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Beneath the Categories: Power Relations and Inequalities in Uganda

Author: Joy Moncrieffe
Date: 2007
Size: 27 pages

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Summary

What are the broad dynamics that create and sustain poverty and inequality? This chapter from Institutional Pathways to Equity uses evidence from Uganda to assert that power relationships often underpin and perpetuate inequality and poverty in societies. It suggests that understanding and addressing these adverse power relations are necessary for building capabilities and ensuring that disadvantaged groups and individuals can make the best of the assets and opportunities they possess.

While there is general consensus that extreme inequality and poverty often culminate in low economic growth, there has been less attention paid to the dynamics of how inequality and poverty are created and sustained. Case studies suggest that inequality and poverty often result from the exercise of power. Specifically, people can become and remain poor because of deliberate action and inaction of others. Without understanding these power relationships, policies designed to promote growth may profit some and exclude others while the more powerful may also manipulate the policies to deepen existing inequalities.

Evidence from Uganda confirms that for some disadvantaged groups poverty reduction depends, critically, on addressing power relations. This is not to say that initial assets and opportunities, group inequalities, and political agency are not important contributors to poverty and inequality. Rather, it suggests that more explicit consideration be given to the role of power because power relationships can have substantial influence on when and how assets and opportunities work. Moreover, attention to these relationships exposes issues that are highly consequential for analyses of poverty and inequality:

• As social actors, people might accept and uphold conditions that perpetuate their own inequality.
• Power relations - coercive and non-coercive, visible and hidden, agreed and imposed - can cause poverty and help to sustain inequalities.
• Stratifications occur even among people who appear to share the same disadvantages.

As such, assets and opportunities alone are unlikely to solve inequalities. Equity requires deep understanding and real recognition of the groups and individuals that policymakers aim to support and the power relations that hold inequalities in place. An important first step in this recognition is respecting people’s lifestyle choices and preferences, assuming these choices and preferences do not contravene the human rights of group members. This more anthropological approach is crucial for uncovering the relational dimensions to poverty and inequality and might well result in more profitable engagement with disadvantaged groups.

Strategies based on this approach require a visible commitment at high policy levels and vigilant implementation over long time horizons. Some recommendations for policymakers and donors include:

• recognise minority groups’ lifestyle choices rather than force assimilation;
• work with minority groups to ensure safe use of their environments;
• protect indigenous industries and help to open new markets for their products;
• suggest new opportunities and sources of livelihood; and
• ensure that conditions are appropriate for minority groups to build their assets and expand their choices.

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Source: Moncrieffe J., 2007, 'Beneath the Categories: Power Relations and Inequalities in Uganda', in Bebbington A. et al., 'Institutional Pathways to Equity: Addressing Inequality Traps', World Bank, Washington DC