Society and space

The following essay is a supplement to Kevin Donovan’s Infrastructuring aid: materializing humanitarianism in northern Kenya that appears in Issue 4 of the 2015 volume of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

Fingerprinting a Hunger Safety Net Program recipient in northern Kenya.

Across the world, humanitarian organizations and governments are investing considerably in so-called ‘cash transfers’. These initiatives typically provide small cash grants to low-income populations. In Latin America, programs like Brazil’s Bolsa Família or Mexico’s Oportunidades (not Progresa) have pioneered the recent profusion of social protection schemes in the global South. In South Africa, a welfare scheme with roots in the 1920s has been expanded in the post-apartheid period to incorporate nearly 20 million individuals. In his newest book, Give a Man a Fish, the anthropologist James Ferguson suggests these are indicative of a new politics of distribution. Indeed, cash transfers have been growing enormously, often replacing food aid. One 2009 study documented 123 cash transfer programs in sub-Saharan Africa alone. As leading proponents of enthusiastically sum up, the idea is “just give money to the poor”.

Continue reading here.