The forgotten dimension of social reproduction: the World Bank and the poverty reduction strategy paradigm

ABSTRACT

This article invokes Gramscian theory in an effort to better grasp the reorganization of social reproduction under neoliberal globalization. It argues that recent transformations in the world development order warrant a rethinking of the concept of social reproduction, towards acknowledging the increasingly apparent role of transnational governance institutions in organizing social reproduction processes, particularly in peripheral countries. To substantiate this argument, the article interrogates the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper development approach, the most visible policy tool of the post-Washington Consensus. In the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process, the World Bank has started to link debt relief administered through the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC II) initiative to the delivery of basic social services to the poor, and directly finances human capital investments through conditional cash transfer programs. While conditionalities attached to Bank funding continue to promote the privatization of various state functions associated with social reproduction, especially in the areas of health care and education, the Bank, at the same time, funds ‘social inclusion’ programs that directly absorb some of these functions. This signals the emergence of a new social reproduction regime of ‘conditional inclusion’ under World Bank leadership.

KEYWORDS:

• Social reproduction
• inclusive neoliberalism
• poverty reduction
• World Bank
• Nicaragua

Notes

1. It is pertinent to highlight that there is no homogenous school of Gramscian IPE but rather a variegated set of perspectives that in their totality make up a diverse Gramscian field of study. My own contribution builds predominantly on the pioneering work of Robert Cox (1983), and the further development of Cox's seminal contributions by his student Stephen Gill (1995, 2000), and more recent interventions by William I. Robinson (2004) and Adam David Morton (2007).

2. For an analysis of the content of Nicaragua's PRSP, see Ruckert (2007). While I draw on some of the empirical insights from this interrogation of Nicaragua's PRSP, this article extents Ruckert's analysis empirically by throwing preliminary light on the social impacts of the PRSP process in Nicaragua, and conceptually by unearthing the added value of Gramscian interpretations of PRSP processes for understanding the current reorganization of social reproduction.

3. The conditional cash transfer program, La Red de la Protecion Social, was, however, ended in 2006 and replaced by the new Sandinista administration with a number of more universalistic social programs, such as the Hambre Cero program.

4. This alternative PRSP document was published in 2001 by a national umbrella NGO, the Civil Coordinator, under the title ‘La Nicaragau Que Queremos’ (The Nicaragua We Want).

5. While in their publications the World Bank has embraced the notion of male and female co-responsibility for social reproduction activities and is now promoting ‘sharing partnerships’ between men and women, as documented by Kate Bedford, in practice CCTs continue to predominantly target women as the ‘head of the household’, and thus arguably undermine the progressive potential of the post-Washington Consensus to de-gender development policy.