Aspirations and Human Development Interventions

Abstract

What role can aspirations play in small-scale human development interventions? In this paper, we contribute to answering that question with both conceptual and empirical work. Aspirations can play at least two roles in small-scale human development interventions: the capabilities-selecting role and the agency-unlocking role. While aspirations also face the challenge of adaptation to adverse circumstances and unjust social structures, we argue that this challenge can be met by embedding the formulation and expression of aspirations within a setting of public discussion and awareness-raising activities, and that adaptation can be further countered by including a commitment to action. We then report on field research done in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, South Africa, where a group of women went through a process of voicing, examining, and then realizing their aspirations. The action research confirms our theoretical hypotheses. We also do not find any evidence of adaptation of the women's aspirations, and argue that the absence of such adaptation might be a result of active capability selection, reflection, deliberation, and the exercise of agency throughout the action research programme.

Key words:

• Human development
• Poverty
• Adaptation
• Aspirations
• Interventions
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the women who took part in the action-research described in this paper, Constanze Binder, two anonymous referees and an associate editor of this journal for comments on an earlier version, and SANPAD for research funding.

Notes

1. This is a companion paper to Conradie (2013), where we discuss in more detail the action research programme on which the empirical part of this paper is based. The companion paper focuses on the assessment of whether there is an enhancement of functionings and capabilities among the participants in the research programme, while this paper develops a theoretical hypothesis, which is confirmed by the findings from the programme.

2. A township is a residential area for Black citizens in South Africa that was created as a part of the Apartheid ideology that different races should live separately. Townships are often situated on the periphery of a city or town.

3. See Clark (2012b) for a taxonomy of different ways in which the term ‘adaptation’ has been used.

4. The notion of ‘(seemingly) overambitious aspirations’ is what Clark (2009, p. 23) calls ‘upwards adjusting aspirations’. We agree with the importance of the phenomenon that Clark describes, but prefer our terminology, since those overambitious aspirations do not adapt to objective circumstances in the life of the poor person herself. Overambitious aspirations are rather fuelled by the lives of people who are much better off, such as those who live more affluent lives within the same geographical area, or by the lives of middle-class and upper-class people that are screened on television. To use Ray's (2003) terminology: these middle-class and upper-class people are within their ‘aspiration window’.

5. Following Ray (2003), one could understand ‘realistic’ aspirations as those where the ‘aspiration gap’ (hence the distance between one's situation now and the goals one hopes to achieve) is not so wide that it cannot be reached with the effort or investment that the person can maximally afford.

6. Someleze is a Xhosa word that means ‘We strengthen each other’.

7. The research was sponsored by SANPAD, the South African Netherlands Programme for Alternatives in Development. Ina Conradie was the field researcher/facilitator and Ingrid Robeyns was the Dutch research partner between 2007 and 2010. Robeyns was not engaged in the fieldwork; she only helped in the design of the survey and engaged in discussions of the interpretation of the results.

8. Site C is a section or suburb of Khayelitsha.

9. Four successful businesswomen from Khayelitsha took part in the training programme as group facilitators. Peer mentoring is a strategy that has been used in education and healthcare with some success (Le Roux et al., 2010). The peer mentors were inspirational, as they proved that it was possible to come from the same background, and nevertheless to achieve one's aspirations.

10. Ina Conradie has been involved in development education, training and facilitation for three decades.

11. See Appendix 1, phase 5 for more information on the selection of these women.