Synopses & Reviews
In Give a Man a Fish James Ferguson examines the rise of social welfare programs in southern Africa, in which states make cash payments to their low income citizens. More than thirty percent of South Africa's population receive such payments, even as pundits elsewhere proclaim the neoliberal death of the welfare state. These programs' successes at reducing poverty under conditions of mass unemployment, Ferguson argues, provide an opportunity for rethinking contemporary capitalism and for developing new forms of political mobilization. Interested in an emerging "politics of distribution," Ferguson shows how new demands for direct income payments (including so-called "basic income") require us to reexamine the relation between production and distribution, and to ask new questions about markets, livelihoods, labor, and the future of progressive politics.
Review
"
Give a Man a Fish is a vitally important book that aims to unsettle often-unspoken commonplaces about the contemporary politics of social welfare. Its wide-ranging and provocative investigations in southern African countries—which raise fundamental questions about the changing relationships among autonomy, dependency, and security—are of global relevance and importance."
Review
"Give a Man a Fish disentangles the confusion of languages in which we talk about work, welfare, and distribution. Some of these languages are old and anachronistic, others new but inchoate. James Ferguson himself speaks with clarity and grace, compelling us to inspect long-held intuitions and inviting us to explore a genuinely new politics."
Review
"What—give away money? In this clear and cogent discussion of the politics of cash transfers, James Ferguson urges us to reconsider our basic ideas on states' responsibilities to their citizens. Give a Man a Fish will stimulate new thinking both within and beyond the academy. Distribution may be the new way to empower the poor, he argues—but only if we can work our way past conventional economic truths."
Review
“Half comparative ethnography, half political pamphlet, Ferguson’s impressive narrative is a tour de force questioning, deconstructing and reconstructing classic and contemporary notions of poverty, development and the welfare state in the region and beyond. … With his creative and flexible analysis, he provokes thinking for action beyond narrow ideological boundaries. One could imagine enthusiastic endorsements of his work by Marxist campaigners, World Bank technocrats and traditional leaders alike. This highly original book is likely to leave a lasting mark not only on contemporary anthropological debates around poverty and development, but also policy and activist thinking in southern Africa and beyond.”
Synopsis
James Ferguson examines the rise of social welfare programs in southern Africa in which states give cash payments to their low income citizens. These programs, Ferguson argues, offer new opportunities for political mobilization and inspire new ways to think about issues of production, distribution, markets, labor and unemployment.
About the Author
James Ferguson is Susan S. and William H. Hindle Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is the author of Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order and the coeditor of Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, both also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Foreword / Thomas Gibson vii
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Cash Transfers and the New Welfare States: From Neoliberalism to the Politics of Distribution 1
1. Give a Man a Fish: From Patriarchal Productionism to the Revalorization of Distribution 35
2. What Comes after the Social? Historicizing the Future of Social Protection in Africa 63
3. Distributed Livelihoods: Dependence and the Labor of Distribution in the Lives of the Southern African Poor (and Not-So-Poor) 89
4. The Social Life of Cash Payments: Money, Markets, and the Mutualities of Poverty 119
5. Declaration of Dependence: Labor, Pesonhood, and Welfare in Southern Africa 141
6. A Rightful Share: Distribution beyond Gift and Market 165
Conclusion. What Next for Distributive Politics? 191
Notes 217
References 237
Index 259