THEORETICAL
PERSPECTIVES ON
DEVELOPMENT
Week Two: Concepts in Contention: Theoretical
Perspectives on Poverty, Inequality and
Development
THE DEVELOPMENT ERA
(1945-PRESENT)
Keynesian era Neo-liberal era The contemporary
(1945-73) (1980s-2007?) era (?)
• The credit crunch,
• State led development • Liberalization,
financial crisis
• Central planning deregulation,
• Re-introduction of govt
• Import substitution retrenchment
• Washington Consensus stimulus and rise of
• Economic nationalism the “BRICs”
• Periodic crisis and low • The return of economic
economic growth nationalism?
KEY QUESTIONS
How do different theories understand and
assess development problems and
challenges?
How do they evaluate different development
impacts and outcomes
What kinds of evidence do they use to arrive
at their observations and conclusions?
How do they collect and analyze their data?
How credible are their observations and
accounts?
How ethical are their observations and
accounts?
TODAY’S CLASS
How do different theories understand and assess
development problems and challenges?
What kinds of evidence do they use to arrive at their
observations and conclusions?
What are their core methodologies?
What are some alternatives to poverty and economic
growth measures?
How do different theories and “ontologies” influence
what we see and what we don’t see?
The challenge of studying race and ethnicity
WHAT IS THEORY?
Theory
Is ‘a coherent body of generalizations and principles associated with the
practice of a field of inquiry’ (Chilcote 1994: 367, Cited in Johnson, 2009)
Ontology
Concerns the categorization and classification of reality at the most
fundamental level; e.g., substances, properties, power relations, poverty
Epistemology
Is about the construction of knowledge, including the norms and
established procedures that we use to generate “valid” scientific
knowledge
Methodology
Implies a system of assumptions and practices that are used to classify
phenomena, collect data, and build knowledge
Not all methodologies are explicit
“LIES, DAMNED
LIES, AND
STATISTICS”
“NON-
TRADABLES”
MEASURING ECONOMIC
PERFORMANCE: GDP, GNP,
GNI
GDP – Gross Domestic Product
The value of national output of goods and services produced in
an economy, including earnings from abroad
Nominal GDP measures the value of output in any given year
Real GDP adjusts for inflation and deflation (R=N/Deflator or Inflator)
GNP – Gross National Product
GDP + net income from abroad, including dividends, interest
and profit
Excludes income from MNCs whose profits go to another
country
GNI – Gross National Income
GDP + income from residents working abroad (e.g.,
remittances from temporary migrant workers), property income
and taxes (minus subsidies) on production
According to the World Bank, low-income
MEASURING
countries are countries with GNI per capita
$1,035 or less
lower middle-income economies are those with a
ECONOMIC
GNI per capita between $1,036 and $4,045;
upper middle-income economies are those with a
PERFORMANCE
GNI per capita between $4,046 and $12,535;
high-income economies are those with a GNI per
capita of $12,536 or more.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH GDP,
GNP, GNI?
ALTERNATE MEASURES:
THE HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT INDEX
A weighted composite index that
measures national economic performance
on the basis of life expectancy, education
and income per capita
Published every year by the UN
Development Program (UNDP) in its
Human Development Report
Pioneered in the early 1990s by the late
Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and
Indian economist Amartya Sen
In 2010, UNDP introduced an “Inequality-
adjusted HDI“ which measures people’s
access to productive goods and services,
including access to education, healthcare
and political institutions
ILLUSTRATING HDI: THE
UNDP HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT REPORT
https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-ind
ex#/indicies/HDI
MEASURING POVERTY: THE
HEAD COUNT INDEX
Measures the proportion
of the population that
falls below a poverty
threshold
The UN defines the
international poverty
line as US$1.90 per day
Data sources: Income
and consumption (or
expenditure) surveys
MEASURING POVERTY
How the World Bank measures poverty
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/video/2022/02/02/how-do
es-the-wbg-measure-poverty
HOW WELL DOES THE
HEADCOUNT INDEX HELP
US TO UNDERSTAND
POVERTY?
THE DYNAMIC NATURE OF
POVERTY
Poverty in India
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGJ6F19c2nI
ALTERNATE
MEASURES: THE
MULTIDIMENSIONAL
POVERTY INDEX
Established by Sabina Alkire at the
Oxford Poverty and Human
Development Initiative (OPHI) in 2007
Strongly influenced by the work of US-
based legal ethicist Martha Nussbaum
and Amartya Sen
Provides an international measure of
acute multidimensional poverty that
complements traditional monetary
poverty measures by capturing the
acute deprivations in health, education,
and living standards that a person faces
simultaneously (
https://ophi.org.uk/multidimensional-po
verty-index/
)
10 indicators: nutrition, child mortality,
years of schooling, school attendance,
cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water,
electricity, housing, assets
MEASURING POVERTY AND
INEQUALITY
Poverty and inequality in Latin America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM_5FskfpAY
LOST IN
TRANSLATION?
Among the Kichwa-speaking peoples of the
Andean region, there is no word for poverty
The closest approximation is huagcha, which
translates roughly into ‘preferred sheep’ or
those that are in need, including orphans,
widows or widowers and strangers lacking
access to land
According to tradition, huagcha are afforded
special rights, including shalana, which confer
the right to collect the harvest of other fields
and communities, and kutiar, which allow the
huagcha to cultivate on another person's land
that is also being sown
However, traditional forms of reciprocity have
been undermined by colonialism, modernization,
out-migration, education, environmental
degradation, and expropriation of land
UNDERSTANDING POVERTY AND
INEQUALITY AS A FUNCTION OF
RACE AND ETHNICITY
What is race?
