Poverty and the Kalahari Bushman:
Advancing the Conceptualization of what it means to be poor.
By D.A.Parker
Introduction
The purpose of this literature review is to gain a fuller understanding of the current debate and views on conceptualising poverty in the contemporary world.
The first part of this paper explores the development of the Orshansky Threshold leading up to the creation of the dollar a day poverty line the standard measure of poverty promoted by the World Bank. In the next section, the paper contrasts this approach with the constructivist approach of Sen and the development of his entitlement theory.
Part two examines the plight of the Kalahari Bush and assesses the usefulness’ of both these theories. And finally in conclusion suggest where things could be improved.
The Orshansky threshold
Two approaches are evident in the poverty debate today. The positivist approach favoured by Dollar and Kraay of the World Bank, described as lacking rigor by Sumner (2004), usually relies on ‘large scale random sample households surveys, with a preferences for consumption expenditure over income, as being more stable over time’ (Wrattern, 1995 cited,Moser,2003 pp114:Woollcock, 2007,pp01). The roots of this approach can be traced back to the advent of the ‘Orshansky threshold’ (Barrington,1997).
In 1963 Mollie Orshansky [1915 – 2007] created the ‘seminal US poverty line’ (Barrington 1997, p. 1) that has since become known as the Orshansky threshold. The Orshansky threshold is a poverty base line that relates to a basket of goods commonly consumed by the average non farming family household in America (Barrington,1997).
This basket has a Dollar value that is multiplied by three to give the minimum income needed for survival, of the average family in America in times of crises or food shortages (Hauver, et al., 1981). This system was later adopted by dollar and Kraay and modified to fit the developing world, which led to the creation of the dollar a day; the standard measure of poverty favoured by the World Bank. The data Mollie used to create this system was taken from the US department of agriculture who had gathered the data on nutrition and consumption for an emergency food plan (ibid).
The ineptness of this measure is clear to see in this extract from the New York Times (2003) ‘In Vietnam a dollar buys half a pound of rice, half a pound of potatoes and a third of a pound of ground beef’ reported Daniel Altman (2003) of the New York Times, ‘In Mexico a dollar buys a pound of rice, a pound of beef and, half a loaf of bread’ (ibid). Because of unequal distribution the buying power of the dollar can vary considerably.
Yet For the World Bank and the United Nations and many other Neo-liberal thinkers this dollar is the dividing line between being rich or poor suggest Altman (2003). However, it is easy to see from this report that in the real world it has little value in real terms.
The second approach that is prevalent in the poverty debate is the ‘Narayan approach’ (McGregor and Cantley,1992) of the constructivists favoured by Amartya Sen et al (1999) and Andrew Sumner (2004) this viewpoint ‘rejects the income/ consumption perspective as being too narrow and reductionist, serving the technocratic needs of development professionals, rather than seeking to understand the complexities and diverse local realities in which the poor live’(Chambers 1995, cited Moser 2003, p. 114).
Amartya Sen is one of the most influential thinkers in the field of development today has developed his ‘Entitlement theory’ (Sen, 1981: Sen. and Drèze, 1999) out of his study of famines both in India and Africa and born through his whish to improve conditions in his home country India. Whilst working for the United Nations Development Program he was instrumental in creating the human development index that was adopted by the UNDP in 1990 (Noorbakhsh,1998).
The change in debate that has taken place over the last decade centres around two main approaches to the conceptualisation of poverty as identified by Maxwell (1999). These approaches being the quantitative approach favoured by the World Bank and David Dollar, that recognises ‘income and consumption patterns as the as the best proxies for poverty’ (Moser 2003) and the qualitative, a more humanistic approach (Moser and McIlwaine, 2003, pp. 114-115). This approach takes into consideration basic human needs, rights, freedoms as well as considering access to entitlements and opportunity (Sen 1981). ‘Both systems use multiple subjective indicators of poverty status’ (Moser and McIlwaine, 2003).
