Politics of global social relations: organising ‘everyday lived experiences’ of development and destitution

Abstract

This article offers a political analysis of development and poverty reduction initiatives from a social-relational perspective. More specifically, the author draws on the example of microfinance schemes to illustrate the way in which poverty reduction policy is increasingly advanced in response to social resistance to experiences of destitution, which is itself produced through development. The perspective the author advances disrupts conventional framings of development and poverty in terms of independent domains abstracted from social relations of power and resistances. Furthermore, it brings into view the global dimension of these social relations, articulated and co-constituted through a range of actors across different levels of governance. Through the social-relational lens, the development paradox is also revealed: development processes have produced destitution which, in turn, becomes the target of poverty reduction (‘development’) initiatives, which are themselves yet again premised upon either realising economic growth or maintaining, at a fundamental level, social relations of inequality and dispossession. This paradox is neither explicable nor discernable from orthodox conceptions of the international political economy of development.

Notes

1. I would like to thank Juanita Elias and Len Seabrooke for organising a workshop on the sociological turn in international political economy in Adelaide in 2007. They have both been exceptionally supportive with regard to my contribution to this issue. I presented aspects of the argument advanced here at that workshop, and I am thankful to participants for questions and discussions. I would also like to thank Martin Weber and Kamil Shah for very helpful comments. Last but not least, I would like to thank the anonymous referee for very helpful suggestions.

2. The 1980s came to be referred to as the ‘lost decade of development’, primarily due to the adverse social and economic consequences of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in many ‘developing’ countries. SAPs were an expression of the wider neo-liberal shift in development policy circles which tended to also be equated with the Washington consensus (see, for example, Esteva 1992: 16; Thomas 2000: esp. 23–33).

3. This would hold insofar as my critique would complement and fall under the broad ‘heterodox’ scholarship critical of neo-liberal development as such. In this sense, it would appear to fall within criticisms offered by a range of authors including Chang (2002), Kiely (2007) and Rosser (2008). However, all of these approaches commit to a ‘stages of growth’ conception of development wherein the ‘everyday lived experiences’ of development and the various struggles for alternative ways of being are displaced or discounted. Importantly, to borrow from McMichael (2009: 252), they do not ‘challenge the ontology of the global development project’.

4. For instance, some critics of neo-liberal development do not generally conceive of the ‘poverty reduction turn’ itself as being fundamentally integral to attempts to consolidate neo-liberal governance of development. For example, I find this articulated in what is an excellent essay by Rosser, in which his very critical stance of neo-liberalism is tempered by a statement that the ‘PWC has allowed greater scope for certain forms of state intervention in the economy’ (Rosser 2008: 375). He is referring here to social safety nets for the poor in times of crisis. This may well be the case, but as I demonstrate in this essay through the example of microfinance schemes for poverty reduction, such ‘safety nets’ cannot be conceived as social safety nets for the already destitute and vulnerable, but rather as perverse attempts to create social discipline and sustain mechanisms of ‘accumulation through dispossession’.

5. I draw on McMichael here, who critically engages orthodox approaches to development, and especially those that conceive of development through the metaphor of the ‘development ladder’. McMichael specifically employs this in the context of his criticisms of Jeffrey Sachs's use of the metaphor in relation to how peasant ‘poverty’ is perceived (McMichael 2008a: 206).

6. For the depth and extent of microfinance in global development and poverty reduction policy, see, for example, Cook and Latortue (2005), United Nations Department of Public Information (2008) and UN-HABITAT (2005).

7. For a critical engagement of microcredit and poverty reduction, see, for example, Brigg (2001), Elyachar (2002), Lazar (2004), Medeiros (2001), Rahman (1999) , Rankin (2001) and Weber (2002, 2004, 2006a ,b).

8. This is similar to the point advanced by McMichael (2008b: 206) where he argues that ‘peasant trajectories are conditioned by world, rather than national history’. My point is that experiences of development and destitution are also conditioned by world, rather than national history. For a discussion relating specifically to the question of method in the study of development and social change, see McMichael (1990 ,2005).

9. As the quotation above by Nandy expresses this point clearly, we should remember that poverty itself, so conceived—in addition to its conflation with destitution—is a problematic concept that is already related to orthodox conceptions of development; that is, as the absence of or incomplete project of attaining the goal of high-mass-consumption-producing societies (as expressed also by Rostow 1960).

