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Post by Anu:
The Green article provided a good overview of how the anthropological lens can provide a meaningful counter to the current ways in which international development discourses render poverty as a technical problem to be measured and managed through programs. The article also acknowledged that even though conceptualizations of poverty have altered from a more basic needs approach to more sophisticated understanding of poverty as multi-dimensional deprivation –the term multidimensional poverty has still not seen its full explanatory potential. It also problematizes the study of poverty as an object of analysis, as if it is a static concept that exists independent of the people who experience it, and the social processes that play a role in constructing it.

Perhaps the most important take away in this for me was that we keep looking for poverty in categories that are already racialized, gendered or discriminated in some form or the other – be it in a “physical category” such as a slum or a refugee camp, or a social category such as “migrants” or “informal workers”. This leads us to focus on the “objects” of poverty rather than the processes that construct it. For example, Mumbai’s slum issue that Appadurai’s article highlighted is not strictly a housing issue caused by low income. It is an issue caused by lopsided urban development plans of the city –  the low income housing provided by the state is located far away from the heart of the city. However the means of livelihood of the slum dwellers are located in the city, so they prefer to stay in housing closer to their place of work, even if it is sub standard, because in moving away from the city into state sponsored housing, they lose their means of livelihood. Looking for answers to poverty in the slums will not easily reveal this connection.

I think the anthropologist can play a huge role by asking to shift the locations where poverty should be explored.

Response by Priyanka

I completely agree with the point Anu highlights especially in terms of the role of  the anthropologist. Such as while the definition of poverty may evolve into a multi-dimensional concept, there is still a need for anthropologists to work with the so-called "poor or slum-dwellers" to understand their emotional and behavioural needs for sustainable impactful development.  This again is nudging towards the need for an empathetic bottom up approach, humanising the people in need and acknowledging their cultural liberty and need for empowerment with respect to capacity to aspire. For post that they are survivors who too with little aid based on what they ask for may stand up and voice and fight their own battles!

Response by Riwa:
To add on to this, what I also took from the article is that as anthropologists, yes it is important to have a more bottom up approach but an understanding of the working institutions and organisations that limit the opportunities of the poorer populations, to see why and how they reinforce their vulnerability before finding ways to move away from it.

Phoebe's response:
I agree especially with your point on how previously poverty did have a basic one-dimensional definition and how the study of poverty is problematic because of this and how we should consider the social processes that construct concepts of poverty. To add my 2 cents in agreeance, poverty is a relative term and differs from different societies, for example being poor in a western European country is not the same as being poor in Eastern Europe, or generically speaking living in poverty in the global North is not the same as it in the global south. Moreover, poverty is not always static but can be a state of flux or shifts, but also may not be a fixed permanent state.

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Appadurai's article spoke to me on multiple levels. Different in tone from most papers we have read so far, in connecting culture to development and acknowledging that the poor are not just "beggars of the condition of poverty" but a social community in themselves, he humanises them.What I found most fascinating/profound is where he pointed out that those identified as 'poor' are also well aware of their positionality within the social hierarchy. They too have a voice but they need the cultural capital of capacity to aspire to be able to help themselves. When I conducted research on dehumanisation of beggars in India across SES, across the interviews, people who identified themselves as lower on SES also humanised the beggar most saying that we too could be in his/her position tomorrow. This supports the point highlighted by Appadurai. With respect to development though it made me wonder whether the question should be- How to be rid of poverty globally ? Or instead How can we empower and enable human beings in difficult conditions with the cultural capital of capacity to aspire? For they too are human beings with voices that can fight and survive!

Response:

I agree that it is important to treat those who live in poverty as autonomous human beings, something which might be missed when the scale becomes too large and the 'poor' become a faceless aggregate. However, I worry that focusing too much on the capacity to aspire may put the responsibility of overcoming structural poverty too much upon the individual and not on the structures that trap them in the cycle of poverty. It seems to be a difficult balance to strike.
- Maria

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I agree with you on your notion of the orthodoxy of the discipline. It is interesting to see how he was told that he was studying the wrong kind of poor by local anthropologists. In this context the discipline has been heavily politicised for obvious reasons. But it is Williams outsider perspective that allows him to observe the patterns of vulnerability and poverty that shows us the nuance of an often essentialized relationship between income and poverty.

Ali Butler

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One of the things that stood out for me in this article was Green's discussion of how policy is often shaped by an idea of the 'social body'. When such a model of society becomes the assumed area of action, policy becomes a process of policing the body and removing any deviant elements. Poverty then gets pathologised as something to be attacked and removed from the social body,  rather than something which arises within (and is endemic to) the social structures themselves.

To me this quite nicely encapsulated much of what we've been discussing over this course, i.e. the difference between limited technical interventions and thoroughgoing structural critiques , and I wonder how far this perspective can be seen in other areas of government intervention to address social issues, such as criminal justice policy.

Gareth

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The concept of a culture of aspiration to me poses two questions; what should be aspired to? And who sets that agenda? Appadurai touches on this and notes a major theme of our studies so far “voice”. Aspiration has in itself become an aspiration as it is seen as a desirable personal quality, however the form that takes is dictated by a certain perspective. In examining why culture is important to development Appadurai argues that for any culture of aspiration to be effective at improving people’s lives it must be culturally relevant and determined by those it targets.

