The dawn of something unknown

Abstract

Social change can be like an undetected shift in the weather. In one moment, endless blue sky fills the horizon, promising a lazy day of sunshine. Slowly, however, unnoticed clouds appear. Before one knows it, wind rips through trees, rain pounds the ground and one is left wondering how it all could change so fast. Over the last twenty years, there has been a change of weather in the world of development. In a time when activists and scholars have become used to critiquing neoliberal reforms in the Global South – reforms which diminish national sovereignty, lessen government spending and generally “roll back of the state” – something unexpected has happened: Governments and organizations in the south have started to give cash directly, often unconditionally, to the poor. Across Southern Africa, Latin America and in parts of Asia vast social welfare programs and have sprung up distributing cash to millions. Close to every second household in South Africa now receives at least one social cash transfer from the state. In Mexico and Brazil one in four inhabitants receive social grants from the state. In Indonesia, 19 million people get around eight dollars a month, no strings attached, in order to alleviate increasing food prices. A review by the UK state development agency DFID estimates that cash transfer programs now reach up to 1 billion people worldwide (Arnold, Conway, & Greenslade, 2011). It describes the trend as a “quiet revolution”. [...] The final version of this research has been published in Forum for Development Studies. © Taylor & Francis