10. See, for example, Raj Patel's (2007) Stuffed and Starved, as well as Mike Davis’ (2006) Planet of Slums.

11. For a more recent account of this perspective, see also Gill (2002).

12. Philip McMichael (2006 ,2008a) offers an excellent account of these mechanisms through his analyses of peasant resistance toward commodification of land and their struggles to reassert their rights to food sovereignty.

13. For a critical account of the WTO Doha Development Agenda, see, for example, Higgott and Weber (2005).

14. For a good critical account of the post-Washington consensus, see, for example, Fine et al. (2001). For a discussion of this in relation to a political analysis of Australian aid policy making, see Rosser (2008).

15. For example, ‘under a 1993 banking law, Bolivia has begun licensing a new class of [financial] intermediaries: Private Financial Funds (PFFs). This legal vehicle was designed to provide financial services to micro- and small enterprises, as well as loans to individuals for purchases of durable goods … Unlike conventional banks, PFFs are permitted to accept non-traditional collateral such as jewelry or furniture’ (CGAP 1994: 3).

16. For example, the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), an apex financial institution in Bangladesh, has a clear policy on this issue. In lending to partner organisations (POs), NGOs and microfinance institutions to on-lend microcredit at the grass roots, the PKSF ‘imposes a minimum lending rate of 16% to ensure that POs do not lend below commercial bank rates and promote cost coverage from operations’ (World Bank 1996: 51).

17. For perspectives that advocate microfinance, see, for example, Otero and Rhyne (1994) and Schneider (1997). And, for a somewhat more ‘middle-ground’ stance, see Hulme and Mosley (1996a ,b).

18. For more on this, see, for example, Dunkerley (1990) and Sachs (1990: esp. 157–266).

19. For example, see Sachs (1990: 159): ‘In the first half of the 1980s, Bolivia experienced an economic crisis of extraordinary proportions [which included] the cut-off in lending from the international capital markets’ (see also 188, 238–9).

20. The other three cited included: (1) economic infrastructure: infrastructure closely related to productive activities, such as road upgrading, urban improvement irrigation, flood control and reforestation; (2) social infrastructure: infrastructure for health and education, water and sanitation, and basic housing; and (3) social assistance: recurrent costs in education and training, vaccinations, school breakfasts and the production of school materials.

21. In a review of the ESF evaluations, the following conclusion is drawn by Jorgensen et al. (1992: 51) under the subheading ‘From Popular Image to Political Sustainability’: ‘The perception that the government is doing something to make the adjustment process less painful or costly is important to the political process of sustaining adjustment … If this did not create direct support, it at least reduced potential opposition to the government and its program.’

22. President Paz Estenssoro's personal commitment is cited under the header of ‘The ESF was given strong protection from political interference’ (Jorgensen et al. 1992: 119).

23. For a detailed discussion of the LPP, see also Soriano (1995: 183–98).

24. See, for example, the references cited in note 7.

25. Barry Hindess (2007) provides an excellent critique of the modernist conception of development (see also Rojas 2009).

26. For instance, the critical and incredibly valuable contributions of Cutler (1995)and Gill (1995, 2002) tend towards analyses of the macropolitical context of power, although how this is experienced is explicated to some extent quite nicely, especially by Gill , through the concept of ‘disciplinary neo-liberalism’. But it would be fair to say that neither offers a perspective that either focuses on and/or draws out the paradox of development through an explicit engagement of micropolitical social relations with macropolitical relations. In contrast, however, McMichael has developed such an approach, for instance, through his sophisticated discussion of food sovereignty movements (Via Campesina). In this context, he has demonstrated that ‘while micro-politics are the substance of movement, macro-politics constitute the social and world historical frame, through which to situate and develop new subjectivities. By the same token, macro-politics are filtered through particular, or localized, experiences’ (McMichael 2008a: 223).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heloise Weber

Heloise Weber lectures in International Relations and Development Studies at the School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland. Her research interests are in the global politics of development and inequality, critical development theory, international relations theory and the politics of international institutions in development. She is the co-editor of Recognition and Redistribution (Routledge, 2009). Her research has also been published in Review of International Political Economy, Globalizations and Third World Quarterly. She is working on the following book projects: Rethinking the Third World (with Mark T Berger) and Organizing Poverty: The Global Politics of Microfinance