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what i really enjoyed about this article is that Williams challenged the widespread notion that poverty=vulnerability. He showed that in some instances, having a bit of money rather than none can prove to be riskier and puts the concerned individual in a positions where survival can bring discrimination. the idea of that he was studying the wrong poor also brings this notion to life, as it shows that they are not necessarily seen as poor, but simply outsiders and intruders because they have more than the poorest of the poor.
- Riwa

Response to Riwa
i agree, and it ties into the idea that poverty should not, and cannot, simply be measured through quantitive measures like income. poverty means more than that and is different in different contexts - there are always new ways of being poor shaped by context that might not relate to money e.g. security or other kinds of deprivation. poverty does not always depend on having little, but encompasses social and relational factors
Izzi

Response to Riwa
I agree, one key takeaway from this is that Poverty does not always equal vulnerability, a concept I had not thought of before. It's interesting to see how he brought out the issue of being targeted for having more than the average poor.
Response by Sarah K.

Response to Riwa:
It is very interesting. If we break the equation poverty=vulnerability, which one of those would be more problematic? If vulnerability proves to be wider than poverty, how can we start addressing that then the “attack” Green talks about needs to be turn to other types of privileges, such as race, religion, language or nationality? Laura Torres

Response to Riwa:
I totally agree! Putting income as the only determining assessment of poverty is insufficient. It also comes from a western, capitalist perception of generalisation.
Siwei Tan

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Cultural production and asipration limitation

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Cultural production and asipration limitation

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This article made me think hugely about Paul Willis' ethnography, 'Learning to Labour'. He undertakes fieldwork with working class school boys, and looks at the relationship between them, their teachers and their overall understanding of aspiration. He notes how

male friends collaborate to circulate discourses that criticized middle-class models of acheivemnet and social mobility celebrated in their school. This reflects Appadurai's ideas that, not only do people experiencing poverty often reject notions and norms of the dominant culture, but also that aspiration is not just an individual phenomenon, but are 'always formed in interaction and in the thick of social life' (Appadurai 2004:67). Whilst Willis' ethnography is only a small representation of one school, we can see the ideological nature of culture at play that can define group ideas of aspiration in a way that may seem individualistic.

Lucy HB

Response to Lucy HB:

Paul Willis' 'Learning to Labour' study is exactly what came to my mind too, particularly when Appadurai mentioned: "every effort should be made to encourage exercise in local teaching and learning which increase the ability of poor people to navigate the cultural map in which aspirations are located". While Appadurai mentioned that Douglas' study (1960) shows how working-class pupils have less educational ambitions and therefore put less value into educational achievement, Willis' study shows that it may not be that they have no ambitions at all, it is just not within the framework of what the education system values. Therefore, as Barry Sugarman (1970) identified, these working-class individuals might be perceived to be characterised with a 'fatalistic' perspective on social mobility, and act according to it.
Therefore, what would be interesting to consider and maybe address when recommending exercise in local teaching is the idea of the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' as a result of categorical labelling and the attitudes of peers and teachers in relation to this.

Veronika

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Post by Anu:
James article, among other things, is a nice reminder of the “orthodoxy” of our discipline – how we like to stick to our “pure” categories and are not very encouraging of those who try to blur the boundaries either by challenging the notion of the field or by studying groups that supposedly don’t demand an “ethnographic eye”.

That apart, for me, the key takeaway from this article was that poverty is much more closely linked to vulnerability that it is to income. The groups that Williams studies found it more difficult to make “money work for them”, than to “make the money itself”, often finding themselves more precarious and unsafe when they had money. Through his ethnographic study, we are able to see the relational and the multidimensional aspects of poverty very clearly, in terms of how processes such as migration, racial discrimination, housing, all come together to construct it and make it visible.

This line though made me wonder if he was trying to romanticize their situation just a little bit –

“Our times together were strangely often more relaxed, enjoyable, and comradely when poverty and destitution set in: when money was short, relations were full; then, too, life in the city was safer”.

But I could perhaps be overthinking this, because his key point seems to be that poverty is experienced differently by different groups of people – which I believe was clearly demonstrated through his work.

Response to Anu:

Yes, this line also made me feel slightly uncomfortable. Although such an extreme reversal of popular discourse on poverty, from it being the cause of danger to it being a way to ‘cloak or insulate the migrants from… danger’ expresses his point clearly, I can’t help but think how someone reading this who is living in poverty, and unable to feed their family etc. would feel.

I think it’s important then to remember that Williams’ findings are a very particular example. They are vital to point out in order to challenge and untangle the discourse on poverty and vulnerability and focus on other vulnerable groups, rather than just those in extreme poverty, and to focus on factors other than economic poverty, but they cannot be applied to everyone’s experience.

Emma

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Cultural Capacity to Apsire - Limits as i see it

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Cultural Capacity to Apsire - Limits as i see it

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Post by Anu:

1. I took some time to warm to Appadurai’s concepts and thoughts. At the end of my first read through of the article, while I fully appreciated all the points it made, I was left with a few questions. Firstly, is the “capacity to aspire” materially different from the topic of “voice” that we have been discussing throughout the term? Effectively, the essence of the argument seems to be that it is the voice the poor that will determine the terms on which they make themselves visible, and the terms on which they want to be integrated (or not). While I understand that the two terms may mean slightly different things, I was not able to take away two meaningfully different analytic constructs from which to unpack the issue.

Secondly, how is the example of the Alliance movement shared in the article different from other bottom up grass route movements that we have read out, which are imagined and run by the communities themselves? The Alliance movement does a great job of making visible the materiality of poverty from the eyes of who live it – its just that I wasn’t able to easily link it to an aspirational capacity.

And lastly, (this will probably be something I will explore in detail in on one of my reading response papers) – isn’t cultural capacity to aspire uncomfortably linked to notions of modernity and development, something that we as anthropologists have been eager to fight against in the discourses of development? While I fully support Appadurai’s notions that it is a form of metacapacity that needs to be inculcated in full measure, I wonder if it will be limited by the very normative and social processes that shape it’s development? How can we make sure that it doesn't fall prey to the hierarchical and hegemonic notions of progress and modernity?

