Cortés Nieto, Johanna del Pilar (2019) Governing the poor in contemporary Colombia. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Preview

PDF WRAP_Theses_Cortes_2019.pdf - Submitted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (2521Kb) | Preview

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

This thesis sheds light on the complexities, particularities, contradictions, ruptures and continuities of the government of poverty in neoliberal times in Colombia. Drawing on the analytical perspective of governmentality and through a close reading of legal documents and policy papers, the thesis explores the ways in which poor populations are governed in neoliberal times. The inquiry is situated at the crossroad of debates about the strategies and effects of welfare reforms pursuant to neoliberal governmentality, discourses and mechanism of poverty alleviations spread in the Global South since the 1990s, and new directions of development discourses. The investigation is conducted through an examination of three distinct but inter-related scenarios of poverty regulation: a conditional cash transfers programme directly managed by the Colombian Presidency involved in counterinsurgent strategies, a constitutional amendment which entrenched austerity rules in the legal system with the aim of preventing the judicial enforceability of social and economic rights, and a general strike in the richest port but poorest city of Colombia (Buenaventura) where violence is deployed to neutralise the political agency of poor populations in order to enable the expansion of the port. The focus of attention is on the discourses, technologies, techniques and rationalities of government deployed in each instance, as well as the heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory subjectivities that programmes of government attempt to constitute. At the core of this thesis is the poverty-(in)security nexus. The chapters illustrate how managing and neutralising the agency of the poor has been central to securing the social, political and economic order that neoliberal governmentality seeks to create. The government of the poor is therefore a project of security: on the one hand, it endeavours to secure an order based on competition, stability and investor’s security. On the other, the 7 management of the poor relies on a logic of security whereby coercive and non-coercive strategies are articulated. Yet coercive and authoritarian technologies prevail, confirming the authoritarian and coercive nature of neoliberalism. Hence, in contrast with the emancipatory language of current poverty alleviation discourses and their defence of ‘softer’ environmental technologies, in Colombia the government of poverty in recent decades has been intensely invasive and coercive. Overall, the thesis aims to ‘problematise’ the manner in which poverty is produced as a ‘problem’ in neoliberal development discourses and “denaturalise” our conceptions and assumptions about it.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions J Political Science > JC Political theory K Law [Moys] > KS Latin America
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Colombia -- Politics and government, Public welfare -- Law and legislation -- Colombia, Poor -- Colombia, Poverty -- Colombia, Neoliberalism -- Colombia
Official Date:	January 2019
Dates:	Date Event January 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	School of Law
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Wall, Illan Rua ; Tan, Celine
Sponsors:	University of Warwick. School of Law
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	282 leaves
Language:	eng

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads