Nasruddin's key: poverty measurement and the government of marginal populations
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Date
2011
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape.
Abstract
This paper considers the role of ‘measurement’ and other forms of poverty knowledge
in a context where the nature and direction of global economic growth is creating
‘surplus populations’ suffering various forms of marginalisation in the global economy.
It links the development of different forms of poverty knowledge with the ways in
which states and non-state agents seek to ‘govern’ poverty and poor populations, and
with the ‘biopolitics’ whereby calculations are made about the differential allocation of
resources towards different sectors of the global population. The paper argues that
addressing the root causes of poverty requires social actors to go beyond the narrow
limits of institutionally sanctioned and bureaucratically invested ‘poverty knowledge’
that currently dominate policy thinking. Rather than seeking to understand poverty by
measuring the characteristics of members of populations, they should try to understand
poverty as an aspect of social relations, and try to come to grips with differential
insertion of populations in the fields of force of modern globalised capitalism. Analysis
should abandon simple notions of ‘marginalisation, and come to grips with the agency
of poor people and the complex relationships between informality, marginality,
exclusion and incorporation. Ultimately, however, a more nuanced understanding of
the role of poverty knowledge in present day biopolitics does not bring with it any easy
answers: rather, it challenges applied social scientists to be more aware of the
responsibilities they bear as producers of 'useful' knowledge in a time of increased
global instability.
Description
Keywords
Poverty, Measurement, Global economy, Social relations, Research methodology
Citation
Du Toit A (2011) 'Nasruddin’s Key: Poverty Measurement and the Government of Marginal Populations,' Working Paper 20. PLAAS, University of the Western Cape