Response by Gareth:

I totally agree with you about struggling to see the difference between 'capacity to aspire' and other concepts we've looked at this term - I had a similar first reaction,. Somewhere there is perhaps a difference is in Appadurai's insistence on blurring the lines between what have traditionally been considered economic or cultural capacities, and illustrate their interconnections  - how what are perhaps sometimes seen as less important matters of 'culture' actually play an important role in the shaping of the economic?

Response to Anu (and Gareth) by Jennifer

I too find it hard to distinguish this from bottom up grass roots movements, but I suppose he is talking about an alternative to conventional ‘development’ that involves fostering an environment in which such movements are possible, and can evolve free from a controlling ‘project plan’ from above. He’s also setting out an approach that explicitly isn’t based on seeing poverty in economic terms.

Response to Jen:
Yes, thats what I think too - its just not very clear to me how his constructs differ analytically from others we have studied!

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I believe that this article is a good starting point to understand why being "poor" is not only about lack of money.
James Williams studied the situation of the "Nigerians" in South Africa and explained how even in the position to have money, they did not and they do not, even now, have the access to certain aspects of life that can make the "money work for them".
Studying the wrong poor made evidently the link between  poverty and vulnerability.

-Susanna Owusu

Response to Susanna by Bo Yang:

Yes, it is then veiling the whole picture about poor groups and the whole urban social life. It strongly lets us rethink the prevalent standards about measuring what poverty is.

Bo

Response to Susanna by DORA

I agree- the comment about money 'not working' for them, really struck me. The migrants need so much more than just money to survive- their fluctuating vulnerability is also to do with how they are perceived by others in the city, by residents, by police. One of the men remarking "we are on our own out here"- this shows how making money work for them must be incredibly complex, if they cannot rely on safety and security if they were to want it (of course, the police not intervening is also a benefit). It really makes clear how 'poverty' and 'vulnerability' can become entrenched because of other resources remaining inaccessible due to prejudice.

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One of the things that stood out to me about this article early one is the way in which Green writes about the World Bank assuming leadership in the 'attack on poverty' through its role in establishing 'systematic ways of representing, analysing and theorising poverty'. I thought the violence in this phrase was perhaps not coincidental. Seeing poverty as a self-evident fact to be somehow measured qualitatively and quantitively, rather than understanding the situations of 'diverse individuals within diverse social and economic contexts' misses the point entirely. The Escobar quote in at the end of the introduction seems to point again to the 'attack' of the word bank not on poverty, but on the poor: 'Poverty as an entity is brought into being through the institutions established to describe, quantify and locate it'

Bea

Responding to Bea
Green asks critically why anthropology hasn’t studied poverty when it has been a goal of the World Bank and UN for decades. Poverty has been institutionalised with NGOs and international agencies through categorising and measuring. This misses the subjective information about who is affected and why, the social network as defined by Green which the anthropologist can aim to fill in in a local, specific level. Anthropology can also look at the historical causing poverty rather than assuming it is an inherited state.  Without this, measures are made by the World Bank and others using inaccurate scales and institutional development plans are applied based on blueprints which match levels of poverty rather looking into specific circumstances and causes as in the case of Tanzania and Zanzibar.  While we can criticise the development agencies for this flawed logic, it is the responsibility of anthropology to provide alternative dialogues and paths to creative partnerships as highlighted by Appadurai.

Susie

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Post by Jennifer
Green’s analysis provides a wide-ranging commentary and critique of the ways in which poverty has come to be mis-conceptualised as an ‘object’ (condition ) rather than as a situation-specific consequence of social relations. She highlights how this mis-conceptualization de-historicises and depoliticises our understanding of the causes of poverty; and demonstrates, for example, how this leads to poverty being considered in isolation from the  processes that generate wealth for some and poverty for others. This pattern of misdiagnosing problems by failing to consider their wider historical, social and political causes seems to be a sadly familiar strategy (eg Ferguson (1990)), that leads to technical ‘solutions’ that maintain the status quo of economic interests and power inequalities.

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It might seem a paradox that earring money  equals to vulnerability, but James Williams through is ethnographic research perfectly demonstrates that  in some contexts its perfectly possible. What I admire  is the tenacity and joined force of this group of migrants even when the conditions are hard.
However after reading this article the first thing I thought is that unfortunately no one was able to handle the money due to social and economic facts. If some among the group had some basic education, surely the would have found solutions for both, protection and investements

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Green’s paper highlighted poverty as the outcome of social relations, and therefore it should be treated as such, rather than as something that can be measured quantitively. Something that  struck me was the attention Green drew to the moral emphasis placed on poverty — the misjudged notion that the poor have somehow brought poverty upon themselves. Thus the social exclusion of marginal groups is blamed on the groups, rather than on discriminatory policies that reinforce their exclusion. This ties into anthropological concepts of relational poverty, and perhaps Bourdieu’s idea of ‘symbolic violence’ — dominant groups dictate the values and standards that put pressure on those with less power.

Izzi

Response to Izzi by Sheu Jeen:
I felt the same and this quote stood out for me "Poverty becomes not only a problem of the poor, but also their responsibility". In a way I wonder if this situation is perpetuated by development actors knowing full well that poverty is a product of society and socio-economic and political systems. By holding on to this misconception, development agencies can continue doing what they do, blaming the failures of aid interventions on the poor, while reaping any benefits for themselves and maintaining the structures that keep them in power.

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An interesting point brought out is that development policies are not determined by those categorized as poor, but rather those who have an interest in policies that are formulated. Once again, we see the World Bank as a culprit in governing the way we talk about poverty and homogenizing the discourse around it.
I liked how Green relates poverty to social relations as well and advocates for focusing on social relations in strategies against poverty. This is useful in maintaining the agency of the poor.
Sarah K.

