By Vijayendra Rao
There are inequalities in the world, among individuals and among groups, that
get reproduced across generations. In the World Development Report 2006
these are referred to as “inequality traps.” But how does an inequality trap
differ from a poverty trap? Speaking a little facetiously—if a poverty trap
describes a situation where “the poor are poor because the poor are poor,” an
inequality trap would say that “the poor are poor because the rich are rich.”
Inequality traps are similar to poverty traps in that they serve to keep people
poor and destitute. But they differ from them in that they refer to a
reinforcing system of economic, political and social structures that lead to
what social scientists have called “durable inequality” (Tilly 1998). Poverty
traps tell us about situations where people at the low end of the income
distribution are stuck in a cycle of poverty because a lack of resources
generates more resources constraints. Inequality traps, on the other hand,
describe situations where the entire distribution is stable because the various
dimensions of inequality (in wealth, power and social status) interact to
protect the rich from downward mobility, and to prevent the poor from being
upwardly mobile.
An easy way to see this is to consider the status of women in patriarchal
societies. Women are often denied property and inheritance rights. They also
have their freedom of movement restricted by strictly enforced social norms
that serve to create separate “inside” and “outside” spheres of activity for
women and men respectively. The consequence of this is that girls are less
likely to be sent to school, and women less likely to work outside the home.
This reduces the options for women outside marriage and increases their
economic dependence on men. All this not only makes women earn less than men,
it also makes them less likely to participate in important decisions both
within and outside the home. In other words men are “rich” while women are
“poor.”
This nexus of unequal social and economic structures tends to be easily
reproduced. If a woman has not been educated and has grown up to believe that
“good,” “decent” women abide by existing social norms, she is likely to
transmit this to her daughters and to enforce such behaviors among her
daughters-in-law. Thus an inequality trap is created which prevents generations
of women from getting educated, restricts their participation in the labor
market, and reduces their ability to make free, informed choices and realize
their full potential as individuals. This reinforces gender differences in
power that tend to persist over time.
The unequal distribution of power between the rich and the poor –between
dominant and subservient groups, helps elites maintain control over resources.
Consider an agricultural laborer working for a large landlord. Illiteracy and
malnourishment are likely to make him unable to break through the cycle of
poverty. But he is also likely to be heavily indebted to his employer which
puts him in the landlord’s control. Even if there were laws in place that would
allow him to challenge his landlord’s dictates, being illiterate he would find
it particularly hard to navigate the political and judicial institutions that
would help him assert his rights. In many parts of the world this distance
between landlords and laborers is compounded by entrenched social
structures–landlords typically belong to a dominant group defined by race or
caste, while tenants belong to a subservient group. Since the members of these
groups face severe social constraints from inter-marrying, group-based
inequalities are perpetuated across generations.
Economic and political inequalities do not occur in a vacuum. They are embedded
within unequal social and cultural institutions. The social networks that the
poor have access to are substantially different from those that the rich can
access. For instance, a poor person’s social network may be primarily geared
towards survival with limited access to networks that would link her to better
jobs and opportunities. The rich on the other hand, are bequeathed with much
more economically productive social networks that facilitate the maintenance of
economic rank–for instance parents are able to use their social connections to
ensure that their child gets into a good school, or call up a few good friends
to make sure that their son gets a good job, while poor parents are more
subject to the vicissitudes of chance. Connections open doors and reduce
constraints.
Thus, social
networks constitute a form of “capital” which is unequally distributed. Social
networks are closely allied with cultural factors. By “culture” we mean those
aspects of life that deal with “relationality”–the relationships among
individuals within groups, among groups, and between ideas and perspectives.
Subordinate groups may face adverse “terms of recognition” (Appadurai 2004)—the
cultural framework within which they negotiate their social lives. One obvious
expression of this is explicit forms of discrimination which can lead to an
explicit denial of opportunities and to a rational choice to invest less on the
margin.