This change in thinking has been heavily influenced by Sen’s work has led to the creation and adoption of the Millennium Development Goals. This represents an important shift away from the static poverty lines approach, moving towards an approach that recognises the ‘multidimensionality of deprivation though the analysis of assets and vulnerability’ (Moser, 1998; Maxwell, 1999).
Development and Freedom
In his book Development as Freedom Sen argues that ‘freedom is the both the primary end and the principle means of development’ (Sen, 1999, p. 31) taking this stand point Sen argues that the developing world suffers from various forms of un-freedom that restrict the process of development, this traps them in to cycles of development and un-development.
This concept is repeated in Professor Colliers (2007) book The Bottom Billion in which he argues that, for the bottom billion developments is likened to a game of snakes and ladders with the rules slightly changed hence, ‘Snakes & chutes’(Collier 2007; pp05) meaning there are considerably more ways down than there are up.
Both Sen (1999) and Collier (2007) would argue that the economic division between the rich and poor is increasing and for the people in the bottom billion, conditions have not improved much over the last decade. These people in the bottom billion are getting left behind because they are stuck in cyclic poverty traps.
Utilitarianism
In contrast to this the institutional concept of poverty expressed by Dollar and Kraay (2002) appears very different. The neo-liberal view of the World Bank as expressed by Dollar and Cray (2002) see the undeveloped world suffering in a ‘low-equilibrium trap’ (Nelson, 1956). This means that the capital stock accumulation is raising at the same rate as population growth, thus, income per worker is not increasing meaning zero per capita growth, the economy suffering from stagnation and zero economic growth (Nelson, 1956).
Not withstanding this trap David Dollar (2002) argues that the poverty gap is not increasing but decreasing with integration in the global economy. He argues that this is spreading of the wealth, a kind of trickle down affect. He goes onto suggest that it is only a matter of time before the rest catch up. He leans heavily on China for statistics to back up these claims.
The utilitarian approach of Dollar and Cray uses hedonic calculus when obtaining and manipulating data statistics. This limits itself by being concerned only with the sum-total and does not included minority or individual sufferance (Sen 1999).
There appears to be general consensus among ‘scholars and practitioners alike that the causes, manifestations and consequences of poverty are multidimensional’ (Sen 1999: Cited, Woolcock 2007, p. 1), meaning that poverty can not be defined by income alone. Although there appears some agreement between the constructivists and the positivists in that they both see poverty as multi-dimensional however, it is the nature of these dimensions that is at question.
Poverty and the Kalahari Bushman
So far this paper has examined conceptual theories that assume the standard classical economic model as conditions or preconditions required for integration into the capitalist economic system. None of these concepts discussed so far has catered for populations that choose to live outside of this system.
There have been several failed attempts to integrate the Bushman of the Kalahari into the modern world. Guenther (1977) writes of the rich white farmers of northern Botswana, who inhabit vast areas of the most fertile land in the country. The white people acquired there land around the turn of last century from the Bantu-speaking Tawana. Prior to the Tawana settlers the land was inhabited solely by the San Bushman the Tawana laid claim to the land and sold it to white settlers with no consultation to the San people. Historical evidence shows that Bushmen communities have always lived in the desert regions of the Kalahari.
The early attempts by the new settlers to employ the Bushman as farm workers all but failed from the outset. The Bushman are a nomadic people and never stay in one place for to long. Also the low wages that the new settlers paid the bushman meant that they had to supplement there income with hunting. Often after a hunting trip they would return to find no jobs as the farmer would have employed a new group of workers. Thus the cycle begun again with the new group, they never stayed long enough to learn the skills required to work on a farm (Guenther,1977).
This was the first attempts to integrate the Bushman hunters in to modern society. Unsurprisingly they clearly had no inclination to adopt a settled life style and the conditions offered by the white farmers where far from favourable they had a much better opportunity remaining as they were.
