Targeted Cash Transfer Programs and “Meritological Individualism”: The Case of Progresa/Oportunidades in Mexico

• In Event: 286 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Paper Session: Table 05. Policy

Abstract

In the early 1990s the rural livelihood diversification approach replaced the articulation of modes of production school in the attempt to explain the survival of the peasantry. The former looked at the family “asset portfolio” in an attempt to explain rural poverty, and how some managed to survive and others to move forward. Targeted conditional transfer programs build on insights from the rural livelihood diversification paradigm that looked at “assets” held by individuals and family members. They are aimed at increasing the family assets in the interests of poverty reduction. In the case of Progresa/Oportunidades this means increasing educational, health, and nutritional levels. The program, initiated by the Mexican government in 1997, has been adopted and spread throughout Latin America, often with the sponsorship of money-lending organizations such as the World Bank. Such programs rely on the assumption of “meritological individualism” whereby the poor, rather than the system they are embedded in, are responsible for their fate. Notably, this meritological individualism is often shaped by neo-patriarchal practices, as will be shown in some of the literature that critiqhes the conditional cash transfer program in Mexico, viz. Progresa/Oportunidades.

Author

• Tamar Diana Wilson, University of Missouri-St. Louis