Comments on John Friedmann’s ‘The dialectic of reason’ by Bryan Roberts

John Friedmann’s article is a useful reminder of two contemporary processes, the first of which is the halt in economic growth and modernization, as the years of relatively rapid growth for underdeveloped countries are followed by those of stagnation and recession. There is the serious possibility that rapid growth will not return again, and will not provide a market alleviation of poverty through the ‘trickling-down’ effect. Internal resources, as presently organized, are inadequate to. sustain economic growth, while the industrialized countries and their capital, increasingly preoccupied with managing growth within and between their trading blocs, appear to be abandoning the underdeveloped world to its fate. The possibility of planning an equitable economic and social development from above is negligible at a period when both faith in, and the capacity o f , governments to reform and redistribute appears to be at an all time low. There is, in Latin America at least, a marked antistate mood amongst both right and left, as well as amongst the international financial organizations. In this context, as John argues convincingly, the popular, community-based movements of self- help in underdeveloped countries acquire an especial importance both as a sign of the times and a pattern for the future. These movements, are widespread, their external help comes from nongovernment organizations, both national and foreign. and are a clear ‘bottom-up’ attempt to improve welfare and offset the process of immiseration to which the majority of the urban and rural populations of underdeveloped countries are now subject.

I agree, then, with John on the need to re-evaluate the relevance of the idea of modernization, especially in its economic manifestations, and on the importance of the spaces for alternative solutions that are potentially being created as organized capitalism retrenches on a world scale. But I retain certain doubts about whether the reality is quite what John depicts, especially in the case of Latin America. The world of the barrio movement is an urban world and one which increasingly predominates in underdeveloped countries. In Latin America 65% of the total population was classed as urban in 1980, and of these 64% lived in cities of over 100 000 people. It is not surprising that various forms of popular organization should arise in the cities, and become more visible to the observer, as people are thrown together and face the same difficulties of getting by. What

242 Comments on John Friedmann ‘s ‘The dialectic of reason’

is not clear, however, is whether the present shows any more signs of organization or solidarity among the poor than does the past. It is my doubts about the novelty of the phenomenon that John describes, and whether it, in fact, represents a break with modernization and a search for alternatives, that are the basis for my disagreement with ‘La Dialectica de la Razon’.

My first doubt is about the barrio economy itself. John tells us that it does not include the small-scale workshop or the putting-out process, anything that ties local people to the wider market economy. Essentially it is the economy of exchange and self-help in which people substitute their own labour and that of their neighbours for the market. But it is unlikely that such an economy will flourish in the face of recession. As Pahl (1984) and others have pointed out, self- provisioning also requires access to resources, and is most easily done by those with the money to buy, for instance, building materials, tools, clothing material and so on. The evidence for Latin America seems to suggest that far from the barrio economy flourishing, and substituting for the market, more poor people are having to sell their labour on the market, working longer hours, and for less pay than before. The time available to invest in barrio affairs is being reduced by the current recession, not increased. Household size is increasing, to be sure, as young members stay on longer than in the past because they cannot afford to set up separate households, and as single relatives move in. For example, 53% of households among the Poblaciones of Santiago, Chile involve sharing (allegados) of this kind (Rodriguez, 1987). The sharing of poverty in this way is, however, an old survival strategy, and is hardly a sign of a novel barrio economy.

There is also some evidence that the pressures generated by economic deprivation are breaking down solidarities as children are abandoned to the street, and as females struggle to bring up children on their own, working the notorious doble jornada. Women may often be better off on their own, as Chant (1985) argues, than exposed to the violence and economic selfishness of a husband, but that indicates that poverty produces tensions - domestic violence and alcohol-related community violence and conflict - as much as it produces solidarity (Gonzalez, 1986). Indeed, there is no evidence that I know of that indicates that self-help practices and community relations are any stronger now than they were 20 o r so years ago when the economies of Latin American and other underdeveloped countries were growing rapidly, though amidst increasing income inequalities. Recent studies of Chilean barrios lament their current lack of cohesion which is attributed to the impact of the economic crisis, and, in particular, high levels of urban unemployment (Tironi, 1987).