Response by Shabazz

First off I agree with you, this is not the first time the world bank has found themselves in a position like this, getting awfully suspicious .. hmmmmm.

Just to add to what you have said, the current structure of knowledge and paradigms of thinking act as justifications for intervening in other countries and to create a ranking system. This immediately bring me back to Escobar's work. Talking of the production of knowledge and its use for the exertion of power. This concept finds its way in every weeks reading, no matter how disparate the topic may seem to a passerby at first glimpse.

However, I found that this article did highlight the homogeny created by quantitative analysis, and provide perhaps an idea of anthropology should be doing for development.  Thinking about it as a social relationship as opposed to a measured statistic, and challenging the existing paradigms and politics, asking who decides on the categorization, who decides who to help, who is included in these categories, and who is deserving of help?

Response to Sarah and Shabazz:
I fully agree with the points you both have raised; the detrimental implications of the World Bank's work has become inescapably obvious. I think both of you have posed interesting questions in terms of "who decides." It seems to me like we do have an idea of who has historically determined the agenda and who it should actually  be, but my question is, how can we change this? What can be done to shift this focus, to produce less biased data and empower the communities that have been ignored in favor of other communities, such as what is highlighted in Williams' piece?
- Mahali

@ Shabbaz
I wonder if the point is precisely that - as long as the agenda is tantamount to advocacy for the 'needy', it implies a (verbal) debate about how  'needs' and 'deserving' groups are classified, and also, it implies a careful choice of the examples that we use to support the one directional interpretation.   I think we all agree that situations exist where the powerpoint planner just has little elements to prioritise; and yet,  advocacy moves within the context of a principal and an agent that acts on behalf of the principal, who for a reason or another cannot prioritise for herself.  I also agree that numbers do not explain everything but they can sometimes be useful.   I think it is quite clear to me that basic sanitation is a priority, whichever way one looks at it,  all seem to agree, and it probably it is about numbers.  So the problem here is not whether the world bank says that toilets are needed;   I am not sure I can see who would argue against.   I also do not think the  WB should go out and build the toilets; I think we also all agree that more toilets are better than less (up to a point of course).  WB develops a sanitation for all strategy (why not), and if anything, the problem is that it does nothing to ensure that the municipality of Mumbai build the toilets, as this does not happen until the local community does.  Here, I see no conflict.  A different  setting is in situations where universal priorities do not overlap with local priorities in a very controversial way, and the WB has a power that the local community does not have.  I am thinking of the example of conservationist policies in Madagascar (I am using precisely a very controversial example on purpose).   Conservation involves a certain idea of the 'future' for the community, whose claims are perceived by western academics and the WB that funds their programs,  at odds with the claims of protecting the pangolin.   In this case,  WB trumps the local community whichever way one looks at it. I am also not so sure that anyone involved would think that the rights of the pangolin are secondary to the rights of the Madagascan peasants.   This differs from the example from Escobar when preserving the forest preserves the environment of humans and the jaguar alike.  In the case of Madagascar,  it is quite clear that evicting the peasants from some of the territories where their cemeteries are and forbidding them to burn swathes of forest to seed crops are two dimensions of impoverishment that we are debating.   The  directionality of numbers also does provide numerical support to conservationism not being so benevolent to the local population (yearly income halved etc..)  So  in this case I would agree with you, the WB is taking a one-sided approach to imposing priorities.  However, I ask myself the question - who would voice a clear stance against conservationism?  My bet is that Escobar would be tested here, as we all are.   / Emanuela

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I found it interesting to learn about how poverty as a construct is rarely historicized but rather, is perceived as a kind of ahistorical blight on society that must be eliminated to ‘maintain social functionality.’ Green strongly and repeatedly suggests that we not conceptualise poverty as this external entity that needs to be purged, but rather view it as the product of specific social relations. For example, Green mentions how although poverty is often framed as the responsibility of the poor themselves, poverty suffered by Puerto Ricans in the US has, of course, very little to do with their own attitudes but rather serves to benefit US interests in terms of exploitable labour through migrants, as well as in Puerto Rico itself, where, labourers with little protection can, again, be exploited due to lax labour laws. It is by refocusing our attention towards examining and transforming these social relations ~ and away from the quantitative methods of organisations like the World Bank, which can quantify the dimensions of poverty, but less so ‘the nexus of desperation’  ~ that perhaps a significant contribution can be made by anthropology.
- Ayesha B.

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This text is great to understand why the “war on poverty”, or all the attempts to “attack poverty” are so useless -they come from a place where poverty is perceived almost as a human trait, a choice or just an individual (or collective in the case we talk about whole countries) failure. This not only makes wealthy people and societies feel superior in material goods, but also in moral values and knowledge. How can you help people fight something that you think they invoke in the first place? The whole choice of vocabulary -“attacking”- denotes the intentionality to portray poverty as an external enemy. In truth, as Green explains, poverty is “actions and strategies of rich and poor alike (are central) in determining poverty outcomes” (1124). These social dynamics are really the ones to blame, observe and transform when talking about reducing poverty.
I find very interesting how Williams’ paper ratifies Green’s words: by exposing how money is not always the solution, that sometimes being “richer” put people in more vulnerable positions than being poorer, the author proves that poverty has more to do with social interactions than with lack of wealth. Hence, it is not up to an individual to be or not to be poor, we all depend on the rest of the people around us, and on the relations of our society/country with the rest of the world.
Laura Torres

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Poverty according to different worldviews

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Poverty according to different worldviews

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Green’s analysis of marginality as social process was particularly poignant for me. The concept of poverty is not universal, and different societies perceive it in different ways. For indigenous communities like the example she presented of the San in Botswana, poverty is very much a result not of having insufficient income, but of being deprived of land and natural resources. With a healthy environment they do not need to rely on material wealth for their livelihoods and wellbeing, although mainstream society may view them as “poor”. However, environmental degradation or land dispossession automatically renders them poor and dependent on the state for aid or handouts. As a recent Malaysian newspaper headline states: “Even a billion ringgit won’t solve Orang Asli [indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia] woes if rights are ignored, say activists”. It is time that the concept of poverty (and development for that matter) and our response are made more inclusive of different worldviews and realities.
- Sheu Jeen

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I found the article by Williams really interesting  because it looks at migration in post-apartheid South Africa. Within this context, Williams looks at the connection between violence and poverty as well  as the conflict between foreign nationals from other African countries and Black South African. Here we see how political and economic processes have created wealth and poverty in Cape town and the violence migrants experience. I though it was interesting that Williams discussed the Xenophobia in South Africa because this has been an issue for years in South Africa, between the Black South Africans and other African foreign nationals,  because of the legacy and trauma of Apartheid amongst Black South Africans and the massive wealth and poverty divide between them and their white counterparts. It shows that there is still a lot of animosity but also misplaced anger towards other African nationals. For instance,  anything negative and 'criminal' was associated with 'Nigerians', even if the migrants were not from Nigeria.

+Phoebe

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I am wondering a necessary distinction between material poverty and structural poverty. If the 'aspiration' is suitable for poorers' own, conceived by richers, that gonna be a kind of illusion. It comforts poorers, but generates much more value for richers. In this regard, it leading to continuing structural inequality, and exacerbating relative poverty.

Bo Yang

Response to Bo Yang -

What is interesting, I think that the alliance teaches the power of working within a group versus individuals. Within a group they can address ideas of material poverty, their individual aspiration and of the group, but also are able to address issues of the usual barriers of structural poverty.

As a group, they have a stronger voice, have built a more stable foundation, and have been able to cheat the system. Their strength as a group and drive for aspiration, and 'recognition' of what they have achieved has mobilised them in a structural poverty system that normally they could not operate or effect any change within as an individual.

Natasha

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For me this article presented two notable points of discussion.

The first is highlighting certain hinderances in anthropology in connection to development. The idea that there is a right kind of immigrant to study, i.e. those that are truly deserving of ethnographic study. This highlights the fact that topical national debates and pressing political agendas shape the scholarly landscape. But more importantly other anthropologists provide a form of peer pressure as to the context or subject of another's study. In one instance the writer talks about a colleague telling him that his work would detract from ongoing scholarly and ngo work. As the aims of his work does not fit the aims of others in the field his work is seen as a threat. This lack of diversity in research creates a homogeneity, in the paradigms of thinking anthropology creates, which in turn can lead to a universalistic approach to development, and finally marginalization. In this regard, this work is reminiscent of Escobar.

The second idea I found rather interesting is the idea of an inverse relationship between poverty and vulnerability , in his research he found that the more money that was made the more they came out of the shadows, and therefore more vulnerable. this challenges the idea that poverty and vulnerability are one and the same, although they do have a relationship it is a complex one that needs more understanding.

- Shabazz

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Appadurai makes a convincing case arguing against the sometime anthropological view that culture is past, historic and economics are future and progress to frame a new model of how development should work. Culture is as much subject to sharing and diffusion as other parts of society, not bound and can spread, influence, evolve and globalise, exactly the same as economic effects. Culture can be as much about the future and aspirations as the historic and traditional. To implement change, we need to understand the cultural values of the poor, simultaneously dismissive of society which rejects and problematises them but loyal to their own values and beliefs.

The Mumbai SDI’s aspirations were driven by the community who identified their own needs and united. As projects and recognition grew, they were no longer just part of the dialogue but steering it through organising events for the community and officials to meet, share and commit to  more plans and projects. The system is being inverted from the usual top down, international, national and NGO led but in a way which benefits all of the parties involved for political and social reasons. The govt and NGOs can claim recognition for providing what people want and the Alliance keeps control. That the SDI have created a model and structure which has been successfully exported to other slum communities on a global scale is also a positive inversion of the development agencies mapping plans onto communities as highlighted in Green’s article.

Susie

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The article highlights the shortcomings of anthropology and it’s tendency to be overly altruistic; the local anthropologists seem to have created an opposing stereotype that the “poorest of the poor” should be studied and to convey a certain narrative of ‘vulnerability’. In this case, anthropology’s desire to be “responsible and mindful” oversimplified the relationship between poverty and vulnerability and Williams examines the relationship for himself, rejecting the narratives suggested for him.

Throughout the article, he shows us that poverty is multifaceted. The concept of fluctuations in life making it hard to label people definitively as “moneyed or impoverished” applies not only to the migrants in Cape Town, but to the rest of the world. Instability of life in the inner city, the changing states of vulnerability, etc.  all demonstrate that solely quantitative/abstract and stable determinants such as income are insufficient to evaluate the concept of “poverty”.
Jessica

Response from Karen: I completely agree. It is very interesting that anthropologists preach the negatives of categorisation, yet in this case, are operating under those same categories and generalise. As many have said, I liked how he questioned that poverty = vulnerability, reinforcing the complexity of the issue and the different circumstances of what 'poor' or 'vulnerable' can mean.