But it can also be less overt. A person born into a low social class or an
excluded group may internalize the dominant group’s value system. Religious
beliefs may help in this process of internalization–women may take on gendered
beliefs on their economic and social role, discriminated castes may absorb the
view that upper castes have on their “inferior” status. This may also be
transmitted via institutionalized mechanisms such as schools–a discriminated
race may face a “stereotype threat” where they internalize the view that the
dominant race has on their ability to perform in standardized tests, or in
occupations that have historically been controlled by dominant groups (Steele
1999). This can affect a discriminated group’s “capacity to aspire”
(Appadurai)–the better-off are better able to navigate their way towards
potentially actualizing their aspirations. It also implies that “voice,” the
capacity of an individual to influence the decisions that shape their lives, is
also unequally distributed and that “effort” and “ability” are not necessarily
exogenous (Rao and Walton 2004a, for more on such “inequalities in agency”).
Thus, economic, political, cultural and social inequalities are usually
correlated and reinforce one another. An individual born a woman or into a
discriminated racial group or region is not only more likely to be poorer than
someone born into the majority group, he or she is also more likely to be at
the receiving end of material and symbolic power structures that restrict their
access to economic opportunities, to legal rights, to opportunities to make
their voices heard, and to a reduced risk of violence.
This has two important implications for public action:
-
from a focus on individuals to a recognition that relational and group-based
phenomena shape and influence individual aspiration, capabilities, and agency;
-
to provide for debate and decision-making when there are several distinct
culturally determined perspectives, and in particular, assure that poorer,
subordinate groups have voice and opportunities for redress.
Implications for policy
Development initiatives need to be shaped in ways that recognize the relative
disempowerment of weaker or subordinate groups in cultural, economic and
political terms. This approach involves understanding how context matters in
ways that are conditioned by such inequalities and the need to design public
action in ways that foster greater “equality of agency” with respect to social
hierarchies, including those involving public, private and international
actors.
Policy design
At the level of the policymaker, a point of departure is the recognition that
actions occur within unequal social, cultural and political structures. Since a
core concern is the lack of influence or agency of poorer or excluded groups,
policy choices to compensate for this are likely to be an important element of
strategy.
To understand local conceptions of well-being the recipients of public action
need to be engaged as central agents in the formation and implementation of
policy. This implies that the theory and practice of development will be more
difficult and, necessarily, more participatory. However, it also implies that
participation in itself is not a panacea, precisely because of the social
inequities inherent within group-based relations. This, consequently, leads to
a proposal that should be self-evident, but is rarely put into practice in
multi-lateral agencies: social and historical analysis should inform policy
design just as much as economic analysis, and they should be placed on an equal
footing.
Learning by doing and the incorporation of context
Political and culturally informed public action is not easy. The process
requires paying close attention to context in shaping interventions both
globally and locally. It therefore argues against the idea of “best
practice”—that an intervention that worked wonders in one context would do the
same in another. Good interventions are very difficult to design ex-ante. A
cultural lens thus teaches us that public action, particularly when it is
participatory, aspiration-building and aware of “common-sense”, requires an
element of experimentation and learning. Ironically the best practice may be
the absence of a best practice.
Projects need to be closely monitored and evaluated, not just in terms of their
impact but also in the processes that led to that impact in order to understand
how to they can be shaped and modified in a manner that matches the diversity
inherent in the local cultural context. All projects will make mistakes, but so
long as these mistakes are recognized and the lessons from them incorporated
into the next stage of design, this helps incorporate common sense into the
development process.
A key lesson is that development is not easy. It is, at its core, a political,
social and cultural process that requires gradual learning from the ground-up
in order to be effective and sustainable. A development culture that forces
projects to be completed in 2 or 3 years before they are either rapidly and
meaninglessly scaled up, or abandoned, is not conducive to social change or to
learning-by-doing.
Shaping institutions to manage difference
The recognition that societies consist of different groups, often structured in
hierarchies, with unequal social and cultural capital, suggests that mechanisms
of inter-group exchange and deliberation need to be set up in a manner that
changes the “terms of recognition.” In this area, as in many others, there are
no magic institutional solutions. One possibility is to employ “deliberative
democracy” as in the participatory budgeting process developed in Porto Alegre
in Brazil—but this has some preconditions. The promotion of democracy is key,
but in order for democracy to work at the grass-roots, it has to be deepened
and local institutions need to be transparent even to people at the lowest
rungs of society.
