What roles do social movements play in poverty reduction? This study explores the connections between poverty and social movements, particularly relating to production and to collective consumption (for example, housing, services, water). It argues that social movements are integral to livelihoods and also to state formation, and can therefore play a central role in poverty reduction. One of the most important effects of successful movements is to induce the creation of new institutions that contribute to poverty reduction and more equal power relationships in society. Context will determine the most productive strategy for a movement to adopt.
A social movement is defined as processes of spatially and temporally diffuse collective action that are sustained over time and framed within a shared identity and set of programmatic commitments. Social movements emerge as part of and in response to prevailing power relations. They are motivated by shared grievances and a sense of injustice, and thus by the need to find another way of organising society and thinking about development. They might make visible identities rendered invisible or abnormal, challenge dominant ideas, draw attention to unmet needs, or argue that existing arrangements need protecting.
The roles of social movements in poverty reduction vary significantly depending on the political regime of the moment. Relatively few social movements emerge specifically around the issue of poverty, particularly poverty as defined by a lack of assets. However, progress towards more inclusive and equitable development has historically involved political processes and non-state actors. Many important social reforms have emerged in a context of, and due to, social conflict. This suggests that social movements can be important to poverty reduction, and that:
- NGOs and CBOs only become significant (beyond localised interventions) when they are part of broader social processes
- Civil society is best understood as a sphere of contention in which ideas about how society should be organised are argued over, with some becoming dominant and translating into law and policy
- Civil society and the state need to be understood in relation to each other.
The strategies that movements use range from quiet, persistent negotiation and argumentation to visible and contentious direct action. Overt direct action can disrupt thinking about issues, challenging dominant discourses. However, relationships with NGOs and academic research centres are needed to develop clear alternative ideas that have policy, political and technocratic traction. Other findings include the following:
- Movements have often helped to place issues on the political agenda. In the areas of poverty and economic policy, however, movements are likely to be more reactive. This means that the movement’s concerns will address the sources of poverty to the extent that state policy is also doing so.
- Historically, poverty reduction is more closely connected with movements emphasising production, such as the establishment of taxation systems that redistribute funds from wages to public investment in services, and broader access to entitlements that come with participation in the formal economy.
- Both the emergence of movements and the relative balance of movement activity between production and collective consumption varies over time and according to the political economy of the country.
- In cases where movements emphasise collective consumption as opposed to production, poverty reduction is less successful.
- Movements’ relations with other actors are more likely to be characterised by conflict when movements contest the underlying ordering of economy and society. While such questioning is more likely to occur in the domain of production it can also occur around collective consumption.
Use of the livelihoods framework suggests that the most significant ways in which movements affect poverty are through the following means:
- Contesting the ideas that underlie how society understands poverty and the sorts of livelihood outcome (including cultural and socio-political aspects) that should be valued in public policy
- Contesting the ideas and principles that underlie the institutional arrangements that govern people’s access to resources, as well as the productivity and sustainability of these resources
- Challenging, both in specific ways but also in terms of their foundational ideas, the institutions that govern these domains of access, transformation and sustainability.
