Failed Magic or Social Context? Market Liberalization and the Rural Poor in Malawi

One of the key questions in the debates swirling around structural adjustment programs in Africa is their effects on the poor. Have these programs "benefited ... the rural poor disproportionately", as concluded in Adjustment in Africa (World Bank 1994)? The answer for rural families studied over a period of years in Malawi is no. Market liberalization has provided new income opportunities (through tobacco and maize sales) that have disproportionately benefited the better-off households, while the poorest twenty-five percent have experienced a relative worsening in income and food security despite increasing the proportion of maize harvest retained and the share of cash budget spent on purchasing maize. Rather than being due to markets failing "to work their magic" (Mosley and Weeks, 1993), the outcome is interpreted as the effect of economic policies being mediated through socio-cultural and political relations. Pauline E. Peters is an associate at HIID and teaches in the department of anthropology at Harvard. She is a social anthropologist who has done extensive research in central-southern Africa, particularly Malawi and Botswana. Recent publications include Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy and Culture in Botswana (University of Virginia Press, 1994); “The Uses and Abuses of the Concept of ‘Female-headed Household’”, in D. Bryceson (ed.). Women Wielding the Hoe: Lessons from Rural Africa for Feminist Theory and Development Practice (Berg, 1995); "The Erosion of Commons and the Emergence of Property: Problems for Social Analysis", in R.C. Hunt and A. Gilman (ed.) Property in the Economy (forthcoming). She is currently conducting longitudinal research in Malawi on the process of agricultural commercialization.