The main point, surely, is that modernization in the limited sense of economic growth and redistribution is still the goal of underdeveloped countries, and not only among the elites. The trek of millions of Mexicans, central Americans and Caribbean peoples to the United States is a seach for better income opportunities than they have at home and a share in the modern consumer dream. It is not a search for an alternative path to development. Nor is an alternative path present in the high degree of residential instability in cities throughout the underdevelo-

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ped world in which individuals and families pass from city to city, and in Brazil and elsewhere, move on to the last frontiers, seeking a better livelihood, and one that is based on the market. The uneven and now halted economic development of Latin America and elsewhere fragments communities as much as it encourages people to seek alternative solutions. Indeed, the barrio hardly exists, if by that is meant a relatively stable neighbourhood in which people have learnt to know and work with each other over time.

Many urban neighbourhoods are areas of high density rental in which relations outside the household are casual and not based on trust. Others are vast slums in which the solidarities engendered by initial struggles of squatting or building house and infrastructure have been eroded as the area becomes a normal part of the city and its housing market (Gilbert and Ward, 1985). There are exceptions, of course. These are often urban neighbourhoods based on the settlement of people who have migrated from the same village or who have the same ethnic or religious memberships. There are also neighbourhoods threatened by redevelop- ment which, with the help of outside agencies and an articulate leadership, have developed a distinctive identity and self-reliance. These exceptions have attracted attention and rightly so, but we need to remember, especially in terms of praxis, just how exceptional they are. They are not beacon lights of an alternative future, but tiny islands gradually being eroded by current patterns of urbanization and its associated economic and residential instability.

It is also important to remember the immense variations between countries, between cities and between rural areas, and to take account of the reasons for these variations since these affect the success o r failure of barrio and other self- help movements. In Latin America, at least, there are evident contrasts that must be recognized: between cities such as Buenos Aires with long urban traditions, relatively stable urban barrios, a lengthy experience of popular associational activity and a tradition of state-provided welfare services that have become increasingly inadequate with the years; Lima, where people have always had to fend for themselves, where small-scale and informal enterprises have always dominated the urban economy, where, currently, the national economy is disintegrating and the community, wherever it can be found, is the only available extra-houshold means of survival; with Brazil and Mexico, where modernization, while slowing down sharply in recent years, is still in progress, and is bringing with it, if anything, more formal political activity with the strengthening o f opposition parties and of other forms of conventional associations, often of a 'middle-class' nature such as the environmental movement.

There are, it seems to me, new and strong bases of identity emerging within the cities of the underdeveloped world, and a more powerful sense of the rights of citizenship, based on the experience of struggling for the income opportunities and services needed for basic survival. But these struggles are public and market- related, and neither the solidarities they engender nor their divisions are permanent ones. The trend that I see is away from community allegiances, even though community remains a vital base of identity and of survival strategies, and

244 Comments on John Friedmann's 'The dialectic of reason'

towards the gradual institutionalization of nonlocal forms of identity through political movements and associations of various kinds. For Latin America, this represents not the end of modernization, but a political and social modernization, still partial and uneven, that is, at last, catching up with economic modernization.

References

Chant, S. 1985: Family formation and female roles in QuerCtaro, Mexico. Bulletin of

Gilbert, A. and Ward, P. 1985: Housing, the state and the poor. Cambridge:

GonzBlez, M. 1986: Los Recursos de la pobreza. Guadalajara, Mexico: El Colegio de

Pahl, R. 1984: Divisions of labour. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rodriguez, A. 1987. Veinte aiios de las poblaciones de Santiago. Proposiciones 14,

Tironi, E. 1987: Pobladores e integracion social. Proposiciones 14, Ediciones Sur.

Latin American Research 4, 17-32.

Cambridge University Press.

Jalisco.

Ediciones Sur, Santiago, 24-43.

Santiago, 64-84.