What do ‘poverty reduction’, ‘participation’ and ’empowerment’ really mean? Has their use influenced mainstream development policy? This paper argues that the terms we use are never neutral. Different configurations of words frame and justify particular kinds of development interventions. Terms are given meaning as they are put to use in policies, and the policies influence how those who work in development come to think about what they are doing. ‘Poverty reduction’, ‘participation’ and ’empowerment’ have been emptied of meaning by a lack of specificity that masks differing opinions. This ‘one size fits all’ apolitical approach undermines their ability to deliver the aspirations that they promote. Significant difference could be achieved in policies and actions if greater attention were paid to specificity in choosing words.
Today’s development language is comforting and full of ‘feel-good’ rhetoric that implies mutuality and the common quest for the wellbeing of all. Divergent groups can create consensus around such ideas without conflict, thus denying that competing ideologies can and should co-exist within the same discourse. As terms are linked together in development policies, ‘chains of equivalence’ evoke a particular set of possibilities – such as configuring participation with governance rather than with social protection.
The word ‘participation’ retains some of the radicalism of its origins in the widening of the World Bank’s programme towards rural development for farmers during the 70s. Poverty reduction focused on basic needs, whilst empowerment was a radical approach to social transformation. In the 80s, meaning was skewed to meet the dominant neoliberal focus on technical and economic solutions: cost-sharing and co-production became the new forms of ‘participation’. In the latter half of the 80s, NGOs widely criticised the negative impacts of adjustment and, thus, community participation was actively fostered by international agencies to counter resistance to reforms.
PRSPs and the MDGs involved a new set of overarching, universalising models in mainstream development discourse:
- PRSPs deliver a strange brand of partnership; in practice, ownership is centred on a small group of actors – an ‘inner circle’ of those who the know the buzz words
- There is limited engagement of CSOs and only token gestures of real participation at local level
- If linked with the Millennium Development Declaration and its terms ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, and ‘solidarity’, the MDGs would have greater ‘bite’ and a moral underpinning.
Participation and empowerment have come to symbolise the legitimacy of a ‘one size fits all’ view of development in the name of poverty reduction. However, blueprint approaches are of course ineffective in achieving poverty reduction. Donors need to remember:
- Words gain extra layers of meaning according to how they are applied in policy and practice
- The way words are combined allow certain meanings to flourish whilst others disappear
- To take apart the existing chain connecting poverty reduction, participation and empowerment and to release different frames of reference that coexist within the fuzz of development rhetoric.
See also Cornwall, A. and Eade, D. (eds.), 2010, ‘Deconstructing Development Discourse‘, Oxfam Publishing.