According to the US Census Bureau, race is commonly
defined as a set of physical, inherited characteristics that we
use to differentiate human populations
What is ethnicity?
Ethnicity, on the other hand is your cultural identity, chosen
or learned from your culture and family
Examples of racial characteristics
Height, hair texture, skin colour
Examples of ethnic social cues
Language, religion, clothing, cuisine
THE PROBLEM WITH
DISTINGUISHING RACE AND
ETHNICITY
Classifications are based on outdated and racist Eurocentric attitudes
about culture (regarding whiteness, for example) that began to crystallize
in the 15-19th Centuries
E.g., Spanish attitudes regarding racial impurity in Latin America
E.g., India’s caste system
Led to the rise of scientific racism in the 19th and 20th centuries that
differentiated human beings on the basis of erroneous assumptions about
race and intelligence
e.g., eugenics in the late 1800s, early 1900s
Most academic and political institutions now reject the idea of ascribing
ability and intelligence to race and ethnicity, but ethno-linguistic factors
remain an important way of classifying human populations
The US Census Bureau uses 7 broad categories to classify ethnic groups
White/Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, Black, Asian, Native American and Pacific
Islander, Middle Eastern/North African, and "Other "
CASE #1: THE
INDIAN CENSUS
India’s first complete census was conducted in
1872
Since then, the Census Commissioner of India has
conducted 14 other census surveys, seven of which
after India gained independence in 1947
2011 marks the first time since 1931 that the
census collected information about caste
Based on self-declaration, leading to thousands
of caste categories
Postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021
census is now scheduled to be held in 2025
In the context of decades-old affirmative action
programs, opposition parties and state
governments are pressuring the government to
enumerate OBCs (other backward castes or
classes), as well as scheduled castes (Dalits or
untouchables) and scheduled tribes (Indigenous
peoples)
IDENTITY POLITICS AND
THE INDIAN CENSUS
Apart from “scheduled castes” (SCs or Dalits or
“untouchables”) and ”scheduled tribes” (STs or Indigenous
peoples), the the decision to stop collecting data on caste was
part of a wider effort to discourage the fragmentation of Indian
society on the basis of caste – a process that became known as
“casteism”
However, after Independence, national and state governments
started expanding colonial-era affirmative action measures or
“reservations” to assist SCs, STs, and other “backward” castes
and classes or OBCs whose members have been historically
(but not necessarily economically) disadvantaged over 3,000
years of varna hierarchy and socio-economic discrimination of
non-vedic groups like Muslims and Christians
Within the current context, states with large numbers of OBCs
and national parties that want to win their votes have put
increasing pressure on the national government to re-introduce
caste to the census questionnaire
However, considerable resistance from the ruling BJP coalition
that has governed India since 2014 by appealing to a Hindu
nationalist movement whose legitimacy has been constructed
on the basis of minimizing caste differences and fueling conflict
between Hindus and non-Hindus, especially Muslims and
Christians
CASE # 2: ECUADOR’S
NATIONAL CENSUS
First declared its independence from
Spain on 10 Aug. 1809, Ecuador is
considered a “middle income
country” with major cities in Quito,
Guayaquil and Cuenca
Traditionally, based on commodity
exports (primarily cacao), but has in
more recent years diversified into
bananas, cut flowers, and since the
1960s, oil and gas
Its population is roughly 16 million,
over 70% mestizo (Spanish and
Indigenous) with significant minorities
of Indigenous (7%), Afro-Ecuadorian
(7%) and European descent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=iUCslSCEs_g
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The 2001 census was the first census to use self-
identification as a means of enumerating
populations on the basis of ethnicity
“Do you consider yourself indigenous, Black
(Afro-Ecuadorian, mestizo, mulatto, white, or
other?” (Martínez-Novo, 2021: 76)
Shift from “hyperdescent” – child of a mixed
couple ascribed to the group considered to be
socially dominant – to “hypodescent” – child of a
mixed union assigned to the subordinate group
Influenced by international norms and policies
US Census Bureau shifted to hypodescendent
categories in the 1930s
Influence of the Inter-American Development
Bank and other UN agencies
Influence of Indigenous politics in Ecuador
WHY THE
DISPARITIES
?
According to Ecuador’s
national Indigenous
movement, CONAIE, the
national Indigenous population
stood at 35% in the early
2000s
IDB – Indigenous & Afro-
Ecuadorian peoples accounted
for 25%
The World Bank put its
Indigenous population at
10.4%
Disparities attributed to the
minimization of “culture” in
2001 census
Effort to reduce the official
number of Indigenous peoples in
Ecuador
And to the identification of
white and mestizo cultural
attributes among Indigenous
groups
A GENDERED ACCOUNT?
“… in 2001, I witnessed discussions
among Quito upper- and upper-
middle classes concerning whether
they should identify as whites or
mestizos. In these informal
conversations, men tended to prefer
the white category, while women
were more inclined toward mestizo.
From these exchanges, I gathered
that to identify as white was
considered arrogant, a
characteristic that would better fit
men than women…”
Carmen Martinez Novo (2021: 81)
INTERSECTION
ALITY
KEY TAKEAWAYS
GDP, GNP, and GNI are imperfect measures of economic
performance and wellbeing
The HDI as an alternative
Income and expenditure surveys are widely used for
establishing a headcount index on poverty and inequality
Multidimensional poverty index
Race and ethnicity as determinants of poverty and
inequality
The politics of collecting “data” on race and ethnicity
KEY QUESTIONS
How do different theories understand and assess
development problems and challenges?
How do they evaluate different development impacts and
outcomes
What kinds of evidence do they use to arrive at their
observations and conclusions?
How do they collect and analyze their data?
How credible are their observations and accounts?
How ethical are their observations and accounts?
