Occasional Papers Series

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https://hdl.handle.net/10566/20

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Browsing by Author "du Toit, Andries"

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    Chronic and structural poverty in South Africa: Challenges for action and research
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2005) du Toit, Andries
    Ten years after liberation, the persistence of poverty is one of the most important and urgent problems facing South Africa. This paper reflects on some of the findings based on research undertaken as part of the participation of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape in the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), situates it within the broader literature on poverty in South Africa, and considers some emergent challenges. Although PLAAS’s survey, being only the first wave of a panel study, does not yet cast light on short term poverty dynamics, it illuminates key aspects of the structural conditions that underpin long-term poverty: the close interactions between asset poverty, employment-vulnerability and subjection to unequal social power relations. Coming to grips with these dynamics requires going beyond the limitations of conventional ‘sustainable livelihoods’ analyses; and functionalist analyses of South African labour markets. The paper argues for a re-engagement with the traditions of critical sociology, anthropology and the theoretical conventions that allow a closer exploration of the political economy of chronic poverty at micro and macro level.
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    Forgotten by the highway: Globalisation, adverse incorporation and chronic poverty in a commercial farming district
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2004) du Toit, Andries
    This paper presents key findings from a livelihoods survey of households in four poor neighbourhoods in the Western Cape district of Ceres, one of the centres of South Africa’s deciduous fruit export industry (see Figure 1). It explores the nature and dynamics of the persistence of poverty in the context of continued and relatively sustained economic development and growth, and considers whether the concept of ‘social exclusion’ can help in making sense – especially policy sense – of these dynamics.
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    Poverty measurement blues: Some reflections on the space for understanding ‘chronic’ and ‘structural’ poverty in South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2005) du Toit, Andries
    This paper explores the challenge of understanding chronic and structural poverty in South Africa, and questions the dominance of the econometric imaginary in present-day development and poverty studies. It argues that measurement-based, econometric approaches to chronic poverty are dependent upon mystifying narratives about the nature of poverty and how it can be known, that they direct attention away from the underlying structural dimensions of persistent poverty and that understanding structural poverty in turn requires a theorised engagement with the complexities of social relations, agency, culture and subjectivity. Valuable as the recent re-recognition of the need to connect qualitative and quantitative research has been, attempts at ‘qual-quant’ integration often remain tied to positivist assumptions – bringing the risk of a new ‘ordering’ of methodological dissent that leaves problematic aspects of the econometric imaginary unchanged. Underlying this process is the entanglement of poverty research with the ‘government of poverty’: the attempt to constitute poverty as something objectively measurable and scientifically manageable. The paper closes with a consideration of the ethical and political challenges this poses for critical researchers and intellectuals in post-colonial contexts.