Browsing by Autor "Graciela Mamani-Vargas"

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Driving Development from Below: The Advantages and Limitations of Vernacular Politics in the BolivianAltiplano
(Wiley, 2016) Rachel Godfrey‐Wood; Graciela Mamani-Vargas
Anthropologists studying the Andean community politics have increasingly emphasised the role of pragmatic, informal ‘vernacular’ political strategies in achieving material and political empowerment of the poor. However, while the concept of vernacular politics marks an advancement over binary and often polarised discussions of the role of local communities in development processes, studies have not fully explored the full range of implications of vernacular strategies on development processes. While researchers have demonstrated the substantial agency that local community actors have to influence development processes, the extent to which this influence effectively resists or reinforces the logic of public policy implementation has not been studied. This article explores the techniques used by rural communities in their interactions with public institutions in rural Bolivia. It shows that community organisations' vernacular political strategies have mixed outcomes: on the one hand, they allow the rural poor to assert their own agendas vis-à-vis the state so that they can benefit from public spending, while on the other hand, their tactics have the potential to entrench the influence of local power brokers and perpetuate inefficient uses of public funds. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘It really saves us’versus‘it doesn't cover everything’: the benefits and limitations of a non-contributory pension in the Bolivian Altiplano
(Cambridge University Press, 2017) Rachel Godfrey‐Wood; Graciela Mamani-Vargas
ABSTRACT Non-contributory pensions have become extremely popular in the last decade, with 78 developing countries currently distributing money in this way, and their acclaimed impacts are increasingly celebrated. Studies have found them to contribute not only to ‘obvious’ needs such as increased consumption and income security but also to investments in productivity, social relationships, health, increased access to credit and savings, while it has become common to claim that they contribute to intangible goals such as dignity and citizenship. The danger of some of these claims is that they assume that wellbeing is heavily responsive to monetary wealth, rather than other areas. To study this, an ethnographic methodology, based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, was employed in two rural communities located in the La Paz department in the highland Altiplano region of Bolivia close to Lake Titicaca. Our analysis shows that while the Renta Dignidad increases older persons’ livelihood security, its contributions to other areas where non-contributory pensions are claimed to have major impacts, such as productive investment, health care and relational wellbeing, are actually relatively limited. The policy implication of this is that a more integral approach needs to be adopted to older persons' wellbeing, going beyond cash transfers to greater efforts to bring health-care services to older people in remote rural areas.
The Coercive Side of Collective Capabilities: Evidence from the BolivianAltiplano
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Rachel Godfrey‐Wood; Graciela Mamani-Vargas
Theorists have critiqued the individualism at the heart of Sen’s capabilities approach, and have advocated the concept of “collective capabilities” to better understand the role of social institutions in influencing human flourishing and freedom. However, the extent to which collective capabilities are complementary to, or in tension with individual ones has been under-researched. This paper explores the relationship between collective and individual capabilities by analysing the social institutions of indigenous peasants living in the Bolivian Altiplano, a relatively collectivist society, considering the roles of three key social institutions: village-level political organizations, social activities, and Evangelical churches. It argues that the strength of institutions to contribute to both individual and collective well-being often depends on their ability to use coercive instruments to override individual freedoms. Therefore, while the data support the claim that individualist approaches to well-being and freedom are inadequate, it also calls for more dynamic understandings of the ways in which social institutions enable and constrain people’s capabilities.