Poor-Led Social Movements and Global Justice

• DOI: 10.1177/0090591718776938
• Date: 01 October 2018
• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

776938PTXXXX10.1177/0090591718776938Political TheoryDeveaux
research-article2018
Article
Political Theory
2018, Vol. 46(5) 698 –725
Poor-Led Social
© The Author(s) 2018
Movements and
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
Global Justice
https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591718776938
DOI: 10.1177/0090591718776938
journals.sagepub.com/home/ptx
Monique Deveaux1
Abstract
Political philosophers’ prescriptions for poverty alleviation have overlooked the
importance of social movements led by, and for, the poor in the global South.
I argue that these movements are normatively and politically significant for
poverty reduction strategies and global justice generally. While often excluded
from formal political processes, organized poor communities nonetheless lay
the groundwork for more radical, pro-poor forms of change through their
grassroots resistance and organizing. Poor-led social movements politicize
poverty by insisting that, fundamentally, it is caused by social relations of power
that exploit and subordinate poor populations. These movements and their
organizations also develop the collective capabilities of poor communities in
ways that help them to contest the structures and processes that perpetuate
their needs deprivation. I illustrate these contributions through a discussion of
the Landless Rural Worker’s Movement in Brazil (the MST), a poor mobilization
organization in Bangladesh (Nijera Kori), and the slum and pavement dweller
movement in India. Global justice theorizing about poverty cannot just “add
on” the contributions of such struggles to existing analyses of, and remedies
for, poverty, however; rather, we will need to shift to a relational approach to
poverty in order to see the vital importance of organized poor communities
to transformative, poor-centered poverty reduction.
Keywords
global poverty, global justice, social movements, slum dwellers, Landless
Workers’ Movement, domination
1Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Monique Deveaux, Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Rd., Guelph,
ON N1G 2W1, Canada.
Email: mdeveaux@uoguelph.ca

---

Deveaux
699
Justice has to be realised, even wrested from, imperfectly just states through
forms of collective action.
—Neera Chandhoke1
Normative ethicists and political theorists generally propose solutions to
global poverty that are redistributive in their aim: more development aid from
rich states, increased philanthropy, and the reform of international trade, tar-
iff, taxation, and debt policies that disadvantage poor countries. But as a
growing number of thinkers come to see poverty as bound up with the subor-
dination, exploitation, and domination of the poor, more “political” solutions
have begun to emerge. The recognition that needs scarcity cannot be grasped
in abstraction from the social relations and structures of power that sustain it
echoes the insights of critical poverty and post-development thinkers.2 Yet
whereas the latter see grassroots, poor-led collectives and social movements
as essential to overcoming the subordination of the poor, theorists with a
similarly structural view of poverty have accorded little significance to
impoverished communities’ struggles to simultaneously reduce their depriva-
tion and powerlessness.3 Focused instead on transnational, institutional dem-
ocratic reforms as a means to enfranchise poor populations, they overlook the
importance of popular, place-based struggles from below. In so doing, they
unwittingly reinforce normative approaches to poverty alleviation that fail to
treat those living in poverty—as Sen writes—“as active agents of change,
rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits.”4
In what follows, I argue that proponents of transformative, poor-centered
approaches to chronic and severe poverty have much to learn from poor-led
social movements and organizations in the global South. In particular, critical
theorists, deliberative democrats, and neo-republicans who argue that global jus-
tice requires the political inclusion of marginalized, impoverished populations
should be deeply interested in the ways that their movements view poverty and
its remedies. Grassroots poor collectives and struggles are uniquely placed—
epistemically, ethically, and politically—to identify and challenge oppressive,
poverty-perpetuating social relations. While excluded from formal institutions of
power, poor movements politicize the underlying causes of needs deprivation
and put more radical, pro-poor prescriptions onto the public agenda. Theorists
could help to advance these solutions by delineating solidarity-based political
responsibilities for individuals and institutions with resources and influence to
actively support and assist progressive, poor-led social movements.
Although organized poor struggles potentially contribute in several ways
to the development of transformative, poor-centered approaches to poverty