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This article made me rethink the standards of measuring what poverty is. In order to understand the concept, we must not only focus of the income of an individual or household but recognise the multidimensional and interconnected aspects which causes poverty. Williams observed that individuals found it harder to make “money work for them”. Instead, he conveys patterns of vulnerability which stem from aspects of racial discrimination and racial stereotypes, migration, lack of housing and violence. To understand poverty, we must not oversimplify it.
Rebecca

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I found it interesting that the author pointed out that poverty is not defined or created by the people who later were categorised as "poor"--"the agenda is not determined by those people subject to categorisation as poor". Again the international institutions created the issue of poverty through while thus superior lens.  Furthermore those who were determined to be poor were not only "powerless" (in need of "saving") but also "powerless" in terms of the determination of whether they are "powerless". However, I feel obliged to consider the fact that some operations carried out either by the local/domestic force or by the international while-centred organisation did help with people's basic needs in remote areas lacking water, food, medical aid, etc. Thus it did to some extent "save" some people. How do we see this paradox?
Siwei Tan

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As Rebecca highlights from the reading, poverty cannot be only conceived as lack of income. These migrants Williams investigated about, had money but were poor in many other aspects; they were a vulnerable community. As he says; "the ethnography further shows poverty and vulnerability to be closely connected facets of urban life, but more dynamically than assumed, not associable in predictable ways". I think the whole idea of this article is a call to anthropologists to widen their view of "the urban poor" and to make a shift towards vulnerability as important as monetary income; "I suggest that anthropology's unrelenting focus on the ''poorest of the poor' is screening off vast terrains of urban life from our analysis".

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I found this article fascinating. It explains in a very realistic way how culture actually is vital for development and for "the poor". It enables dialogue between past  traditions and future aspirations. Through culture, new consensus to be ritualized emerge, "producing new states of feeling connected". This triggers a new capacity for aspiration which is essential to "cultivate their own voice" and truly make an impact.

María Mónica

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Post by Mahali:
As others have mentioned above, this piece also reminded me of the rigidity of anthropology in terms of what and who are considered “worthy” subjects of ethnographic research. From previous lectures we have discussed how anthropology has historically been complicit in the perpetuation of a Western, colonial lens that seeks to study “the local”, that is generally poorer communities with darker skin tones. In this case Williams demonstrates how eclipsing the demographic he chose to focus on may very well play a part in why the many complex issues affecting segregated cityscapes, including poverty, have yet to be eradicated or approached in such a way that considers the nuances of poverty and vulnerability.

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I found this paper fascinating in its simplicity.  What I find simple is that instead than bringing in the usual trite concepts of paternalism in all its forms - solidarity, compassion,  protection, support , empowerment etc (all top-down language if we look at language as representation of analytic categories), the main story is about - how does a social group stir itself up and becomes an agent.  This paper is about taking up agency, as distinct from protesting (Hirschman's voice, which does not imply agency as a necessity and in fact - relies on unilateral agency, within relationships of subalternity, 'interest articulation' as Hirschman poses it).   It also fits with the reality I know, which dips back into Gramsci and 'the culture of the making' as self-determination (although this came a lot later as a grid of interpretation of real behaviours that I grew up embedded within).  Simple and powerful, which does not proceed from relations of 'representation'  so dear to all 'developers'  - a reverse 'principal and agent' relationship as we know it.  / Emanuela

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The 'War on poverty' reminds me of another heavily militarised aspect of human evolution, health, with the 'War on cancer', which fills the headlines.  It is as if anyone has forgotten (or perhaps never thought about) cancer as an age-related  process of degradation of cellular vitality and contextually, a (natural) degradation of the functionality of the immune system.  So what the cancer warriors seem to be blind to is that in fact they are declaring war to ageing and poorly performing immune systems, which is sort of - pointless, ex-post.  So we (pointlessly) fight the cytokines instead.   Poverty seems to me a concept handled in similar ways, with a  determination to fight the outcome of a process long after it has been established.  We are back again to square one, more and more convoluted technical solutions (compensation, in all forms)  and  'culture' interventions which to me seem to boil down to - being represented by someone else is the way out of poverty.  From this viewpoint, there seems to me little difference between attempts to 'measure' and focus on materiality vs attempts to 'represent and give voice'.  Top down imperat.   No wonder the 'exit' solution becomes a rational response to all this.   And of course - how does one change the '' outcome of specific social relations  that require investigation and transformation' - we already saw from a paper from two weeks ago that this is a circular argument, as empowering agency is a meaningless, because the absence of agency means that empowerment is not going to be a solution, and when agency is there, then empowerment is not necessary. Going back to analogies,  a rather famous psychologst - cum TV conductor  in the UK years ago thought up an intervention to address the needs of 'problem children'.   His way was simple: he did not even saw the children. He was working on the parents.   I had the same feeling when travelling on a train in India (First class as all europeans are bound to) and sitting near two well mannered, western-style clad, stylish couple, we were conversing about things when I asked something like - so what is in your opinion the most pressing social issue in this Country? -  Inflation, was the answer.   / Emanuela

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with this article of Williams what I really enjoyed was how he challenged this notion of poverty and vulnerability. It was interesting how Williams in his study showed that being "poor" is not always about lacking in money. That even sometimes having some money, can even be riskier than having none. Also how some local anthropologists said that he was studying the wrong poor, that the 'poorest of the poor' should be studied. That even with these recommendations Williams still studied the group he wanted to study.

Tessa

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I could relate to Green's point that the 'deconstructionalist' tendency does not work well for policy development. Having come from the business world, I tend to have an 'action orientation' - always looking for solutions. So as I've been going through the term, I keep thinking that criticism and nuance is important but but what are we gong to do about it? (knowing that real-world solutions are never easy). It has been important for me to recognise the importance of stepping back to fully understand the problem - and the unintended consequences of action - but am definitely interested in learning more about how the two can come together to drive change.  -Karen

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I really enjoyed this reading and learning the innovative attempts made by Slum/Shackdwellers International.

