South African Debates on the Basic Income Grant: Wage Labour and the Post-Apartheid Social Policy*

Barchiesi, Franco

doi:10.1080/03057070701475575

Cited by 49 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…3 Yet these lines of argument lie side by side with others, which are markedly different from social democratic reasoning, and surprisingly similar to the neoliberal rationality that we more usually associate with antiwelfare discourses. The intermingling of these different themes speaks to the complex political struggles around the BIG, which have been discussed by others (eg Mattisonn and Seekings 2003;Barchiesi 2007). My interest here, though, is not in analyzing these politics, but in identifying some surprising ways in which certain discursive "moves" that we can readily identify as neoliberal are being put to work in the service of apparently pro-poor and pro-welfare political arguments.…”

Section: Basic Incomementioning

confidence: 91%

“…Endnotes 1 I refer here to the remarkable PhD research now being carried out by Ramah McKay (Department of Anthropology, Stanford University). 2 Barchiesi (2007) gives a detailed and illuminating account of the origins of the BIG campaign and the Taylor Committee report. 3 As Barchiesi (2007) noted, some more conservative formulations of the BIG campaign have also made the contrary argument, that it would help move unemployed people into very low wage jobs.…”

Section: The Point Is To Change It!mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Uses of Neoliberalism

2010

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The term "neoliberalism" has come to be used in a wide variety of partly overlapping and partly contradictory ways. This essay seeks to clarify some of the analytical and political work that the term does in its different usages. It then goes on to suggest that making an analytical distinction between neoliberal "arts of government" and the class-based ideological "project" of neoliberalism can allow us to identify some surprising (and perhaps hopeful) new forms of politics that illustrate how fundamentally polyvalent neoliberal mechanisms of government can be. A range of empirical examples are discussed, mostly coming from my recent work on social policy and anti-poverty politics in southern Africa.

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Section: Basic Incomementioning

confidence: 91%

Section: The Point Is To Change It!mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Uses of Neoliberalism

2010

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“…6 Yet these lines of argument lie side by side with others, which are markedly different from social democratic reasoning, and surprisingly similar to the neoliberal reasoning that we usually associate with antiwelfare discourses. The intermingling of these different themes speaks to the complex political struggles around the BIG, which have been discussed, for example, by Matisonn and Seekings (2003) and Barchiesi (2006). But my interest here is not in analyzing these politics, but in identifying some surprising ways in which certain discursive "moves" that we can readily identify as neoliberal are being put to work in the service of pro-poor and pro-welfare political arguments.…”

Section: The Basic Income Grant Campaignmentioning

confidence: 94%

Formalities of Poverty: Thinking about Social Assistance in Neoliberal South Africa

Ferguson¹

2007

Afr. Stud. Rev.

149

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Abstract:In Marginal Gains (2004), Jane Guyer traces the logic of African socioeconomic practices that have long confounded attempts by modern states to impose what she terms “formalization.” Nowhere is the tension between pragmatically “informal” economic life and putatively “formal” state structures more evident than in the domain of poverty interventions, which typically aim to bring state institutional power to bear precisely on those who are most excluded from the “formal sector.” This article offers a preliminary analysis of some new rationalities of poverty alleviation observable in recent South African political and policy discourse. I will argue that new sorts of programmatic thinking about poverty represent a new development within (and not simply against) neoliberalism, and that they seek, by abandoning the regulatory and normalizing functions usually associated with social assistance, to bring the formal and the informal into a new sort of relation.

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“…A large informal sector and the blurring boundary between working and not working, as well as the need to combine labour income with social transfers and improve the bargaining power of the most precarious workers are even more topical in low and middle-income countries than they are in the developed welfare states. 5 Some seminal discussions have been seen in South Africa (Seekings & Matisonn, 2012;Barchiesi, 2008) and Brazil (Matarazzo Suplicy, 2002). The discussion on India will be referred to in the discussion chapter.…”

Section: Basic Income As Social Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Some seminal discussions have been seen in South Africa (Seekings & Matisonn, ; Barchiesi, ) and Brazil (Matarazzo Suplicy, ). The discussion on India will be referred to in the discussion chapter. …”

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confidence: 99%

Micro‐investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income

Eskelinen

Perkiö

2018

Development Policy Review

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The article evaluates prospects of the Basic Income (BI) as a development policy tool. While BI is a relatively new initiative within development policy, the article argues that it should be seen as a serious option in the future, given the changing geography of poverty and the findings from existing cash transfer schemes. The analysis is carried out as a synthesis of existing findings on BI pilot programmes, along with cash transfer instruments more generally. While not including new empirical data, the synthesis allows preliminary estimates on the likely impacts of abolishing conditioning and targeting in cash transfer schemes. Particular attention is paid to the notion of micro‐investment and the psychological conditions of micro‐investment.

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South African Debates on the Basic Income Grant: Wage Labour and the Post-Apartheid Social Policy*

Cited by 49 publications

References 5 publications

The Uses of Neoliberalism

The Uses of Neoliberalism

Formalities of Poverty: Thinking about Social Assistance in Neoliberal South Africa

Micro‐investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income

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