---

700
Political Theory 46(5)
reduction, I focus here on only two; both of these, I argue, lie outside of the
(current) scope of action of other agents of global justice, such as states,
affluent individuals, transnational financial institutions and corporations, and
non-grassroots organizations. First, self-organizing poor collectives and
social movements politicize poverty by raising poor members’ critical aware-
ness of the underlying causes of their deprivation, and harnessing it to mobi-
lize poor communities to protest practices and policies that disadvantage and
impoverish them. This activism can shift public opinion and pressure policy-
makers to introduce genuinely pro-poor measures. To illustrate, I discuss one
of the most successful movements of the rural poor, Brazil’s Landless
Workers Movement (MST), as well as Via Campesina, the transnational
peasant movement that the MST helped to form. Second, self-organizing col-
lectives and movements build the collective capabilities of the poor using
horizontal, solidarity-focused forms of knowledge-sharing and skill develop-
ment. These capabilities enable communities to demand accountability from
power-holders, claim social entitlements, and engage in a variety of direct
actions to secure access to vital resources or services.5 A grassroots poor-
empowerment organization in Bangladesh (Nijera Kori), and the Indian slum
dweller movement, exemplify this collective capability-building function of
poor groups.
Poor social movements are not confined to the global South, but because
ethicists’ and theorists’ discussions of poverty have focused on the develop-
ing world, I follow suit. There are, however, important parallels (which I do
not take up here) between poor social movements in low and middle income
countries, and anti-poverty/welfare rights struggles and anti- or alternative
globalization movements in rich countries—such as the Settlement
Movement, the Industrial Areas Foundation, ACORN, the Campaign for a
Living Wage, the Peoples’ Social Forum, the European Anti-Poverty Network,
and Occupy. Moreover, my contention that poor mobilization contributes
vitally to pro-poor social change echoes the claim by global North poverty
activists that progressive poverty reduction depends upon the existence of
effective advocacy movements intent on dismantling policies that disem-
power and oppress poor people.6
Why So Little Attention to Poor-Led Social
Movements?
According to James Bohman, John Dryzek, Rainer Forst, and Nancy Fraser,
the democratic inclusion of poor and marginalized populations is a constitu-
tive feature, rather than a distant outcome, of global justice.7 Rejecting apo-
litical accounts of poverty that emphasize resource and needs scarcity, these

---

Deveaux
701
thinkers see severe deprivation as the outcome of relations that create and
sustain the inequality and powerlessness of the global poor. Token inclusion
of the global poor—or the “transnational precariat”8—in existing institutions
will not suffice to dismantle the unjust structures that perpetuate their exploi-
tation and domination; marginalized populations will instead need to acquire
real power to help define, within transparent and democratic processes, what
justice requires and how to achieve it. This approach to global poverty and
inequality is captured by Forst’s view that “justice is not only a matter of
which goods, for which reasons, and in what amounts should legitimately be
allocated to whom, but . . . how these goods come into the world . . . who
decides on their allocation, and how this allocation is made.” It is also
reflected in Bohman’s assertion that “severe poverty is a form of silent citi-
zenship”; in Fraser’s claim that there can be “no redistribution or recognition
without representation”; and in Dryzek’s conclusion that there is “no justice
without agents of justice, no effective agents of justice without democracy . .
. no global justice without global democracy.”9
Given their insistence that poor and marginalized populations need to
have democratic control over the matters that most affect them, it is surpris-
ing that these theorists have said little about poor-led social movements that
seek to empower impoverished communities. In part, this reflects their pes-
simism about the ability of the poor to mobilize effectively in advance of
some measure of redistribution: “current global economic arrangements pro-
mote domination in the form of capability failure; that is, the lack of...