour, even bonded labour, but as reservations and legislation has provided these groups with higher education, it is only natural that Dalits would become labourers alongside other employers in the different IT-companies that seek new labour for their new departments in the Bangalore district. This year alone Apple Computers will employ 3000 persons for their new call enter located in the EcoSpace business area just south of Bangalore. But to what extent do these companies employ Dalits, and what implications does caste have on their “western” business structure?

Through my fieldwork among Dalits and hopefully among business coordinators at IT-companies in this region, I wish to highlight how economic globalization is affecting the social and economic situation of Dalits, how western companies think about caste entering their egalitarian business structure, and to what extent the possible economic improved situation of Dalits has on the general access to public space.


V.Dinesan. PhD Student (Also connected to the Challenging the State Programme)

Presently working on the theme “Caste/class, Spatiality and Teyyam: Towards Understanding Cosmologies of North Malabar, (Kerala) South-West India”. His research interests are directly related to the department’s ongoing research on “Challenging the State”. However, some of the issues he raises have overlaps with the present major research on “Poverty Politics”.

The focus of the thesis is the health situation among an indigenous group in South India. More specific I am concerned with the medical pluralism consisting of various biomedical options, and what can be called “indigenous” medicine. During my fieldwork I was puzzled by the apparently disordered variations of acceptance, scepticism and resistance that flourish among the particular group of medical and health care consumers. In my thesis I will try to shed some light on the choices and the situations in which people have to make them. I am also working on the historical angle of the contemporary situation.I have also found an interest in the topics of power and suppression. I will explore whether there are certain elements of the biomedical systems that can be seen as part of a structural violence. In relevance here is the whole situation of being “tribals”, poor, and having limited access to education, health care, work etc. The medical situation will be viewed in light of theories of social suffering, suppression etc.


Sri Lanka

Berit Angelskar. MPhil Graduate.

Thesis submitted in June 2006.
For abstract, see here

Guatemala & Bolivia

John-Andrew McNeish. Post-Doctoral Researcher.

Overcoming Invisibility in a Global Age: Encountering Development and Prosperity in Bolivia and Guatemala.

Although with very different social histories and locations, Bolivia and Guatemala have been linked together both by modern discourses on poverty and multi-culturalism, but also by the expansion of recent efforts to create free trade agreements in Central (CAFTA) and South America (ALCA) aimed at assisting the resolution of these and related problems. As a result of these discourses and actions, the particularities of the cultures and histories of the two countries have been subsumed by a transnational system of development and economic liberalism. Indeed, despite the striking differences and complexity of both countries social structures, both Bolivians and Guatemalans use similar means to contest this system of development and economic liberalism. Both countries have been witness to a rising number of legal and extra-legal efforts to express dissatisfaction and rejection of the current global system: high levels of militant activism, democratic instability and mass demonstrations, as well as land invasions, vigilante actions and rising levels of civil violence. These coincidences of impact and reaction strike me as worthy of further research. In this study I aim to explore the current context of response to development and economic liberalism in Bolivia and Guatemala. Moreover, they raise a series of important questions:

Why is there a coincidence in terms of the methods used to express opposition to, or dissatisfaction with current policies for development and economic liberalisation? Are there common conditions that constrain social action? What role do states, international organisations and recent efforts at democratic reform play in this? What do these actions tell us about the limitations of, but also the advantages to be gained in contesting, the current international system and its policies? How do differing social groups and populations express their different identities and demands through these methods? What does all of this tell us about competing, but also the meeting, of contrasting notions of public and private, of tradition and modernity, and most importantly poverty and prosperity?



Guatemala

Margit Ystanes. PhD Student

The project aims to explore ethnographically the contested views of the Mirador Basin Project, the largest archaeological-environmental conservation project in Guatemala. This project is driven by governmental and international business interests, and is challenged by local populations who are losing access to logging and agricultural concessions due to the projects efforts to conserve the rainforest for tourist purposes. The focus is to explore the positions of both local communities opposing the project and the elites behind it, using both discourse theory and more experience sensitive approaches, and dealing with matters such as landscape and belonging, conceptions of sustainable development, national integration and the relationship between global process and local context. Main questions asked in this research project focus on how local communities frame their arguments for continued use of the rain forest. Have they become a people caught largely “betwixt and between” the different templates employed in this contestation regarding sustainable development, and preservation of culture vs preservation of relics of ancient culture? How do local people view themselves in this regard, and to what extent does the Mirador Project challenge their livelihoods and understandings of their natural surroundings? Furthermore, how are the local communities opposing the project perceived and portrayed in the discourses of economic development, ecological preservation and cultural heritage by the corporate, academic and political interests behind the project? What impact does the unequal distribution of power and legitimacy have in the controversy related to the project? Can the communities' continued resistance to the Mirador Project be understood as local resistance to national integration and a denial of the legitimacy of the Guatemalan nation state?

