The circumstances of agency: A relational view of poverty (original) (raw)
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The circumstances of agency: A relational view of poverty
International Development Planning Review, 2008
The human development paradigm that inspires the growing international consensus on poverty and development conceptually bounds our thinking about the problem of poverty and its solutions in particular and inappropriate ways. We question, among other things, the almost exclusive focus on individualistic wellbeing and ill-being, and the neglect of people's agency, in practice if not in theory. We propose to re-conceptualise freedom and poverty in relational terms. It is argued that by (re-)emphasising the relational character of un-freedom, we also put local political processes around the reproduction and reduction of poverty centre stage. We conclude with a brief overview of implications for policy and research on poverty.
THINKING and ACTING on POVERTY
2006
The politics of poverty is increasingly being situated within a non-materialist discourse of human and citizenship rights, democracy, inclusion and respect. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the current debates in development practice as they pertain to our understanding of inclusive society and its concern to find more adequate ways of fighting poverty. The paper explores two lines of arguments based in an extensive literature review. The first argument examines the value of the concepts of inclusion and exclusion as they pertain to policy discourse about poverty. The argument establishes connections between poverty, power and agency on one side, and possibilities for projects of better inclusion on the other. The second line of argument examines two dominant frames of reference for development intervention --the Millennium Development Goals and Poverty Reduction Strategies. It raises questions about their adequacy to alleviate poverty and explores some of the themes that may both strengthen and enlarge their goals.
Freedom of Choice and Poverty Alleviation
Review of Social Economy
The Capability Approach (henceforth CA) views poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon and emphasises that restricted freedom of choice is a crucial aspect of poverty. If poverty is seen in this way there are two ways to improve the situation of the poor: by broadening the set of opportunities open to them or by strengthening their ability to choose. The paper concentrates on the latter. The paper summarizes which circumstances are seen in the CA as suitable for strengthening freedom of choice, namely the market, democracy and participatory projects. Two shortcomings of the CA are identified by this: first, the social embedding and secondly, the process aspect of agency. The two shortcomings are intertwined such that any remedy will always have to tackle both. The paper takes a look at sociological theories on the issues and presents how they can be used in this context.
Editorial Note: Freedom for the Poor
Development, 2001
Amartya Sen in his collection of essays Development as Freedom (1999) provides an important entry point into the themes of Development, volume 44 (numbers 1-4). Sen discusses eloquently different forms of deprivation and unfreedoms, arguing that 'development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy'. We need processes that allow freedom of actions and decisions as well as ensuring opportunities for people to act freely, individually and socially. We have to look squarely at the range of inequities that are leading to extreme deprivation for the world's poor, be they political, social, economic, gender or rights based.
2014
The capability approach, which is closely connected to the works of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, is one possible theoretical framework that could be used to answer the question as to why poverty is a problem from a moral point of view. In this paper we will focus on the normative philosophical capability approach rather than the social scientific and descriptive perspective. We will show that the approach characterizes poverty mainly as a limitation of freedom and that it is precisely this aspect, from its point of view, that makes poverty morally significant. This insight shifts the discussion away from questions regarding specific capabilities or lists of them-questions treated extensively in the literature-to the more general level of what constitutes the normative core of the capability approach. But as we will also discuss and argue, the role of freedom alone does not give us a complete picture of poverty but only presents us with one aspect relevant to evaluating it. A further aspect which we consider has not been adequately recognized and taken into account by most capability theorists is the experience of disrespect and humiliation, or to put it differently, a lack of recognition.
Journal of Human Security, 2008
The paper adopts a rights-based approach to analyse poverty and development in the less industrialised world. This approach links up with the poverty production debate (as opposed to poverty reduction) which contends that the proper framework for analysing poverty is to understand that agents, not institutions or processes, are responsible for generating poverty. The link between poverty production and human rights is established by the fact that the process or means adopted to produce poverty and the end-result of the process both lead to violations of human rights. The process takes place and thrives in the absence of an existing human rights framework or within the context of a weak or weakened human rights regime. Therefore, it is contended that the starting point for the analysis of the relationship between human rights and poverty production is to understand the socio-political environment in which poverty production thrives.
Local and Global Poverty: Insights Using a Rights-based Approach
Advances in Social Work, 2012
Social workers have proposed various conceptual models to explain the relationship between structural oppressions and poverty. These models are grounded in critical social work and each provides an understanding of how systemic issues impact the sustenance and reinforcement of poverty. With rapid economic globalization and further social and economic exclusion faced by people, poverty has become even more deep and complex. This paper argues for the adoption of a rights-based framework in social work to address issues of endemic structural poverty. Grounded on the principle of the inalienability of basic human rights, the rights-based approach changes the discourse on poverty by creating accountability, equality, transparency and participation from welfare states and civil society. The paper also provides a critique against traditional human rights perspectives in poverty alleviation. The paper provides a context in which the rights-based approach could be pursued in global as well a...
CAPABILITIES, FREEDOM AND SEVERE POVERTY
The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice, 2019
Severe poverty is a key challenge for theorists of global justice. Most theorists have approached this issue primarily by developing accounts for understanding which kinds of duties have relevance and how responsibilities for tackling severe poverty might be assigned to agents, whether individuals, nations or states. All such views share a commitment to ending severe poverty as a wrongful deprivation with profoundly negative impact on affected individuals. While much attention has prioritised identifying reasons for others to provide relief, this chapter will examine the nature of the wrongful deprivation that characterises severe poverty. One influential view is championed by Martha Nussbaum in her distinctive capabilities approach. An individual might be considered to experience severe poverty where she is unable to enjoy the use of her capabilities which should be available to her. But this position raises several questions. Take the fact that about 1 billion people are unable to meet their basic needs today. Would the capabilities approach claim the number is much higher given its wider grasp of human flourishing beyond mere material subsistence-and what implications would flow from this? Or would the capabilities approach claim only a portion of those unable to meet their basic needs are in a wrongful state because their circumstances are a result of free choice-and what would this mean? These questions indicate a potential concern about whether the approach is over-or under-inclusive and why. (Forthcoming in Thom Brooks (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice. Oxford University Press.)