Similarly, effective education initiatives may need multi-cultural designs with
curricula that are tailored to reflect the reality and lingua-franca of
students rather than of elites who tend to design curricula. Comparable
arguments can be made for the design of health projects, commons management,
etc. The recognition that sub-groups can often have conflictual interactions
leads to the need for effective methods of conflict management—for instance,
mechanisms for inter-group dialogue and opportunities for social and cultural
interaction, and fair and effective courts that can adjudicate differences and
which poor communities can easily access.
International policy and the behavior of external agents
How can international action become more culturally attuned? The issue is most
commonly framed in terms of the policies and cultures of international
agencies, such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization,
though it also applies to the whole range of external actors, from bilateral
donors, to UNESCO, international non-government agencies such as OXFAM and
multinational companies. I touch on three areas here:
Supporting development design within countries
The discussion of implications for local public action applies with equal force
to the international sphere. Policy design needs to take account of local
conditions, including the interaction between culture, power and economic
structures. This does not mean eschewing generalization from international
experience or giving up the documented lessons of history on economic and
social change. Indeed a central function of such agencies should precisely be
the sharing of knowledge—by understanding situations and processes by which
policies can be made more effective in improving the conditions of the poor.
However, the debate over what makes effective policy within a country has to be
informed by a process of dialogue and deliberation within the country—rather
than the mindless force-feeding of “best practice” guidelines that are little
informed by the social and historical context.
International policy design
An Inequality Trap perspective is directly relevant to some areas of
international policy. Trade liberalization and foreign investment are typically
desirable for income and employment objectives, but the effects of enforced
globalization on the living conditions and aspirations of workers can be
complex. Typically the diagnostic frame of an inequality trap would not suggest
reversing globalization, but strengthening the agency of adversely affected
domestic groups to influence their capacity to influence, choose, or gain from
the consequential economic changes. Thus in arguing for the benefits that may
accrue from more open markets, the seismic cultural shifts that would ensue
should not be ignored, particularly when they may result in new forms of
domination and control. This is not to say that cultural dimensions of
integration are always either inequalizing or homogenizing—cross-cultural
interactions could also be enriching and productivity enhancing.
Institutional cultures
Last, but not least, we need to consider the cultures of the institutions
themselves. Tales of arrogance in the interactions between international or
bilateral agencies and their “clients” abound. Some would suggest the ease by
which borrower countries adopt the ideological fashions of international
development agencies is an example of internalized discrimination. Small, less
affluent countries eager for a loan are particularly vulnerable to this.
However, there is an increasing self-awareness within the organizations of this
issue. Recent policies in the World Bank and elsewhere have been seeking to
change the asymmetry of dealings with client countries and enable a shift
towards a culture of partnership and mutual learning with countries. But while
institutional cultures are dynamic, they also take time to change, and this
change is helped by being conscious and aware of inequities of agency within
the world of development policy.
Vijayendra Rao is Lead Economist with the Development Research Group, The World
Bank.
This essay is a summary of the arguments in Rao and Walton (2004a and 2004b)
which provide more thorough expositions.
References
Appadurai, Arjun, “The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of
Recognition,” Chapter 3 in V. Rao and M. Walton (editors) Culture and Public
Action, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2004
Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1977
Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1984
Rao, Vijayendra and Michael Walton, “Culture and Public Action: Relationality,
Equality of Agency and Development,” Chapter 1 in V. Rao and M. Walton
(editors) Culture and Public Action, Stanford University Press,
Stanford, 2004a
Rao, Vijayendra and Michael Walton, “Conclusion: Implications of a Cultural
Lens for Public Policy and Development Thought,” Chapter 16 in V. Rao and M.
Walton (editors) Culture and Public Action, Stanford University Press,
Stanford, 2004b
Steele, Claude M., “Thin Ice: “Stereotype Threat” and Black College Students,” Atlantic
Monthly, 284, Pp: 44-54, 1999
Tilly, Charles, Durable Inequality, University of California Press,
Berkeley, CA, 1998
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