Venezuela

Iselin Åsedotter Strønen. MPhil Graduate.

Thesis submitted in June 2006.
For abstract, see here

Brazil

Heidi Larsen. Masters Student.

Thesis submitted in October 2007.
For abstract, see here

Peru

Lena Oppland. Masters Student.

In this project I research the dynamic between different forms of knowledge and systems of knowledge, and aim to highlight how indigenous people in the High Andes use, tranfer, reproduce and change their cultural knowledges in relation to national and local social processes. I ask how the relationahip between different forms of knowledge about the world creates meaning, power and the construction of ethnic identities. In this way I also mean to study the relationship between indigenous peoples and the State. I aim to further study the process in which knowledge is produced in people's relationships to the complex of ideas represented at the local, national and international. What are the differences between these kinds of knowledges? How do Quechua speaking peoples use their "traditional" cosmological knowledge to understand their everyday? How is their worldview transformed or changed through their meeting with hegemonic national and global knowledges?

Kenya

Leah Junge. MPhil Student

Key Words: Household economy, household relations, micro- credit, village banking (FSA), saving culture, gender relations, poverty, social change, development, education, security, self- esteem, status, independence, insurance, front/backstage.

This study, conducted among members of rural communities within Embu and Mbere districts respectively is aimed at assessing the interrelational play between a Christian Micro Finance NGO and the local community members involved as clients. Fascinating in this study is the dynamic play between both `the local' (community members) and `the foreign' (NGO), and how they negotiate their spaces in relation to each other. Front and backstage theatrics are taken into account in this play of development under the financial umbrella of rural finance. Understandably there are always reactions and effects to new interventions in any given rural community, this thesis examines household economic changes both positive and negative as well as the social and cultural metamorphoses emerging from this type of financial intervention, ( Micro- credit and FSA). It also examines the `before' and `after' arenas after rural finance intervention.


Thor Erik Sortland. Masters student

Conflict and Displacement in Northern Kenya

Keywords: Pastoralism, Kenya, Samburu, Conflict, Displacement

The focus of this thesis will be on how a case of conflict and displacement in Northern Kenya has affected a group of people in social, economic and religious ways. This involves not only how social networks, livelihood praxis and other socioeconomic aspects are broken down and disarticulated, but also how new one’s are rebuilt, reformed and adapted into a new social and geographical context. During my fieldwork I found that rituals are changing in content, context and importance. I found that there is a renegotiation of the social stratification and new statuses are being built particularly as a result of the increased centralisation due to insecurity.

The most important parts involved in this conflict are from the two pastoralist ethnic groups Samburu and Pokot. In order to narrow down the scope I have focused on one of the ethnic groups called Samburu. The conflict is very much about the availability of land, and the contesting views on how and by whom landscape should be utilised. For this reasons the conflict involves people, groups and organisations on many various levels from pastoralists and farmers to NGOs and influential politicians. It is interesting to see how processes at policymaking level, international and national, plays out locally. Landscape will be an important category as it rooms so many significant aspects revolving around both this conflict and the cosmological world of the Samburu. For example the political landscape going from community leaders and the council of elders to ambitious MPs and Government Officials. In the cosmological world of the Samburu the importance of grass and water is not only explained by their nomadic wanderings in search for this, but it can be seen symbolically in rituals and blessings as well. The current problems concerning land and the pastoralist livelihood is engraved by the colonial and postcolonial history in Kenya. This can be understood as a history of marginalisation and misunderstandings. Internal conflict and internal displacement is becoming an increasing problem in large parts of Africa and the world at large. I would like to see my thesis as a case study on vast anthropological issues like displacement, postcolonial problems and marginalisation of pastoralists.



Malawi

Jessica Mzamu. PhD Student.

In this project I aim to problematise standardised concepts such as “Poverty”, “the Poor” and “Food Security” in a deconstructive manner through their use in policy design and implementation in relation to local Malawian’s conceptualisation of such words. In exploring the inter - linkages of such concepts within a wider range of social, political, economic, cultural, natural, historical as well as global dimensions, I aim to seek ethnographic insights which might be overlooked by social scientist or policy makers, yet might be fundamental for such processes in the case of Malawi. Thus, in trying to answer the broad research question: “Can the “Poor” influence Policy?” I will try to explore how poverty discourses which filter through policy implementation maintain paradigms of power and subjectivity among certain groups of people.

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