Contractual dependencies:

Abstract

One of the most conspicuous livelihood strategies for physically disabled people in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, is a particular style of begging known locally as “doing documents.” Confronted with the stigma of begging, disabled beggars create documents in an attempt to legitimize and regulate begging through formalization and bureaucracy, presenting their relationship with donors as NGO fund‐raising and government tax‐collecting. The dynamics of petitioning for these “contractual dependencies” provide a nuanced perspective on desired dependencies: dependencies can be presented in multiple ways, and people consider some dependencies more legitimate and valuable than others. Recipients are not passive but play a defining role in shaping these relationships, seeking a balance between proximity and desired distance to patrons. [dependence, disability, distribution, bureaucracy, begging, temporality, Democratic Republic of Congo]

Beggar Bosses on the Streets of Dhaka

“…The organisational forms sketched here are striking in their similarity to those found more broadly among professional and labour groups. This then resonates with recent literature which has argued that people who beg often conceive of the activity as a form of labour or work (Devlieger 2018;Lenhard 2021).…”

“…For these authors the view of begging as work seems to stem from the fact that conforming to socially constructed notions of deserving alms requires performance, strategy, and hard graft. In Kinshasa, for example, this is seen in the use of documents by beggars to facilitate donations, imitating the bureaucracy of the state and practices of NGOs, and serving as a mechanism for socially legitimising begging (Devlieger 2018). In Paris this means strategically building personal connections, conforming to notions of deservingness and neediness through "scripts and hustles" (Lenhard 2021, 797).…”

Theories and practices of disability from the Global South: a critical anthropological perspective

“…For example, groups of individuals with leprosy in India, Mali, and Tanzania arose from the intersection of sociocultural perceptions of the condition, colonial classifications, biomedical public health interventions and postcolonial categorizations ( 73 – 75 ). In these geographical areas, informal networks of solidarity among individuals with similar non-normative bodies are shaped by shared economic, employment needs ( 76 , 77 ) as well as the presence of decolonial epistemics ( 78 ).…”

“…Furthermore, forms of formal and informal belonging to and membership in specific groups help individuals with disabilities gain entry to religious organizations ( 77 ) and pursue careers within state administration ( 71 ). In other words, Deaf communities in various geographic areas share common and similar experiences, stories, emotions, as well as cultural and linguistic traits ( 76 , 94 , 95 ).…”

“…Finally, many anthropologists have recently investigated work connected to disability and to the neoliberal global economy in which non-normative bodies are immersed ( 23 , 76 , 77 , 107 – 110 ).…”