Aid as an encounter at the interface: the complexity of the global fight against poverty

Abstract

International development discourse has recently shifted its focus from top‐down economic adjustment to participative anti‐poverty policy. This shift hints at an acknowledgement of the local complexities within the poverty process and at a need to listen to and develop actions with the ‘poor’. But, whereas the mainstream argument remains couched in a technical framework, we argue that the fight against poverty is inevitably political. Conceptualising the aid industry as a set of global–local interfaces, it follows that a closer look at ‘participation’ in anti‐poverty interventions is needed to come to grips with the political issues involved. Four issues are discussed: the complexity of local ‘participation’, given the ‘polycephalous’ character of third world societies; the power biases in the aid chain; the potential problem of ‘false consciousness’; and the ambiguities of the role of local development brokers. We conclude that anti‐poverty policy is in need of ‘interface experts’, who, through ‘provocation’ can beget ‘participation’.

Notes

Tom De Herdt and Johan Bastiaensen are both at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp, Middelheimlaan 1, B‐2020 Antwerp, Belgium. Email: [email protected].

See, for example, the debate on the articulation between migrant identities and the ‘developed’ states that host them (Vranken & Timmerman, 2000).

This can be illustrated with the case of a credit scheme for pygmies in Cameroon. In view of its original goals the project failed since the pygmies' bantu patrons intervened to collect their debts precisely at the moment the credit was granted them. Personal communication, Séverin Abega.

For simplicity's sake, it is assumed that donor agencies are genuinely well intentioned. It is, however, clear that their motives are often a ‘mixed bag’ in which stated anti‐poverty objectives mingle with more mundane concerns about the organisation's survival, and its associated ‘soft’ and interesting employment opportunities often play a crucial role. This theme is not developed here.

Note that using the terms ‘stakeholders’ or ‘intended beneficiaries’ rather than ‘agents’ in this phrase would bear testimony to the original sin of re‐framing local reality (in this case agents) within the perspective of outside intervention. As already indicated, re‐framing intervention in terms of local realities seems far more logical, albeit impossible, or at least very difficult, to combine with the governance and meaning systems of the aid business.

This problem has also arisen in other realms of the aid chain. Limitations of time and human resources were observed as the main impediment to bringing about genuine partnership relations between Northern agencies and their Southern counterparts (Bastiaensen & De Herdt, 2002).

The concepts of ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ beliefs refer to Elster's (1999) work on emotions and interests, but goes back at least to Adam Smith's 1789 work on moral sentiments (see also De Herdt, 2003b).

The same idea is expressed by Kees Schilder: ‘Ethnic consciousness can be used in two ways: to exclude outsiders from the group, or to include the group in outside society through ethnic assertion. In other words, local culture may be employed to claim autonomy vis‐à‐vis the wider society, but also to claim incorporation into that wider society’ (1994: 12).

Nothing is as relative as the word ‘relative’ in the context discussed here: it eventually transpired that both share the same great‐grandfather. In any case, there was frequent contact between the two, as they were neighbours and shared the same church. Another point to observe is that his claim to have brought water to the village was contested by other villagers.

http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/voices/overview.ht.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom De Herdt

Tom De Herdt and Johan Bastiaensen are both at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp, Middelheimlaan 1, B‐2020 Antwerp, Belgium. Email: [email protected].