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Abstract
The article argues for what can be called a ‘relational’ approach to poverty: one that first views persistent poverty as the consequence of historically developed economic and political relations, and second, that emphasises poverty and inequality as an effect of social categorisation and identity, drawing in particular on the experience of adivasis (‘tribals’) and dalits (‘untouchables’) subordinated in Indian society. The approach follows Charles Tilly's Durable Inequality in combining Marxian ideas of exploitation and dispossession with Weberian notions of social closure. The article then draws on the work of Steven Lukes, Pierre Bourdieu and Arjun Appadurai to argue for the need to incorporate a multidimensional conception of power; including not only power as the direct assertion of will but also ‘agenda-setting power’ that sets the terms in which poverty becomes (or fails to become) politicised, and closely related to power as political representation. This sets the basis for discussion of the politics of poverty and exclusion.
Acknowledgements
This research was commissioned by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) which is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The article condenses a fuller treatment of poverty and power produced as a CPRC Working Paper (Mosse, 2007) (www.chronicpoverty.org). I am grateful to Sam Hickey and Andries du Toit for their support and comments, to Sam for additional guidance on this article, and to two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. The revised version of this article is informed by current research under two grants: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) ‘Caste out of Development’ (RES-062-23-2227); and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)/ESRC ‘Religion, development and the rights of subordinated people’ (AH/F007523/1). The views expressed are the author's own and should not be taken to reflect those of DFID, ESRC or AHRC.
Notes
1. Of course debates on poverty draw on other meanings of power too (see Mosse, 2007 and recent debate in Alsop, 2005). Underpinning the present discussion is the need to view power as relational rather than as an attribute or the capacity to do things, and powerlessness as subjection to the domination of others (individuals or groups) rather than as a deficit of power per se (correctable through capacity-building programmes of ‘empowerment’). But ultimately, it is more important to study the relationship between structural and voluntaristic expressions of power than to see these as alternatives (Lukes, 2005: 56–57), and to trace the connections of power – from broad political systems to individual subjectivities – that make poverty durable.
2. For discussion of the implications of this article's approach to poverty for contrasting programmes of ‘empowerment,’ see Mosse (2007: 31–43), and for a recent review of ‘rights-based approaches’ to development see Hickey and Mitlin (2009). Research in progress on dalit rights and development in south India (ESRC/AHRC) involves close examination of the assumptions, organisation, politics and social effects of attempts by dalit activists, social movements, dalit NGO networks, dalit women's organisations, dalit priests and religious movements, political parties and national and international campaigns to shift power relations and challenge exclusion and injustice. Other articles in this issue address the question of how social movements (Bebbington et al., vom Hau and Wilde) or development interventions (Green, Masaki, Golooba-Mutebi and Hickey) do or do not, can or cannot, change the relational basis of poverty.
3. Amartya Sen or Martha Nussbaum's work on capabilities and freedoms involves such individualism, see Mosse (2007).
4. Of course, the relationship between growth and poverty (and inequality) is complex, varied (for example, in terms of the sectoral composition of growth or the effect of inequality itself on the poverty-reducing impact of growth) and subject to rethinking in the context of the current global recession (see Nissanke and Thorbecke, 2006; Global Chronic Poverty, 2004–2005: 37).
5. On the need to qualify universalistic notions of capitalism, and to understand the capacity of capitalism as a structure of representation to displace or conceal other logics, see Mitchell (2002).
6. Generalisations are, of course, dangerous. Patterns of economic change, differentiation and impoverishment (or economic mobility) are locally specific, extremely complex and demand long-term and intensive study. Jan Breman has provided such an analysis of processes of long-term regional economic differentiation in western India (1974, 1985), while Scarlett Epstein's (2007) work in rural Karnataka over half a century throws light on localised patterns of rural change in different ecologies. With exemplary care she maps out a trajectory of persisting inequality of opportunity with economic change (patterned by class inequality and caste identity) that finds parallels across the globe.