Other than the point made above, one of the quotes that struck me the most came up in the discussion about how to strengthen the capacity to exercise their "voice," or aspiration; "It has to take some local cultural form to have resonance, mobilize adherents, and capture the public space of debate. And this is true in the efforts that the poor make to mobilize themselves (internally) and in their efforts to change the dynamics of consensus in their larger social worlds (p.67)." Only when "voices" engage with wider historical, social, political and economic contexts and relations in the specific context, and actions are taken accordingly to the tackle the specific structural  issues risen from the entanglement of all these factors, a fundamental change can be made with time. This again challenges the universalist application of categorization of, and solutions to "poverty".

Ryoko

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Why does culture matter to reducing poverty?

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Why does culture matter to reducing poverty?

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I found this article by Appadurai convincing in its clarity of thought and pragmatism. There were no 'trivialities cloaked in polysyllables' and it focussed on how abstract notions of 'voice' and 'aspiration' can become vehicles for agency, which results in concrete, substantial and sustainable outcomes for the poor.

Influenced by Charles Taylor's concept of 'recognition' and  Hirschman's 'voice' the article aims to place culture, not as an obstacle to the technical and economic 'solutions' to measuring and improving the lives of the poor, but as a root system where ideas of the future can be fed from. Whilst culture is normally associated with pastness, Appadurai seeks to show its capacity to provide agency, voice and aspiration. He uses examples of housing and sanitation in Mumbai as community driven projects which invert the ubiquitous top-down, 'paternal', technical responses so often seen in responses to poverty.

"The capacity to aspire provides a cultural capacity whose strengthening addresses some of the most particular cruelties of economic exclusion".

Elliot

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I think it's profound to define the capacity to aspire as a navigational capacity. This suggests that aspirations have a very important dimension, which is navigational information, and that blind aspirations would fail. The nature of information as a resource has been increasingly discussed in economics and game theory, and the inequality of information resources is perhaps one of the most deep inequalities today. Culture as a major carrier of local information is political in essence, which may bring us back to the discussion of cultural hegemony from Gramsci to Laclau. The poor are somehow excluded from, or somehow blindly accepting of, mainstream culture, but more importantly they are excluded from the process of the formation of culture, and they have very little information about the real processes by which society works, which reproduces inequality to some extent.
-Zhenyuan Fang

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The work by Williams  is a good example for me on the case for dipping very dip in all directions in the analytics.   So the first observation I have is that I disagree that poverty is not a matter of money - in fact it is, but the qualifier is in 'not only': this is shown in the measure in which 'vulnerability' is defined in 'losing the ability to make money'.  So the dynamic aspect of 'retaining' a source of income is part of the concept.   Second, the paper explains why the problem is not money per se, neither its volatility, but rather "how to hold it, keep it, and transform it into something
of permanence",  "struggled to
find ways to make their money “work” for them".   So turning money into stability, again, raises the issue of agency - moving from gathering (the survivor's economy with the flat / community as a safety net) to 'access' to ?stability?  or something else.  This is way beyond acquisition and accumulation:  the causal chain seems a lot more articulated than just 'empowerment' (these guys seem to have it)  and 'culture'  - but has to do with something that I would describe as Appadurai does, in terms of agency.    What to me is also very interesting is the fact that communal safety nets (the flat) eventually dissolve;  the dynamic aspect, fluctuations in using the money seems key.  I find this aspect is similar to the capacity to 'aspire', - rather, lack of thereof, as there seems to be no practical implementation in this context.  Sen's 'capabilities'   is also not a useful tool, as it is thought in the perspective of the official narrative of 'multidimensional' poverty, but still articulated as command on goods (and services, etc..).  Essentially, it is not what one has, but what one does with what one has that Williams focusses on  / Emanuela

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What stood out in Greens paper was how in dealing with the most vulnerable and poorest people in society there has not been much change in our practices since colonial times, we are still discriminating and trying to ‘civilise’ others.

The idea that poverty or poorness is caused by ones culture, makes not only poverty a problem to be solved, but also culture as well. Causing further stereotyping of marginal groups in society, and the attachment of negative labels of being a ‘problem’ which perpetuates binaries and separation of people into who are ‘good’ and who are  ‘bad’. The poor being a ‘bad’ problem and group that need to be changed or excluded completely.

Which has led to conditions of ‘reform’ in return for help or assistance, a reform to a universal culturally accepted standard, like we see in present day welfare systems in the US and UK. But as Green points out, this is not dissimilar to the ways of the ‘civilisation’ efforts if the colonial Christian missions

Natasha

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MDG #1: Poverty (2014) - India: Fishing for Freedom - https://youtu.be/kjIdutXVdBw

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1) Philip Alston Condemns Failed Global Poverty Eradication Efforts

2) For David Brooks, the Rich Are People, the Poor Are Numbers

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The agents for true development are here

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The agents for true development are here

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For me the article shed light on the fact that groups do exist with moderate agency who work on empowering and voicing out the poor. First of all, I admire these people from afar, having the courage to lift themselves out of the burdens of their everyday lives as poor, and take their destiny into their own hands. I think initiatives such as the Alliance are our best bet if we are seeking major improvement in terms of how the poor are helped and how they help themselves. Instead of financing NGOs via which the invested money usually does not go to the right place, and the actual needs of the poor are not addressed, I believe philanthropists should target these self-made organizations. There are numerous members in those who actually came from, or still live in poverty, therefore they are the ones who will actually understand what their peers need. Also I would like to add that I reckon, they would distribute the funds better than how "experts" do.

