Cash Transfers in Context: An Anthropological Perspective
()
About this ebook
Marginal in status a decade ago, cash transfer programs have become the preferred channel for delivering emergency aid or tackling poverty in low- and middle-income countries. While these programs have had positive effects, they are typical of top-down development interventions in that they impose on local contexts standardized norms and procedures regarding conditionality, targeting, and delivery. This book sheds light on the crucial importance of these contexts and the many unpredicted consequences of cash transfer programs worldwide - detailing how the latter are used by actors to pursue their own strategies, and how external norms are reinterpreted, circumvented, and contested by local populations.
Related to Cash Transfers in Context
Related ebooks
Never Ending Nightmare: The Neoliberal Assault on Democracy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReclaiming the European Street: Speeches on Europe and the European Union, 2016-20 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMedia Amnesia: Rewriting the Economic Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImagine Non-Profit Society: Utopia or Necessity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIdiots breed Idiots: Why men no longer are created equal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Economics of Discontent: From Failing Elites to The Rise of Populism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNeoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty And Resistance: Neoliberalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Benefits of the New Economy: Resolving the Global Economic Crisis Through Mutual Guarantee Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rise and Fall of the Privatized Pension System in Chile: An International Perspective Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Global Life of Austerity: Comparing Beyond Europe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDebt as Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings#WeAreRent Book 1: Capitalism, Cannibalism and why we must outlaw Free Riding Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBasic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Fight Poverty? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Big Kahuna: Turning Tax and Welfare in New Zealand on its head. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoverty, Amartya Sen and Adam Smith Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsModern-Day Indirect Slavery: Understanding its Origins, Impact, and Solutions for a Fairer Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDraft for a Shared Revolution: The necessary Utopia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Citizen Dissents: Essays in Public Policy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsManagement by Seclusion: A Critique of World Bank Promises to End Global Poverty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInclusivism™: The World on the Brink of a Social Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHE WORLD OF THE POOR: How people chose and perpetuate poverty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Quest for Security: Protection Without Protectionism and the Challenge of Global Governance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocial Europe: Volume 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cracking Social Mobility: How AI and Other Innovations Can Help to Level the Playing Field Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmbodying Borders: A Migrant’s Right to Health, Universal Rights and Local Policies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary Of "Corruption As A Tax For Poverty In Argentina" By Jorge Srur: UNIVERSITY SUMMARIES Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Despot's Guide to Wealth Management: On the International Campaign against Grand Corruption Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/50.03%!: Let’s transform the international humanitarian movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Economics For You
The Intelligent Investor, Rev. Ed: The Definitive Book on Value Investing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Economics 101: From Consumer Behavior to Competitive Markets--Everything You Need to Know About Economics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Can't Lie to Me: The Revolutionary Program to Supercharge Your Inner Lie Detector and Get to the Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don't Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Economics For Dummies, 3rd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works (and Doesn't Work), in Words and Pictures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Richest Man in Babylon: The most inspiring book on wealth ever written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wise as Fu*k: Simple Truths to Guide You Through the Sh*tstorms of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capital in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recession-Proof Real Estate Investing: How to Survive (and Thrive!) During Any Phase of the Economic Cycle Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Soft Skills for Succeeding in a Hard Wor Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Capitalism and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Cash Transfers in Context
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Cash Transfers in Context - Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
Chapter 1
Miracle Mechanisms, Traveling Models, and the Revenge of Contexts
Cash Transfer Programs: A Textbook Case
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
Preliminary Note
On no account do I wish to adopt in this chapter a position in the debate for
or against
cash transfer programs as such. Cash transfer programs have many positive outcomes for very vulnerable households. However, they also have many unintended or adverse effects, mostly due to the perceptions and reactions of stakeholders (pragmatic contexts) in the course of their implementation. All other types of aid (among which traveling models are predominant by far) also have their unintended or adverse effects, and no miraculous form of intervention exists that is spared such effects. But policies are context-sensitive to varying degrees. Analyzing the critical nodes,
bottlenecks, and implementation gaps encountered by any type of standardized intervention, regardless of the form of public action involved, on a solid empirical basis and bringing them out into the open is an indispensable step toward improving development programs, taking better account of the contexts in which they are implemented, and, if possible, adopting some alternative approaches embedded in the real world.
I would like to bring the methodological resources of anthropology (qualitative research) to bear on such analyses.