The San are but one of a number minority groups in Botswana and represent a relatively small proportion of the total population. Accurate data of the precise numbers are hard to find, with figures varying from as little as 3% (Hitchcock, 2002) up to 10% (US Bureau of African Affairs, 2007).
The people of the Kalahari have survived forced removal from there lands and found themselves for the first time in there history suffering the inflictions of modern life. Survival International reports that for the first time they now have Aids and other sexual transmitted dieses in the community and many are becoming alcoholics, inflictions that have never been seen by these people before (Survival-international 2008).
Poverty has finally overcome these people ‘In many ways, they are at the bottom of the Botswana socio-economic system. A sizeable proportion lives below the poverty datum line. They exhibit some of the highest rates of infant mortality alongside the lowest living standards and literacy rates, and in many cases have insecure access to land and resources’ (Hitchcock, 2002). Over the years the Kalahari Bushmen have remained in poverty where their richer neighbours denied them rights to the land, in both Botswana and Namibia, they have found their territory drastically reduced.
Most livelihoods approaches such as Sen’s ‘Entitlement theory’ (Sen,1981) tend to focus on economic and social aspects rather than physical dimensions such as personal safety. The concept of security itself is mostly associated with national and international territorial disputes’ only recently have there been efforts to broaden this to incorporate notions of human security focusing on basic needs and human dignity (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 1994: World Bank, 2000) perhaps this why tribes like the Bushman are getting left behind. Simply there is no system that caters for their specific needs.
There has been renewed attempt recently to bring the bushman into the modern world. The self stared NGO, The first People of the Kalahari, (TFKG) set up by the san peoples in order to unify and take control of the Bushman’s knowledge and fight for land rights as well as control their wealth. With the discovery in 2002 of a plant that helps combat obesity and only grows in the Kalahari Desert region, suddenly there knowledge is of some value and attempts are being made to profit from it. Coincidently Shiva Vandana has been advocating saving and protecting indigenous cultures for many years for this very reason. In order preserver diversity it is the indigenous people who hold the key, suggests Shiva (Shiva,1991).
Another attempt to integrate the Bushman them into the economy is being made by the organisation for Information and communications technologies for development (ICT) a subsidiary of the NGO Development Gateway Foundation, who suggest that the ‘Kalahari Bushmen, have become a depressed and marginalised community, excluded from their traditional nomadic range by the good intentions of those who have fenced it into national wildlife parks in which there is no place for humans, and certainly no place for those who treat these preserves of endangered species as a larder. In the past the San people’s understanding of their environment was everything they needed, but as the fences went up, that understanding became irrelevant; they lost everything and fell into poverty’ (ICT 2003). Suddenly their knowledge is of value.
Conclusion
Although there has been a lot written about the Bushman of the Kalahari, however, there is little actual evidence to be found of the extent of poverty in which they live. The reason for this must partly be because they have lived predominantly outside of the economic system. Concomitant with this the attitude of the Botswana Government has not provided for a fair assessment of the situation.
Until recently they have been consider to have no economic value other than a tourist attraction. In fact on the contrary the government has viewed these peoples as a hindrance to development and in the way of progress and diamond extraction.
This study clearly shows the need for a way of measuring the extent of poverty that these peoples endure. The pressure of modernisation and development are forcing these people into lives of hardship and poverty as before they have never seen or experienced.
Recent events with the discovery of medicinal plant that can be used in the west high lights the need to preserver these people’s knowledge customs, as well as showing their economic worth. 80% of all medicines know today originated from plants out of the rainforest and have used by indigenous tribes foe centuries (Shiva, 1991).
This paper has highlighted’ a gap in the thinking of economic theorist when it comes to conceptualising the poverty of indigenous populations. The systems that they conceptualise do not on the whole, consider the indigenous culture that live out side of the normal economic system; this paper has also shown the reason why we need to include these people in the poverty calculation.
The constructivist approach of Sen is the closet tool available to measure the poverty of these people. This approach needs to be expanded so that measuring the depth of poverty of indigenous culture that live outside the system can be achieved.
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