Andrew

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Romanticising the World Bank, culture and development

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Romanticising the World Bank, culture and development

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Despite the World Bank's idea of cultural inclusion, if an ethnographic approach would be adopted prior to the implementations, there could be a greater understanding of how strategies will affect the more vulnerable, and women. Abrahamsen (2012) in her work on the 'good governance' model showed that ideal democratic freedom expressed through the words used within the good governance discourse such as "empowerment" and "community freedom" can create an illusion of democracy, as in fact, it can also mean increased burden on specific groups of a given society.
For example, when illustrating the World Bank's plan of 'cost recovery' in parts of Africa, the model encouraged greater independence from the state, suggesting that,  by placing management of essential social services into local hands, this control would allow the community to build on 'indigenous African values and institutions'. However, what happened, was, the burden of caring for the sick, feeding the poor, and so on has been increasingly transferred from paid state officials to unpaid local labour which was mostly women.

Veronika

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This article made me think about the vulnerability these individuals have to endure in order to receive a sort of sufficient amount of money to fund their living costs. This vulnerability in my understanding comes from being occupied in vacancies which are illegal, or at least in a grey area. Due to all this, these people are exposed to hatred from locals, and atrocities from the police. Even though they do not have a choice. They might be able to find another legal occupation which would pay significantly less. Do people really expect them to settle for an amount which is not enough for their basic needs, just to comply to the regulations of society or a certain country. It enrages me that many look at these people with disgust for doing jobs which are labelled malicious or contra-productive for society. They would probably engage in something else, should the opportunity exist for them to live a lawful and admirable life besides making ends meet. So even though I cannot really argue with law, I am adamant that no one should judge or look down on people who earn their living from shady businesses due to not having any sufficient alternative. The ones who do should just experience for a miniscule timeframe, how does it feel when their children are hungry and they cannot provide any food for them despite working 16 hours at a factory or some other exploitative business. Probably they too would turn towards other means for income soon. At least most of these people are not robbing and killing others in order to make some profit. Dealing drugs harms others quite less frequently than the former.

Andrew

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I really enjoyed this piece by Williams- it raised a couple of interesting questions for me. I think what is notable about his argument is that quite aside from perceiving poverty as vulnerability (a shift in scholarship on this subject that occurred in the 1990s) Williams separates poverty and vulnerability as distinct, and makes the claim that poverty actually functions to reduce vulnerability, specifically vulnerability to violence, amongst informal migrant workers in Cape Town. Before reading this piece, I would have assumed the converse to be true. As he brings the piece to an end, Williams notes that 'our times together were strangely often more relaxed, enjoyable, and comradely when poverty and destitution set in: when money was short, relations were full; then, too, life in the city was safer' (p S31) and thus lends tacit support to the old adage 'money can't buy you happiness'. This got me thinking about the relationship between poverty and happiness and lead me to question whether poverty can and does equate to happiness more broadly outside of the boundaries of William's ethnographic account.
- Claudia

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I found Appadurai's article really interesting, and I think the concept of a capacity to aspire is useful. Whilst I agree to some extent with the comments above about the definitions of certain concepts not being clear, this paper to me was a deliberate reframing of familiar concepts in different, fresher terms, in order to breathe some hope into a discussion that is characterised often by cynicism, especially from anthropologists. I admire that Appadurai is taking an optimistic perspective in this, in an effort to invigorate terms such as 'grass-routes' and 'participatory.'
However, I am in fact a cynic, and for that reason, I found his dismissal of the 'loyalty or exit' paradigm disappointing. To dismiss an 'exit' from current global structures of power is to totally undervalue the importance and efficacy of protest and radical re-imaginings of society. Those living in poverty have a right to choose the 'exit' route- they have a right to protest and to demand drastic and immediate change. Saying that going down the route of cooperating with police, with local governments and with development agencies is the best way to secure a better future is to undermine the fact that in many cases, it is these authorities that have entrenched people's poverty in the first place.
DORA

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I always enjoy Appadurai's work, his writing is easy to read while also being revolutionary and inviting us to change and challenge the way that we think about, in this case, aspiration as an important part of the self-mobilisation of the poor.

It should seem strange(r?) to us I think, that the concept of the poor being "Partners in the battle against poverty" is a new one. Appadurai illustrates the tendency of development/economic discourses to overlook culture, and by association, the poor, as a bastion of the past to be overcome as we move forward into a future of "development". What I like about this article, is that no matter your cynicism or contempt for the development narrative, Appadurai does not only critique or praise, he offers suggestions that point out the humans involved in what can seem like a faceless and impersonal wall of "developmentt industry":
"what exactly can lenders, planners, and managers in an institution like the World Bank actually do to put it into practice?"

Asking ourselves these questions is so important. To study this course without questioning the future-bias of development or the past-bias of anthropology would be, in the case of poverty, to blindly accept, perhaps, that the poor are worth studying but not working alongside. A development narration based solely on moving forward, top-down is as bad as an armchair-anthropological study based on seeking "culture in modernity". Examples like the incredible work of slum/shack dwellers international is where we should be able to see that this is not true, and to fight against systems that aim to perpetuate this concept.

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I really enjoyed the clear argument from Appadurai. Could this reframing of the term ‘culture’ liberate anthropologists from the trap of valorising static notions of local culture which do not accurately reflect the way contemporary people live their lives? - Maria

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In his \article, Apparaudai does a great job at showing the ways in which 'poor' people can gain a voice

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How can we help the poor out of poverty? The examples mentioned in the article further show that not only are the poor unable to escape poverty trap, but they also lack the will or awareness. In some cases, including the rural areas of my hometown, in addition to meeting basic daily needs, the money will be used for gambling or even taking drugs, which cannot change the poverty situation in the long term.
Perhaps it is not only material support and subsidies, but also needs to help the poor from concepts. Education is one aspect, but more importantly, Guide the poor out of trouble and help future generations to avoid entering the poverty trap again.

Yixian