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Preface
Deborah EadeSocial diversity is a relatively new addition to the lexicon of development practitioners and thinkers. Yet it has quickly come to represent both what is most inspiring, and most depressing, about human potential. The recognition that our needs, our perspectives, and our priorities are shaped both by who we are - and by how we relate to others, and they to us - represents an important advance in our understanding of how societies function. It thus changes how we perceive our own roles, as individuals and as institutions, in working for social and economic justice.
Mary B Anderson, who introduces this Development in Practice Reader, has made major contributions to policy and practice in this field. Her work has provided the international development community with more sensitive tools with which to analyse the contexts within which we act; and more subtle ways in which to listen to those whose thoughts remain unspoken, or whose voices we have been unable (or did not wish) to hear. Her insights both into how we can best respond to people's individual and collective capacities and vulnerabilities, and specifically in terms of gender analysis, have influenced many official aid agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) around the world.
The greater recognition of social diversity (for instance, in terms of gender, or age, or cultural identity) reveals some of the conflicts within social groupings that were previously regarded as homogeneous (such as the household, the urban neighbourhood, or the refugee community). In so doing, it holds up a critical mirror to development processes (and aid programmes), showing how these can actually generate poverty and exclusion. Indeed, the interventions of official agencies and NGOs alike have often exacerbated inequality, and further disempowered the powerless, largely because they have ignored differences in how poverty and oppression are constructed; or the ways in which our identities are mediated by power. Diversity does not mean breaking down society into ever smaller sub-sets, or attaching more labels to people; but rather seeing how the inter-action of various aspects of our social and economic identities comes to shape our life options. A deeper understanding of these processes shows how detrimental it can be to trust that the situation of one set of people is a barometer against which to measure the well-being of society as a whole.
Here, Mary B Anderson argues that the contemporary expressions of intolerance, combined with the extreme abuse of power, require us urgently to re-examine the implications of diversity in the context of development and emergency relief work. The massacres that took place in Rwanda in 1994 are an abhorrent example of how assumed differences between one set of human beings and another can be invoked to inspire acts of unspeakable brutality, and how fear can be manipulated for political and material gain. The cynical term 'ethnic cleansing' hides barbarity of a similar kind, based on the totalitarian view that difference cannot be accommodated within a society; and, by extension, that belonging to a particular culture or social group means that each individual member must by definition share identical interests. Lethal combinations of fear and loathing have, throughout history, allowed one set of human beings to dehumanise others - emphasising (or inventing) difference in order either to deny the very right to express that difference, or (as under the Apartheid regime) as a pretext for the systematic subordination of particular communities.
Yet the denial of diversity - and hence of the privilege and discrimination that flow from it - can be equally devastating in impairing people's lives. For instance, the 'quiet violence' (1) of the fact that over half of all murders of women, whether in Brazil or in Bangladesh, are committed by their husbands or male partners. Or the 'apartheid of gender' (2), which means that fewer than two dozen women have ever been elected as heads of state or of government in the history of the world. It is the categorisation of people according to a single characteristic or set of traits - a physical disability or illness, skin colour, sex, age, language, political views, sexual orientation, culture or religion - and conceding or denying rights and opportunities to them on that basis. When societies believe in their intrinsic fairness - 'in letting the best man win' - attempts to redress such systematic bias are often cast as improper interference with the 'natural order', a denial of 'fair play', or an indulgence in 'political correctness'. In addition, certain disciplines and 'laws' are perceived as neutral and immutable. Indeed, discrimination may come to seem so natural that we fail to see it. Yet, after years of research by feminist economists and others, UNDP now estimates that if women's unremunerated (invisible) work was monetised, not only would it yield some US$11 trillion each year, it would irrevocably change the face of orthodox economic analysis. (3) A deeper recognition of the diverse ways in which people relate to the market would thus help to shape development policies in a more equitable way.
Written largely by development practitioners, the papers in this volume demonstrate that we are far from understanding how to create development policies, practices, and institutional mechanisms that can represent (and thus are accountable to) all interests in society, rather than being defined around those of certain privileged or more vocal sectors. But in trying to respond to existing forms of diversity, we must also recognise the wider context in which we are working. For economic globalisation and rapid advances in information technology are generating ever greater homogeneity across societies and cultures. We hear the same music, depend on the same computer software, visit the same hamburger chain - and even communicate through the same language - whether we are in Miami, Manila or Moscow. The challenge is to form the kinds of alliances that are needed in order to resist cultural and ideological domination, but without falling into an anachronistic isolationism.
If we believe in the universality of human rights, an awareness of diversity places upon us a moral responsibility to work for the eradication of the discrimination and exclusion that stem from it. However, such an awareness also holds the promise of still richer and more exciting forms of solidarity in the quest for a world based on equality and social justice for all.
Notes
1 A phrase coined by Betsy Hartmann and James K Boyce in A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village, 1993, London: Zed Books
2 The 'apartheid of gender' was the central theme of the 1993 UNICEF annual report, The State of the World's Children, Oxford/New York: OUP.
3 UNDP, Human Development Report 1995, Oxford/New York: OUP
