Subject: Re: BHA: Development: Beyond the Poverty Paradigm Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 15:18:17 +0100 From: W.K.Olsen-AT-Bradford.ac.uk My previous email of 31 August 2000 raised an issue which concerns 'development studies' specialists and anyone interested in the anti-globalisation movement. I mentioned the human capabilities approach as an abstract ethical stance which might -- and I mean might - - help in opposing neoliberalism. Here I set up a couple direct questions for those who want to explore critical realism's inputs into the debate. 1. Poverty has for long been a focus of left-wing policy in industrial countries as well as the so-called 'third world'. However a reconceptualisation is needed if real development (genjine progress on human capabilities right across populations) is to occur. SPeficially, calling people poor disempowers them straight away by engaging in a discourse which labels them as 'the other' and implicitly identifies the speaker as non-poor. Once this division is established, it is almost impossible to get rid of it. Bhaskar's idea of absenting the absence applies in the specific sense that the poverty discourses (all of them) have a dualism which absents general human achievements and their potential -- ie capabilities. Then Bhaskar might suggest we should absent this absence by creating new discourses which avoid the poor/non-poor dualism. I don't like the terminology but I have to admit that this is exactly what I mean by transcending the poverty paradigms (e.g. income poverty; income inequality; etc.). Q: Is the poor/non-poor dualism already passe, out of date? What do list members think? It is out of date for me, yet I can't ignore it. It is too dominant, perhaps hegemonic. 2. Various schools of thought have tried to innovate and to escape this dominant discourse. For instance the human development index (UNDP) is a direct outcome of the innovations in human-capability thinking at the UN. Another example is the attempts to instigate participatory research. However specific barriers to change have inhibited these new approaches from overcoming the dominance of theneoliberal paradigm, its GNP per capita figures, and its tendency to label the poor people as 'overpopulation' and a 'problem'. These barriers are partly structural, e.g. class and ethnicity. However class and ethnicity are themselves socially constructed and there is a dialectical relationship between the structures we may observe at a point in time and the actions taken to preserve/change/destroy them over time. Q: Is it enough to have a big debate about this dialectic amongst academics? Isn't joint action in society part of the way we learn for ourselves how durable the poverty paradigm has been? Is it important to keep stressing Critical Realism's potential contribution, and if so should this come under this heading or should it happily link up with headings like ecofeminist, environmentally-concerned, socialist, etc.? My own answer is that we are all active in the economy. Local detail and personal experience oare part of how we know. -- anything! (See S. Harding's various works for evidence to support this component of standpoint epistemology. I would not support all the components of s.epist. but I do take very seriously the need to make more prominent our personal experiences as factors that have led us to change our thoughts. Indeed portraying these experiences is quite tricky among academics precisely because of the Great Dualism ( rational vs. emotional; impersonal vs. personal; science vs. non-science etc.) (see sayer, 1992 for details). Perhaps Alethia can operate as a forum for pieces that are radical-in-style as well as radical-in-content.) 3. For development people it seems very important to answer the debate between Geoff Hodgson and Mervyn Hartwig about Andrew Collier and socialism. (Alethia, vol. 3, no. 1, for instance) Q: Was Hodgson right to (mis)interpret critical realism as he did in Alethia? Are all of Hartwig's criticisms of Hodgson's reply well founded? In my view at least one more reply to this debate needs to be offered in alethia - any volunteers? I noticed that Brian Pinkstone also argued that critical realism had been misinterpreted. It seems to me that someone needs to take time to combat the misrepresentations and to publish that, perhaps as a joint paper, in an internet journal for easy access. 4. Finally it seems that Nussbaum's work is only effective if it is expressed in abstract terms. Q. Is this an area for critique by realists? Could someone help get the ball rolling? Wendy Olsen (entered with a view to having a Development corner going in the critical realism bulletin board.) > > > FROM: > Wendy Olsen > Lecturer in Quantitative Development Economics > University of Bradford > Bradford BD7 1DP > 0044-1274-233965 > fax 0044-1274-235280 > email w.k.olsen-AT-bradford.ac.uk > > > > > > --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > Wendy Olsen Senior Lecturer Development & Project Planning Centre Univ. of Bradford Bradford BD7 1DP --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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