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!

 

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 –

 

 

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

 

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. 

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

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.

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

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