Poverty and Livelihoods: Whose Reality Counts?

Abstract

SUMMARY: This paper explores how professionals ' universal, reductionist

Urban poverty alleviation strategies in Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Contrasting opportunities for community development

“…Democratisation and decentralisation of responsibilities provided the policy framework for a shift towards more participatory approaches. This followed the mainstream international development policy debate (United Nations, ; Gaventa and Barrett, ) and the idea of people‐centred development (Chambers, ), shifting the focus from structures and technical procedures to people (Kenny, ) and making sure that development involves a positive change in the lives of the poor. This means to view poverty through the eyes of the poor, who make decisions through a bottom‐up participatory approach to create change (Chambers, ; Ife, ).…”

“…This followed the mainstream international development policy debate (United Nations, ; Gaventa and Barrett, ) and the idea of people‐centred development (Chambers, ), shifting the focus from structures and technical procedures to people (Kenny, ) and making sure that development involves a positive change in the lives of the poor. This means to view poverty through the eyes of the poor, who make decisions through a bottom‐up participatory approach to create change (Chambers, ; Ife, ). Bottom‐up development considers ‘that the people who are the most affected by a decision or an action, should, as far as possible, be the ones who collectively make decisions and control actions’ (Kenny, : 171).…”

“…Strong institutional change is required to facilitate a real process of empowerment by poor groups. Perhaps the challenge is that, as Chambers (: 197) clearly showed, ‘empowerment for them [the poor] means disempowerment for us [elite, the non‐poor]’. The top‐down approach of PNPM came not only from the design of the programme, still in the hands of the national government, but also from the elite groups (programme facilitators and non‐poor citizens) involved in decision‐making.…”

“…It remains unclear whether top‐down poverty policies positively support poor groups or reproduce their dependency on public grants (Mansuri and Rao, ; Gaventa and Barrett, ). In 1995, Chambers (: 173) wrote a seminal article criticising ‘reductionist and standardized views of poverty’ and referred to ‘new understandings of poverty’ based on poor people's criteria for defining poverty and the need for participatory approaches. These criteria should consider dimensions such as vulnerability, humiliation and powerlessness.…”

Missing the trees for the wood: Why we are failing to see success in pro-poor conservation

“…Our understanding of poverty has evolved considerably from its original definitions, which focused on a lack of income or wealth (Sen, ; Roe, ). It is now viewed as a multidimensional concept, encompassing material deprivation, the lack of access to basic needs such as education, health, nutrition and food security, and the absence of political autonomy and empowerment, as well as the lack of freedom of choice and social inequality (Chambers, ; Shackleton et al ., ; Sunderlin et al ., ). Interest in multidimensional poverty measurement has been growing steadily over the last decade (Alkire & Foster, ; Ravallion, ; Ferreira & Lugo, ), and mainstream poverty research has become more sophisticated in its handling of this concept, both through a diversification of methods and through more inclusive processes of assessment that include the perspectives of the poor (Addison, Hulme & Kanbur, ).…”