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Strategies of conditional cash transfers and the tactics of resistance

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  • Jeff Garmany

Abstract

This article examines how poor people negotiate obligations placed on them by social welfare initiatives. More specifically, it considers conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs), and the ways beneficiaries harness program conditionalities to make demands on authorities, in some cases even enacting subtle forms of resistance to state governance. Drawing from Michel de Certeau, it argues that while CCT conditionalities function as strategies of state development, they are not always/already under exclusive state control. Marginalized groups like CCT recipients can tactically harness these conditionalities. Through such tactics, poor people make demands on the state and deflect program obligations, but in calculated ways that avoid exposing them to greater vulnerability. Drawing from empirical data collected as part of a case study in rural northeastern Brazil, this article contributes to existent bodies of literature on CCTs, governance, and critical development studies in the 21st century.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeff Garmany, 2017. "Strategies of conditional cash transfers and the tactics of resistance," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(2), pages 372-388, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:49:y:2017:i:2:p:372-388
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16672453
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Yiagadeesen Samy & Jean Daudelin, 2013. "Globalization and inequality: insights from municipal level data in Brazil," Indian Growth and Development Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(1), pages 128-147, April.
    2. Jeff Garmany, 2014. "Space for the State? Police, Violence, and Urban Poverty in Brazil," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 104(6), pages 1239-1255, November.
    3. Jamie Peck & Nik Theodore, 2012. "Follow the Policy: A Distended Case Approach," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(1), pages 21-30, January.
    4. Sudhanshu Handa & Benjamin Davis, 2006. "The Experience of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America and the Caribbean," Working Papers 06-07, Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO - ESA).
    5. Sudhanshu Handa & Benjamin Davis, 2006. "The Experience of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America and the Caribbean," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 24(5), pages 513-536, September.
    6. Ariel Fiszbein & Norbert Schady & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Margaret Grosh & Niall Keleher & Pedro Olinto & Emmanuel Skoufias, 2009. "Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2597, December.
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