Revealing the impact of interface representations, identities and use-values on the poor: a research agenda for NGDOs

This paper argues that NGDOs should focus their attention on revealing how, despite the ‘pro-poor’ development discourse that has underlined the international project of poverty reduction, poor people still lose in grassroots practice. This is because conflicts in perceptual meanings (image-conflicts) involved in interfaces among actors operating from different frames of reality are not properly explored and managed. Case studies of interactions between development agencies and rural communities in Malawi showed that it was through representations (use of language and/or actions) that poverty was constructed. People were categorised or characterised (and indeed people also categorised themselves) using labels that suited particular forms of intervention rather than their actual identities. There were also conflicting meanings of development as ‘good’ change arising from defined interventions (use-values). It was in the analysis of the nature of these interface negotiations that it was evident that poor people were at a disadvantage. In order to assist these vulnerable people, whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened, NGDOs have to continually deconstruct stakeholder identities, representations and use-values and take appropriate action. Introduction: globalisation, development discourse and poverty Literature on globalisation has tended to focus mainly on its economic implications ignoring the far reaching cultural and political ramifications that globalisation could have on the situation of rural poverty. The opening of cross-border markets could be the cause of not only of new economic flows but also of the cultural and ideological technologies that justify certain practices and images while discounting on others, through language. The language of development then is a combined set of linguistic representations and linguistic constructions of how to relate ‘problems’ to ‘solutions’. It is a certain way of framing problems, attributing essences, and finding solutions based on the objectivisation of what constitutes development (Arce, 2000, p. 33). In effect, the language of development is mediated through labels, which everyone strives for in order to attract attention. On the part of development agencies this could be for the purpose of ensuring that programmes and projects are successfully proposed and funded. On this realm, there is a global currency of language, which development agencies log into, the family of such concepts as ‘empowerment’, ‘negotiation’, ‘participation’ and ‘capacity building’. The expediency of using these concepts has become even more intense as they have become the common denominator for development policies of states and institutional donors. The use of ‘language’, in this case, goes beyond the spoken to the behavioural and written