In the introduction to this book, we attempted to fathom the diversity of cash transfers and to examine the critical nodes indicative of both the variety of the contexts in which CTs are implemented, and the plurality of action logics at work within each context.
In this chapter, I attempt to understand the emergence and global diffusion of CT programs based on the original success stories (Brazil and Mexico). I analyze how, based on this Latin American foundation stone, a fundamental distinction has emerged between a context (considered favorable but secondary) and a mechanism (considered central and explanatory), how a set of devices associated with the mechanism was gradually created and validated, and how this process culminated in a model intended for export along with all its specialists, procedures, expertise, training, manuals, evaluations, networks, and conferences (what could be referred to as the CT business
).
I also examine how this model was promoted and has traveled throughout the world, based on different formula and in varying guises with diverging local adaptations in contexts that differ significantly from those in which it originated. I describe how, in the course of this process, local perceptions, practices, and logics were generally ignored (with some exceptions, of course) and how, as a result, the mechanism and its instruments were regularly circumvented by various local actors (the revenge of contexts).
The chapter concludes with the consideration of how CTs are symptomatic of a more general trend in the area of development: the standardization of interventions and the underestimation of the central role played by the contexts in their implementation.
Over the course of this examination, I also undertake three theoretical digressions
on concepts and analyses used to describe the process of the production and diffusion of CTs, but which are also more general in scope and could form the object of a broader scientific debate.
The Making of a Traveling Model
In view of the extremely polysemous nature of the concept of a model, its use here should be clearly explained. I will not discuss computer models based on algorithms (simulations or projections as widely used in economy or in meteorology), or the cognitive, descriptive, and interpretive models that are common within the social sciences (Gérard-Varet and Passeron 1995). I am interested in an entirely different category of models: standardized social interventions, mostly development interventions and public policies aimed at inducing changes in behavior. Hence, what is involved here are conscious, proactive, planned, institutionally formalized interventions of a social engineering nature and not simply ideas or technologies that circulate in a spontaneous manner or in accordance with the laws of the market (as generally arises with cultural patterns
or commercial successes). The travel of models (in this sense) is different from the travel of ideas (Czarniawska and Joerges 1996; Weisser et al. 2014), although standardized interventions are shaped by paradigms, cognitive frameworks, intellectual fashions, and prevalent ideas.¹ It is also different from the travel of commodities (or of business plans), although marketing techniques may be used in both cases. I prefer to focus on a clearly circumscribed category of phenomena that share an indisputable family resemblance on the empirical level, and CTs are emblematic of such a category. I borrow the expression traveling model from Rottenburg (2007) and Behrends, Park, and Rottenburg (2014). Bierschenk (2014: 77) proposes the expression travelling blueprint.
For Behrends, Park, and Rottenburg (2014: 1), a model can be understood as an analytical representation of particular aspects of reality created as an apparatus or protocol for interventions in order to shape this reality for certain purposes.
Behrends, Park, and Rottenburg’s (2014) theoretical perspective has the merit of involving intervention models; however, it uses the concept of the model in a very general way following the studies by Czarniawska and Joerges (1996) and Czarniawska and Sevon (2005) on traveling ideas.
² The concept will be used here in a narrower sense—which is particularly suited to the case of CTs but to other phenomena too—by referring to the traveling model
as all standardized institutional interventions (a public policy, a program, a reform, a project, a protocol—depending on the scales or areas involved) intended to initiate a given social change and based on a mechanism
and devices
(see below) deemed to have intrinsic properties that will make it possible to induce this change in different implementation contexts.
In political science, the traveling
done by models is referred to as policy transfer.³ This expression focuses on the borrowing (with some adaptations) by decision-makers in context A of a public policy or elements thereof already implemented in context B.⁴ However it makes no mention of the process involved in the production of a model of international scope and its standardization, which is typical of development policies. Development policies are nothing more than a specific subset of policies, that are more often than not (especially in African settings) designed, promoted, and funded from the outside. Models are very common in the area of development. Within the developmentist configuration (Olivier de Sardan 2005), in which models represent the core business in a sense, they follow on from each other, they travel a lot, and they travel far.