7. The shifting relationship between Maoists and poor people is a complex matter which cannot be elaborated here. (See Economic and Political Weekly, 22 July 2006 for recent coverage of Maoist movements across central and eastern India; also Kunnath, 2008).
8. Many historians would concur that the elaboration of caste ideologies in India was secondary, or at least that ideas of purity and impurity became generalised only from the late-18th century and that British colonial administrative arrangements themselves introduced a more rigid caste categorisation through caste-typed recruitment practices into the army, industrial units, as hospital menials, or domestic servants (Bayly, 1999; Dirks, 2001).
9. Tilly (1998) refers to the reproduction of gender, ethnic or caste-segmented labour markets in diverse sectors and institutions as emulation, that is the ‘transfer of organisational forms, representations and practices from one setting to another’ (2001). When in this way, for example, hotel managers naturalise ‘the recruitment of cleaners from among poor immigrants and desk clerks from more educated or second generation immigrants’ they reduce the transaction costs of exploitation and hoarding. And when the categorical distinctions match those widely available in society (for example, those of race, caste or gender), costs are yet further reduced. Tilly argues that powerful organisations make the categorical distinctions they adopt ‘more pervasive and decisive in social life outside’, which was the case with colonial census taking or recruitment (see previous note) and later political constituency building and state affirmative action policies. He argues that categorical inequality is further stabilised through adaptation, that is the ‘invention of procedures that ease day to day interaction, and the elaboration of valued social relations around existing divisions’, such as when workers in a factory or a construction site ‘entwine friendship, courtship, rivalry, and daily schedules’ around the routines of the workplace effectively ‘reinforcing whatever distinctions are built into these routines’ (1998, 2001).
10. This is demonstrated by Iversen et al. (2009) who apply an econometric model that is careful to distinguish identity effects and the use of networks in demand-side referral from the supply-side use of networks to access vacancy information.
11. Exclusion from water sources, temples, decision-making committees, from markers of dignity (wearing shoes or carrying umbrellas); or the forced inclusion through ignominious funeral service, drumming, deferential bodily comportment, or exposure to sexual exploitation, all of which naturalise power and unequal rights.
12. Actor-Network Theory (from science and technology studies) has encouraged further reflection on the selective attribution of agency in everyday ideas of power. Poverty cannot be adequately explained in terms of human actions and intentions alone (that is, social processes). Impoverishment is an effect of the coming together of different logics, not only human, but also hydrological, bio-chemical, mechanical – produced by the interaction of human and non-human ‘actors’ (Latour, 2000; Mitchell, 2002). Artefacts and technologies are themselves inherently political, with a capacity to create systematic social inequality that long outlives the particular political alliances that created them (Winner, 1999).
13. http:// www.indianngos.com/issue/other/labour/politicies.htm (accessed April, 2002).
14. For an overview see Hardtmann (2009). As a contentious category-in-the-making, ‘dalit’– a Marathi term meaning the ‘broken’ or ‘downtrodden’– is forged from and internally divided by the experience of discrete discriminations of many different subordinated castes in different regions.
15. See Hickey and Du Toit (2007) for review of debates on the relationship between citizenship and clientalism, neopatrimonial politics and the reproduction of ethnicities.
16. Pandian (2009) concludes that, ‘… one cannot practise empancipatory politics which are predicated on fixed identities regulated by the disciplinary power of the state … the governmental recolonisation of politicised identities exactly denies [the] abundance of life beyond identities by naming them into rigid categories'.
17. Of course this is an example of just one among various forms of clientalism in which poor people lend support to institutional or political regimes apparently against their interests (see Auyero, 2001 for a close examination of the gendered maintenance and ‘performance’ of personalised clientelist networks in shantytown Argentina).
18. Looking at individual needs as grounded in collective values distinguishes this approach from the ‘capability approach’ of Amartya Sen (1999) and Martha Nussbaum (2000) which emphasises individual freedom and capabilities. Then, Appadurai's emphasis on interactions rather than beliefs places him alongside Tilly.