As demonstrated by the case of CTs, the specific production of a traveling model involves three main processes:⁵ narrativization (a founding success story), theorization and social engineering (the construction of a mechanism), and networking (global diffusion). These three processes are deeply dependent on international organizations and networks of experts, which come forward as champions of a given traveling model. Needless to say, these processes (which can overlap) arise in an environment that has already been described extensively in policy analyses, either on the basis of a sequential perspective (emergence, formulation, decision, implementation; see Sabatier 1992; Lemieux 2002) or according to the metaphor of the couplings
between three streams
(Kingdon 1995): the problems, solutions, and political will. In the case in point, the world economic crisis and the debates and issues surrounding the eradication of poverty
and humanitarian interventions constitute the sociopolitical environment that presided over the birth and success of the cash transfer model. However, the particular added value of CTs is based on the three processes of narrativization, theorization, and networking. It is these three processes in particular (and not only the actual intrinsic properties of the CT mechanisms as stated in the official discourse⁶) that have underpinned the career
of CTs as a traveling model and made them into an indispensable point of reference for all social policies and development and humanitarian intervention policies in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).
CTs are clearly an example of a very successful traveling model. Its multiple peregrinations have taken it to the four corners of the globe. However, it presents all of the characteristics of other traveling models, which include attempts at the full-scale transposition of organizational models developed somewhere else as solutions to specific problems found elsewhere
(Bierschenk 2014: 82).
A traveling model needs to refer to an inaugural experience somewhere in the world. This is an indispensable stage in its production and subsequent exportation. In policymaking circles, experience has a unique status as a justification of effectiveness; it shows that a proposal is not just based upon ‘head in the clouds’ speculation
(Rose 1991: 5; quoted by Debonneville and Diaz 2013: 166). For CTs, there were not one but two inaugural experiences, both located in Latin America.
Brazil and Mexico: The Starting Point
The history of CTs begins in Brazil and Mexico.⁷
Brazil: The Long Evolution to Bolsa Familia
Two parallel, noncontributory benefit systems operated by the federal state and involving payments equivalent to the minimum wage for the elderly and disabled have existed in Brazil since the 1970s.⁸ Various experiments involving conditional CT programs were launched at the local level (Federal District, Sao Paulo state, and some municipalities) from 1995. Most of them were aimed at poor families, and focused on education and school attendance with a view to combating child labor and school absenteeism. The federal government contributed significantly to the program from 1997, and many municipalities also joined them. The Bolsa Escola program was taken over by the federal state and implemented at the national level in 2001 under the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. It was subsequently transformed into the Bolsa Familia program under his successor, Lula de Silva, in 2003, and expanded to cover three other social programs. The new version included new devices, unified the existing programs, and updated the lists of beneficiaries.
The Bolsa Escola and Bolsa Familia benefits were and are paid preferably to mothers with an income below a minimum salary. Bolsa Escola was initially paid to women with children between the ages of seven and fourteen years, and later six to fifteen years, while Bolsa Familia was recently extended to families with children up to seventeen years old, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers. The payments are conditional, with the communes responsible for the imposition of the conditionalities: families must fulfill certain educational requirements (minimum school attendance of 85 percent by the children was initially required; however, there was little monitoring of compliance until 2006) and health requirements (one medical check every six months and immunizations) to obtain the benefits.
It must be stressed that this process was not as linear as this summary may suggest and, as highlighted by Fabio Soares (2011) and Sonia Rocha (2014), it involved multiple attempts, continuous adjustments, negotiation between competing views, and extensive institutional pragmatism under both the communal and federal management. The program had numerous failures (many local experiments with the Bolsa Familiar para a Educaçao, Bolsa Escola, or Bolsa Alimentaçao were considered failures), as well as some successes (for example for the city of Campinas and the federal district of Brasilia) generated by favorable conditions that were difficult to reproduce in other locations. Several CT programs were implemented at the same time between 1995 and 2001 and with very variable results. The launch of the Bolsa Escola at the federal level (1998–2001) was a general failure in targeting and coordination with the communes. Lula’s rise to power was crucial for the unification of various social programs under the banner of Bolsa Familia.⁹ However, just a few months after the launch of Bolsa Familia, Lula created another CT program based on food cards, which was severely criticized and quickly abandoned. In 2012, Bolsa Familia successfully innovated by implementing a new service for families in extreme poverty (around 4.3 percent of the population), which was aimed at guaranteeing a minimum income for these families (Rocha 2014: