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Pro-poor growth and the conversion of the economic habitus
Pro-poor growth and the conversion of the economic habitus A case study of the tourism sector in Flores, Indonesia DISSERTATION of the University of St. Gallen, School of Management, Economics, Law, Social Sciences and International Affairs to obtain the title of Doctor of Philosophy in Organizational Studies and Cultural Theory submitted by Manuel Rothe from Flawil (St. Gallen) Approved on the application of Prof. Dr. Franz Schultheis and Prof. Dr. Urs Jäger Dissertation no. 4492 Gutenberg AG, Schaan, 2016 The University of St. Gallen, School of Management, Economics, Law, Social Sciences and International Affairs hereby consents to the printing of the present dissertation, without hereby expressing any opinion on the views herein expressed. St. Gallen, October 13, 2015 The President: Prof. Dr. Thomas Bieger For Alexander Acknowledgements First and foremost I want to thank Verena Witzig, my wife, who supported me all the way, during the years of working part-time on my dissertation. Our discussions of research methods and social science theory helped me face many challenges and navigate around dead ends. She always believed in the success of this journey and guided me when I needed it most. Great thanks also go to my thesis supervisors Professor Franz Schultheis and Professor Urs Jäger, whose advice and insights have opened my eyes to new academic fields and new perspectives of thinking about international development cooperation. My field research in Indonesia would not have been possible without Arie Daru. With his knowledge of the Manggaraian culture and his passion for tourism, he guided me through a world that only gradually revealed itself. Thank you for being a guide and a friend. Furthermore I want to thank my family, in particular my father David Rothe and my mother-in-law Heidi Witzig who always showed great interest in my research, guided me with their experience and advice and helped me keep my spirits up. A special thanks also goes to the numerous people in Labuan Bajo and West Manggarai who welcomed me into their homes and shared their life stories with me. Manuel Rothe Winterthur, January 2016 i Table of Content List of Figures ................................................................................................................ iii List of Abbreviations ..................................................................................................... iv Abstract ........................................................................................................................... v Zusammenfassung.......................................................................................................... vi 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 2. Pro-poor tourism in Flores .......................................................................................... 5 2.1. Decentralization and marginalization of eastern Indonesia ................................. 6 2.2. Tourism development in Labuan Bajo ............................................................... 10 2.3. How pro-poor is tourism growth in West Manggarai?....................................... 14 3. Pro-poor growth in theory and practice .................................................................... 20 3.1. Growth is good for the poor ............................................................................... 20 3.2. Growth and inequality ........................................................................................ 23 3.3. Do pro-poor growth policies work? ................................................................... 28 3.4. Finding the right policies .................................................................................... 30 3.5. Pro-poor tourism ................................................................................................. 33 4. The non-income dimensions of poverty ................................................................... 37 4.1. The conflicting paradigms of poverty ................................................................ 38 4.2. The origins and limits of the monetary approach to poverty ............................. 40 4.3. Basic needs and sustainable livelihoods ............................................................. 45 4.4. Relative poverty and social exclusion ................................................................ 47 4.5. Development as freedom .................................................................................... 51 5. Reflecting the methodological approach .................................................................. 57 5.1. The case for reflexivity in qualitative field research .......................................... 57 5.2. Gaining access to the field and selecting interview partners.............................. 63 ii 5.3. Conducting the interviews .................................................................................. 73 5.4. Distribution of roles ............................................................................................ 81 5.5. Working with the data and drawing conclusions ............................................... 88 6. Participation as conversion ....................................................................................... 91 6.1. Investing in your children ................................................................................... 92 6.2. Participation as a leap into the unknown ............................................................ 98 6.3. Participation requires self-learning and self-improvement .............................. 104 6.4. The social purpose of work .............................................................................. 106 6.5. Income as a means not an end .......................................................................... 112 6.6. Work as vocation .............................................................................................. 115 6.7. The spirit of the modern capitalist economy .................................................... 121 6.8. Conversion of the economic habitus ................................................................ 124 6.9. Broken habitus .................................................................................................. 126 6.10. Anomie ........................................................................................................... 132 7. Some lessons for pro-poor growth .......................................................................... 140 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 147 Curriculum Vitae ........................................................................................................ 158 iii List of Figures Figure 1 – Map of Flores Island…………………………………………...…… .......... 6 Figure 2 – Map of Labuan Bajo………………………………………………............ 13 Figure 3 – Main Street of Labuan Bajo…………………………...……….… ............ 16 Figure 4 – Petronela Lanes with family and neighbors…………………… ………. 111 iv List of Abbreviations AFD Agence Française de Développement BMZ Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit CDD Community Driven Development DCED Donor Committee for Enterprise Development DEZA Direktion für Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit DFID Department for International Development EU European Union FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations GDP Gross domestic product HDI Human Development Index ILO International Labor Organisation IMF International Monetary Fund LED Local Economic Development M4P Making Markets Work for the Poor MDG Millenium Development Goals MPI Multidimensional Poverty Index NGO Non-governmental organization NTT Nusa Tenggara Timur ODI Overseas Development Institute OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights PELNI Pelayaran Nasional Indonesia PPG Pro-poor growth SDC Swiss Development Agency SIDA Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency TNC The Nature Conservancy UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization WCED World Commission on Environment and Development YKK Yayasan Komodo Kita v Abstract “Pro-Poor Growth” as an approach to fighting global poverty is about enhancing the ability of the poor to participate in and benefit from growth. Based on a case study of the booming tourism sector in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia, this thesis explores why most of the local poor are struggling to get a share of the wealth the growing economy creates, despite the efforts of non-governmental organizations to foster the “propoorness” of tourism development. The results of the case study show that for the poor to make the transition from the backcountry of Labuan Bajo, where the economy is still largely based on traditional, non-capitalist principles, to the tourism sector, that is built upon the principles of the global, modern capitalist economy, requires an adaptation of economic beliefs and practices that is nothing short of a what Bourdieu (2000) called a conversion of the economic habitus. Those who do not adapt to the new economic realities risk being left with a “broken” habitus – faced with the irreconcilability of their acquired economic disposition with the rapidly changing economic environment around them. The extent of the conversion required for the poor and the risks they face when not undertaking it, the thesis concludes, is not recognized by pro-poor growth theory and practice. vi Zusammenfassung Der “Pro-Poor Growth” Ansatz in der internationalen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit zielt darauf ab, den Ärmsten zu ermöglichen am wirtschaftlichen Wachstum in ihren Ländern zu partizipieren und davon zu profitieren. Anhand der Fallstudie des boomenden Tourismussektor in Labuan Bajo in Indonesien, untersucht diese Arbeit warum es den Menschen aus der Umgebung von Labuan Bajo anscheinend schwer fällt, im Tourismussektor Fuss zu fassen und sie kaum vom Wachstum profitieren. Dies trotz der Bemühungen von Nichtregierungsorganisationen, ein breitenwirksames Wirtschaftswachstum zu fördern. Die Resultate der Fallstudie zeigen auf, dass die Transition von Arbeitern und Unternehmern aus dem weitgehend vorkapitalistisch geprägten Wirtschaftskosmos im ländlichen Hinterland von Labuan Bajo, in den auf globalisierten, auf modernen Wirtschaftsprinzipien aufbauenden Tourismussektor, eine Adaption ihrer ökonomischen Dispositionen und Praxen erfordert, die einer eigentlichen Konversion des ökonomischen Habitus (Bourdieu, 2000) gleichkommt. Die Konversion nicht oder nur unvollständig zu vollziehen birgt die Gefahr eines „gebrochenen“ Habitus – der Unvereinbarkeit der verinnerlichten Dispositionen mit dem sich rasant verändernden wirtschaftlichen Umfeld. Das Ausmass der erforderlichen Konversion und die Risiken für diejenigen die sie nicht vollziehen, ist in „Pro-Poor Growth“ Theorie und Praxis bisher weitgehend unbeachtet geblieben. 1 1. Introduction In 1990–2010 the driving force behind the reduction of worldwide poverty was growth (The Economist, 2013). When I first visited Labuan Bajo, a small town on the island of Flores in Indonesia, Swisscontact, a Swiss NGO, had just completed a three year PPG promotion project, supporting the development of the local tourism sector. The NGO helped local businesses to cater more professionally to Western tourists who came to visit the nearby Komodo National Park. It supported the local government in developing a investment plan and in helped promote Labuan Bajo as a tourism destination in Bali and internationally. Tourism was developing rapidly in Labuan Bajo at the time. The number of flights to the local airport had increased, and various new businesses had been established in the town, offering tours, transportation, accommodation, souvenirs or food to the tourists. The research project I was involved in looked at how (and if) the benefits of growth, which was mainly taking place the town of Labuan Bajo, spread to the remote, rural areas of the surrounding district of West Manggarai. Following the impact chains that linked the PPG promotion project to the wider economic development of the region, we explored how people, who were directly or indirectly affected by the growth of the tourism sector valued the benefits or disadvantages they experienced because of this development. 1 In the course of the field study, we visited local businesses, spoke to government officials and interviewed people in remote villages in the mountains of West Manggarai. Many of the people from Labuan Bajo business community seemed to benefit considerably. They talked about how they expanded their businesses or entrepreneurial activities to cope with the growing numbers of visitors, how their revenues or salaries increased, or how they professionalized their businesses or improved their skills to keep up with the rising standards of the tourism sector. At the same time, we saw that not everyone in Labuan Bajo was benefitting from the tourism 1 The full results of the study are presented in Jaeger & Rothe (2013). 2 boom. Many people in the villages of West Manggarai knew that there were opportunities in tourism and that there were others who had left the villages and earned good money in tourism, but they did not know how to take advantage of these opportunities themselves. It was this difference in how people engaged in economic growth that got me interested in doing further research for my doctoral dissertation. I wanted to explore how those, who were successfully participating in the tourism sector, were able to do so. According to the OECD (2007), the goal of PPG promotion is to enable a “pace and pattern of growth that enhances the ability of poor women and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth” (p. 3). The question I asked myself was what “ability” did those who managed to get into formal employment or who built a sustainable livelihood as entrepreneurs in the tourism sector have? I returned to Labuan Bajo in 2010 to interview more local people who grew up in Flores and who were well established in the tourism sector because they owned a tourism business, worked in formal employment, or earned a regular income through informal entrepreneurial activities. During the interviews, I asked them to tell me about their biographical paths from the villages of their childhoods to where they were standing now. Three years later, in 2013, I conducted a third field study in Labuan Bajo to complement my interview sample with more interviews, this time with people from the villages in the catchment area of Labuan Bajo and with representatives of the government and other institutions, whom I considered relevant in shaping the propoorness of growth2. What struck me when I returned to Labuan Bajo in 2013 was how few of the many new tourism businesses that had opened along the main road of the town were owned by locals. Most of the dive shops belonged to Western expats, the restaurants belonged to Indonesians who came from Bali or Java, midsized hotels were being constructed by outside investors, and tours to the national park were organized by subsidiaries of Bali travel agencies. Of the local population of the town, it seemed that only the ethnic Chinese, who had owned many of the department stores and some smaller hotels before the boom, participated as business owners in the development of tourism. 2 The selection of the interview sample is explained in greater detail in Chapter 5.4. 3 Swisscontact and Yayasan Komodo Kita (YKK), an NGO from Jakarta, tried to counter this trend by enabling more locals to participate in the tourism sector. Among other things, they trained people from the surrounding villages to learn how to cook for tourists or make souvenirs and handicrafts. They supported local farmers to supply the tourism sector with agricultural produce, and they trained fishermen how to use their boats to offer tourists daily outings to the national park or how to become dive instructors. In 2013, there were still many local people working in tourism as employees or as freelance tour guides or tour operators, but most of the formal businesses in the tourism sector were owned and run by outsiders. The tourism pie is getting larger and larger, but only a very small part of it goes to the local people, the project manager of Swisscontact told me (F. Samosir, interview, June 19, 2013). It is very difficult to get the people from the fisher villages to participate in tourism, the director of YKK told me. The villagers, she argued, don’t know how doing business in tourism works, they just live day by day and don’t plan ahead (E. Halfild, interview, July 11, 2013). After returning from the third field study, I started analyzing the data I had collected during my field studies. I discovered that for the people from the rural villages of West Manggarai, “participation in growth” (which lies at the heart of the PPG approach to poverty reduction) was a much longer and more complex process that I previously recognized. When those with a successful and sustained career in tourism talked about their professional lives, they stressed how challenging it was to understand how tourism works and that a process of continuous learning and self-improvement was necessary to get to where they are now. Along the way, they had to change their views and their lifestyles to such an extent that they now see themselves as somehow different from their relatives and friends who stayed back in the villages. Their participation in the tourism sector was not simply a matter of acquiring the necessary industry know-how or gaining the skills needed to find a job, it required much more adaptation. In the case of West Manggarai, “participation in growth” could be best understood as a “conversion of the economic habitus” (Bourdieu, 2000), a far-reaching transformation of one’s economic beliefs and practices. In the following chapters, I will explain how I got to this finding and what conclusions I draw from it for pro-poor growth theory and policy. The structure of my thesis is as follows. Chapter Two introduces the case by describing the tourism sector of Labuan 4 Bajo. Chapter Three provides an overview of the current literature on PPG in theory and practice and establishes how I understood PPG in my research. Chapter Four considers in detail what is meant by the “non income” dimensions of poverty, which I believe are essential for the understanding of how PPG works. Chapter Five describes the methods I used for my research. With the aim of ensuring transparency, accountability, and reliability, I reflect on each step that I took from the choice of the case study, the collection of the data to the analysis, and the drawing of conclusions. Chapter Six describes my findings from the field, illustrating the extent of adaptation people go through in the process of leaving their villages in the rural areas of West Manggarai and building their professional careers in tourism. Chapter Seven draws conclusions for PPG theory and policy. 5 2. Pro-poor tourism in Flores Flores is like Bali in the 1970s (Manumadi, Tour Guide). In 2009, the Manggarai region on the Island of Flores was going through some big changes. The dictatorship of President Suharto ended in 1998 and, like all the regions in Indonesia, the Manggarai regency began its journey towards more political and cultural autonomy. In 2000, the local parliament voted for the partition of the regency into three independent districts, and in 2005, Labuan Bajo became the capital of the new district of West Manggarai. Now the central government was pouring money into the new district to build the local government. While a lot of the money drained away because of corruption, notable investments in public infrastructure were made in the years following independence. In a very short time, the new district administration grew to more than 5,000 employees, and the town of Labuan Bajo began to grow (T. Ulrich, Interview, January 20, 2009). After the financial crisis of 1997 and 1998 had caused a drastic reduction of the number of tourists coming to Labuan Bajo, by the beginning of the new millennium tourism was back on the upswing (Erb, 2005, p. 164f). The Islands of Komodo and Rinca, off the coast of Labuan Bajo and home of the Komodo Dragon3, had long been a destination for international tourists. The two islands became a national park in 1980, but compared to other destinations in Indonesia, they remained peripheral for a long time. Conservation of the local wildlife began with the aid from the FAO in the 1970s and was continued with renewed effort by The Nature Conservancy, an American NGO from the 1990s. In 1986, Komodo Island became a World Heritage site, and in 2002, the Indonesian Minister of Tourism had proclaimed on a visit to Flores that he wanted the region to be part of a “golden triangle” of tourism in Indonesia together with Bali and Sulawesi (Erb, 2005, p. 163f). The political, social, and cultural transition of the West Manggarai was in full swing. The Varanus Komodensis, also known as the “Komodo Dragon” is the world’s largest and one of its oldest lizards. Adult dragons reach a length of over three meters and an average of 90 kg. The animal, an endangered species, can be found only on Komodo Island and its smaller neighbors Rinca, Nusa Kode, and Gili Motang. In 1991, the Komodo National Park was declared a UNESCO world heritage site. More information can be found at www.florestourism.com. 3 6 2.1. Decentralization and marginalization of eastern Indonesia The island of Flores is located in the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago. The island is about 350 km long and divided into five “regencies”, administrative divisions created by the Dutch in the nineteenth century, loosely based on the island’s main ethno-linguistic groups. The Manggarai region, with its capital Ruteng, is at the western end of the Island, covering roughly one-third of the whole island (Allerton, 2001, p. 10). The district of West Manggarai, with its capital Labuan Bajo, includes the western half of the Manggarai regency and the islands of Komodo and Rinca. Figure 1 - Map of Flores Island4 Eastern Indonesia was colonized by the Portuguese, who were the first Europeans to arrive in the Indonesian archipelago in the sixteenth century, founding a Dominican mission in Larantuka to the east of Flores. The name of the Island of Flores, of which the area of West Manggarai is part of, is one of the legacies of Portuguese colonization, that otherwise did not have much of a lasting impact on the area. The Dutch, who had colonized much of the rest of present day Indonesia, gained control over Flores in 1859 (Allerton, 2001, p. 10). 4 http://ikat.us/map_flores_02_enh.jpg 7 For several centuries, Flores was seen as an “unprofitable” island, and there was not much interference by the colonial masters. Despite the Portuguese and later Dutch presence in the eastern parts of Flores, Manggarai remained mostly free from European meddling. Instead, the Makassarese Empire of Gowa on the island of present day Sulawesi and the Bimanese, loyal to the Sultan of the neighboring island of Sumbawa, fought over control of Manggarai (Erb, 1997, p. 50ff). The Bimanese had a lasting political and economic influence over the Manggarai region by introducing the dalu system of regional divisions, where each dalu leader ruled over one administrative unit, called geratang. Only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Dutch took more active control over Manggarai, the leader of Todo, the most powerful of the administrative sub-regions, was, in the name of pacification, forcefully elevated to become King of all of Manggarai. In the 1920s, the Todo royal family moved to Ruteng, and introduced their system of Manggarai law (Allerton, 2001, p. 11). Despite the influence of the Todo clan, it is, according to Allterton (2001), important to recognize that it was the Dutch who had helped them achieve their position with Manggarai and who still exerted considerable influence. The position of King of Manggarai therefore does not represent an “indigenous” system of political authority, but is in the end a construction of outside powers (p. 11). In 1945, the independence of Indonesia was proclaimed by Sukarno and Muhammad Hatta, who would become the first president and vice president of the new republic. Independence was accompanied by violent conflict when the Allied Forces, mostly British and British Indian troops, arrived shortly after the proclamation of independence. A year later, the Dutch were forced to negotiate an end to hostilities, and in 1949, the sovereignty of the republic was formally recognized (Library of Congress, 2004, p. 3). Despite the democratic elections that were held in 1955, the struggle for independence was followed by regional dissidence, attempted assassinations and coups d’état, military–civilian conflict, and economic stagnation. In 1959, a period of guided democracy was proclaimed by Sukarno, who dominated the leadership of the republic until the mid-1960’s (Library of Congress, 2004, p. 3). Out of the chaos and violence of the years of 1965 and 1966 and after an attempted coup on Sukarno the authoritarian “New Order” regime of Suharto emerged, who was about to lead the country for the next 30 years. According to Bräuchler and Erb (2001), the Suharto 8 regime was based upon the fear that resulted from the massacres of the transitional period, and a firm and highly centralized state was cultivated as the only hope for security. This centralization resulted in an enormous accumulation of power and wealth in the hands of the Suharto family (p. 121). The development of the Manggarai region in the twentieth century was significantly affected by the centralized political and administrative structures of the Sukarno and Suharto regimes. Shortly after independence, the traditional feudal system of dalu was replaced by the centralized local government structure on the level of kecamatan or sub-districts and the smallest administrative unit of desa or village areas, usually consisting of one or several villages and their adjoining hamlets (Allerton, 2001, p. 11). The decades of accumulation of power and money of the New Order regime, controlled by a very small number of people, eventually lead to total standstill and breakdown in the course of the Asian financial market crisis. Massive protests against corruption, collusion, and nepotism (which became known as Korupsi, Kolusi, dan Nepotisme) of the New Order regime culminated in the fall of Suharto. The post New Order period was also one stained by violence across the country, reaching even the farther away areas of eastern Indonesia (Bräuchler & Erb, 2011, p. 122). What followed was a period of decentralization that proved crucial for the economic and cultural changes happening in Manggarai and in other parts of eastern Indonesia. With the enactment of a series of laws, designed to reverse the accumulation of power and control of the Suharto regime, a process of decentralization of political decisionmaking spread across the country, reviving local traditions and traditional political institutions and structures. While these new policies gave previously unthinkable political and cultural freedom to the regions, one of the many unexpected side effects of the dissolution of power and democratization was the spread of corruption, collusion, and nepotism deeper into the regional levels of politics across the country (Bräuchler & Erb, 2011, p. 122f). The local, political, and economic landscape of Manggarai, where the local parliament in 2000 decided to support the aspirations of the residents of the western part of the regency, approved of the split of the regency into the two independent districts of West- and East-Manggarai (Erb, 2005, p. 327), has to be understood within this context of decentralization. To build the new district administrations and to develop 9 the region economically, the new district administration was heavily subsidized from the central government in Jakarta. While there now was weak accountability to the central administration, the local government had full autonomy on how to spend the money. In particular, the highly marked up budgets for building infrastructure has led to opportunities for profiteering by local administrators and politicians. While the whole of the Labuan Bajo area, for example, was earmarked since the early 1980’s as an area for tourism development, shortly after the Komodo National Park was created. In 2006, the Bupati began to allocate a number of mining concessions to foreign and national business, “more often than not without the full prior consent of the local communities” (Erb, 2011, p. 174–176). Another peculiarity about West Manggarai and for the whole of Flores is the spread of Catholicism. While 88% of Indonesians count themselves as Muslims (Library of Congress, 2004, p. 7), in West Manggarai, the majority of people are Roman-Catholic. Here it was the early colonial history of the Portuguese era that had a lasting impact on the subsequent missionization of the island of Flores. When the Portuguese relinquished power to the Dutch, it was under the conditions that the Catholic faith, at that time confined to the east of Flores, was left untouched (Allerton, 2001, p. 11). This makes this part of Indonesia “probably the only area of the Indonesian archipelago where, on the whole, Christianity preceded the coming of Islam” (Fox, 1980, p. 238). Throughout much of the twentieth century, it was not the central government that had the greatest influence over the development of the Manggarai region, but the Catholic Missionaries and the “workshops, clinics, schools and plantations” they introduced (Allerton, 2001, p. 11). Today, around 90% of Flores island’s inhabitants designate themselves as Catholic. However, Allerton (2011) points out, the “relative strength of Christian belief varies, and there remain many conflicts with priests, whether over marriage practices, animal sacrifice or rejections of attempts at ‘inculturation’” (p. 12). Meanwhile, the communities on the smaller islands off to the western tip of Flores, Komodo, Rinca, and a host of tiny islands with only a limited number of inhabitants are predominantly Muslim. The islands communities, who have their cultural roots in Sulawesi and other parts of the Indonesia, are part of the “buginese” boat people, who traditionally inhabit the coastal areas throughout the Indonesian archipelago. 10 The town of Labuan Bajo, the capital of West Manggarai, was founded as a buginese fisher village. However, because of the continuous influx of people from the rural areas of Manggarai in the last decade the town had a population that is about 50% Muslim and 50% catholic in 2005 (Erb & Anggal, 2009, p. 300). Today, the original Muslim population of the town is likely to be in the minority. Economically, West Manggarai, like all of Nusa Tengarra Province belongs to the least developed areas of Indonesia (Erb, 2011, p. 1), with over 95% of people living with less than one dollar per day (T. Ulrich, Interview, January 20, 2009). During the New Order, the Indonesian economy was transformed through to the introduction of the industrial production of commodities such as steel, aluminum, and cement. Today, Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and one of the largest producers of oil. While the agricultural sector has been declining as a share of national GDP, it still employs roughly 40% of Indonesians (OECD, 2010, p. 5), it still provides the main source of livelihood for the large majority of people in West Manggarai (Allerton, 2010, p. 181). Farming in West Manggarai is mostly done by small landholders, and involves growing rice, vegetables, or cassava for subsistence and growing cash crops, like peanuts, clove, ginger or coffee. While Labuan Bajo is shaped by the mostly secular political and business elites—including a large number of civil servants of a growing bureaucracy—traditional social and economic structures prevail in the villages of the countryside. According to Bräuchler and Erb (2011, p. 121), eastern Indonesia has gone from a central region in world trade during colonial times to one of the most marginalized regions, not only within Indonesia but internationally as well. It is in this economic marginalization that the current development of the Manggarai region has to be understood. 2.2. Tourism development in Labuan Bajo According to a story provided by the local tourism department, the first tourist to visit the western tip of Flores island was a German couple by the name of Kuhn, who arrived by sailboat in 1967, stayed in Labuan Bajo for a couple of days, and then continued to Ruteng on horseback. At that time, the Manggarai backcountry had still not been affected much by the modern world. To Western tourists, it was an unknown destination and there was no tourism infrastructure on the island. There weren’t even 11 many roads, and the villages were connected only by footpaths through the jungle. Manggarai was almost the same as it had been centuries ago (Erb, 2005, p. 163). When Mr. and Mrs. Kuhn arrived in Labuan Bajo and explored the island, the scientific research of the Komodo Dragons that would later make the giant lizard world famous was already ongoing. The Komodo National Park opened in 1980, and in the subsequent years, the government began constructing the first holiday bungalows on Komodo Island. In less than two decades, Flores went from a largely unknown area to one fairly well known, although not a very well-visited tourist destination. The main road between Labuan Bajo and Ruteng went from a path to a dirt track to eventually a paved road. In the late 1980’s, the first “adventure” travel agency started bringing tourists to some Manggaraian villages in Ngada. In 1993, a small airstrip opened in Labuan Bajo, which would later become the major airport on the island (Erb, 2005, p. 163ff). The first “hotel” in Labuan Bajo was opened in 1971 by a Chinese man from the town of Ende in Central Flores. Before that, he used to bring the mail by boat to Flores from Bima on the neighboring island of Sumbawa. He started ferrying tourists on his mail runs and saw the opportunity for tourism development in Labuan Bajo. The second hotel in Labuan Bajo was built by a resident of Labuan Bajo, also of Chinese origin, who had been involved in the development of government bungalows on Komodo. Over the years, with tourism arrivals continuously increasing, accommodations grew from a handful of basic homestays to a sizable number of midsized hotels ranging from around USD 10 to USD 50 per night. The various crises that affected tourism arrivals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century diminished the demand for accommodation, and so, by 2003, the number of guest houses and small hotels had diminished to around 15 (Erb, 2005, p. 165f). In 2009, when I first arrived in Labuan Bajo, tourism was on the upswing again, but the tourism landscape had not yet changed much. In the center of Labuan Bajo, there were still only a handful of hotels and homestays catering mainly to domestic travelers, but there were some first signs of the development that was about to come. On the hillside above Labuan Bajo, a Dutch man, married to a woman from Flores, had started building a small bungalow village catering to the growing number of western divers arriving to explore the underwater world between the islands of Flores and Komodo, which had become internationally renowned as a prime dive site. A 12 kilometer to the south of Labuan Bajo, along a gravel road leading along the coast, an Indonesian hotel chain had recently built the first “four-star” hotel of Flores, providing air-conditioned rooms, a restaurant serving Western food and a pool area in a neatly trimmed garden. The main road in the center of Labuan Bajo, leading from the harbor and the fish market along the Chinese markets, the backpacker hostels, the local homestays and restaurants all serving the same menu of common Indonesian dishes, the three small dive shops and the houses of the fisher people who had been living in Labuan Bajo since it was founded as a small fisher village, was only partly paved and full of potholes, throwing up dust when one of the motorbike taxis or small, beat up buses drove by. In 2013, when I returned to Labuan Bajo for my third field study, the center of town had changed a lot. The road was smoothly paved and broadened. Traffic, which seemed to have more than doubled, ran smoothly along a range of new restaurants, shops, and dive centers. Several of the old houses had been torn down and replaced by modern structures, hosting the new tourism businesses. The main road of Labuan Bajo is about two kilometers long. The main part of town is built on a small hillside, overlooking the harbor area that is naturally protected by a range of tiny island only a few kilometers from the mainland. The town follows the main road for about two kilometers along the shoreline. The road is connected by a smaller ring road running parallel a little further up on the hillside, allowing traffic to circle around the center of town. The airport is located about one kilometer inland from the main part of town, separated by a small, tree-covered hill. Over the years, the town continuously expanded towards the south, between the old part of town and the airport, with settlements growing inland, eventually to merge with the nearby village of Battu Cermin, which has since become part of the larger inland residential areas of Labuan Bajo. Of the roughly 20,000–30,000 inhabitants of the town, the overall majority lives in these areas, while the overall majority of tourism businesses are clustered along the main road in the older part of town. 13 Figure 2 - Map of Labuan Bajo5 Public infrastructure had developed rapidly in the last decade or so. The government invested in the supply of electricity and water and in mobile phone and internet service and paved most roads in Labuan Bajo and Battu Cermin. The sector between Labuan Bajo and Ruteng of the main trans-Flores road was paved in the 1990’s, significantly reducing the time needed to travel cross country across the island. While it was difficult to reach Ruteng along the long 120 km route in one day in the 1980’s, it is now possible for tourists to pass Ruteng altogether and go directly to Bajawa, the capital of the next regency (Erb, 2005, p. 164). Air travel has also changed dramatically. The airstrip that opened in Labuan Bajo in 1983 soon became one of the major airports on Flores, connecting the island with the international airport in Den Pasar, Bali, in less than two hours. Until recently, air travel was erratic, with frequent flight cancellations and almost perpetual overbookings. After the the financial crisis ended in 1998, the number of flights reduced to as low as one per week. In recent years, the number of airlines and flights connecting Labuan Bajo to different large cities in Indonesia has increased manifold. In 2013, four airlines 5 http://www.florestourism.com/sites/default/files/1_Labuanbajo_A6_3May2011_revised-wm-.jpg 14 provided at least three flights per day 6 . Another previously more common way of travelling to and from Labuan Bajo is by boat. The PELNI ferries, large ships that connect islands of the Indonesia archipelago, stop in Labuan Bajo once every two weeks. Smaller tour boats, taking visitors from Bali or Lombok on weeklong tours around the islands of western Nusa Tengarra, often making stopovers on Komodo Island and in Labuan Bajo. They are another way for tourists to reach Flores (Erb, 2005, p. 164f). 2.3. How pro-poor is tourism growth in West Manggarai? Between 2006 and 2009, Swisscontact implemented a range of measures to promote pro-poor tourism growth. The project was funded by the Australian Government, who had previously asked Swisscontact assess how to best support rural development and income generation on Flores. A study of the economic development of Flores was conducted to identify opportunities for poverty reduction through economic development, and a concept pro-poor tourism development in the newly created district of West Manggarai was developed. The stated goal of the subsequent development project was “to improve the performance of tourism related enterprises in West Manggarai” in order to “improve peri-urban and rural income” (Swisscontact, 2009, p. 1f) The project fostered pro-poor tourism in three sets of measures. The first was to build an “enabling” business environment for local small and medium tourism enterprises. This mainly included working with the local government to create more businessfriendly regulations and public service delivery, such as developing guidelines and standards for issuing business permits, establishing mechanisms for public consultations and hearings, putting in place a regional investment plan to attract foreign direct investment, promoting the necessary legislature to direct public funds towards the improvement of roads, power and water supply, and the upgrading of the airstrip. The second set of measures concerned the improvement of the services provided by local tourism businesses, both in availability and in quality. For this, existing local hotels and restaurants received free business consultancy services to improve their services, products and facilities, skill trainings for tourism workers were While visiting Labuan Bajo in 2013, I attended the ceremony surrounding the arrival of the first airplane of “Sky”, the forth local airline to include Labuan Bajo on their list of destinations. 6 15 offered, in which in total over 2,000 people participated, and business associations were established to link up the local tourism businesses and strengthen their voice in political decision making. The third set of measures was focused on the promotion of West Manggarai as a tourism destination, in Bali and internationally. A website was created to promote tourist attractions and the tourism services on offer, promotional events were held, and local business were linked with larger tourism stakeholders from Bali (Swisscontact, 2009, p. 5ff) After the end of the project, Swisscontact reported a positive impact of the intervention. The number of tourist arriving by plane had increased and tourists on average stayed longer in West Manggarai and spent more money. The number of local small and medium tourism businesses had increased by 15 and the number of people employed in the tourism sector had increased from around 300 to around 500. More importantly, it was stated that the project gave the local economy the necessary impulses to herald a period of rapid economic growth that would benefit the poor in the years to come (Swisscontact, 2009, p. 15f). From 2009 to 2013, the project was followed by two further PPG projects; one was a follow-up intervention by Swisscontact and the other a separate, but related project by the Indonesian NGO Yayasan Komodo Kita (YKK). The follow-up by Swisscontact included further measures to promote West Manggarai as a tourism destination, but it also included measures to develop community-based tourism projects in the rural areas of Manggarai, helping rural communities to offer tours to local sites, accommodation or handicraft to tourists and promote local farmers as suppliers of agricultural produce for hotels and restaurants in Labuan Bajo. The goal of the project of YKK was primarily to enable two communities, Komodo village on Komodo Island and Perang village in the mountains of inland West Manggarai, to participate in tourism. This included the building of local infrastructure, water supply, sanitation, road access and public transportation, the provision of micro credits to establish tourism-related businesses, and knowledge and skill development, for example the provision of English courses or trainings to acquire the certificate of diving instructor. The goal was to foster eco- or community-based tourism. Emmy Halfild, the director of YKK explained. We want to “really empower the local people, to enable them to enter the market” (E. Halfild, interview, July 11, 2013). 16 When I returned to Labuan Bajo for my third field study in 2013, I wanted to get a sense of how the tourism business had developed in the four years after my first visit to Labuan Bajo. So I walked along the main road of Labuan Bajo together with my guide Arie Daru7. While we walked, I took pictures of the shops, restaurants, hotels and other tourism businesses and asked Arie to tell me what he knew about them8. As a longstanding member of the tourism community and former head of the tour guide association, he followed the development of tourism in Labuan Bajo since the 1990 and was familiar with most of the people who owned the businesses in the town. We started next to the harbor, where the road intersects with a side road leading to a small residential area to the north of the old town. For many tourists, this is the first place where they enter the town after disembarking from one of the tour or PELNI boats that connect Flores to Bali, Lombok, or Sumbawa. Figure 3 - Main street of Labuan Bajo Arie Daru, a local tour guide and tour operator, supported my research in many ways. His contributions are described in more detail in Chapter Five. 8 I recorded and transcribed the interview we did during the walk. See: A. Daru, interview, June 27, 2013. The description of the main road of Labuan Bajo is based on this interview and my observations during the walk. 7 17 On the street corner, where we started, a new dive center had been built. It was a round one story bamboo house with a wooden structure built on top of it, covered with signboards that advertised the dive tours on offer. Built by a group of young Europeans who leased the land from the Chinese owner of the nearby Gardena backpacker hotel, the structure was loosely based on the traditional Manggaraian style of bamboo houses. Next to it was a new Italian restaurant, also leased from the owner of the Gardena hostel by an Italian man. Until recently, the restaurant had been run by the staff of the Gardena serving Indonesian food, but unlike now, it wasn’t very successful back then, Arie told me. On the opposite side of the road was an ice cream shop recently opened by a Frenchman. The house belonged to a local from Labuan Bajo and used to be rented out to a Manggaraian man who ran a small tour operating business. His contract was cancelled because he was unable to match the rent that a foreigner was willing to pay. Next to the ice cream shop were two new tour operators, using both sides of a nondescript duplex brick building. Both of them were run by people from the island of Lombok that had recently opened branches of Lombok-based tour operators. They commonly offered day tours to the Komodo National Park with one of the many small diesel-powered fisher boats in the harbor that had been converted to tour boats. On the other side of the road, not far from the Italian restaurant, was the tour and travel office of Mrs. Gertrudis. She is a real local, Arie said. She grew up in one of the villages in the rural inland of West Manggarai. Her father was the elected leader of the village community and was able to pay for a high school education for Gertrudis, his second daughter. After working her way up through different jobs at restaurants in Labuan Bajo and at the National Park, the owner of a local restaurant helped her to get her small tour operation going. That was more than 10 years ago. Today, she is one of the few ethnic Manggarai and of the very few women owning a tourism business in Labuan Bajo. Opposite Gertrudis’ Tour and Travel are two dive shops side by side, Reefseekers and Dive Komodo. One is owned by an English couple, the other by an Australian man. Both have their own dive boats and sell one- to several-day dive trips to Western tourists. Both houses—while built with dark wooden walls and a tin roof, a building style that can be seen all over Indonesia—stand out for their tidy and well-organized appearance. The windows are clean and the signboards are printed in high quality and 18 are neatly aligned. The pavement in front of the shops lacks the usual cracks and pot holes, and it looks like it had been just swept. Arie and I continued walking along the road for about another kilometer until the road turned slightly towards the inland, and the density of tourism businesses became much lower here. What we had discovered was that the overall majority of tourism businesses were owned by outsiders—either they belonged to individuals who moved to Labuan Bajo from outside of Flores, or they were a part of larger chains of tourism businesses that had their headquarters outside of Flores. Apart from Gertrudis’ office, we did not find any businesses that were owned by an ethnic Manggarai or Buginese. The tourism pie is quite large, but only a very small part of it goes to the local people, Ferry Samosir, the project manager of the Swiss NGO told me. According to a survey he conducted, the average length of stay in Labuan Bajo and the rest of Manggarai is five days, during which people spend an average of 100,000 rupees per day. Unfortunately, the poor do not have much access to this pie, Ferry said, “Because they have low skill, low learning. But in the future this must change, because otherwise, in my personal opinion, we are creating a conflict of jealousy and social conflict. This is not good for tourism.” In West Manggarai, he said, less than 20% of tourism businesses are owned by locals, and even fewer by ethnic Manggarai. The same goes for the job market: “There is no regulation, for example, in the hotel sector. Hotels are built in public spaces. There is no regulation that hotels should employ 40% or so local people. They take staff from Bali because they are more qualified” (F. Samosir, interview, June 19, 2013). Getting people in the rural areas of West Manggarai more involved in tourism is very difficult, Ferry explained. “How to involve the poor people in the tourism is not easy. They do not understand about tourism. They have a good attitude towards receiving visitors, but when we assess what poor people get from tourism, it’s almost nothing. [...] We have a program to link farmers to the tourism as suppliers of vegetables and so on. We are trying this since 2011, but it is difficult to change the mindset of the farmers because they produce crops which are not requested by the tourism market. They live in a climate [in the mountains] which is suitable for the demanded produce, like pepper or broccoli, but because there is no demand by local people, they don't even think about these produces. We try to encourage a group of 5–10 farmers in Ruteng and since 2011 they are constantly supplying 4–6 hotels and restaurants here, 19 including the cruise ships. We are trying to make this project bigger, but it’s not easy, because mostly the famers here want to see concrete evidence first, before they try. We try to encourage them but they are only willing to try when they see concrete evidence that it works” (F. Samosir, interview, June 19, 2013). The goal of PPG is to create opportunities for participation of the poor. If opportunities exist in Labuan Bajo, I asked myself after the walk along the main road and my interview with Ferry, and there is ample support available by the government, NGOs, and banks in terms of resources and technical support, why are so few locals succeeding in the growing economic sector? 20 3. Pro-poor growth in theory and practice Pro-poor growth is about enabling a pace and pattern of growth that enhances the ability of poor women and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth (OECD, 2007). 3.1. Growth is good for the poor The interaction between growth and poverty has been part of academic and policy debates for many decades. From the 1950’s to the 1970’s, academic discourse focused on the trade-offs between growth and income distribution (Stuart, 2011, p. 6). The dominant view was that economic growth in its early stages is inevitably associated with deteriorating income distribution. The rich get richer, while the incomes of the poor stagnate. Eventually, the benefits spread to all. This view was given theoretical support by Kuznets curve, which showed the statistical association between the early stages of growth and rising inequality in developing countries. Over time, inequality decreases as labor becomes more concentrated in industry (UNDP, 1996, p. 46). In the 1970’s, the focus was on identifying measures to redistribute wealth to reduce poverty without impeding growth. The 1980’s brought a shift in thinking about growth and income equality. The so-called Washington Consensus, a set of policies promoted by international financial institutions like the IMF or the World Bank, argued that the benefits of growth, which could be achieved primarily through privatization, liberalization and stabilization, would eventually “trickle down” to all, without the need for any complementary policies (Stuart, 2011, p. 6). The world economy grew considerably during the course of the 1990’s, and a renewed debate among policymakers over the extent to which the poor benefited from this growth started at the beginning of the new millennium. At the one end of the debate, Dollar and Kraay of the World Bank point out, were “those who argue that the potential benefits of economic growth for the poor are undermined or even offset entirely by sharp increases in inequality that accompany growth”. At the other end were those who argued that “liberal economic policies such as monetary and fiscal 21 stability and open markets raise incomes of the poor and everyone else in society proportionately” (Dollar & Kraay, 2002, p. 195). In their seminal paper, the authors compared the data on economic growth rates and income levels of the poor in 137 countries over the course of the last four decades of the twentieth century. They defined the poor as “those in the bottom fifth of the income distribution of a country” (2002, p. 196). What they found was a strong positive relationship between the variables of growth and income, and that this was true for the incomes of all income quintiles. This indicated that “on average the incomes of the poor rise equiproportionately with average incomes” (Dollar & Kraay, 2002, p. 196). In contrast to earlier findings from the 1950’s and 1960’s, they showed that there is a positive relationship between growth and poverty reduction in terms of the increase of incomes of the poor and that growth-enhancing policies therefore contribute to the reduction of income poverty. At the same time they argued that in contrast to the economic thinking of the 1980’s, there will be some policy measures that ensure that the poor do not lose income share at any stage of the growth process. “Our evidence,” they write, “does not suggest a ‘trickle-down’ process or sequencing in which the rich get richer first and eventually benefits trickle down to the poor. The evidence, to the contrary, is that private property rights, stability, and openness contemporaneously create a good environment for poor households […] to increase their production and income” (Dollar & Kraay, 2002, p. 219). Their research laid the groundwork for further research on the relationship between growth and poverty reduction and a quest to find the policy measures that would make the growth process beneficial for the poor. As a result, the debate on “pro-poor growth” (PPG) was launched. A large-scale study by the World Bank was then conducted together with a number of governmental development agencies. It looked at the economic performance of 14 developing countries from 1990 to 2000 and gave further credibility to the work of Dollar and Kraay, confirming that income poverty in these countries only fell when there was economic growth and that the higher the growth rates were, the higher was the decline of income poverty (World Bank et al., 2005). The study, which ran under the title “Operationalizing Pro-poor Growth,” was initiated in 2003 by the French Agency for Development (AFD), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the British Department for 22 International Development (DFID), and the World Bank. Its goal was to explore “the channels for the poor to participate in growth and the country context and initial conditions affecting the efficiency of growth in reducing poverty” (World Bank et al., 2005, p. iii). The data used for the study, was based on two household surveys from each of the 14 countries – one from 1990 and one from the early 2000’s – which offered “comparable methodologies, consumption aggregates and poverty lines” (World Bank et al., 2005, p. iii). In particular, the study focused on the effect of government policies on the ability of the poor to participate in growth and how growth contributed to their incomes. These policies included measures from four broad policy areas, including the macro-economic framework and the composition of growth, agriculture and nonfarm incomes, labor markets and employment and public expenditure policies. In addition to these four, the study looked at policies related to gender and institutions, access to financial markets and health services, as well as participation in political processes and empowerment (World Bank et al., 2005, p. iii). The study confirmed that the pace of overall economic growth is the main factor determining the rate of poverty reduction. All the country studies showed a strong link between economic growth and the reduction of income poverty in absolute numbers. In the 11 countries that experienced significant growth during the period, poverty fell. It rose in the three countries that saw little or no growth. On average, an increase in GDP of 1% per capita reduced poverty by 1.7%. The reduction in poverty was particularly spectacular in the case of Vietnam, where poverty fell by 7.8% per year between 1993 and 2002, in effect halving the poverty rate from 58% to 29%. A successful PPG strategy, it was concluded, should therefore focus first and foremost on measures to achieve sustained and rapid economic growth (World Bank et al., 2005, p. 2). Cord, Lopez, and Page (2004), using the same data as Dollar and Kraay, complemented by a second set of data from 42 countries, showed that while growth does not always correlate with the same levels of poverty reduction, overall growth is “both good for the poor and necessary for sustained poverty reduction” (p. 19). In their review of literature on PPG and poverty reduction in developing countries, Bigsten, Levin, and Shimeles (2004) conclude that countries which “have been successful in terms of economic growth are also very likely to have been successful in reducing poverty” (p. 54). 23 The basic argument that growth is good for the poor at every stage of economic development has since become widely recognized in economic theory and in development policy. In a paper for a conference on foreign aid at the IMF, Kraay (2006) concluded that there is “a basic point that should not be too controversial: sustained poverty reduction is impossible without sustained growth” (p. 1). 3.2. Growth and inequality One of the debates in PPG theory revolves around the question under which circumstances growth can be considered to be pro-poor. Some argue for an “absolute” definition, where all growth that improves the incomes of the poor is considered “propoor.” Others argue for a “relative” approach to PPG where growth is considered “propoor” only when it disproportionally increases the incomes of the poor, compared to the income of the rest of the population (Anand et al., 2010; Grimm et al., 2007; World Bank et al., 2005). One of the foremost advocates of a definition in absolute terms is Martin Ravallion, head of research of the World Bank. According to Ravallion (2004), a definition in absolute terms means very simply that “pro-poor growth is growth that reduces poverty” (p. 2). A definition in relative terms, he argues, would mean that a period of overall economic growth that is accompanied with rising inequality would not be determined pro-poor, even though incomes of the poor might increase significantly. “Similarly,” he writes, “a recession will be deemed pro-poor if poor people lose proportionately less than others, even though they are in fact worse off” (p. 2). A definition in absolute terms avoids this problem by focusing on what actually happens to the income of people in poverty. On this ground, Ravallion opposes the “relative” measurement of poverty, common in most European countries, where the national poverty line is relative to the average income earned in an economy and argues instead for an absolute poverty measurement, where the poverty line is based on a fixed purchasing power (Ravallion, 2004, p. 3). According to the World Bank et al. (2005, p. 19), an absolute definition is preferable for pro-poor economic policy. When based on an absolute view of the pro-poorness of growth, policies tends to focus on accelerating the rate of income growth of the poor and thus the rate of poverty reduction. An absolute definition is therefore more consistent with the international community’s commitment to the first MDG of 24 halving the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day between 1990 and 2015. While the focus on “ensuring that poor people benefit disproportionately from growth” is intuitively appealing, “it could actually result in a lower rate of poverty reduction” (p. 17). Growth that is pro-poor in relative terms can lead to suboptimal outcomes for both poor and non poor households, because under a relative definition, growth would be considered more pro-poor in a scenario where the household income of the poor grew by 3%, while the average household incomes grew by 2%, rather than in a scenario where the incomes of the poor grew by 4%, while overall growth was at 6%. While poor households are favored in the first scenario, they are actually better off in the second (World Bank et al., 2005, p. 19). In one of the country cases of the study, that of Vietnam, the growth rates during the 1990’s were the highest of the total sample, which resulted in the largest reduction of absolute poverty but also the largest increase in inequality (World Bank, 2005, p. 25). With an absolute definition, the pro-poorness of Vietnam’s growth would therefore rightly be considered the highest among the countries studied. Other authors such as Klasen (2008), White and Anderson (2001), and Kakwani and Pernia (2000), argue that economic growth should be considered pro-poor only if it disproportionately benefits the poor and the income gap between the poor and the rest of the population decreases. “Arguing that any income growth of the poor is propoor,” Klasen (2008) writes, “even if it was much lower than average income growth (and thus distribution worsened) seems to hark back to old notions of ‘trickling down’” (p. 421). Taking the absolute definition to the extreme illustrates this weakness. If in a given year, the incomes of the poor grow by 1% while those of the non poor by 10%, “hardly any of the fruits of growth have trickled down to the poor” (Klasen, 2008, p. 421). For Klasen and others, there are two main arguments in favor of a definition in relative terms. One concerns the effect of inequality on the rate of growth in general and on the rate at which growth translates into income poverty reduction in particular. The second argument concerns the question whether income distribution is relevant for poor people’s lives, or in other words, whether inequality in itself has negative consequences for the development of a society that go beyond its relationship to growth (Klasen, 2008, pp. 421f; Stuart, 2011, pp. 10f). 25 Let’s first look at the question if inequality hampers growth. It is often argued that measures aimed at reducing poverty through income redistribution end up reducing economic efficiency and thus the rate of growth, thereby reducing the rate of reduction of poverty in absolute terms (Galston & Hoffenberg, 2010, p. 3). Some even argue that rising inequality is necessary for higher growth rates. Studies by Barro (2000) or Forbes (2000), for example, suggest that inequality enhances growth by providing the right incentives for growth-promoting sectors and individuals and by increasing savings due to a higher savings propensity of the rich (Klasen, 2008, p. 422). A study by Besley and Cord (2007) predicts that inequality is likely to be growth-enhancing because it increases the ability of the rich to invest and because an unequal wage structure provides the incentives for outstanding achievement (Stuart, 2011, p. 12). At the same time, there are studies that show the opposite—that lower inequality promotes rather than hinders economic growth. Deininger and Squire (1998) and Klasen (2004), for example, show that lower inequality can mean a lower chance of capital and insurance market failures and higher political and social stability, which in turn lead to higher economic growth. Deininger and Squire (1998), as well as Alesina and Rodrik (1994), also show that in particular in the initial stages of growth in developing countries, lower levels of inequality are associated with higher subsequent growth. Klasen (2008) concludes that “the evidence for potential trade-offs between growth and inequality (in both causal directions) is weak,” and that this would “support a relative definition of pro-poor growth,” since the benefits of growth could be redistributed to the poor without compromising overall growth (pp. 432f). For Stuart (2011), there is a consensus among academics that the “extremes of income inequality are bad for growth, as are other aspects of inequality, such as inequality of education” (p. 10). She quotes several studies that point to this conclusion. Watkins (1998), for example, shows that more equitable income distribution leads to an overall increase of the levels of saving and investment, and this promotes growth. Kanbur and Spence (2010) show that while it is less clear if income inequality inhibits growth, there is stronger evidence that inequality in a broader sense, such as gender inequality, negatively affects growth rates. Conversely, Buvinic et al. (2010) show that measures to address gender inequality can help promote economic growth by increasing the participation of women in the labor market. A paper by Milo Vandemoortele (2010) 26 suggests that rising inequality decreases aggregate demand and thus hampers growth (Stuart, 2011, p. 10f). The second aspect of the relationship between inequality and growth is the question whether growth translates into higher income poverty reduction when inequality is lower. The OECD (2007) states that “Inequality of assets and opportunity hinders the ability of poor people to participate in and contribute to growth,” and “High and rising levels of income inequality lower the poverty reduction impact of a given rate of growth” (p. 12). According to Stuart (2011, p. 10f), current research suggest that this is in fact the case. Draper et al. (2010), for example, show that poverty reduction in East Asia as in sub-Saharan Africa is twice as responsive to economic growth, as structural inequalities in Africa hinder the poor from benefiting from growth. A study by Naschold (2009) shows that in countries with high inequality, a growth rate that is three times higher is necessary to reduce absolute poverty by the same amount as it would be in low-inequality countries. While Naschold shows that a relatively small reduction in inequality can have a significant effect on the reduction of absolute poverty, a study by Melamed (2010) shows that in the example of Uganda, where economic growth stood at 2.5% per year between 2000 and 2003, absolute poverty actually increased by 3.8% because of worsening inequality. Stuart (2011) concludes that “by ignoring the issue of equality, donors and poor country governments have failed to maximize the benefits of that growth” (p. 1). Battling inequality, not only of income but also of “assets, both financial and human, such as education and good health” and reducing inequalities based on gender, origins, or belief is central in ensuring that poor people benefit from the economic progress taking place in their countries (Stuart, 2011, p. 4). The second main argument for taking a relative view on PPG is that the reduction of inequality in itself should be one of the main goals of any development policy. Stuart (2011), for example, argues that inequality undermines political legitimacy and political stability. Inequalities of political power often go hand in hand with inequalities of income, and a weak political voice can lead to further disadvantages for poor people. When an outsized voice of the rich in the political process leads to policies that benefit a few at the expense of the majority, and when “political institutions are seen as perpetuating unjust inequalities or advancing the interests of elites, democracy and stability can be undermined” (p. 11). A paper by Stewart (2010) 27 of the Center for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity at the University of Oxford shows that inequalities increase the risk of violent conflict. A study by Kanbur and Spence (2010) states that persistent inequality in its various dimensions leads to political and social instability or very harsh repression (Stuart, 2011, p. 11). In the end, an equal participation of the poor in the political process might turn out to be a prerequisite for pro-poor economic policy. “For pro-poor growth policies to emerge,” the OECD (2007) states, “the poor need to be informed and empowered to participate in a policy-making process that is accountable to their interests” (p. 13). Inequality also had negative effects on other aspects of human welfare. A study by Jack & Lewis (2009) for example shows that “in a country with a highly unequal income distribution, the population at large is likely to be less healthy than would be predicted for countries with the same average income” (Stuart, 2011, p. 12). A book by the two epidemiologists Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) argues that inequality within a society correlates with a range of ills, such as obesity, large prison populations, or high teenage pregnancy rates, and that inequality in the end is bad for everyone, not just the poor (Stuart, 2011, p. 9f). And lastly, it also had to be argued that reducing inequality is simply a matter of social justice. According to the UNDP, this is one of the reasons why it matters under which circumstances growth is considered pro-poor. “In the absolute definition,” the UNDP (2005) states, “[…] any growth that increases the income of the poor can be deemed pro-poor. It is difficult to square this with basic ideas of social justice. If everybody in Brazil shared in increments to growth on the current distribution pattern, the richest 20% would receive 85 cents of every $1. The poorest 20% would receive 3 cents. Everybody—including the poor—is better off, so growth might be deemed pro-poor. But if more weight is attached to the well-being of poor people, that distribution pattern is not consistent with basic principles of fairness and social justice” (p. 65). Klasen (2008) argues that while this aspect of the PPG definition “is ultimately a normative question that cannot be settled here, a range of welfare theories as well as increasing evidence from the experimental and subjective well-being literature suggest that inequality per se affects welfare, regardless of its impact on absolute income levels of the poor” (p. 422). For Stuart (2011), inequality in itself is “morally repugnant”, and there is a limit to what level of inequality can be tolerated. She writes, 28 “Surveys show strong opinions in many countries that the gap between rich and poor is too large, thus indicating an underlying perception of social justice. This means putting poor people first: more weight should be given to improvements in the well-being of poor and disadvantaged groups than to the rich and privileged” (p. 11). A PPG policy that disproportionally benefits poor men and women is not only likely to strengthen growth and increase its effect on the reduction of poverty, but it also battles the ills of inequality itself. For any NGO that is committed to improve the lives of the poorest men and women, it cannot suffice if its policies provide indiscriminate, allaround benefits. A policy that can rightfully claim to be pro-poor, therefore, has to benefit the poor disproportionally. In my research, in Labuan Bajo and in the reflection of my findings with regard to the pro-poor theory and policy, I therefore take a relative definition of PPG. Growth is pro-poor when it disproportionally benefits the poor. 3.3. Do pro-poor growth policies work? Another debate within PPG literature concerns the link between PPG policies and the level of poverty reduction that results from growth. In their study of the relationship between growth and poverty reduction, Dollar and Kraay (2002) also looked at whether certain economic and social policies that raise the average incomes of the poor have a systematic effect on the share of income, resulting from growth, of the bottom quintile. These policies included the “openness to international trade, macroeconomic stability, moderate size of government, financial development, and strong property rights and rule of law” (p. 196). Not much evidence was found regarding whether these policies have any effect on the share of growthinduced income increases that went to the poor. Only smaller government size and stabilization from high inflation seemed to disproportionately benefit the poor. Then, the researchers considered policy interventions that are more directly linked to improving the incomes of the poor. These included primary educational attainment, public spending on health and education, labor productivity in agriculture relative to the rest of the economy, and formal democratic institutions (p. 198). Here, they concluded that “While it is likely that these factors are important in bettering the lot of poor people in some countries and under some circumstances,” they were unable to “uncover any evidence that they systematically raise the share if income of the poorest” (p. 198). 29 A study by Surjith Bhalla (2002) based on economic data from two decades concludes that economic growth and poverty reduction always go hand in hand and that growth is good for the poor per se. His argument begins with challenging the view that “the globalization period witnessed higher growth and a smaller decline in poverty” than previous periods. Using his own data, he states that “poverty not only declined from 1985 to 2000 but did so at a faster pace than at any time in world history” (p. 2). Through the use of economic models, which he adapts according to different parameters and applies to cross-country data rather than in-country data, he concludes that the level of poverty reduction that can be attributed to growth was much higher than previously thought. As long as productivity growth in poor nations is higher than growth in industrialized economies, the beneficiaries of the according convergence of economies are poor nations and the poor people that live in them (p. 189). A comparison of the consumption growth of poor people with the consumption growth of non poor people furthermore shows that the poor have enjoyed much higher growth than the non poor. “Little additional evidence is needed,” Bhalla concludes, “to suggest that globalization has been manifestly pro-poor” (p. 206). Finally, he goes as far as to attribute poverty reduction to growth alone, stating that “the entire amount of poverty reduction that has been observed can be accounted for by growth” (p. 163) and that “growth has been more than sufficient to reduce poverty” (p. 206). While Bhalla is probably right when it comes to looking at the aggregate numbers of poor countries and poor people of the world, there is also evidence that the equation between growth and poverty reduction might not always hold true for every part of a country, every time period or every group of society, and that the right policies can increase the effect of the benefits of growth for the poor and help spread them more equally among the poor (World Bank et al., 2005, p. 74). In a study of in-country data from a range of developing countries, Cord, Lopez, and Page (2004) show that the effect of growth on the rate of poverty reduction differs greatly across regions and countries (p. 15). In their analysis of cross- and in-country data, Cord et al. use two databases, one based on the 133 countries that Dollar and Kraay (2002) used for their analysis and a second one based on observations of absolute poverty per head in 42 countries (p. 22). Using an absolute definition of PPG, by which growth is pro-poor if it increased the incomes of the poor in absolute terms, Cord et al. (2004) show that in contrast to the findings of Bhalla, there were several 30 occurrences where sustained economic growth of 10 years or more did not increase the incomes of the poor (p. 34). Based on their results, they conclude that “economic growth and growth-oriented policies, while necessary for sustained poverty reduction, do not guarantee that it will occur at the country level. For ‘pro-poor growth’ to take place, policies must be both pro-growth and pro-poor” (p. 15). The “operationalizing pro-poor growth program” of the World Bank (2005) comes to the same conclusion: “The 14 country cases underscore the importance of having policies that promote strong and sustained growth at the core of a PPG strategy. But they also reveal the importance of putting into place policies to enhance the capacity of poor households to participate in growth (p. 74). Based on these findings, the OECD (2007), in its comprehensive study of the current research and policy on pro-poor growth, states that “developing countries with similar rates of economic growth have experienced quite different levels of economic poverty reduction, due to initial conditions” and that the pro-poorness of growth depends on ”whether growth occurs in areas and sectors where the poor live and are economically active,” and policies are therefore needed to “create the conditions and remove the obstacles to the participation of the poor in the growth process” (p. 12). “Unlike past approaches that sought to focus initially on the rate of growth with the hope of addressing its pattern and the distribution of its benefits later,” the OECD (2007) argues, “it has become clear that the two need to be addressed together. Policies that impact on pace also address pattern and vice versa and so neither should be approached in isolation” (p. 22). 3.4. Finding the right policies Within the development community, there are two main schools of thought when it comes to promoting growth for development and poverty reduction (DCED, 2008, p. 50ff). One school of thought—the macro-oriented—argues that support for economic growth is best provided by creating the conditions for economic actors to thrive. These include a stable macro-economic environment, the rule of law, and business friendly regulations or a prudent fiscal regime, both on the national and on the local level. Policy interventions are therefore aimed at improving the macro-economic framework and are directed towards improving the economy as a whole. 31 The other school of thought—the more “micro-oriented”—claims that while setting the macro-economic frame is necessary, it is not sufficient, and direct interventions into the market are needed, for example, to support emerging industries and strengthen individual businesses. Direct interventions can take a range of different forms, some of which are aimed at the whole market and while the others target individual groups, businesses, or individuals. The “pro-poor growth approach” with its origins in macro-economic theory is more aligned with the macro-oriented school of thought, but in the practice of development actors who apply the approach (e.g. World Bank et al., 2005; SIDA, 2009; DEZA, 2004), it includes both policies to tilt the macro-economic framework towards benefitting the poor and direct interventions to enable their participation in growth. In my review of the literature on pro-poor growth as an approach to poverty alleviation, I did not find a conclusive list of pro-poor growth policies that are universally recognized in the development community. I will instead give an overview over the policies that some well-established and widely recognized development policymakers recommend for pro-poor growth. The World Bank et al. (2005, p. 5ff), for example, lists a range of policies that were found, in the comparison of country cases, to improve the ability of poor people to participate in growth. It differentiates between measures for rural and urban areas of a country. In rural areas, measures include improving market access, strengthening property rights, broadening government incentives for farming, broadening the availability of technology, and helping poorer and smaller producers deal with risk. In urban areas, where non agricultural jobs are created in times of economic growth, a different set of policies is suggested, including improving the investment climate, expanding access to secondary education and in particular girls’ education, regulating the labor market, and providing access to infrastructure. These factors that “allow poor households to take advantage of nonagricultural jobs in rural areas and job opportunities in urban areas” are, according to the World Bank (2005), crucial for a successful pro-poor growth strategy (p. 7). The OECD (2007, p. 57) provides extensive guidance for international donors on the policy areas that good pro-poor growth promotion should focus on: Enabling the private sector, promoting the agricultural sector and improving infrastructure. The privates sector, as “the major contributor to economic growth and employment 32 creation” is the key to pro-poor growth. Here is where the opportunities for the poor to participate in growth are created, be it through informal or formal employment or through entrepreneurship. For the private sector to deliver pro-poor growth, “five interlinked and mutually reinforcing factors need to be in place,” which include providing opportunities for investment and entrepreneurial activity, increasing productivity through competition and innovation, harnessing international economic linkages, improving market access for the poor, and reducing risk and vulnerability for private sector activity. The agricultural sector is important for PPG because in most developing countries, it still provides the livelihood for a large number of people. It thus has a significant impact on poverty reduction, not only by providing income to the rural poor but also through lowering food prices or stimulating growth in the non farm economy. The rural economies in developing countries vary tremendously, ranging from chronically poor rural areas with almost no farming activity to areas where large-scale agricultural production for international markets is taking place. Depending on the context, other interventions have to be found to increase productivity, enhance market opportunities, diversify livelihoods, and reduce risk and vulnerability of the rural poor (OECD, 2007, p. 135ff). The third area is infrastructure, which, according to the OECD (2007, p. 217), “is crucial to economic and social development that promotes pro-poor growth.” Although, there again is a wide range of measures to improve infrastructure, the OECD (2007) list those measures which it considers offering “a consensus framework for meeting infrastructure challenges.” They are, establishing an infrastructureinvestment framework as the basis for coordinated donor support, enhancing infrastructure’s impact on poor people, improving the management of infrastructure investment, and increasing infrastructure financing and using all financial resources efficiently” (p. 217). An important cross-cutting topic, which the OECD (2007) regards as a key element of PPG policy is the empowerment of the poor within the political process and in the design of PPG policies. “Empowering the poor, is essential for bringing about the policies and investments needed to promote pro-poor growth and address the multiple dimensions of poverty,” the OECD writes. “To achieve this, the state and its policy making processes need to be open, transparent and accountable to the interests of the 33 poor. Policies and resources need to help expand the economic activities of the poor” (p. 11). The PPG policy papers of the governmental donor agencies of Switzerland and Sweden, the Swiss Development Agency (DEZA, 2004) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA, 2009) respectively, and the paper by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI, 2008), a prominent development think tank, all recommended similar policies to enhance the pro-poorness of growth. These policies included enabling access to credit and insurance, enabling access to resources and markets, improving infrastructure, involving the poor in the political process, education and skill training, health care and basic social services, and providing good governance and macroeconomic stability. Overall, there are some aspects that all approaches to PPG have in common. First, they combine policies aimed at the macro-economic framework with policies that are directly targeted at the economic actors participating in growth. Second, unlike the development policies of the 1980’s, these approaches are less focused on promoting growth and more on enabling the poor to participate in it and benefit from it. Third, PPG development policy interventions are less focused on the thriving of private sector companies than on creating opportunities for individuals to engage in economic activity as entrepreneurs or as employees. “All growth is a result of individuals’ economic activities,” and PPG measures should “place poor people’s role as economic actors and productive employment possibilities in focus,” SIDA (2009, p. 9), for example, writes. Fourth, PPG should be more concerned with removing the obstacles that hinder the participation of the poor in growth than directly promoting them to participate. The OECD (2007, p. 12) for example states that “policies need to create the conditions and remove the obstacles to the participation of the poor in the growth process.” PPG is about removing obstacles and creating opportunities. It is up to poor men and women themselves to fulfill their economic potential. 3.5. Pro-poor tourism Some features of tourism development as a PPG measure differ from other PPG measures because of the nature of the tourism industry. These features are relevant in order to draw the right conclusions from the case study of Labuan Bajo. 34 The British Department for International Development (DFID, 1999, p. 6) defines propoor tourism in very general terms as “tourism that generates net benefits to the poor.” In line with our narrower definition of PPG, we can say that tourism is considered to be pro-poor if poor men and women can disproportionally participate in it and benefit from it. Proponents of tourism development generally assume it to have good pro-poor credentials. Ashley, Goodwin, and Roe (2001, p. 2) for example claim that in remote areas, the poverty impact of pro-poor tourism can be great even if tourism itself is limited. Gerosa (2003) claims that “from the analysis of the tourism industry and through the evidence shown by case studies conducted by various institutions in the last few years, it seems clear that tourism has great potentialities for poverty reduction purposes” (p. 2). Tourism has found its way into international development policy. At the summit to review the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in New York in 2005, the World Tourism Organization, together with several UN organizations, NGOs, and private sector enterprises, called for tourism to be included in national development plans to achieve the MDGs (Ashley & Mitchells, 2005, p. 1). Some particularities about the tourism sector are relevant for pro-poor growth. According to DFID (1999, p. 11f), the unique characteristics of tourism include the following: First, what is special about tourism is that it “is consumed at the point of production.”? In other words, it brings the consumer and the tourist to the producers— the poor men and women living and working at the location visited. A tourist who stays at a hotel is also available as a customer to the local community for additional business (Goodwin, 2008, p. 60). Second, while most other industries depend primarily on some form of specialized financial, productive, and human capital, tourism depends more on natural and cultural capital, which are assets that many of the poor have. Third, tourism is more labor-intensive than other sectors. DFID (1999, p. 12) states that “data from six countries with satellite tourism accounts does indicate that it is more labor intensive than non agricultural activities, particularly manufacturing, although less labor intensive than agriculture.” Fourth, there is a “greater uptake of jobs by women” although the percentage of female employment Human Development Index “varies enormously by country, ranging from over 60 per cent such as in Bolivia to under 10 per cent in some Muslim countries.” Fifth, tourism 35 is more diverse than other industries, and thus there is an increased scope for wide participation (DFID, 1999, p. 12). According to Gerosa (2003), “Tourism has lower barriers to entry than other sector because it includes a range of enterprises from the micro to the multi-national and provides plenty opportunities for linkages in the local economy” (p. 4). It is usually a liberalized sector with few formal entry barriers, and it provides opportunities for employment and entrepreneurial activity, which require less formal education or training than other sectors (p. 11f). Tourism is also more resilient than other sectors. It is non cyclical, it has a catalytic effect on the rest of the economy, and it recovers more rapidly from shocks (p. 2, p. 13). Also, since tourism is built on natural and cultural assets that are consumed onsite, it is one of the non agricultural sectors which can most easily reach the poor in rural areas (p. 2). Ashley, Goodwin, and Roe (2001, p. 4) argue that tourism has five strengths from a poverty-reduction perspective. First, it is easier to steer tourism towards the poor than other sectors. This can be achieved through measures such as diversification into culturally-based products or the redistribution of land assets. Second, it is possible to increase demand within tourism for goods and services that can easily be provided by the poor. Third, it can provide complementary income sources for the poor, particularly in remote areas, and thus contribute to the diversification of livelihoods. Fourth, tourism is more likely to drive change in local policies and processes. Fifth, it has a long tradition of “sustainable tourism” or “eco-tourism,” which can be harnessed. The promotion of pro-poor tourism, just like the promotion of PPG, in general focuses on the participation of the poor. DFID (1999) writes that “Strategies for pro-poor tourism focus specifically on unlocking opportunities for the poor within tourism, rather than expanding the overall size of the sector (‘tilting’ not expanding the cake). They can be applied within any segment of tourism. They are distinguished from – but usually need to be combined with – general tourism development strategies which aim to develop the sector as a whole” (p. 6). Goodwin (2008, p. 61f) lists a range of key principles for the promotion of pro-poor tourism, of which here I want to list only those particular to tourism. While location matters, pro-poor tourism can work even in remote areas where no tourism activity has previously taken place and where it can make a significant difference to local livelihoods. Local tourism promotion has to be incorporated into broader tourism 36 development strategies to be successful on a larger scale. Pro-poor tourism works best for the poorest, were the products and services they provide to tourists are based on their existing livelihoods, for example, a basket maker who develops an additional product to sell to tourists or a farmer who grows some vegetables for the local hotel or guest house. And finally, the cultural and natural heritage of the poor is one of products offered in the tourism market. Pro-poor tourism strategies have to ensure that the returns go to the “owners” of the heritage. 37 4. The non-income dimensions of poverty I always think money is not important for our own life. If […] I can make myself to become happy, have peace, it’s enough (Juventus Tongkang, Tour Operator). In PPG literature, some authors have criticized that much of PPG research is exclusively focused on the monetary dimension of poverty. Grimm and Klasen (2007, p. 15), for example, when drawing some lessons learned from their analytical study of PPG, state that “much of the work could have been further enriched if poverty had not been uniquely defined in the income dimension. Klasen (2008, p. 1) argues that the non income dimensions of poverty should be considered in measuring the propoorness of growth, not only for their intrinsic value as development goals, but also because they contribute to the reduction of income poverty. Grosse (2010) argues that “current concepts and measurements of pro-poor growth are entirely focused on the income dimension of wellbeing, which neglects the multidimensionality of poverty and wellbeing. There are no corresponding measures for tracking progress on non income dimensions of poverty” (p. 8). Bérenger and Bressons (2012) state that while there is abundant literature on the multiple dimensions of poverty, in economic research, “surprisingly, very few attempts have been carried out in order to include the additional information associated with other dimensions of well-being alongside the monetary one within the assessment of the ‘pro-poor’ nature of growth” (p. 456). The UNDP (1996, p. 56) suggests that to evaluate the quality of economic growth, all dimensions of human development should be used. “Human development is the end— economic growth a means,” the UNDP argues and goes on to specify that growth benefits the poor when it “generates full employment and security of livelihoods, fosters people’s freedom and empowerment, distributes benefits equitably, promotes social cohesion and cooperation” and “safeguards future human development.” The OECD (2007) argues that “reducing economic poverty through pro-poor growth should contribute to progress on the human dimension of poverty” (p. 32). Since higher incomes do not automatically lead to higher welfare, policies to promote 38 growth should always go hand in hand with policies to tackle the multiple dimensions of poverty (OECD, 2007, p. 13). To understand how to make growth pro-poor, the non income dimensions of poverty have to be taken into account both as an end for development—the outcome that any PPG policy ultimately wants to achieve—and as a means for poor men and women to participate in growth. The debate about the nature of poverty underlies the debates within PPG theory. 4.1. The conflicting paradigms of poverty While it might seem obvious that there are certain basic necessities in life, without which someone would definitely be considered poor, like food, water or shelter, it is difficult to define conclusively the conditions that differentiate between a life of poverty and a life without poverty. Academic debates about poverty have been ongoing for most of the twentieth century without resulting in a conclusive and unanimously recognized definition of poverty. Instead, a range of different approaches have evolved in economic and sociological literature (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 34). In my search for the non income dimensions of poverty, I took the monetary definition of poverty as a baseline, which is the most widely recognized, not only in PPG literature, but also in the development community as a whole (Hulme & McKay, 2006, p. 3; Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 2) and then started to review the literature on poverty very broadly—not restricted to any academic field or discipline—to find alternative conceptual approaches to poverty, which differed from the monetary approach. I tabulated and compared all poverty approaches I found in literature, and from this emerged six conflicting paradigms along which the approaches differed9. These were as follows: The conflicting paradigms gradually evolved through a process of continuous reading, tabulating, comparing and adapting the paradigms until a certain level of saturation was reached and the six paradigms had been repeatedly confirmed. Other authors have also identified the paradigms along which poverty approaches differ, in particular Ruggeri Laderchi (2006) and Hulme (2010). These have been helpful in guiding my review of poverty literature. The conflicting paradigms I identified partially overlap with the paradigms identified by these authors. 9 39 1) The scope of poverty. Is poverty limited to a lack of material means measured in monetary terms or does it include the social, cultural, political, and emotional aspects of well-being? 2) The contextuality of poverty. Is poverty a universal condition that is measurable and comparable across countries and at different times or can poverty only be understood within a particular geographical, social, and historical context? 3) The relationality of poverty. Is poverty an individual conditions based on insufficiency or is it a social phenomenon that depends on the relative status? 4) The role of choice in poverty. Is poverty about what can be achieved with the resources available and within a given environment or about what actually is achieved? Is poverty a deprivation of welfare or a deprivation of capability? 5) The processuality of poverty. Is poverty a static condition, a state in which one is either in or out, or is it a dynamic process over time? 6) The definition of the source of poverty. Is there an “objective” method to determine if someone is in poverty or is there a value judgment involved? These paradigms helped me to narrow down the list of alternatives to the monetary approach to four approaches that stand on the opposite side of at least one of the paradigms, compared to the monetary approach and compared to each other. I consider each one of them as necessary for the understanding of the pro-poorness of growth in the non income (or in other words, non monetary) dimensions of poverty. The first alternative approach is the basic needs approach, proposed by Paul Streeten (1981) of the World Bank in the early 1980’s. It rests on the assumption that labor productivity in poor countries, which was a common concern among economists at that time, cannot be increased if large swathes of the population lack some of the most basic human needs, such as access to healthcare and education or the supply of clean water. The approach contributed to a shift in the development community from industrial development to community development. The second is the sustainable livelihoods approach, which was introduced in a report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in the late 1980’s and later spelled out in a widely recognized paper by Chambers and Conway (1991). It considers a person’s means of living, including their income, their skills and in particular their assets, within the context of a particular social and political environment. It understands 40 poverty as the lack of a livelihood strategy which is sustainable over time and ensures that the person can satisfy their needs themselves. The third is the social exclusion approach, on which most poverty policy and social work in European countries today is based. It derives from the concept of relative deprivation by Peter Townsend (1979), which defines poverty as the lack of the resources necessary to ensure participation in ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities (p. 31). The approach addresses the issue that poverty in the affluent industrial societies in the West clearly manifests itself differently than in poor developing countries. The fourth approach is based on the work of Indian economist Amartya Sen. Sen (1999) saw the key to human development in people’s freedom to do the things one values in life. With its emphasis on well-being, the capability approach, as it is known today, further opened up the scope of how poverty was understood in the development community, which in Sen’s view is anything that hinders someone from living a self-determined life up to the point which most human beings would consider normal. In the following section, I will briefly outline the conceptual origins and the limitations of the monetary approach and then show in greater detail how the alternative poverty approaches broadened the understanding of poverty in development theory and practice. 4.2. The origins and limits of the monetary approach to poverty One of the first systematic surveys of poverty in Europe was conducted by Charles Booth at the end of the nineteenth century with the aim of measuring the living conditions of the poor working classes in the city of London, followed soon after by Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1901) in the city of York (Johnston, 2010, p. 226). While Booth used informants such as school board visitors, who were not directly affected by poverty, Rowntree conducted a household survey among the poor based on standardized questionnaires to assess how much household income was required for a nutritionally adequate diet and some minimal needs for clothing and shelter (Rowntree, 1901, p. 86). His work revolved around the question of how much income a family had available, a focus that influenced all subsequent research on poverty and was the direct precursor of today’s monetary approach to poverty (Johnston, 2010, p. 226). 41 According to Ruggeri Laderchi et al. (2003, p. 4f), Rowntree was concerned with selfinflicted causes of poverty and wrote about the bad habits of poor people, wasting their income on drinking and gambling. He lived in a society marked by social stratification, and lifestyle was a powerful identifier of different social strata. His main interest, however, was not to explain poverty but to describe and define it scientifically. Rowntree believed in two fundamental assumptions that were not widely accepted in poverty discourses of his time, but subsequently came to shape poverty theory significantly. He believed that an objective assessment of poverty was possible, i.e. that an empirically observable condition termed “poverty” existed and that this phenomenon could and should be assessed and understood by social scientists who are not poor themselves. To define a poverty line, he estimated the monetary requirements for food, clothes, and shelter, which he deemed “sufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency” (Rowntree, 1901, p. 86). According to Townsend (1979, p. 32f), this idea of monetary measurement of poverty spread to member states of the Commonwealth and was used for describing social conditions in individual countries. A range of surveys of poverty, directly based on Rowntree’s subsistence standard, were carried out in Britain and in other countries in the 1920’s and 1930’s. During and after the Second World War, they evolved into notions of “standard of living,” defining what is deemed an acceptable working class salary in a given country. Beginning in the 1960’s, monetary poverty measurements gained attention in international development statistics, and with the introduction of the World Bank’s “one-dollar-a-day” poverty line in 1985, the monetary approach became the global standard for poverty alleviation policy (Hulme, 2010, p. 53). The basis for the World Bank poverty line was the median of ten of the lowest national poverty lines in the world. It thus represents the lowest level of poverty deemed acceptable in the poorest parts of the world (Edward, 2006, p. 14). All monetary poverty approaches are based on one obvious common denominator: the measurement of poverty levels through monetary indicators (Ruggeri Laderchi, 2000, p. 3). One of the most common is the aggregation of household income data into international income poverty lines. These do not directly refer to any physical or social requirements to which a certain income level is equivalent, but are based simply on politically agreed absolute numbers. An alternative are the relative poverty lines used 42 in most OECD countries. These relative poverty lines set the poverty threshold at a certain level of household income relative to the average household income in a certain political or geographic area. The European Union, for example, categorizes a household as poor when its income is less than 60% of the national median income (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 4). More common in development policy is the measurement of the monetary equivalent of consumption, generally a bundle of goods deemed necessary to reach a certain standard of living common in a given country. Consumption measurements approximate welfare in developing countries more closely than pure income measurement. In avoiding short-term fluctuations of income, they also come closer to capturing long-term poverty (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 8). The World Bank promotes two methods of how to measure consumption-based poverty. One is the food-energy intake method, which determines food energy requirements, i.e. the number of calories needed to maintain bodily functions at rest and during physical activity. Alternative measures are the nutritional composition of the food intake needed for long-term physical health (Ravallion, 1998, p. 9f). The minimum household income needed to meet the poverty line is then set in line with Rowntree’s template to match the calculated food consumption expenditure plus an allowance for non food consumption in a given economic setting. The second method is the cost-ofbasic-needs method, where minimal household income is matched to meet a bundle of consumption needs. The composition of the bundle is either based on the preferences of the poor—the minimum requirement to meet their basic needs—or on a sociallydetermined normative minimum for avoiding poverty. Both methods are typically based on household consumption, adjusted for household size and country- or regionspecific cost of living (Ravallion 2010a, p. 26). What all variations of the monetary approach to poverty have in common is that the level of poverty of a person or a group is determined exclusively in reference to their income. Other aspects of a life in poverty do not in themselves constitute poverty but serve as calculation basis for the income levels that constitute poverty. According to Hulme (2010, p. 53), monetary approaches to poverty alleviation have been attractive in development because they have more limited and therefore more manageable implications for policy and political action, thus enjoying greater acceptance with policy makers. If the meaning of poverty is restricted to material and 43 physical needs and the methodological focus is on individuals instead of communities, it is, for example, easier to establish the preconditions for social programs (Townsend 2006, p. 6). Narrower approaches also allow for easier measurement and comparability and can be made easily comprehensible to policy makers and the public in general, thus facilitating consensus on political actions (Hulme, 2010, p. 53). The monetary approach to poverty has been criticized in two important respects, which are relevant to PPG theory. First, income is generally not a good yardstick for poverty reduction because of the differences countries and individuals face in transforming monetary resources into actual welfare outcomes (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 14). A study by Easterly (1999, p. 6f) for example, based on a survey of a large statistical dataset, including cross-country data spanning from 1960 to 1990, found only a weak relationship between growing incomes during growth periods and the improvement of a range of quality of life indicators. He analyzed changes over time of 81 indicators from seven areas, including individual rights and democracy, political instability and war, education, health, transport and communications, inequality across class and gender, and “bads” (which included unwanted changes, such as an increase in pollution, some crimes, injuries in the workplace, and suicides). He found that even in times of sustained, rapid growth, as experienced by East Asian countries such as Korea or Taiwan, the relationship between income growth and improvements in most of the indicators was weak. Countries such as Pakistan and Vietnam for example have similar levels of GDP per capita but large differences in life expectancy. Korea and the United States have the same level of life expectancy, but Koreans have on average less than half the income of people in the US (Fukuda-Parr & Stewart, 2010, p. 247). Easterly (1999) concludes by giving several possible explanations for his findings, suggesting that a country’s “fixed factors,” such as its resource endowments, ethnic fragmentation or legal system, could “be the dominant determinant of a country’s income and quality of life indicators” or that there is a “public good problem during growth” as “a rise in private incomes (per capita GDP) does not necessarily translate into increased public goods” (p. 25). The same gap in transforming income into welfare is true on the individual level. Individual circumstances such as age or health and the general socioeconomic environment have a significant impact on how much income a person will need to reach the same level of welfare (Pogge, 2010, p. 111; Narayan, 2000, p. 14). Research 44 on the relationship between the income and non income dimensions of poverty show that neither rising incomes of the poor, nor growth in general, automatically lead to a reduction in poverty in other areas of well-being. Headey (2010) for example finds that the correlation between GDP growth and the improvement of nutrition is lower than that between growth and income poverty. While the income and growth have a “definitional” relationship, he writes, in that “economic growth will typically only fail to be pro-poor if an income distribution becomes more uneven” (p. 2), the relationship between growth and other measures of poverty is non definitional and thus correlation is attributed through means of other socioeconomic impacts. In the case of malnutrition, the paper concludes, “There is some tentative evidence that economic growth influences malnutrition through socioeconomic impacts related to water/sanitation and fertility impacts” (p. 31). A study by Bourguignon et al. (2008) finds the correlations between growth and all non income related MDGs, including education, child mortality, and gender equality to be almost non existent (Stuart, 2011, p. 13). In general, monetary approaches are less suitable to capture the realities of poverty because they neglect the importance of political and social factors that explain and shape poverty trends (Fukuda-Parr, 2010, p. 16). They neglect for example to account for people’s concerns about uninsured risk to their income (Ravallion, 2010b, p. 32) or the importance of leisure and physical recreation (Barnes et al., 2002, p. 27). Furthermore, while based on a concept of individual welfare, it has been criticized that monetary measurements usually consider households as the unit of analysis. It therefore neglects unequal distribution of resources within households, but also economies of scale enjoyed by larger households (Hulme, 2010, p. 57; Ravallion 2010b, p. 32; Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 12). One example is gender and intergenerational inequality in the distribution within households. A disproportionate share of income, material goods, and even access to public services are sometimes reserved for some family members and not others, usually women and children. Their actual deprivation is therefore not adequately reflected (Hirschmann, 2010, p. 14; Sen, 1999, p. 88f). Narrow approaches are also less suited to reflect the preferences of poor people. For someone who is not affected by the most extreme forms of material deprivation, dignity or social acceptance for example might be more important than income when searching for a job (Graham, 2005, p. 42). 45 The second shortcoming is that there are non income dimensions associated with poverty, such as hunger or the lack of education, that affect the ability of the poor to overcome their income poverty. At the level of poverty-reduction policy, a broader approach to poverty has the advantage of taking into account that the dimensions of poverty are interlinked, and that some “coupling” of disadvantages between low income and the difficulty in concerting income into ends of well-being may occur. Not only do handicaps, such as age, disability, or illness for example, reduce a person’s ability to earn income, but they also make it harder to overcome non income poverty, since an older or more disabled person may need more income to achieve the same level of well-being in life (Sen, 1999, p. 88). Strategies to reduce poverty are more effective if they include more than income generation or the provision of basic public services and address all dimensions of poverty, including the elimination of discrimination, marginalization, or social injustice (Fukuda-Parr 2006, p. 7). 4.3. Basic needs and sustainable livelihoods Up to the 1970’s, international poverty reduction policies were based mostly on the idea of increasing economic productivity. By the mid-1970’s the International Labor Organization (ILO) and later the World Bank started promoting a different approach to poverty, identifying a multidimensional set of needs essential to people’s lives. It was argued that the primary objective and obligation of national and international development efforts was not to foster economic productivity but to ensure that basic needs of poor people were met first (Streeten et al., 1981, p. 3f, p. 61; Hulme, 2010, p. 59). The basic needs approach soon spread through the development community. It established some of the preconditions for the community development activities, which became characteristic to development aid from the 1990’s, and in many countries, it became part of the process of developing national “poverty-reduction strategy papers” for the IMF (Streeten et al., 1981, p. 5; Townsend 2006, p. 6). This broadened the understanding of poverty in three important ways. First, it goes beyond individual needs that can be linked to monetary means and included needs by whole communities, which can only be fulfilled through community services (Streeten et al., 1981, p. 21). Access to safe water, for example, does not only depend on a household’s ability to pay for it but also on the availability of the necessary infrastructure in the 46 first place. Second, the approach recognizes that poverty alleviation has to go beyond mere physical needs to “provide the opportunities for the full physical, mental, and social development of the human personality” (Streeten et al., 1981, p. 33). A well-run prison, Streeten argues (1981, p. 34), would be quite capable of covering the physical needs of its inmates but would not provide other basic human needs. Non material needs such as self-determination and self-reliance are not only valuable in their own right but serve as important conditions for communities to meet their material needs. Third, to be effective, it highlights the linkages among different dimensions of poverty and the need for poverty alleviation to intervene at several fronts simultaneously. Education, for example, can improve access to health services, and better health enables children to benefit more from education (Streeten et al., 1981, p. 5). Building on the broader concept of poverty of the basic needs approach, the sustainable livelihoods approach contributed a systematization of the non monetary dimensions of poverty. It provides a comprehensive and policy oriented review of the multiple resources needed to overcome poverty. Introduced in the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987 and later spelled out in a paper by Chambers and Conway (1991, p. 6f), it defines “livelihood” as a person’s entire resource base, which includes their income, their skills and knowledge and their assets, both of the tangible kind (including land, livestock, or tools, and stores such as food, stocks, or valuables) and the intangible kind (including claims for material, moral or practical support, and access in terms of opportunity to use a resource, store or, service or to obtain information, material, technology, employment, food or income). A livelihood is environmentally sustainable if it maintains or enhances the local and global assets on which all livelihoods depend, and it is socially sustainable when it can cope with external and internal shocks and remains available over time to provide for future generations. Apart from being one of the most comprehensive assessments of the condition of poverty and how to overcome it, the livelihood approach also brought some more new and important aspects to poverty research. It focuses on what the individual can contribute and encourages participation. It recognizes poor people themselves as key actors in identifying and addressing the conditions of poverty and the strategies to overcome them. It builds on people’s strengths and opportunities rather than on their problems and needs and it fosters partnerships, between people and between the public 47 and the private sector. Being born out of research on environmental protection, the livelihood approach also introduces the concept of sustainability into poverty theory. It has raised awareness that coming out of poverty does not guarantee immunity against falling into poverty again, and that the poverty alleviation strategies of one person should not threaten those of another (Ashley & Carney, 1999, p. 7). The livelihood approach was operationalized for poverty alleviation by Oxfam and later DFID into a framework centered on five livelihood assets needed for a person or a household to build a sustainable livelihood to overcome poverty. The first asset is human capital, which includes skills, knowledge, health, and education; the second is natural capital, which includes the environment, air, water, wildlife, and biodiversity; the third is financial capital, including savings, credit, remittances, pensions, safety nets, and benefits; the fourth is physical capital, such as transport, housing, water, energy or land; and fifth is social capital in form of networks, affiliation to groups, and access to institutions (Raworth et. al., 2008, p. 1). 4.4. Relative poverty and social exclusion The concept of social exclusion first appeared in French literature in the 1970’s, describing the marginalization and deprivation that can arise even in affluent societies with comprehensive welfare systems. Those who do not fit into what is considered the shared moral order of a society are often excluded and experience marginalization in terms of employment and social relations (Atkinson, 1998, p. 18). Townsend (1979) brought social exclusion into the equation of how poverty is understood. In his largescale survey of households in the United Kingdom, Townsend noticed that when people’s incomes shrink, they still conform to their standard of living and their activities to what is common in the community and society they live in (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 20). Once their economic means fall below a certain proportion of what is needed to achieve the common standard of living and participate in common activities, deprivation seems to intensify disproportionally and people retreat from the community. They meet friends or invite people to their homes less often; their children are absent from school more often; they no longer observe conventional diets and become ill or disabled more often. Townsend (1985, p. 661f) concluded two things: First, people have basic needs that are directly related to the common customs and obligations of the community they live in; second, the 48 fulfillment of these needs depends on the relation between the levels of resources available to the community, the family and the individual. He defined poverty as the “lack of resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong” (Townsend, 1985, p. 661f). If an individual’s command of these resources falls below a certain threshold relative to the average of a society, this effectively leads to the individual’s exclusion from ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities—he becomes “poor” (Townsend, 1979, p. 31). The terms poverty and social exclusion have sometimes been used interchangeably, but they are not identical in meaning (Atkinson & Hills, 1998, p. v). Within EU member states, social exclusion is considered a “process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live” (European Foundation, 1995). Le Grand (2003) more precisely defined that “an individual is socially excluded if (a) he or she is geographically resident in a society, (b) he or she cannot participate in the normal activities of citizens in that society, and (c) he or she would like to so participate, but is prevented from doing so by factors beyond his or her control” (p. 2). Burchardt et al. (1999, p. 228f) of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics have sought to spell out more precisely what normal activities are. They identified five key aspects of society in which participation is essential: Consumption, saving, production, political engagement, and social interaction. However, just as there is no clear and agreed definition of poverty, there are different understandings of the notion of social exclusion (Barnes et al., 2002, p. 6). There are different views on how poverty and social exclusion are linked. Townsend argued that there is a link between the level of material deprivation and the participation in ordinary living patterns. For this purpose, he developed a deprivation index consisting of 60 indicators in 12 categories, including nutrition, electricity, and household effects as well as the characteristics of the neighborhood, social insurance, family situation and social relations, education, health, and means of entertainment (Townsend, 1979, 414f). When people’s deprivation in these categories increases, he argued, they will economize what they do but still try to conform to what is expected from them. Once deprivation grows to a certain level, they begin withdrawing from social life (Townsend, 1985, p. 662). Others have disagreed with this observation. 49 Atkinson (1998) argues that while there are evident examples of the relationship between deprivation and social exclusion, such as homelessness or nutritional deprivation, where the link is not automatic. People can be poor without being socially excluded and they might be socially excluded without being poor (1998, p. 20). Barnes et al. (2002, p. 148f) argue that poverty has little effect on social exclusion, simply because much social contact is inexpensive and takes place between people at similar income levels. Their research on the effects of poverty on social relations shows mixed results. Young people have been found to be less likely to participate in social activities if they are poor, in particular in relation to cultural and leisure activities. Peer group pressure may mean that the right kind of clothes or accessories are necessary for children to be included in neighborhood activities. No significant differences occur in the levels of social activity between single parents and partnered parents, who on average have different income levels. The link between poverty and social exclusion seems to be different for different groups of people with similar levels of material deprivation. Different people have different histories, which affect the level of exclusion. Social exclusion caused by poverty therefore has to be understood as a dynamic process resulting from a history of experiences. While the link between social exclusion and poverty is not straightforward, the concept of social exclusion nevertheless adds some useful dimensions to the analysis of poverty (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 21; Barnes et al., 2002, p. 5f). According to Atkinson (1998, p. 22), there are three main characteristics of social exclusion: (a) dynamics, which includes both the current circumstances of a person and their future prospects for their level of social exclusion—social exclusion has to be understood as a process; (b) agency, which suggests that people are excluded as a result of the actions of others; and (c) contextuality, which indicates that people are excluded from a particular society or community at a particular place and time. Let’s look at these characteristics and their implications for the analysis of poverty in detail. First is the dynamics of poverty, which is concerned with the question of how poverty and well-being evolve over time (Addison et al., 2009, p. 5f). The relationship between poverty and social exclusion can be described as “descending levels”: Some disadvantages associated with poverty lead to some exclusion, which in turn lead to more disadvantages and more exclusion. The social exclusion approach understands poverty as a process: Becoming poor and getting out of poverty (Ruggeri Laderchi et 50 al., 2003, p. 20). Social exclusion can also happen not because people currently face some disadvantages, but because they have fewer prospects for the future. This dynamic may also apply across generations and affect the children of people who experience social exclusion. The same can be argued for poverty. Poverty can turn into chronic poverty when long spells of income poverty and social exclusion reinforce each other (Atkinson, 1998, p. 14). Further, both poverty and social exclusion were found to differ at different stages of a person’s life (Barnes et al., 2002, p. 9f). Certain critical decisions or circumstances over the course of a person’s life—during pre-birth, in their early childhood, in their school years, as an adult, for example—are more likely than others to lead to poverty or prevent it (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 6). The assumption is that depending on the life stage, people are confronted with a different set of socioeconomic and political circumstances that establish the “space” within which they can act, fulfill their needs, and shape their lives (Annen, 1998, p. 34). The vulnerability to poverty varies at different stages in life. Young adults, single parents, and retired people in European countries have been found to be at a heightened risk of poverty (Barnes et al., 2002, p. 9f). The role of family structures is also important. People living alone are at greater risk of income poverty because they have no one else to rely on if their income reduces (Barnes et al., 2002, p. 148). The second characteristic of social exclusion is agency. Atkinson (1998, p. 13f) argues that one cannot judge whether a person is socially excluded by looking at their circumstances in isolation. A defining element of the social exclusion approach is that it implies that someone is excluded by someone else, i.e. it involves acts by “agents”. In contrast to other poverty approaches, it therefore provides a framework to analyze social relations of power and control and how they affect the processes of marginalization. The extent to which poverty leads to exclusion depends on the behavior of the community and society as a whole. Exclusion can develop or increase due to inequalities of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, or disability (Barnes et al., 2002, p. 6). The third characteristic of social exclusion as described Atkinson (1998, p. 22) is contextuality. The social demands that result from the customs and common living patterns of a society are related to its resources and average living standards. Different societies have different living patterns. When incomes grow in a society, living 51 patterns tend to change, but not necessarily at the same speed or to the same extent. The social exclusion approach to poverty shows that poverty is not a homogenous phenomenon; rather, it takes on different forms in different places (Fukuda-Parr, 2010, p. 16). The challenge for any poverty alleviation policy is therefore to recognize the prevalent patterns in a particular society. Applying the social norms from European countries to the context of developing countries to design a poverty alleviation policy has proven difficult. In a study by Ruggeri Laderchi et al. (2006, p. 11) in India and Peru, which intended to define social exclusion in participatory focus groups, none of the participatory activities generated an agreed definition. 4.5. Development as freedom Another concept of poverty that became widespread in the 1990’s, notably through the UNDP’s Human Development Reports can be found in the writings of Indian Economist Amartya Sen. His approach to poverty and development, which is often called the “capability approach,” has inspired a broadening of the concept of poverty and has contributed to discussions about poverty both in academic research and in international development policy (Fukuda-Parr, 2010, p. 17; OHCHR, 2003, p. 6). Developed over the course of several decades, the main premise of Sen’s analysis of poverty can be found throughout his academic writings, starting as early as the 1960’s. Sen’s 1999 book on “Development as Freedom,” I think, outlines the essence of the capabilities approach most pointedly. In his book, Sen (1999) provides the following short “parable,” which illustrates the main arguments of the capability approach: Annapurna is looking for someone to clear up her garden and three unemployed laborers Dinu, Bishanno and Rogini are available for the job. She can hire any one of them but the work is indivisible. She wonders who would be the right person to employ. While all of them are poor, Dinu is the poorest of the three; which makes her inclined to hire him (“What can be more important,” she asks herself, “than helping the poorest?”). However, she also knows that Bishanno has recently been impoverished and therefore psychologically suffers most from his predicament. This makes her rather favorable to the idea of giving the job to Bishanno (“Surely removing unhappiness has to be,” she tells herself, “the first priority”). Then Annapurna is told that Rogini suffers from a chronic ailment and could use the money to be earned to rid herself of that terrible disease. She wonders whether it might not be right to give the 52 job to Rogini after all (“It would make the biggest difference,” she surmises, “to the quality of life and freedom from illness”) (p. 54ff). The first main argument of the capabilities approach addresses one of the primary shortcomings of the monetary approach to poverty—the variable transferability of monetary wealth into welfare or well-being. In the parable, Rogini is less poor than Dinu in terms of monetary means, but because of her illness, she has to spend more money to reach the same standard of physical well-being as him, if she is able to reach that level at all. The transferability of monetary wealth into welfare outcomes is neither exclusive—since it is only one of many things that affect the achievement of someone’s well-being—nor is it uniform, since the impact of wealth on well-being itself is influenced by other variables. To understand how the reduction of monetary poverty influences the attainment of welfare therefore, Sen (1999) argues, requires the understanding of the “qualified and contingent nature of this relationship” (p. 14). According to Sen (1999), the transfer of monetary wealth into well-being requires first and foremost the removal of sources of “unfreedom,” which he sees both as the lack of opportunities, to earn a decent livelihood for example or to receive basic public services like health care or education, as well as the constraints that are put on people to take advantage of these opportunities, like a lack of political freedom, discrimination or, as in the case of Rogini, a physical disability (p. 3). Sen (1999) also explicitly criticizes those who advocate for authoritarian political systems in the name of achieving faster economic growth. It is sometimes claimed, he writes, that the denial of political liberty and basic civil rights is good for economic development. He further argues that civil liberties, though beneficial in themselves, are constitutive elements of the human capability to transfer the monetary gains of economic development into welfare (p. 17). Another argument for freedom as the better indicator for development is the inherent virtue of freedom itself. The development literature, Sen (1999) argues, has shown the tendency to view the priority of development in generating higher incomes and acquiring bigger baskets of goods and services. This shift of the focus of attention within economics from freedom to utility neglects the central value of freedom itself. “The success of a society,” he writes, “is to be evaluated, in this view, primarily by the substantive freedoms that the members of that society enjoy” (p. 18). In this sense, 53 freedom is viewed both as the end and the means of development. Sen (1999) refers to the “constitutive” and the “instrumental” roles freedom has for development (p. 36). Also, utility, understood in the classical sense, which is the level of satisfaction that someone derives from acquiring goods or services, stands for some measure of his or her pleasure or happiness10, which he regards as an unsuitable measure for human well-being (Sen, 1999, p. 58). As Sen makes clear in the parable, he regards utility as unsuitable for measuring an individual’s well-being: Bishanno, while being materially better off than Dinu, is nevertheless unhappy. The condition of being unhappy cannot be equated with poverty. “The view the utilitarian approach takes of individual well-being,” Sen (1999) writes, “is not very robust, since it can be easily swayed by mental conditioning and adaptive attitudes. […] Concentrating exclusively on mental characteristics (such as pleasure or desires) can be particularly restrictive when making interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing and deprivation. Our desires and pleasure-taking abilities adjust to circumstances, especially to make life bearable in adverse situations. The utility calculus can be deeply unfair to those who are persistently deprived” (p. 62). Development therefore needs to consider an individual’s degree of freedom to achieve things they value, a notion which Sen (1999, p. 75) attempts to capture by introducing the concepts of “functionings” and “capabilities.” Functionings are “the various things a person may value doing or being”; a person’s capabilities refer to the combinations of functionings that are feasible for them to achieve. A capability in this sense, Sen writes, “is a kind of freedom: the substantive freedom to achieve alternative functioning combinations, or, less formally put, the freedom to achieve various lifestyles.” With this, Sen also addresses the issue of choice, which poses a non trivial question for the development community: To what extent do preferences of the poor have to be taken into account when designing and implementing poverty reduction policy? Banjeree and Duflo (2011, p. 23f and p. 35f) provide some examples of this dilemma. One explanation for the bad eating habits of poor people in many developing countries, they write, is simply the fact that people spend money on things which to them matter more than food. People feel obliged to spend large sums on weddings, Utility, a concept from economic theory, has different meanings. Sen (1999) discusses and criticizes the concept in detail on page 57ff. 10 54 dowries or christenings, for example. In Udaipur, India, for instance, they found that a typical poor household could spend up to 30% more on food if they cut back expenditures on alcohol, tobacco, and festivals. At the same time, the money spent on food is not spent to maximize the intake of calories or micronutrients. When poor people get the chance to spend more money on food, they tend to buy food that is better-tasting but not necessarily healthier or more calorie rich. These wrong choices alone, according to the capability approach, do not make the individuals in question poorer as long as substantial unfreedoms, such as the lack of information or awareness, which might lead them to that welfare outcome that would be deemed lower by a nutritionist, are removed. Throughout his work, Sen stresses the importance of individual agency as one of the core elements of his approach to poverty. For him, poor people themselves can and should be principal agents of change and drivers of development. “With adequate social opportunities,” he writes, “individuals can effectively shape their own destinies and help each other. They need not be seen primarily as passive recipients of the benefits of cunning development programs (1999, p. 11).” For Sen, another reason why freedom is the most suitable measure for development is in its role as a principal determinant of individual initiative and social effectiveness. It enhances people’s ability to help themselves (p. 18). Having outlined the determinants of development as freedom, Sen addresses the conceptual issue of defining poverty itself. In accordance with his argument for development as the enhancement of substantive freedoms (or capabilities), he insists that poverty “must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities” (p. 87). While thus rejecting the one-dimensional monetary view of poverty, Sen does acknowledge the role of monetary means when it comes to retaining basic capabilities: “While it is important to distinguish conceptually the notion of poverty as capability inadequacy from that of poverty as lowness of income, the two perspectives cannot but be related, since income is such an important means to capabilities” (p. 90). With this definition, he also tries to bridge the divide between relative and absolute poverty approaches. “Relative deprivation in terms of incomes,” Sen states, can “yield absolute deprivation in terms of capabilities. Being relatively poor in a rich country can be a great capability handicap, even when one’s absolute income is high in terms 55 of world standards.” To achieve the same level of social functioning, more income is needed in a rich country than it would in a poor country (Sen, 1999, p. 89). When it comes to defining the “basic” capabilities that constitute poverty, Sen remains elusive. He defines five freedoms that are instrumental for the process of development (Sen, 1999, p. 38ff). The first is political freedom, which he broadly conceives as “the opportunities that people have to determine who should govern on what principles,” including “the possibility to scrutinize and criticize authorities, to have the freedom of political expression and an uncensored press, to enjoy the freedom to choose between different political parties, and so on.” The second is economic facilities, which are a person’s opportunities to utilize economic resources for the purpose of consumption, production, or exchange. The availability and access to finance is an important part of this. The third group of freedoms is social opportunities, by which he refers to the “arrangement that society makes for education, health care and so on, which influence the individuals’ substantive freedom to live better.” The fourth is transparency guarantees, which refer to the guarantees of openness, in the sense of disclosure and lucidity that people should have when dealing with each other. Fifth are the freedoms of protective security, which means the social safety net that prevents people on the edge of vulnerability from falling into misery, starvation, or death. Building on the work of Sen, others have attempted to define the basic capabilities that constitute poverty more concretely. The UNDP (1996), for example, with the publication of Human Development Reports in 1990, began to argue for international development efforts to be broadened “beyond income and growth to the full flourishing of human capabilities” (p. 49). To measure the advancement of human development and the efficiency of development measures, the UNDP put together a statistical index, the Human Development Index (HDI), containing measures of the relevant capabilities needed for human development, in particular in the field of health care, education, and democratic processes (Fukuda-Parr, 2010, p. 21f). Another notable attempt to spell out what basic capabilities entail is Nussbaum’s (2000, p. 74) list of essential features of a full human life, comprising ten capabilities, which she argued were based on an “overlapping consensus” between different societies on the conception of what is needed to be a full human being: 1) normal length of life; 2) good health; 3) bodily integrity; 4) imagination and thoughs which are informed by education; 5) emotional attachments; 6) critical reflection and 56 planning life; 7) social interaction and protection against discrimination; 8) respect for and living with other species; 9) play; and 10) control over one’s political and material environment. Both attempts have been criticized for being culturally biased—in Nussbaum’s case for reflecting a western conception of the good life, and in the case of the HDI, for reflecting the perspective of the international development community on developing countries (Ruggeri Laderchi et al., 2003, p. 17f; Fukuda-Parr, & Stewart, 2010, p. 247). These criticisms notwithstanding, Sen’s writings lead to a further broadening of the concept of poverty in development research (Fukuda-Parr, 2010, 17f). For Sen, the starting point to understand poverty is not the minimal necessities to be considered not poor but rather the conditions necessary to live a full life. While some other poverty approaches also include non material aspects of poverty, the capabilities approach explicitly expands the scope of what poverty entails beyond the level of material wellbeing, to include all capabilities necessary to open up the opportunity to live a tolerable life, including non material aspects of the human condition, such as dignity, confidence, and self-respect (Anand & Sen, 1997, p. 4f). Subsequently, within the international development community, awareness is rising that the dimensions of poverty are interlinked and that there can be some “coupling” of disadvantages between low income and the difficulty of converting income into ends of well-being. Handicaps such as age, disability, or illness reduce a person’s ability to earn income, but also make it harder to overcome non income poverty, since an older or more disabled person may need more income to achieve the same level of wellbeing in life (Sen, 1999, p. 88). Strategies to reduce poverty are more effective if they include more than income generation or the provision of basic public services but address all dimensions of poverty, including the removal of discrimination, marginalization, and social injustice (Fukuda-Parr, 2006, p. 7). 57 5. Reflecting the methodological approach The field is like a can, when you open it, the snails come crawling out and eating up your salad (Ben Johnson, 2000). “The field” in social research refers to a “real-life” social sphere of activity, which puts a researcher before a completely different set of challenges as compared to, say, a laboratory experiment, arranged for the purpose of the research (Wolff, 2000, p. 335). To obtain empirical data in field research, the researcher has to somehow physically access this social setting and collect the desired pieces of information. This is a highly dynamic endeavor. The researcher delves into a social world largely unknown to her (or him) and gathers information about the field in complex and often surprising interactions with the people who constitute the field. As we will see, there are good reasons to gain a thorough understanding of the particularities of the field research process, beginning from the selection of the setting in which the data is collected to the decision of how to work with the collected data to obtain relevant insights and answer the research question. 5.1. The case for reflexivity in qualitative field research The range of conceptual views on reflexivity in academic discourse is wide. In their case for “reflexive anthropology,” Bourdieu and Wacquant (1996, p. 64ff) identify several divergent types of reflexivity that have been brought forward in academic literature, of which three are of particular interest to the field research process. From the ethnological point of view, for example of Berger (1981), the main purpose of reflexivity is the field researchers’ understanding of their role within the social context of the field, so as to allow the analytic distance between the researcher and the members of the field with the ultimate goal of achieving an objective and unbiased observation (p. 222). For ethnomethodologists like Garfinkel (1967) or Circourel (1974), reflexivity and with it the awareness of “indexiality,” which refers to the concept that everyone interprets the world according to their own social and cognitive frame of reference, is a prerequisite for the researcher to understand how people 58 attribute meaning to everyday practice and thus understand the fabric of social reality itself. Finally, Gouldner (1970), like Berger, puts the person of the researcher in the center of his reflexivity concept, in that he assumes that the knowledge created in sociology is shaped by the personal history of the researcher and her or his position in the social world. Reflexivity, as understood by Bourdieu and Wacquant (1996, p. 63ff), differs in some of its central assumptions from other approaches. The subject of their reflexive process in social science is not the researcher as a person, but the unconscious social and intellectual background that shapes the tools and processes of research. There are, in other words, multiple biases that blur the researcher’s perception of the field, and not all of them are fully appreciated in social sciences practice. The most obvious are the social origins and characteristics of the researcher, e.g. gender or ethnicity. Another bias is the position of the researcher within the academic field, which comes not only with certain restraints and expectations, but also with a particular intellectual mindset. The third and most subtle bias is what Bourdieu calls the “intellectualistic” bias, and this is where he goes beyond Gouldner (1970). It refers to the nature of the social scientist’s cognition of the world itself, which sees the world more as a spectacle—as an ensemble of interactions and their meaning—to be interpreted by the researcher than concrete challenges and necessities of people in search of practical solutions. Reflexivity in this sense aims not at qualifying objectivity in terms of a constructivist view of the world, but actually at strengthening it. It is not the reflection of the subject on the subject, as postulated by ethnomethodology, but rather a systematic exploration of the “unthought thought-categories” that define and limit the researcher in the first place. By subjecting the position of the observer to the same critical analysis that is applied to the subjects of research, reflexivity contributes to avoiding the production of research output in which the unconscious relationship of the researcher is projected onto to the subject (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1996, p. 68ff). If we apply the rationale of academic reflexivity to the process of field research, there are two practical aspects which, in light of their particular epistemological relevance, need to be considered. First, the researcher interferes with the field by researching it, and second, field research is selective and subjective in that the collection of data about the field and its interpretation is both limited and biased (Flick, 2007, p. 493). Both factors affect the findings of the research. Let’s look at these two points in detail 59 before reviewing them in the context of the aforementioned reflexivity concepts and drawing some conclusions for the content of this chapter. Would the field be the same if it was not subjected to research at the moment? The question of the researcher’s interference with the field, which is a central topic of the ethnological discourse, is closely linked to the method of data collection. The researcher can approach the field in different ways, which have implications for the type and level of interaction with the members of the field. As the proverbial fly on the wall, the researcher could for example try not to interfere at all and observe without being noticed. In this case, the question of interference with the field would be eliminated. That said, one could argue that while it is doubtful whether someone could go unnoticed in a social sphere for very long, an observation that does not invovle any form of interaction is unlikely to generate the necessary richness and depth of data (Johnson, 1975, p. 84). In addition, ethical questions arise if the researcher does not reveal his intentions to the members of the field. While there are prominent examples of field studies in which the researchers acted “undercover” by taking on a false identity to interact with the members of the field (Johnson, 1975, p. 54)—for example that of a social worker—many researchers consider informed consent an important component of ethical research on human subjects (Bailey, 1996, p. 11). The researcher should inform the people being studied about the fact that they are participating in research, what the purpose of the research is, and what the consequences for them are. In the most common methods of data collection such as participant observation, qualitative interviews, or quantitative surveys, the researcher interacts openly with the members of the field and therefore influences their behavior. This “reactiveness” of field research counters the basic rule of scientific objectivity, which demands that the influence of the researcher on the outcome of the research be eliminated, or in other words, that the results must be reproducible in the sense that two different researchers would be able to collect the same data and reach the same conclusion (Flick, 2006, p. 16). A similar concern arises in relation to the second aspect: the selectiveness of data collection. The researcher can only access a very limited part of the information that would theoretically be available. Apart from the practical limitations in terms of time available and physical accessibility, data collection can also be limited by the degree of openness of social settings. Certain settings or events may be closed to outsiders, or 60 some people in the field may refuse to be part of the research project. Often the researcher depends on the support of a gatekeeper to gain entry to certain parts of the field. In this case, the gatekeeper will invariably have an effect on the parts of the field that are accessible and those that are not. Even when the researcher gains access to a certain part of the field and the people involved agree to participate in the research, some information may still be withheld from the researcher, either by unconsciously remaining silent about things deemed inappropriate or not worth sharing, or by deliberately keeping some secret or inner knowledge from the researcher (Wolff, 2000, p. 344). Further, the researcher herself is biased in what data to look for, which questions to ask, which data to preserve (e.g. by recording it or writing it down), and which to ignore (Flick, 2006, p. 371). In both the ethnological and the ethnomethodological view on reflexivity (represented here by Berger [1970] and by Garfinkel [1967] and Circourel [1974] respectively), the researcher’s interactions with the field are key elements to be aware of. Where the two differ is in their motive. While reflexivity in Berger’s ethnologic view becomes a means to the end of analytic distance and thus scientific objectivity, for ethnomethodologists, it remains a tool for dealing with inevitable subjectivity (Kruse, 2010, p. 19). The impossibility of objectivity in their view is not a drawback but rather the starting point of qualitative research. In the ethnomethodological view, human interaction is continuously interpreted by the involved persons themselves, in the sense that they attribute meaning to it. These interpretations of reality are not objectively given, but are constructed in the interaction between human beings. In the same way, the representation of the social world, which is provided in during field research, is constructed in the interaction between the researcher and the members of the field. The researcher’s interference with the field in this sense becomes a subject of the research itself (Helfferich, 2004, p. 20f). In my research, which relies heavily on qualitative interviews, there is a strong case to agree with both views in their call for reflexivity. Both state that the interaction of the researcher with the respondents has tangible implications on the data that is collected. This is particularly true if the information about the field is provided in a verbal exchange in which necessarily both the researcher and the respondents contribute to the outcome. In this case, the questions of interference with the field and selectiveness of data collection become inseparable. In an interview, the researcher gains an 61 understanding of the field through the subjective experience provided by the interview respondent. The form and scope in which this is communicated during an interview is necessarily shaped by the particular interview context. The researcher thus influences not only the answers that are provided but also the information that is held back or left out. This context dependency of data is not purely random but follows certain patterns, which can be controlled (to a certain extent) and retrospectively reflected by the researcher (Helfferich 2004, p. 20f). In the same way, it can be argued that the particular form of access gained to the field, which in this research was primarily through a local intermediary, has a considerable effect on the subsequent interactions with the respondents. The researcher has to be aware of the effect this has on the insights provided by the members of the field. To be reflexive about this effect does not mean to adopt full objectivity as the purpose of qualitative research by preemptively trying to eliminate the researcher from the equation. At the same time, one does not have to subscribe to the constructivist notion that the interactions with the members of the field are in themselves the main subject of research, in that it is only there that social reality is constituted. Reflexivity also does not have to go as far as analyzing the personal feelings, irritations, and impressions of the researcher towards the interactions in the field, as it is sometimes done in ethnological research (Bourdieu, 2003, p. 282; Flick, 2006, p. 16). A reflexive view in a qualitative field research means first and foremost taking into account the factors that shape the way in which the realities of the field reveal themselves to the researcher, both during data collection, analysis, and interpretation. For Bourdieu and Wacquant (1996), the personal and academic background of the researcher and the resulting sociocultural biases are one of these factors that influence how the field is perceived by the researcher. In their view, reflexivity is the continuous effort of the researcher to understand and make transparent how his own position and the particular practical and conceptual path of the whole research process shape the outcome that is produced by the research. At the same time, their concept of intellectualistic bias goes beyond the experience of the individual researcher and entails the complete “organizational and cognitive structure” of the academic discipline. The subject of the reflexivity then has to be the field of social science itself. This task is therefore in its entirety not an individual one, but a collective task of the whole academic and educational field (p. 71ff). 62 For the individual researcher, it provides a case for being aware of how one’s own sociocultural and academic background influence the whole research process and question one’s preconceptions as often as necessary. In an interview situation, for example, the interviewer’s background has a direct effect on the behavior of the respondent. It is not hard to imagine that an interview between two people of the same gender and similar age and sociocultural background will take quite a different course than one where the interview participants show opposite characteristics (compare Bourdieu, 1997, p. 783). At the same time, the researcher approaches the interview with a particular preconceived view of social reality (Kruse, 2010, p. 20f) manifesting itself in ethnocentrically based assumptions that have an effect on the way questions are posed and answers are understood. Let’s take the very basic question on what makes a “person”. According to Geertz (1983), every culture has some kind of understanding of this, but the Western notion of a unique individual, clearly distinguished from others and from society, is a particularity of the Western worldview that may seem odd in a different cultural context (p. 293f). This definition of person, however, should not imply that the researcher should reflect upon her person in the sense that her biography or her general social and cognitive state of mind be analyzed. Rather, the awareness in the field research process, the background and the sociocultural bias of the researcher have a tangible influence and should be taken into account when collecting and interpreting field data (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1996, p. 69f; Kruse, 2010, p. 26). In addition, the reflection on the peculiarities of the research process should be available for the analysis of the data, as this provides valuable additional information for the interpretation of the data (Mayring 2002, p. 143; Wolff, 2000, p. 339). For the researcher, the goal of reflexivity is to understand why, in the context of the field, things turned out to the way they did and not something else (Schultheis, 2007, p. 7). Just as importantly, reflexivity of the research process makes it available to the reader in the name of transparency, accountability and reliability. What is called “procedural reliability” in the ethnologic discourse (Flick, 2006, p. 369f) or “intersubjectivity” in the ethnomethodologic literature (Kruse, 2010, p. 250) is central to the quality of any research, as it ensures the reproducibility of the research process by allowing it to be independently and congruently comprehensible to other researchers. The principle of maintaining a chain of evidence of one’s research, Yin (2003, p. 105) writes, should 63 “allow an external observer—in this situation, the reader of the case study—to follow the derivation of any evidence, ranging from initial research questions to ultimate case study conclusion. Moreover, this external observer should be able to trace the steps in either direction (from conclusion back to initial research questions and from questions to conclusions).” 5.2. Gaining access to the field and selecting interview partners Gaining access to the field not only has a practical side, but also an epistemological side. The approach one takes to enter the field has consequences on how the researcher is perceived by the members of the field and how they interact with her. Depending on the approach, some parts of the field will become accessible while others will remain hidden (Johnson, 1975, p. 50ff). Different types of fields will pose different challenges. Legewie (1991) for example differentiates between three different types of fields according to their level of openness, ranging from “open” (e.g. a public street) to “half-open” (e.g. a university) to “closed” (e.g. a prison) (p. 191). Each type of field requires a different access strategy. In closed fields, the need for formal permission is inevitable; in a half-open field, usually some kind of host is needed; in an open field, the researcher can approach the members directly and without formally prepared access. In the case of an open field, which is common in ethnology (Girtler, 1988), the role the researcher takes on is what determines which and how much information can be gained (p. 69). There is no inherent difference in access to a social group or milieu and an institutional field like a company (Johnson, 1975, p. 54ff; Wolff, 2000, p. 342ff). Every field requires a proper access strategy, irrespective of its level of openness. Social communities often display the characteristics of a half-open field, in the sense that many members of the field cannot be accessed by just their “showing up.” Their participation has to be negotiated beforehand. Further, acquiring the permission of some high authority does not suffice in gaining access (Bailey, 1996, p. 50f). Permission from the top is usually insufficient to ensure cooperation from everyone involved. Beginning with the person at the top can even lead to gates being closed at lower levels. Also, gaining access involves more than just the permission to enter; it involves establishing relationships with the members of the community. Creating meaningful interactions is not a one-time matter but rather a continuous series of 64 negotiations. In a half-open social setting, the help of “informal gatekeepers” is necessary (compare Neumann, 1991, p. 345; Johnson, 1975, p. 50ff). These are people who do not necessarily have any formal institutional power in granting or denying entry, but they can still wield strong influence over the researcher’s access to the field. While an informal gatekeeper of a social setting can be an outsider, in West Manggarai for example, this could be a non governmental organization or a government representative. The best way to gain access is through a member of the community itself (compare Girtler, 1988, p. 69). In ethnology, the comparable concept of the “key informant” – sometimes also referred to as “key actor” or “key insider” – is often used, but the meaning of the term is not fully consistent in literature (Agar, 1980, p. 120; Wolff, 2000, p. 337). According to Bailey (1996), a key informant is a member of the field who is willing to guide and assist the researcher in gaining entry and establishing rapport with the members, and who will act as a host and provide explanations about the field (p. 55). A key informant can act as an informal gatekeeper, especially in terms of granting access to particular areas of the field. This was famously illustrated in William Whyte’s study of the Street Corner Society in 1943. Whyte himself experienced severe difficulties when trying to contact people in the suburbs of Boston. Only when he met his key informant “Doc,” the leader of a street gang, he gained fruitful access to this social milieu (Girtler, 1988, 70). In the current case study, the field, the district of West Manggarai, can be characterized as a “half-open” setting. It is open in the sense that practically speaking, there are no institutional gatekeepers within the community who could deny access to a researcher. For the three research studies, there was no formal permission or affiliation with a local academic institution required by the local authorities. On the other hand, it could also be characterized as a closed field in the sense that it is difficult to contact the relevant members of the community, i.e. government officials and community leaders, local entrepreneurs, and poor people, without the support of an insider, who helps to identify the relevant people and arranges meetings with them. A useful key informant for this purpose is someone who has profound knowledge about the local social, economic, and political context and is well-connected with the relevant people. 65 Identifying a suitable key informant usually requires some inside information on the field. In my case, it was the Swiss NGO Swisscontact, my partner during the first field visit, who suggested Arie Daru, a freelance tour operator and longstanding member of the Labuan Bajo business community as a translator. He supported me in conducting a part of the interviews and emerged as a valuable key informant during my two subsequent field visits. Key informants—usually being the people with whom researchers come in contact with early on in their research—often happen to be those members of a community or society with more than average contact with outsiders. To a certain extent, these people are often outsiders themselves, which can lead to distortions in the researcher’s view on the field (Wolff, 2000, p. 337). As a tour operator, Arie is in contact with outsiders—especially with people from Europe—more often than most other inhabitants of West Manggarai. But through the shared life experiences of growing up as a poor person in West Manggarai and through being an active member of the business community for two decades, Arie is well integrated into the local community. As the child of peasants in one of the scattered villages in the hilly areas of central West Manggarai, he grew up in a tightly-knit, collectivist community. Even though he left his home as a teenager to attend secondary school in the district capital and has not lived in the village for longer periods since, Arie still identifies with its agricultural heritage and has a deep-seated belief in communal solidarity. He started his professional career in Labuan Bajo as a low-paid helper in a backpacker hostel, which was the only guesthouse in town at that time. In a succession of different jobs in the growing local tourism market and repeated opportunities to work for companies in the tourism industry in other parts of Indonesia, Arie established himself as a successful independent entrepreneur. Apart from his involvement in different local businesses and community organizations, he also was the acting head of the provincial tour guide association for several years. Arie lives with his wife and three children in Battu Cermin, a suburb of Labuan Bajo. During my second and third field visit, his support was crucial in gaining access to the field. He supported the selection of interview partners, arranged most of the interviews, acted as translator, provided me with his own insights about the field, and helped me reflect on the research process itself. 66 Once access to the field is gained, it is important to understand the particularities and consequences of the entry. Some ethnologic textbooks warn of letting the key informant dictate the parameters of the study (e.g. Bailey, 1996, p. 56). This does not mean that the key informant should be excluded from this process or that their influence on the research should be somehow eliminated. It can be beneficial to define the parameters of a field study relevant to members of the field, but it is necessary that their influence be understood, controlled, and taken into account when analyzing the data. Key informants and other people who participate in the research not only have their particular biographies and position within the community that shape their perspective on the nature of the field and on what they consider important for the research, but also a particular interest why they support the research at all. In this, their perspective might counter that of other members of the field and consequently needs be considered as one perspective of many (Bailey, 1996, p. 56). Helfferich (2004) suggests that there are several stereotypes of people with distinct motivations to support a research project: The “competent informant” with their own demands to be met during the course of the research; the “friend of the project,” who believes in the benefit of the research; the “reverent aide” to the higher purpose of research; the “pragmatic supporter,” who is aware of the researchers academic obligations and participates as a personal favor; and the “reluctant test person,” who does not understand the purpose of the research but is willing to support it anyway (p. 119f). Arie’s interest in the research project could be characterized as that of a “competent informant,” a “friend of the project,” and of a “pragmatic supporter.” In return for his support, we agreed on a monetary remuneration. This fee was lower than what he would have earned if he spent the same time in his main job as a tour operator for tourist groups, but it was still high enough to provide a decent income, considering the low wage level in Labuan Bajo. At the same time, Arie also showed what I believe to be genuine interest in the research and its goals. He personally feels a strong obligation towards the economic and social development of his home region and is involved in several social projects. Additionally, a personal relationship emerged with our collaboration during the first field visit, which also led to the establishment of an ongoing working relationship between him and my father in a joint social project. These “family ties” doubtlessly helped my case when asking for his support. 67 A key informant has some control over the flow of interaction between the researcher and the field. By selectively revealing parts of the field to the researcher—for example, by deciding who talks to the researcher and who doesn’t—the informant controls the type of data that becomes available to the researcher (Burgess, 1991, p. 43ff in Bailey, 1996, p. 50). This does not have to be an actively and consciously pursued goal. The key informant’s position in society itself can open up some parts of the field and close others. It is possible, for example, that the researcher isolates herself from some members of the field simply by being affiliated to the key informant (Bailey, 1996, p. 56; Agar, 1980, p. 120). Arie had a noticeable influence on the selection of interview partners in the second and the third field study. In the first field study, the selection of the interview sample was supported by two project managers of Swisscontact. In all three studies, the selection process took place in two steps: first, the researcher(s) defined the parameters a person had to fulfill to qualify as a potential interview partner; second, the local partners made suggestions of possible interview partners, out of which, the researcher(s) chose the most suitable candidates. In the first field study, two groups of interview partners were selected separately. First, we obtained an understanding of the local socioeconomic environment. We selected five people with different backgrounds and positions within society to get a diversified insight into the context of West Manggarai. The analysis and discussion of the interview with these five people resulted in a rough map of the main groups and segments of the West Manggarai society. In the subsequent meeting with respondents, each representing a different field, we further discussed the socioeconomic makeup of West Manggarai and refined our understanding of the interdependencies between the tourism market and the local society. We then selected one of the identified impact chains, which links the PPG interventions of the Swiss NGO with the poor, and then chose further interview partners, who represented the different stakeholder groups along this impact chain. The goal of these interviews was to understand how people participate in growth and what value growth added to their lives, by tracing back the impact chain from the tourism sector to the villages. These stakeholder groups we chose were a) hotels that received consulting by Swisscontact; b) the employees of those hotels; and 3) the relatives and neighbours of 68 the hotel employees. Of the four hotels we selected, the hotel owner or the manager was interviewed as the representative of the first group. The hotel staff, which represented the second group, was interviewed individually. All staff members who were available during the time were interviewed. The last group was represented by a random selection (“whoever was available at the time of visit”) of relatives and neighbours of two hotel employees which were interviewed in two group interviews. The first group of interview partners consisted only of men. The second and third group included female and male interview partners in about equal numbers. In the second field study, I wanted to learn more about the journey that people from the rural villages of West Manggarai undertook to establish themselves in tourism and worked for several years as tour guides or who were business owners of or staff members in tourism sector companies. These were the participants in growth, in other words. The selection criteria for interview participants the second field study were therefore: Persons who 1) were well established in the tourism sector in West Manggarai, in the sense that they either owned their own tourism businesses or worked in formal employment, or who were among those able to earn a regular income through their informal entrepreneurial activities; 2) grew up in West Manggarai or the surrounding areas; and 3) whose parents and extended families were poor in the sense that they had average or low wealth or income.11 Arie suggested potential interview partners by giving me their names and a short biography. In total, he provided more than 40 suggestions, of which the overall majority fitted the criteria. From these, I first selected 10 suitable candidates with whom Arie scheduled individual interviews. Another 10 candidates I selected after the completion of the first set of interviews. If a selected person was unable to participate, someone else was chosen from the remaining candidates. At the end of most interviews, I asked the interview partners to provide further suggestions on potential candidates who suited the criteria. From these inquiries, some nine candidates emerged, who were different from the ones already identified. Mostly, the candidates suggested by the interview partners reflected the selection that Arie had already given me, which points to a saturation of the selection process. Since the suggested overall The selection criteria was limited to the monetary aspect of poverty. The criteria therefore applied to the the majority of tourism workers who originated from West Manggarai. 11 69 selection included candidates from different subsectors of the tourism sector (hotel managers, travel agents, tour guides, etc.), it is unlikely that the selection was limited to the immediate personal social network of Arie, with major parts of the tourism business community missing. In the selection of the interview partners, a gender and age-group balanced distribution was pursued. Since there was a strong predominance of men in the established business community, special preference was given to female candidates. Of the five female candidates who I was able to identify, three were available for an interview. In the third field study, the goal was to complement the interview sample with representatives of two further stakeholder groups that are particularly relevant from a PPG perspective. These were on the one hand the representatives of the institutional environment, and on the other, of those poor men and women who do not participate in growth. The selection criteria of each of the two stakeholder groups were first discussed in depth with Arie before a list of possible interview partners was composed. The interview sample of the stakeholder group of the “non participants in growth” was meant to consist of people who did not work in the tourism sector or in any other part of the economy that was directly linked to it. In particular, I wanted to gain the perspective of the poorest of the poor, of those who did not directly benefit from the growth that was happening in Labuan Bajo. I therefore made sure to include people with income and living conditions below the average of West Manggarai, people with below average education or skills, or people suffering from marginalization or social exclusion of some sort. To select interview partners representing the institutional environment of Labuan Bajo, we considered all institutions included in the institutional typology by Narayan (2000, p. 11). “Institutions”, she writes, “are found along a continuum, from the micro or local level to the macro or national and international levels. Institutions often have both formal and informal dimensions, with some part of their operation governed by explicit rules, roles, procedures, and precedents, while unwritten rules, roles, and procedures also shape behavior. An understanding of institutions is important in any project attempting to understand poverty, because institutions affect people’s opportunities by establishing and maintaining their access to social, material, and natural resources” (p. 11). 70 For the interview sample, we considered only institutions on the local or micro level, which have, in our opinion, the far greater impact on the pro-poorness of growth in West Manggarai: State Institutions Civil Society Institutions Local governments Community-based Local police Organizations Health clinics Neighborhood Schools Kinship networks Extension workers Traditional leaders Traditional authority Sacred sites Institutional typology by Narayan (2000, p. 11) State institutions are “formal institutions that are state-affiliated or state-sponsored. They are vested with the power and authority of the state and act in its name, projecting the purposes and interests of those who operate state institutions into the domains of individuals or communities. For most citizens these institutions are the most important points of direct contact with the ruling national power. The effectiveness of these formal institutions is closely connected to the capacity, legitimacy, and degree of public confidence in the state itself” (Narayan, 2000, p. 11). Civil society institutions on the other hand are “not state-affiliated – they occupy the space between the household and the state. Rather than deriving their authority from legal recognition – although some do – civil society institutions draw primarily on the collective will of constituent groups” (Narayan, 2000, p. 11). Our criteria for the selection of interviews partners was institutions with the highest effect on the following five aspects, which determine the pro-poor character of growth: 1) the availability of basic infrastructure; 2) the inclusiveness of markets (in terms of business environment, rule of law, non discrimination or funding); 3) the level and development of incomes at the bottom; 4) the growth of those markets in which most poor people earn their livelihood from or the number of poor people earning from the market which is growing; and 5) the skills and knowledge of poor people (OECD, 2007). 71 This also included the two NGOs that fostered PPG in Labuan Bajo and West Manggarai: Swisscontact and Yayasan Komodo Kita (YKK). In case of Swisscontact, the interview partner was the current local program manager, and in case of YKK, it was the director of the organization. In all cases, the interview partner was, whenever possible, the person with the greatest influence over the activities of the institution in West Manggarai. To reflect the socioeconomic makeup of the district of West Manggarai, we chose to look for interview partners in four different locations: the town of Labuan Bajo, the Suburb Battu Cermin, the mountain village Perang, and the island of Kukusan. Battu Cermin is on the outskirts of Labuan Bajo, inhabited mainly by newcomers from the rest of West Manggarai and people from outside of Flores who moved here roughly during the last 15 years. Further, many government officials and business owners from Labuan Bajo live there. Before the economic boom, Battu Cermin was a small farming village. Perang is a typical Manggarai farming village in the mountains of central West Manggarai. It is part of a collection of four smaller villages (Desa Ponto Ara), with a combined population of approximately 4,000 people. Kukusan is a small fisher village of around 150 inhabitants on a tiny circular island, about 15 km away from the coast of Labuan Bajo. Since Arie did not have any personal associations or detailed knowledge of the villages of Perang and Kukusan, we made the selection of interview partners directly on location during our transect walks through the villages. The selection criteria remained the same. The overall interview sample of the three field studies was the following: Field study Number of interviews conducted First: January 2009 Seven interviews with people representing different parts of the local social and institutional environment Eight interviews with people who work in tourism Three interviews with people in the villages (two of which were group interviews) Second: June/July 2010 Twenty interviews with people who work in tourism Third: June/July 2013 Eleven interviews with representatives of the local 72 institutional environment Ten interviews with people in the villages The sampling in all three field studies was theoretically driven and did not aim for representativeness. It had an “iterative or rolling quality” (Miles and Huberman, 2014, p. 33), where the observations made and the people spoken to led to new interviews and observations. The more I found out about the context of Labuan Bajo, the further I enlarged the sample interviews to include new perspectives on the case. The researcher cannot take for granted the participation of an individual in an interview for research purposes. Not only do the interview partners have to spare their time to participate in the interview, they also have to reveal their insights on a particular subject without having had much time to previously reflect on their opinions, all while being left at least partly in the dark about the purpose of their involvement. The agreement to participate in a research project thus depends on the compatibility of views and interests of the interview partners with that of the researcher (Wolff, 2000, p. 355ff). This means that in the current study, participation depended on the skill of Arie, who supported the arrangement of most of the interviews in the sample, of explaining the intentions of the research in terms that make sense to the interview candidates (Johnson, 1975, p. 56). In most cases, particularly in the second field study, it was the persuasiveness of Arie that secured participation. The decision to participate depended either on the personal relationship of the interview partner with Arie or on the persuasiveness of Arie’s arguments for participation. This made most interview participants either “pragmatic supporters” or “reluctant test persons” (Helfferich, 2004, p. 119f). It is common that many people in the field who come in contact with a research project do not take much interest in it (Wolff, 2000, p. 345). Rather, the researcher has to expect and accept skepticism towards the research project, and in some cases, even a refusal to participate. From an epistemological point of view, the relevant question in terms of selection is whether there was a bias or a pattern in participation versus rejection. Looking at people who were selected as interview partners but rejected to participate in the research, which only happened in a very small number of cases, some general conclusions can be drawn. For one, it does not seem like the background (or biography) of the interview candidates had any influence on rejection. People with 73 comparable backgrounds were included in the sample. Secondly, the candidates who refused participation were heterogeneous in their demographic characteristics (including gender) and their position within society. No pattern was thus recognizable. Also, they were heterogeneous in their relationship with Arie. The list for example includes one close friend and one protégé of Arie, as well as some people with whom he had only a loose connection. It can be presumed that there was no personal bias or even a conscious manipulation by Arie related to the likelihood of participation. The only recognizable pattern was that the candidates who refused to participate seemed to be traveling more often and generally were under greater time constraints than those who participated. Since a high workload and a high volume of travel can be sign of good business in the tourism sector of Labuan Bajo, a possible bias for professionally less successful people in the sample cannot be ruled out. In view of the scientific interest of this research, this bias is not expected to have a significant impact on the outcome. 5.3. Conducting the interviews An in-depth qualitative interview resembles an everyday conversation, but it differs in some important aspects (Helfferich, 2004, p. 35f). Both participants have an influence on the flow of the interview, but in different ways. The respondent may reveal more or less of herself by either speaking openly in long narratives or giving scant answers, avoiding questions, or even taking breaks from the interview. The interviewer acts strategically, following a specific research interest, to reach an intended outcome. She (or he) controls the flow of the interview by using certain interview techniques, for example, by asking either open or closed questions or by deliberately allowing for pauses in the narrative flow. In this sense, there is a lack of reciprocity in the interview. The interview participants contribute unequally. The respondent provides the data while the interviewer sets the structure of the interview. Unlike everyday conversation, the interview is not necessarily shaped by mutual experience or mutual context knowledge. The interviewer listens “actively” (Helfferich, 2004, p. 78f), in that she (or he) controls spontaneous reactions revealing judgment on the things said. On the other hand, the interviewer does not overlook contradictions, as is often done in everyday conversation. 74 In light of the peculiarities of the qualitative interview, Helfferich (2004) differentiates interview types along five dimensions. The first is the research focus, meaning the purpose or intended outcome of the research, as a precondition of the interview technique. The selection of a specific interview technique shapes the outcome of the interview. Open questions, designed to generate a narrative flow, will result in different data than a structured questionnaire centered on a specific topic. If the research focus is on the self-awareness of the interview partner—let’s say to understand how biographic events “shape identity” (p. 26ff)—an open narrative interview form may fit the purpose. If the research focus is to understand the everyday patterns of social practice of the interview partners, a partly structured interview technique, which allows a stronger focus on these practices, is more suitable. In all interviews conducted in West Manggarai, the latter research focus was pursued and the style was semi-structured in the overall majority of interviews. During the first field study, there were two interview guides. The first guide was developed before the field visit in preparation of the interviews to increase the understanding of the socioeconomic structure of West Manggarai. It did not include any specific questions but a general structure that the interviews would follow. The first of the three parts of the interview was to inquire the general context of West Manggarai. The second part focused on the workings of the PPG project within the tourism sector and in particular the stakeholders involved in the chains of value creation from the tourism sector to the wider society. The third part involved an inquiry into the nature of the value creation which occurred and spread because of the tourism sector growth. This structure was followed only roughly and more space was given to the particular expertise and insights of the respondent. Whenever new and interesting aspects were mentioned, this was followed up by further questions. The result was a network diagram showing the involved stakeholders and their value creation and benefits from tourism sector growth. The identified chain of value creation from the hotel consultancy intervention was the basis for the interview guide for the second set of interviews. For each step of the chain, the value created was discussed with the subsequent interview partners along four dimensions: economic impact, social impact, ethical impact, and emotional impact. In the second field study, the interviews with members of the business community also followed a structure prepared before the field visit: The first part of questions followed the biographic path of the respondent, a technique usually associated with narrative 75 interviews. Open questions left space for a longer narrative. In the second part, the questions followed a more narrow approach to the particular practices, which encouraged the transfer of economic, social, and human capital from the respondents to the community, and the practices that had emerged as common in previous interviews. In the third field study, the two different interview guides were prepared in correspondence with Arie in preparation of the field study and refined in a half-day session with Arie, all including specific lead questions. The phrasing and translation of the questions was discussed with regard to their likely reception by the respondents. The interview guide for the first stakeholder group, i.e. poor men and women, opened with the inquiry of the daily life of the respondents, including typical daily activities. Then, the respondents were asked to compare their current situation with that of five years ago and with that of their parents at the same age. The lead questions were complemented with follow-up questions for a better understanding of the points made by the interview partners. To avoid the imposition of a preconceived notion of the concept of poverty, there were no references to the paradigms of poverty, and the term “poverty” was not used. In a few cases, the interview was followed by a third part, in which the term poverty (or miskin in Indonesian) was introduced. Then, more concrete questions were asked to gauge the respondents’ understanding of the concept of poverty. The interview guide for the two other stakeholder groups included in the sample, i.e. institutions and external aid organizations, opened with the invitation to the respondent to talk about the activities of their organization, followed in the second part of the interview by questions related to each paradigm of the poverty matrix. Depending on the respondent’s level of previous knowledge about the theoretical aspects of the concept of poverty and their practical implications, the questions were either phrased abstractly (e.g. “To what extent do the dynamics of poverty influence your organization’s strategy?”) or closely related to the activities discussed in the first part of the interview (e.g. “How does activity X affect people in the long-term?”). In the third field study, every interview was followed by a discussion with Arie addressing our personal impressions and assessment of the interview situation, the interview partners’ behavior, and the answers provided. The second dimension of Helfferich’s (2004) typology is the evaluation of the validity and extensiveness of the answer. The decision if an answer is “adequate” in the sense 76 that it correctly reflects the subject of the research and suffices in its scope should depend on the research focus. If the self-perception of the interview partner is the subject of the research, it can be left fully to the respondent to decide what and how much to reveal, since this is an integral part of the subjective experience. In contrast, my goal was to understand everyday practice and applied concepts. It was therefore necessary to assess if the answers given in the interview provided the right information and to intervene if they appeared to be untruthful or contradictory, or if they were insufficient in a sense that certain aspects were not mentioned spontaneously or were even avoided. While there was no indication that any of the respondents ever deliberately provided a false version of their own experience, it happened sometimes that the information provided was confusing or contradictory. In these cases, follow-up questions helped to gain a better understanding of the subject. Contradictions were also always part of the post-interview discussions. Another possible source of misrepresentation is the language barrier. In the first and third field study, the majority of interviews were conducted either in Indonesian, the national language of the country, or in Manggarai, the local language. Arie acted as translator in most of those interviews. During the first field study, John Raja, the deputy project manager of the Swisscontact Wisata project acted as translator in some cases. Whenever the interview partners were known to have a proficient knowledge of English, the interview was conducted without a translator. In the second field study, the majority of interviews were conducted in English, which was the native language of neither the researchers nor the interview partners. The use of a foreign language was possible due to the relatively high level of language skills among the established members of the tourism sector. The knowledge of foreign languages is an indispensable prerequisite for their work and thus part of their self-image as successful business people. There were disparities in the level of English skills. A majority of interview partners spoke English on a daily basis, almost as frequently as Indonesian or Manggarai. They spoke the language on a level beyond everyday conversation and were able to communicate effortlessly during the interviews. A good third of English-speaking interview partners were not as fluent, and this inhibited the narrative flow during the interviews. In these cases, it sometimes occurred that the meaning of their answer was blurred by the difficulty to find the right words. Wherever it did not disturb the flow of the interview too much, I intervened with a follow-up question if the answer was unclear. 77 In the third field study, most of the interviews were conducted in the native language of the interview participants with a continuous translation by Arie. He translated the interview questions I posed in English into either Indonesian or into the local Manggaraian language, depending on the preferences of the interview partner. The answers were directly translated back into English. Language, Bourdieu writes, represents the adoption of a whole world view (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 117). So the fact that an interview participant responded in English, in Indonesian, or in Manggarai is not only relevant in terms of the correct translation of the spoken words but also the acknowledgement of the representation of a particular view on society, the economy, and the world as a whole, which is reflected in the language spoken. When the Manggaraian words by an interview participant in a remote village in the mountains of Manggarai were translated into English by Arie, they were also reproduced in a language that represented a different view of the world—in this case, the world view of the globalized Western society and of the capitalist economy. To minimize the occurrence of distortion of meaning that happens with translation, I therefore had the original interview recordings transcribed in Manggarai (or Indonesian) by an Indonesian–English teacher from Labuan Bajo, and then translated word by word into English. This gave me the opportunity to compare the immediate translations Arie provided during the interview with a second, written translation of the answers the respondents had given in their native language. The evaluation of the validity of information is possible only to a certain extent during the interview itself. To recognize misrepresentation or contradiction during the interview requires a lot of attention on the part of the interviewer but also some level of previous knowledge about the context. (We will revisit this aspect in dimension four of the interview typology.) An important step in validating the information provided by the respondent, and in particular the translation provided by the translator, therefore comes during the analysis of the interview transcripts. The majority of interviews conducted in Indonesian or Manggarai were transcribed in the original language and then translated by Agnes Retnaningtyas, an English teacher and professional translator from Labuan Bajo. This allowed for a comparison of the translation provided during the interview by Arie and the retrospective translation of the answers from the transcript. 78 The second aspect of validity of information is its extensiveness, or in other words, how much information the respondent is ready to provide. The willingness to talk about certain aspects of social life can be very different in different cultures. It can be low in groups or milieus with a strong collective social cohesion, especially if it cultivates collective experience and not individual uniqueness (Helfferich, 2004, p. 136f). In the interviews conducted in West Manggarai, it was obvious that the interview partners, who all came from small village communities with structures of strong communal solidarity, were sometimes irritated that the interviews revolved around their personal experiences, and their answers sometimes departed from their own experience and practices to factual descriptions of their social communities. Sometimes, they also seemed to be unable to answer the simplest questions about their own daily lives, which most likely had an effect of the same uneasiness with my interest in their individual practices and views. In most of these cases, I revisited the subject at hand with the same question phrased differently, and in some cases, Arie needed to further explain the background and intent of the researcher. In some cases, this led to more openness, and in some cases, the answers remained partial. This brings us to the third of Helfferich’s (2004) dimensions: the level of control the interviewer takes over the interview structure. Generally, the interviews with the first stakeholder group, the poor, were open, without much direction on the topics to be discussed. The interviews with representatives of the other three stakeholder groups were mostly open in the first part. In the second part of these interviews, I more strongly directed the discussions to some pre-determined areas of practice or theoretical aspects of poverty. If the respondents introduced new aspects, these new threads were not immediately abandoned, but the focus of the interview was often quickly shifted back to the structure. What also sometimes happened was that the respondents themselves signaled the need for more structure after the first open-ended questions. A very open question can expose the respondent more than a narrow one. The respondent reveals more about himself and is more vulnerable to the risk of not fulfilling the expectations of the interviewer in an open, narrative interview. Reluctance to answer and short answers to open questions can indicate the need for more guidance from the interviewer (Helfferich, 2004, p. 126). The closed structure on the other hand leaves the respondent with little control over the flow of information, with the exception of not answering a question, which then is more often the result of not understanding the questions or being overburdened or offended by it (Helfferich, 79 2004, p. 128). A downside of the closed structure is a lower likeliness of new and unexpected insights on the subject to emerge. Dimension four of Helfferich’s (2004) interview typology is the level of previous knowledge of the interview participants. In the interviews in the current case study, the interviewer’s knowledge of the context was much lower than that of the respondents’. While I was able to gain a certain level of understanding of the socioeconomic context of West Manggarai, the actual experiences of the interview partners, in particular the poor, is very far from my own life experiences. In such cases, it is important that the interviewer keeps an open mindset and shows the willingness to understand the experiences and motivations of the interview partners. As we have seen before, this does not necessarily mean taking on a position of “ethnomethodological indifference”, in which the personal social and cognitive frame of reference is abandoned and no judgment whatsoever of the answers are indicated. Rather, I tried to show understanding and reassurance to build trust and help develop the flow of information, in that I verbally and non verbally signaled that I tried to understand their situation. My own background in development cooperation in Pakistan and India also provided an increased sensitivity of the peculiarities of the practices and views of the interview partners. Previous knowledge on the part of the interviewer can also be a possible bias, in that it influences how the interview is structured and questions phrased, and it has implications upon the information provided by the respondents. Mutual contextual knowledge, for example, can lead to a feeling of unspoken understanding on part of the respondent and result in important pieces of information being withheld (Helfferich, 2004, 136f). In such cases, the interviewer might have to compensate by indicating ignorance. This is a technique that I often used to encourage respondents to talk about the things that were important to them, even if these seemed trivial to them. The role of the respondent in different types of interviews is the last dimension to consider. It somewhat anticipates the topic of the next chapter, which looks in detail at the distribution of roles, but it is limited to the interview typology as it concerns only the character of the interview structure itself. Helfferich identifies four types of role distributions, depending on the setting of the interview (natural or scientific) and on the communication style (monologic vs. discoursive). The first type, the naturalmonologic, is set up as a narrative monologue, where one person takes the role of 80 listener and the other of narrator; the second type, the scientific-monologic, is non reciprocal and semi structured, where one person guides the other in order to collect information on certain predetermined subjects; in the third, the scientific-discoursive, there is a joint focus of two experts on a certain problem-oriented topic— both participants contribute in terms of content; and in the fourth, the natural-discoursive, the respondent determines the topics to be discussed while the interviewer steers the interview flow, always working towards reciprocity and allowing mutual reactions to shape the interview. The physical setting in an interview has an impact on how the respondents perceive their role during the interview (Helfferich, 2004, p. 136ff). Thus, setting the interview at a location within the social environment of the respondents—a place where they spend time in their everyday lives—will be more conducive to a “natural” interview style. A more formal environment, like the meeting room at a university for instance, is more suitable for “scientific” interview styles. Since the overall majority of interviews in all three field studies had the aim of understanding how the respondents saw the world and were not limited to a predetermined list of topics, a natural interview setting was preferred. The interviews took place either at the home or workplaces of the respondents or, particularly during the second field study, in one of the well-frequented restaurants in town. All settings represented the everyday social environment of the interview partners. Only the interview settings at the restaurants had some “scientific” elements, in that the location was chosen by the researcher and the recording device was placed visibly on the table were the interview partners sat opposite each other. The respondents—all individuals who worked in the tourism sector—thus found themselves in a situation that was both familiar for them and somewhat detached from their usual social environment. The style of communication is the second aspect influencing role distribution during the interview. The interviewer can either allow monologic narratives (or even impose them) and take on the role of a listener or engage in a dialogic form of communication. The interviews conducted in all three field studies were dialogic. At the beginning of the interviews, I often began with an open-ended question along the lines of “Can you tell me a bit about your life?” While this allowed for a monologic response, it rarely resulted in a longer narrative flow. Answers were often limited to short factual description of the respondents’ family structure, the location and demographics of their 81 native village, or the simple statement that there was actually not much to tell. In some cases, the respondents gave a very brief overview over the stages of their lives that resembled a career summary in a job interview. A side effect of the factual nature of the initial responses in the first field study was that it led me earlier than intended to take up a stronger guidance of the interview with more closed and more frequent questions. While the semi-structure of the interview was maintained and there was ample room for the respondents to determine the content of the dialogue, few interview partners ever engaged in longer monologic narratives. 5.4. Distribution of roles As soon as any interaction occurs between the researcher and the field, the role of the researcher ceases to be that of a neutral observer (Flick, 2006, p. 114). The question of what type of roles the researcher and the members of the field take on in their interaction with each other is one of the central methodological aspects of qualitative field research (Atteslander, 2010, p. 98). It is often implied that the researcher must choose a particular role when entering the field. Atteslander for example argues that the researcher must adopt a role that is fully congruent with the field, which means a role that already exists in the particular field under research and therefore does not disturb the field at all. While the underlying assumption that the researcher can influence her role by choosing a particular approach to the field is true, she controls her role only partially, and to a certain extent, this role is unwillingly and indirectly given to her by the members of the field (Flick 2006, p. 114). It therefore makes most sense to view the role distribution in empirical social research as emerging from an interaction (or negotiation) between the researcher and the members of the field. When reflecting upon role distribution, a distinction between the “researcher role” and the “social role” must be made (Atteslander, 2010, p. 98). In her interactions with the field, a researcher will be viewed not only in her professional function as someone investigating the field, but also as a social being with a particular background and particular personal intentions. At the same time, the researcher must find a balance between the objective distance as observer of the field and the practical and cognitive involvement with the field as a participant. The relationship between the two depends on the level of “foreignness” of the researcher (Flick, 2007, p. 149f), which refers to the level of involvement of the researcher in the field. The researcher can limit her 82 social role by limiting her exposure to the field to a minimum, for example, by just showing up for the interviews. Alternately, she can adopt the opposite strategy of interacting as much as possible with the field and acquire the insider perspective step by step. In its most extreme form, the insider role is characterized as “going native,” when the researcher breaks down all boundaries between himself and the field by adopting the behavior and the mindset of the members of the field (Girtler, 1988, p. 63). Role distributions in empirical field studies are not set in stone. During the course of the research, roles can change. In addition, the freedom of the researcher to handle changing roles flexibly and adapt to different situations is considered a strength of qualitative empirical research (Atteslander, 2010, p. 98). In the three field studies in my research, the boundary between the researcher role and social role was not always distinct. In the first study, my researcher role was dominant. As a representative of the University of St. Gallen, and because I was always seen as a close collaborator of Swisscontact, I had little social interaction with any members of the field. It is very likely that during the interview, the formal introductions by Swisscontact staff members and our affiliations contributed to the interview partners perceiving us in our researcher role only. In the second and third field studies, two elements blurred the lines between the two roles: First, my interactions with the interview partners were not just limited to the interview situations—they also included informal meetings for social purposes; second, my social affiliation with Arie, who arranged most of the interviews, blurred the line between my researcher role and my social role. However, the researcher role and the social role were still kept distinct, in the sense that information gathered during the interview situations and information gathered in the form of field notes out of other interactions were treated distinctly as such. While there was no deliberate effort to integrate with the field in the sense of “going native,” the length of my stay and my personal relationships with people from Labuan Bajo allowed me to acquire some insider knowledge about the field and develop loose social ties with the community as a whole. The role distribution cannot be set collectively for the whole field, but it is individual and situational (Johnson, 1975, p. 121ff), and an analysis of the role distribution should be part of the post-assessment of all interactions in the field from which research data is derived. The most relevant of these interactions for the research outcome in all three field studies were during the interviews. The emergence of roles 83 between two interview partners begins even before the first encounter by the preconception of the likely role the other is going to take on. It is then shaped by the first cognitive and emotional perception at the beginning of the encounter and continues to evolve during the interview process (Helfferich, 2004, p. 105). This process is not arbitrary. While in each interview distinct roles emerged, which were taken into account individually with the analysis of the interviews, comparable patterns also emerged. Let’s look at the preconceptions first. Since all interviews in the three field studies were arranged by a key informant, the relationship of the key informant and the interview partner is key to understand preconceptions. Further aspects to consider are the circumstances under which the interview was arranged and the interview partners’ general attitude towards foreigners and foreign researchers in particular. In the first field study, interviews were arranged by John Raja, whose affiliation with the NGO Swisscontact certainly shaped preconceptions of the interview respondents. Swisscontact had been working in West Manggarai for three years prior to the field study and had developed ties with political, institutional, and business leaders. In the first set of interviews with representatives of different segments of society in particular, this played an important role. In the second set of interviews—the interview with hotel managers and hotel staff—the affiliation with Swisscontact had an additional effect on preconceptions. All interview partners worked for hotels that had previously received free business consultation by Swisscontact. In the case of the hotel staff, it can be assumed that the invitation to participate in the interviews came from the hotel manager or another of their direct supervisors. In the second field study, Arie arranged the interviews, and since I did not have any meetings before the interview with most respondents, the effect on their preconceptions was comparable. For people working in the tourism sector in Labuan Bajo, Arie was a known figure. Being one of the most active and most experienced member of the tourism business community, he was perceived by most either as a colleague or a role model and mentor. As head of the provincial tour guide association, he did perform the function of a formal leader, but in the very loosely organized and regulated business community of Labuan Bajo, he did not have any formal leadership power. His influence on the community was based on his strong networks and his role as an independent entrepreneurial trailblazer. The trust that people in the community 84 showed for him helped to establish my credibility as a researcher. It added to the perception of my researcher role as serious, unbiased, and in the best interest of the community. The meetings with the interview partners were arranged mostly by phone and sometimes in person. The information Arie provided before the interviews, which shaped preconceptions the most, was similar for all respondents. First was the purpose of the research, which he explained as understanding the role of entrepreneurs or people with jobs in the tourism sector or the development of the whole region. To ensure participation, he assured the respondents of the importance of their role and the potential benefit that could come from a better understanding of this role. To assure them of the legitimacy of the research, he stressed on my “academic respectability” (Johnson, 1975, p. 64) as a doctoral student from a Western university. In some cases, this may have contributed to the preconception of the role of a formal researcher and hindered the unconstrained flow of information at the beginning of the interviews. During the course of the interviews, the character of the interview often changed to a more informal dialogue between equals, especially when I mentioned my previous experiences in the field and my ties to the community. In the third field study, the arrangement of interviews took on different forms. The meetings with representatives of institutions were done in the same way, with Arie making arrangements by phone beforehand. Again, there was often reluctance on part of the interview partners at the beginning of the interviews. In some cases, a fear of unwanted evaluation of their programs may have played a role. The meetings with poor men and women in the villages arose more spontaneously during the visits to their respective village. Either we asked a person whom we met if they were willing to participate in an interview, or we approached people’s houses during our walk to see if a spontaneous interview was possible. In these situations, no preconception on the part of the interview partner was noticed. Special circumstances had to be taken into account in some of the interviews in Battu Cermin, where some of the interview partners were neighbors of Arie, and in the village of Perang, which I visited together with a delegation of representatives of an NGO and an English school—this shaped preconceptions. In my analysis of the interviews, the circumstances shaping preconceptions of role distribution have been taken into account for each interview. 85 The second factor shaping role distribution is the first impression the interview participants gain during the first encounter. This perception ranges between two poles: “similar to me” versus “different to me”, or in other words, “congruity” versus “incongruity” (Helfferich, 2004, p. 105). Congruity depends on two things: Cognitively, it depends on the shared experience or more precisely the comparison of the background of the other person to one’s own background. Emotionally, it depends on a feeling of trust, of being understood, which develops during the course of the interview. To understand the cognitive factors shaping congruity, one has to take into account that people always encounter each other as members of a certain gender, age group, and social and cultural background. While there were varying degrees of congruity in the basic demographic characteristics between the interviewer and the respondents in the interviews in the current case study, the social and cultural background between the two were always vastly different. All of the respondents grew up in poor, remote rural communities in West Manggarai or in the immediate surrounding areas. In some cases, when the respondents were active in the tourism sector, there were certain elements in their background that increased congruity: Familiarity with “Western” culture, English language proficiency, affiliation with Arie, and a general open mindset and outward orientation. Congruity has its advantages and disadvantages. High social congruity and familiarity can support the flow of information in that there is an unspoken understanding by the interview participants of the content and the style of the communication. The respondents feels reassured that the motives of their actions, which are laid bare in the interview, are understood and not misinterpreted by the researcher (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 783). On the other hand, cognitive closeness can lead the interview partner to presume an understanding of certain social realities that he then does not think worthy to be mentioned (Helfferich, 2004, p. 106f). High congruity requires more distance on the part of the researcher to prevent premature interpretation of the narrative. Too much closeness can also lead to rivalry (Helfferich, 2004, p. 114). These factors had to be taken into account for all interviews in the current case study where a local interpreter was present. In general, the congruity between the researcher and the interview partners was very low. Low congruity usually leads to lesser willingness to share insider knowledge, and therefore, more trust-building measures were required to build 86 confidence and openness in the interview partners. In qualitative field research, building relations of trust is generally an essential ingredient to gain fruitful insights into the field (Johnson, 1975, p. 121ff). A typical reaction to field research by both the researcher and the members of the field is the feeling that there is a “backstage” to the process (Wolff, 2000, p. 344). For the researcher, this is the part of the field reserved for insiders; for the respondent, this is the underlying motive of the research, which is not fully comprehensible. Therefore, trust is needed to access information that would otherwise have been withheld. Trust supports the validity of data (Johnson, 1975, p. 84ff) but does not guarantee it. In some cases, it is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for valid data collection. When there is a high level of trust, certain information may still remain inaccessible or invalid information may be reported, depending on the context (Johnson, 1975, p. 121ff). Trust-building measures can range from general courtesy to active exchange of reciprocities (e.g. the prospect of cooperation in other projects) (Johnson, 1975, p. 86ff). In my case, a certain level of trust was established through previous intermediation by Arie, through informal conversations before the interview started, and through the signaling of interest and understanding during the interview. Nevertheless, it is clear that many topics that demand a high level of trust are underreported in the data at hand. Poor people for example often choose not to reveal information about sensitive issues like domestic violence, conflicts within the community, or local government corruption (Narayan, 2000, p. 22). Role distribution continues to evolve in the interactions between the participants during the interview process. Preconceived roles begin to change in the first contact, even before the actual interview situation begins (Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann, 2004, p. 82), through the physical interview setting (as we have seen in Chapter 4, Section 4.3) and through the interaction before the interview. In the current case study, interaction in all interviews was limited to a few minutes of friendly conversation. When the meetings took place at the offices or homes of the interview candidates, the hosts usually offered a cup of tea or coffee. If it took place in a restaurant, I extended an invitation for a beverage before the interviews began. An informal conversation, usually about shared experiences, Manggaraian culture, or mutual acquaintances added to the familiarity between the interviewer and the respondent. In the second field study, there was rarely a seamless transition between the informal conversation and the 87 beginning of the interview. The interviews started when I visibly turned on the recorder and put forward the first question of the interview. This brought the situation back to a more formal distribution of roles between interviewer and respondent. In the third field study, this happened at a much lower degree. I consciously made sure that the friendly everyday conversation led to more formal questions without any interruption. In the first field study, some of the interviews lacked any informal conversation at the beginning and had a more formal character, while in some of the interviews, the transition was seamless. No audio recording was used, but the researchers just started taking notes at some point in the conversation. The opening question and in general the first interview sequence have a big impact on how roles are shaped during the course of the interview. The role distribution, which emerges prior to the interview, can shift again. The question of who takes the leading role in steering the interview flow becomes apparent in the first sequence (Helfferich, 2004, p. 122f). As mentioned earlier, the interviews in the current case study usually began with an open-ended question, to which interview partners often responded not with longer narratives but in a short and factual manner and then waited for the next question. The lead was thus almost always shifted towards the interviewer. The distribution of roles during an interview is always asymmetric. The participants of the interview are partners, in that they are working towards the same goal, to get information from the respondent to the interviewer, but their roles in this partnership are complementary and non reciprocal (Helfferich, 2004, p. 118). There is no reciprocity in terms of gain. The interviewer receives something out of the interview— information—but has nothing to give back except his undivided attention for a certain period of time. The roles are also asymmetric in terms of knowledge. The interviewer has a knowledge advantage concerning the interview process, knowing which question comes next. The respondent has an advantage in terms of knowledge about the research subject. The interviewer has time to reflect on the subject beforehand. The respondent does not know if and how important his answers are, and he does not have any control over how the information he is providing will be used (Helfferich, 2004, p. 119). In interviews with poor men and women, there is also the element of asymmetrical power relations (Narayan, 2000, p. 22). The interviewers are in most cases richer, more educated, and better connected with influential people inside and outside the community than the respondents. 88 From the interview role, one has to differentiate the social role of the respondent. In their everyday lives, people have different social roles, of which they can represent one or several during the interview. It is important that the interviewer be aware of which social role of the respondent she addresses (Hermanns, 2000, p. 360ff). This role can change during the course of the interview, depending on which role the interview questions are directed at. Interview partners generally respond not only as representatives of the function or lifestyle the interviewer aims to understand, but also as members of their families and their communities dealing with an outsider. Social roles are both varied and fluent and difficult to distinguish. The awareness of the different aspects of role distribution not only helps to better understand what has been said during the interviews, but also in their own right provide further insights into the subject that is being researched. 5.5. Working with the data and drawing conclusions The conclusions that I drew from the case study of West Manggarai, which will be presented in subsequent chapters, must be understood as the product of a long and iterative process, going back and forth between empirical observations, literature review, data analysis, writing up of findings, and discussions with peers and mentors throughout the whole research period. All of the different parts of the research process contributed to the conclusions drawn it. In the following section, I describe the process of data analysis in detail. While the analysis cannot explain the conclusions in isolation, it was nevertheless an important element contributing to the findings of the research. To make sense of the wealth of data obtained from the field, the research process needs to be accompanied by a general analytic strategy, defining what to look for, what to ask, and what to analyze and why (Yin, 2003, p. 109). In my case, what was of interest to me—throughout the research process and in particular when I began analyzing my data after the end of the third field study—was to better understand what enables or hinders participation in growth. The questions that guided the analysis of the data were the following: a) How did those who participated, more or less successfully, in the Labuan Bajo tourism sector get to where they are today; b) what was important to them on their journey; c) what were the obstacles they faced; d) how is it that they got to where they are today and not any further; and e) how do their 89 experiences compare to those of the people who do not participate and benefit from the growth process? The data analysis was mostly an inductive process. When I reopened the transcripts and field notes of three field studies and began the analysis, I did not apply any theoretical propositions to the data. While there were different theoretical angles I derived from my review of PPG literature, of poverty theory, and other literature from the fields of sociology and management theory that had inspired my research, I tried to approach the data analysis without any predetermined theoretical structure. I did not transcribe and code all interviews but selected those interviews which I thought most suitable and enriching for the analysis. The interview sample for the coding was the following: Field study Number of interviews coded First: January 2009 Three interviews with people in the villages (two of which were group interviews) Second, June/July 2010 Thirteen interviews with people who work in tourism Third, June/July 2013 Nine interviews with people in the villages I coded the data from the whole set of interviews, using the coding software Nvivo. In an open or “in Vivio” coding process, I extracted codes or chunks of data from the interviews, labeling them with what was actually said during the interviews and grouping those codes together that I thought had similar meaning. The resulting groups of codes were unstructured and reflected a range of topics, some more and some less frequent, that prevailed within the whole interview sample. Then I started to regroup the codes in a second order coding process in order to find recurring themes. With this two-step coding process, I followed the approach by Miles & Huberman (2014), who propose to begin by developing a first cycle of coding to summarize segments of data without already weighing the importance of the information or making any assumptions about possible patterns or explanations. And then in a second cycle coding to group these summaries of data into a smaller number of categories, or pattern codes which are more explanatory or inferential than the first order codes and help to identify emergent themes or explanation (p. 86). 90 I then started to work with the pattern codes, trying out different possibilities on how to display and link the emerging themes. At this stage I also started to apply the concepts I derived from the literature review on poverty wherever I deemed helpful, to find answers to the questions I had in mind about the case. For instance, by adding all codes of individual interviews in a chronological order along a timeline, I explored the links between different stages of the educational and professional careers of the tourism workers by displaying them in networks or tabulating the data I obtained from individual interviews in categories that seemed of particular interest. In parallel with this process, I wrote short one- to two-page biographies of a selection of interview partners—some from the interviews of the tourism workers during the second field study, and some from the interviews with the people I interviewed in Battu Cermin, Perang, and Kukusan, who did not did not participate in the tourism sector as employees or entrepreneurs. I summarized what they had told me about their lives and highlighted what I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy about their biographical paths. I discussed these biographical write-ups and the patterns’ codes with colleagues at the university and explored different theoretical explanations to give meaning to the data. The propositions that finally emerged from this process and that have been outlined in Chapter 6 are a result of this process and my review of a study by Bourdieu (2000), in which he explored economic and social changes that the people of the mountain areas of Kabylia in Algeria went through during and after shaking off French colonial rule. What Bourdieu saw in Algeria had some meaningful parallels to what can be seen in West Manggarai today. 91 6. Participation as conversion Of course we have culture and we have religion, because this is part of the philosophy, the life of the Flores people. But the other side, because of this, people always misunderstand to run in the modern age, because they are very full of love in culture. And they don’t care about progressive development, or to go out from these conditions, from this reality (Kanitius Mite, Tour Guide). PPG is about the participation of poor people in growth. As we have seen, the promotion of PPG by development agencies includes measures such as investments in infrastructure, involvement of the poor in the political process, access to credit and insurance, education and skill training, health care and basic social services, access to resources and markets, good governance, and macroeconomic stability (SIDA, 2009; ODI, 2008; OECD, 2007; DEZA, 2004). On the other hand, when talking to the people in Labuan Bajo—those who had taken the step of leaving their communities to establish themselves as professionals in the growing tourism sector—it was not these points that were on people’s minds. For their individual biographies, neither the opportunities nor the formal obstacles of the economic or political process mattered most. What people remembered was what it meant to leave their village and their parents behind, and about how difficult it was to improve their skills and understand how tourism works despite their long years of formal education. They talked about how they helped each other out and followed the examples of those who had made the same journey, to learn how to behave in a world that was foreign to them in many respects. For them, the participation in growth involved more than just deciding to take advantage of the opportunities that the market provided. Their journey from the Manggarai village to the tourism sector of Labuan Bajo required a complete change of the way they earned their livelihoods. Participation in growth for them required more than acquiring the necessary skills and financial resources—it required what Bourdieu calls a “conversion,” an extensive transformation of their economic and social beliefs 92 and practices, and in that sense, a re-invention of who they were (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 14ff). To understand the difficulties that the people from the villages face when entering the tourism sector of Labuan Bajo as entrepreneurs or employees of the tourism businesses, and to understand why so many others do not manage to participate in the tourism boom in any beneficial way at all, it is important to understand the nature and extent of the conversion that presupposes the successful participation in economic growth. To illustrate this point, I want to reflect of different aspect of this transition from the poor rural communities to the tourism sector as it was described to me and as I saw it during my field studies. 6.1. Investing in your children Like many of the people I talked to in Labuan Bajo, Fatima Janis left her village when she was a young woman. Fatima is now around 30 years old and works as an office manager at the Reefseekers dive shop in Labuan Bajo. She is not married and lives in Labuan Bajo together with a family that comes from the same village. Her parents, she says, were among the poorer people in the village. Their rice field was so small that it barely supported the family. To earn some money, her father gathered sugar from palm trees in the forest and made Arak or palm liquor, which he sold to other people in the village. Her parents and grandparents did not want their children to suffer the same hardship as they had. Fatima’s grandfather was considered a wise man in the village—a man whom people would go to if they had problems that needed solving. Her grandfather strongly believed in education and wanted all his grandchildren to receive higher education and be able to leave the village. He didn’t want them to become farmers. So he and Fatima’s parents supported her and all of her five siblings to get a high school education. Fatima was the fourth child and studied English at one of the high schools in Ruteng. Since it was a government high school, the tuition fee was highly subsidized. One of her elder sisters studied to become a teacher. “I’m from a poor family,” she said, “This is why, when I was a child, we worked hard to help our parents. Then my grandfather—he wanted us to go to school. […] He didn’t want us to stay home, so he supported my father to send us to school. […] He didn’t want us to live like they had, just at home, just in the village, not going anywhere. So he wanted 93 us to go to school, find a job, and not be a farmer anymore” (F. Janis, interview, June 24, 2010). The reasons why people leave the village of their childhood, leave their families behind, and seek to build a livelihood outside of their communities are manifold. Often it is the lack of a perspective of building a livelihood in the village and the necessity to escape the impending poverty. “I come from a very, very poor family … very, very poor. Probably in my area where I live, we were the poorest people.” This is one of the first things Augustinus Jemparu says when he recounts his story for me on the terrace of the Greenhill Hotel in Labuan Bajo. As the manager of a hotel on the main road of the town, close to the harbor, he is a well-established member of the local tourism business community. Being the son of unskilled daily laborers from a small village on the outskirts of the town of Ruteng, he is among those who successfully transitioned into formal employment in the growing tourism economy. Belonging to one of the poorest families in the community as a young man, he knew that his best chance to build a sustainable livelihood was to leave the village. “In [Ruteng], so many people live in their daily lives in a high level and we are of the few that live in poorest conditions. And because of this situation … in 1992 I came from Ruteng and tried to find a job here. And with my little skill—I could speak a little English at the time—I tried to apply for a job, first at the Mutiara Hotel” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). In the traditional Manggaraian village communities, it is the king of the village, the Tua Golo, who shares the land with the children of the community members when they come of age. In our visit to Perang in the mountains of central Manggarai, Arie and I walked through the village together with Jan, the Tua Golo of the village. We started next to the traditional communal house or para tambong, where Jan lives with his family and relatives. The Tua Golo, as the descendant of the first settlers in the village area, is the owner of all land in the community, he explained. When newcomers arrive in the community—either the children of someone in the community or outside relatives of someone in the community who move to the village—people meet at the communal house, where the Tua Golo awards the new members a piece of land in a traditional ceremony (Jan, interview, June 22, 2010). Today, these traditions are dying, Arie later explained to me. Today, there are parallel structures of land administration, the traditional village authorities, and the 94 governmental land registry office. Land is also scarcer than it used to be when Arie was a child. Now, most of the land in Manggarai has a registered owner and cannot be awarded to the young by the community (A. Daru, interview, June 22, 2010). The scarcity of land leads to the necessity to divide the land into ever smaller pieces among the children in the family. “When one family has eight children,” Arie Daru explained, “When the children marry, they separate from their parents. Then it becomes clear what belongs to whom. If they have land they split it into eight persons. All material wealth is separated exactly. When that decision is taken, then it is clearly declared what belongs to whom. You don’t try to take it if it is clear that it belongs to A, B, and C. This goes for land or for other things like treasures, cows, and buffaloes. Ideally, they have to take such a decision before the parents die” (A. Daru, interview, June 22, 2010). The sources of livelihood of the children subsequently become smaller and smaller, until the land does not provide enough for all children and some of them—usually the younger sons—have to leave the community. Many parents therefore pursue a strategy of diversification of livelihoods among their children. They encourage their children who cannot take over the family land to marry into a family that has more land available to take up one of the few alternative livelihoods of farming or fishing, which are available in the rural areas of West Manggarai, such as working for the church, working for the government, or as a recent addition, working in tourism. It is very important to invest in the children, the father of Hironimus Pampu says. As they say in the village, “The skin of the rice for the parents, the rice corn for the children.” Hironimus is one of the young recent graduates from the tourism high school, whom we interviewed during the first field study. After completing high school in 2006, Ronnie, as he calls himself, went to Bali to look for a job and worked for a while for a company that refills mineral water bottles. When his elder brother, who cultivated the family land together with their parents, had a motorcycle accident, Ronnie had to come back to support his parents until his brother recovered. After that, he wanted to stay closer to the family and took a job in one of the hotels in Labuan Bajo, which is around three hours by bus from the village (H. Pampu and family, interview, February 2, 2009). “It was a big burden for us to send Ronnie to high school,” his father explained when we visited Ronnie’s home in Ngkor village to learn more about his background and his 95 relationship with his family. His family wanted to send him to university after graduating in Labuan Bajo, but it was not possible for them to get enough money to pay for the school fees. Being able to pay for Ronnie’s high school education was already a big success for the family. There are few employment opportunities in the village and many people in the village would like their children to be educated and to go to Labuan Bajo, the father said. There is jealousy in the village. Those who were able to invest in their children are envied. But everyone understands the parents of those who work in Labuan Bajo have invested in their children (H. Pampu and family, interview, February 2, 2009). In the case of Aloisius, his father never wanted his sons to walk in his footsteps, but eventually he was only able to support his younger son to get a higher education. “You know, around 1964, my father helped his brother to join on the war fighting—is like fighting in the village. Just because of land. So at that time they fought, they won but they still had to go to jail and stay in the jail for a couple of years. So my father just couldn’t support my older brothers when they needed to study in the school. That is also one reason why my brother had to stay in the village, because they couldn’t continue their studies with the next level. It is only secondary school. Yeah, just because of my father ... So for sure, my father never pushed me to be a carpenter but until now, one of my brothers, he’s a carpenter, he is following my father. That’s because he cannot continue his studies in school so he just join my father; until now he’s a carpenter” (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). To continue school after secondary school, Aloisius had to move away from his home village. “There is a small town, Ruteng. At that time it was only in Ruteng that there is a senior high school, so ... we had no choice. We went to Ruteng. I spend around six years there in Ruteng, since brother-in-law supported my study. You know I have a sister, which is ... they had more profit from their work and then they help pay for my high school” (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). Juventus Tongkang, who is the manager of the Labuan Bajo branch of a Balinese travel agency, also grew up in a remote village in the mountains of Manggarai. His parents had a lot of children and he was lucky that he was among those who were able to go to school. “I have five sisters and then three brothers,” he told me. “So we have nine in one family, because our parents, they didn’t get family planning at that time. And then after we moved close to the sea, they got family planning and then they 96 didn’t have any more children.” (J. Tonkang, interview, June 10, 2010). Together with his older siblings, Juventus walked for one hour to primary school every morning. Because his parents considered the walk too dangerous for girls, his older sisters had to wait until the oldest son went to school before they could attend. Both parents worked hard on the fields all day and did not have time to accompany their children to school. “For my older sisters, they didn’t go to school—first and second [sisters]. It was quite difficult for them at that time, because my parents, they had to work at the garden, at the field, and then at the time it took them three or four hours to take us to the school. This was a government school and till now it is so far away. Yes, from my house we walked one hour to the school every day until stay at sixth class of primary school. So normally parents are taking care, […] they are like our security to help us, bring us through the long forest to the school. That’s the reason why the first and second older sister of me, they didn’t go to school, because the parents needed time to help them, to accompany them.” (J. Tonkang, interview, June 10, 2010). Juventus attended junior high school in the town of Borong, not far from the village. After school, he often saw Western tourists making a stopover on their bus trip across Flores. Right from the start, he was fascinated by these people and decided that he wanted to study at the new tourism high school in Maumere, the provincial capital. His father was strictly against the idea of his son studying tourism. Since his family owned a comparably large area of arable land, all his brothers and sisters became farmers. Tourism was not something that the father saw as a viable future for his son. “He doesn’t know about tourist, tourism, tourism sector, how is going,” Juventus said, “and first he forced me come to Ende to, to get the school in, in you know technical school.” (J. Tonkang, interview, June 10, 2010) Ende is a larger town in central Flores, about a day’s journey away from Borong. Juventus obeyed his father but knew that technical studies were not for him. After six months of study in Ende, he decided to quit technical school and pursue his career without the support of his parents. “Because I couldn’t get my dream, so I stop by myself and my papa let me choose, but I, I couldn’t because he let me choose to the other school, but I should pay by myself. Of course I couldn’t do it.” (J. Tonkang, interview, June 10, 2010). So he went to work as a laborer for six months until he had earned enough money to pay for a trip to Ende and the tuition fee to begin tourism school. His father was not pleased with his decision: “Father is very strong and strict to 97 every, every son or his daughter, I know he is very strong, but I try to help for my school fee by working in the afternoon for one year, and one year after he send me letter: Okay, I pay for the second class and third class. I agree with you, but with one condition, that after you graduate, you won’t stay here anymore. You’re to go out from the village, you live which area you want to go, and then if you want to continue in university, you do by yourself. I don’t do anymore because I very disappointed with your decision” (J. Tonkang, interview, June 10, 2010). It is not always the hardship of the family that leads to the decision to send the children to be educated outside of the village. In the case of Marianus Sariden, a former tour guide, tour operator in Jakarta, and current project manager of the Komodo National Park Services, his parents had the means to allow all their children to get a good education. Both of them were teachers. The family lived in a village along the main trans-Flores road. Despite the large number of children in the family, the parents made sure that their children got high-quality education. “I come from a big family—” Marianus said, “—eleven of us, plus mother and father; so thirteen of us. Well, it’s quite difficult to imagine how parents look after all of us […] And after primary school, I was studying in Cissao, the school for becoming a priest, the seminary” (M. Sariden, interview, June 23, 2010). The seminary, a school run by the Catholic Church was and still is considered the best education available. After high school, the first three children pursued a university degree. For the younger children, of whom Marianus was one, the family did not have the resources to pay for higher education. Marianus decided to leave the village anyway and tried to find a job in Jakarta. After earning a bit of money in the capital and returning back to Flores, he saw an opportunity in tourism: “I went to Kupang, and then in Kupang I did some English course. Thinking at that time – because tourism was starting to ... [boom] and my simple thinking at that time was, this is the way to be a guide. So I improved my English and then I got a scholarship and I could finish my university. So like... Then I went to Jarkarta to find some jobs there. So as soon as I finished my university, I worked in Tourism until now” (M. Sariden, interview, June 23, 2010). John’s father was the headmaster of the local primary school. From an early age on, he promoted his children. “Because my father was the head,” John remembers, “I can join the school younger than the other students. I joined the school at the age of five, and normally six or seven in the village, so I start the school quite young.” The school was 98 close to the house where John grew up. Even before he joined classes, he would accompany his father to the school and spend time with him at his office. When John was nine years old, his father sent him to live with one of his brothers in the town of Bajawa. A few years later, John’s father passed away and John moved back to his parents’ house in the town of Ende, where they had moved while John was away. “Because my brothers were still very small,” John says, “I decided to move back to Ende, to take care of the brothers and to live with them.” Most of his school years, John therefore spent in larger towns. (J. Raja, interview, June 13, 2010). After graduating from high school, he moved to Bali to join a higher education program in tourism studies. The school had been recommended by a friend. “Because my friend was already in Bali a year before. He studies in this school and he told me this is a good school. A very good place to study, to find a good job. He gave me motivation and then I joined him. And when I applied to this school, I [chose] the management program, diploma four. And I passed the entry selection.” (J. Raja, interview, June 13, 2010). His mother was able to pay for the first year of school but afterwards, John had to earn the tuition on his own. These stories are exemplary for what the majority of the people I interviewed in Labuan Bajo experienced. In all cases, there was the lure of a more affluent life in town or on a more developed island, and there were factors within the community and the immediate family, like the unavailability of a sustainable livelihood or the parents’ wish for some of their children to adopt an alternative livelihood outside of the community. Everyone I met working in the tourism sector of Labuan Bajo stated that their parents, their grandparents or their communities had actively invested in them to make the transition, by the way of a high school or university education, from the agricultural- into a non agricultural sector. It is important to note that not everyone within a family was promoted equally, but those who left were among the few who were supported and, in some cases, pushed to leave the village in search of a better life. 6.2. Participation as a leap into the unknown When Juventus was a boy, his family moved from the mountains to a village along the coast, roughly two hours from the district capital of Borong. In the new village, Juventus saw foreigners for the first time. They made him curious: “I didn’t know 99 anything about tourism back then,” he says. “One day at the sixth class of primary school[,] I saw a lot of tourists with our priest, but he was he himself [was] from Germany; he lived or at our village, and I saw a lot of tourists come with him. I didn’t know if it was family or not. This is the first time I started to think: How they come from far away, from Europe. Because in the primary school[,] we only know the globe and learn about the map. So, how is it, how did they come? Among there and here is a very long way. And then when I was in Junior school in Borong, there the only one… the “Flores Trans” busses are crossing every day between Ruteng, Labuan Bajo, Bajawa, and to Ende, to the east parts, and Borong is one of the good place for getting lunch for them. And when I came back from the school[,] I saw many tourists as they were eating in the restaurant and then during the three years that I always saw them. So after Junior, I talked with my papa, exactly at the time in Maumere there is a new… this is the first tourism school in our province, so I started to talk with my father but he said, “NO” because he doesn’t know about tourist, tourism, tourism sector, how it is going. And first he forced me come to Ende to get the school in, in you know technical school” (J. Tonkang, interview, June 10, 2010). Augustinus, who grew up in a village close to the main town of Ruteng, also tells me of the awe he and his family had for the tourists that stopped over in town on their way east. His uncle used to invite western tourists to spend the night at his house: “It used to be that when someone took a tourist to their house, this became very special thing in the village: ‘These must be very clever people. They can take a tourist to stay at their house.’ Actually the tourists even stayed for free. [My uncle] didn’t care. The only thing was that the tourists stayed at their house. This was like an inspiration.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). His encounters with foreigners motivated him to take English as a major subject in secondary school. “English was my major at the time. I liked to learn English. Just because my uncle’s son always [talked] to tourists and take them to his house when I was young. This was like an inspiration for me. To follow them when I was at the junior high school I learned… I really learned English“ (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). One reason for the fascination with the foreigners can be found in traditional Manggarai society. The orientation system in Manggaraian society, Allerton (2001) states, “contrasts the people, places and ways of life ‘in this Manggarai land’ [...] with those from ‘across the sea’ (Iau). Within Manggarai, strangers are referred to as ala 100 bana, literally ‘people from anywhere.’ Such a stranger will normally be addressed as a potential affine. Tourists from America [and also the missionaries] have been, and continue to be, classed all together as ‘people from outside’ (ala pe 'ang-mai). Calling someone a "person from outside" in this way denotes an initial attitude of cautiousness, locating that person outside of the social and moral landscape of Manggarai life” (p. 233f). In reference to American Anthropologist Mary Helms, Allerton (2001) shows that in traditional Manggarai society, the foreign corresponds with the supernatural, the mystical. “Geographical distance,” she writes, “is frequently thought to correspond with supernatural distance; as one moves away geographically from a social centre, one moves toward places and people that are increasingly 'different' and therefore regarded as increasingly supernatural, mythical, and powerful.” Those who travel to geographical distant places “may be accorded an aura of prestige and awe approaching the same order, if not always the same magnitude, as that accorded political-religious specialists or elites in general" (p. 235). There is always a certain awe when people both in Labuan Bajo and in the villages talk about their encounters with foreigners, or with the unknown outside of the village community in general. Arie, for example, remembers the first time he came to Ruteng as a child: “When I came to Ruteng, I saw new thing. It made me surprised to see a new thing. See... you can imagine, a man from the villages, suddenly coming to the town, so we were like ‘wow’ there. It’s the dream of everyone to move […] from the village, to the town to study. When the first time [out of the] village we [saw] the thing that we didn’t see before, right? […] When you see something new that you’ve never seen before[,] there is like an impression. That “wow” impression. Something unbelievable. That happened to us when we… like me I wanted to try something new, like what is it… touching the car and only seeing the asphalt. Even, a friend of mine, to tell to the other friends in the village that they have been there, they said they will bring something from the town to show to other people in the village that you really been there. If not they said, oh you lie, you never went there [laughs]. So then, also I did the same. I took a piece of asphalt.” (A. Daru, interview, June 8, 2010) Foreigners are associated with power, wealth and knowledge and being linked to them is something that people aspire to. I found this to be true not only for people who rarely see anyone from outside of Manggarai, but also those who work with foreign 101 tourists every day. “I love talking […] with the foreigners,” Franz Suhardi, the manager of the main office of the Komodo dive shop along the main road of Labuan Bajo, says (interview, June 23, 2010). Franz, who is around thirty years old, wears the same outfit that I have seen on western expats in Labuan Bajo: t-shirt, cargo pants, flip-flops and a large diver’s watch on his wrist. His English has an American sound to it. Talking to foreigners, he says, means that “I can practice my English and I get more experience to ask with them, cause I believe that uhm... we, people in the West are more developed than us here, and just to create what way, what are they... the way of thinking of western people, and the behavior, and things like that, I could learn from it. That’s the reason. Besides that, I’m a singer, I like to sing and I like singing English songs. That’s another reason.” (F. Suhardi, interview, June 23, 2010). Margaretha Yunita, who is about Franz’ age and works in another dive shop in Labuan Bajo, remembers: “When I was a child, some tourist come to my village, and some local people speak with him - they are two - and I thought, is something make me proud if we speak with somebody we don’t know from another country, and I think, “oh it is good if I speak to, speak to white, black, a white skin from like America, from, from there. And when I was in secondary high school, I ask to my parent where is I can study with for learning a special English and they said here in Labuan Bajo.” (M. Yunita, interview, June 24, 2010). One reason for high status of the foreigner can be found in the role of catholic missionaries throughout the 20th century. “As long we know,” Juventus says, “Flores is under the Dutch Colonialism, so everybody thinks about becoming a priest. I believe that everybody at the country sides, they are first planning, before they understand about their self, first is how to become priest.” (J. Tonkang, interview, June 10, 2010). In the village of Wae Rebo, Allerton (2001) noted that for Manggaraian people, the catholic church and its western missionaries who came to Manggarai from Poland and Germany in the 1930s, were associated with wealth and with the development projects they brought to the area, like building roads, schools or irrigations systems (p. 237). According to Erb (2006), the early catholic missionaries in the early 20th century supported the protests to free the Manggarai from the rule of their Muslim lords from the neighboring Island of Sumbawa and were instrumental in helping to choose the first Manggaraian king. After the end of the Second World War, with the birth of the modern Indonesian state that secured the equal treatment of all religions, catholic 102 missionaries successfully converted the majority of people in Manggarai. By the 1980, 90 per cent of the Manggarai were Catholic (p. 209ff). “Being Catholic,” Erb (2006) states, “has become so much a part of the life of a Manggaraian that it is now sometimes more of an ethnic identity, than a purely religious one” (p. 215). The evangelization programs of the church were based on the construction of schools, among other catholic seminaries, which are today considered to provide the highest standard education available in Manggarai. It also included other projects to develop public services, like transport, health care or irrigation. “Part of the great admiration, even devotion, shown to the clergy,” Erb (2006) writes, “especially the early foreign missionaries, has had to do with gratitude for so much aid that they gave to the village folk of Flores over the decades. Many people remember fondly how a particular priest gave them or a relative the opportunity to further their education, build a sturdy house, plant coffee, chocolate or clove trees, or sent them to the hospital to be treated or operated on” (p. 210f). Becoming a priest or a nun is associated with considerable prestige, as it promises a life of material wealth in terms of better food and housing in comparison to village life. For the people of Manggarai, the West in general is associated with material wealth. “Goods from the outside,” Allerton (2001) notes, “are explicitly connected with things of the city, and both are contrasted with the material circumstances of ‘village people.’ Material wealth is one of the things that ‘spirits’ and foreigners share. As being from another realm, spirits share with foreigners the desirable badges of development: electricity, televisions, cars, cement houses, food "from factories" (one-mai pabrik) and ‘pill medicine’ (rewos pi!). These 'badges' are one of the distinctive marks of ‘outsiders’”(Allteron, 2001, 235). Since foreigners are associated with great wealth, it is quite natural that doing business with them also holds the promise of wealth to be gained. Aloisius, who worked as a tour guide in Manggarai in the 1990s, remembers taking a group of western tourists to the village of Wae Rebo, which was known for its remoteness and its people for their traditional lifestyle: “You know, in 1999 there was a village” he recounts, “I come from that area but I had never seen this place. Even when I was young[,] nobody had told me there is this village. It is very primitive. But since I work with tourist and my father also knows I work with tourists and then he said how do they like to see the village. [...] I still remember as a child it was the same in my village. But at Wae Rebo 103 village, until today, it is still the same. That's the reason why I really wanted to go there. There is one secondary school near the village. It is called ‘Dunjed’. At the time when I came with the tourists, all the children jumped out of the classroom. Because they never seen tourist before. Wow, they were really shocked. And then I went with my clients to Wae Rebo village and stayed there around two nights. They like it very much [...] And then at night, I talked with the local people. They asked me so many questions about the westerners, about their life. And then I explained them that if you want the tourists to come here, you have to look after your village very well. And they asked me to bring the tourist there. And I want to. […] At the time my clients gave them something. ... I think they gave them money because we stay at the village for two nights and get free food.” (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). At the same time, the outside can be threatening. According to Allerton (2001), the idea of the foreign as something powerful and mythical explains why few people actually move out of their villages during their lifetimes, and those who do are mostly men. People feel uneasy about travelling outside their villages. This unease, Allerton (2001) writes, is “addressed in numerous protective mechanisms” (p. 235). Whether the destination of travel is far or near, in traditional Manggarai custom, a journey out of the village should be preceded by certain ritualistic measures that will protect the traveler from unspecified dangers. They usually include prayers for a safe journey, spoken by the parents to their child that sets off to a distant destination. A similar prayer is said before the journey made by newly-wed couples. Bride and groom are also given a range of protective medicines to ensure their safe passage (Allterton, 2001, p. 235). People can even be nervous about visiting neighboring villages, Allerton (2001) writes. Being “away from the protective land and ancestors of home, they fear that they and their possessions will be vulnerable to jealous witchcraft attacks” (242). When travelling even further from home, people are made to carry protective charms, and to eat roots or coconut containing protective prayers. Another ritual, which I experienced myself on several occasions when visiting Manggarai villages, includes the sacrifice of a chicken at the arrival and departure of a guest. Journeys to more distant destinations, like going for higher education in one of the larger towns in Flores, or in search of work outside of the island, are primarily made by men. According to Allerton (2001), it sometimes happens that young women 104 temporarily leave the village to work, but in general, “and following a common southeast Asian pattern of male travel and migration, it is men who travel beyond the local to gain access to outside power.” Women by contrast “may (and frequently do) show independence by choosing not to travel the female path of marriage, remaining instead in their natal village and becoming expert weavers, raisers of pigs or heads of dispersed households” (p. 240). In traditional Manggarai society, the world outside of the village community and the foreign tourists that represent it have an obvious appeal. The pull factors of higher education, well paying jobs, and the promise of an affluent life encourage many young people today to leave their villages and come to Labuan Bajo to work in tourism. At the same time, the divide between the world inside the community and the one on the outside of it is felt by those who take the step of leaving their community. Leaving the village is a step into the unknown. 6.3. Participation requires self-learning and self-improvement When Augustinus came to Labuan Bajo as a young man straight out of high school, his expectations for finding a good job were not high. He knew that with his limited skills and experience, he had to be grateful if he found any work at all. So when the owner of one of the small hotels offered him a job as a helping hand, he gladly accepted. The work was hard and the days were long. For the first six months, Augustinus received room and board but no salary (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). Kanitius Mite, who works as a tour guide in Labuan Bajo, remembers that he could not be picky about how to earn money when his parents had do cut their financial support to their son. At that time he was attending high school in Maumere, on the other side of the Island of Flores. So he started as a dish washer in a restaurant. For nine months, he went to school during the day and worked at the restaurant in the evenings. In return for his work he received a decent meal and some other food items, but no salary. To get by with the little money from his parents, he had to be very frugal: “[After school] I put my uniform in a plastic bag and I started to walk. Other people in the town paid fifty rupees for a Bemo [Bus]. But I always walked. I didn’t care - because it was so difficult to get this job and I never lost my money, no point. I always remembered what I had in the family. So I was really struggling, really fighting for myself.” (K. Mite, interview, June 15, 2010). 105 When people in the Labuan Bajo tourism sector talk about their first job, they all remember similar things: unskilled labor, long working hours and low pay. Some had relatives in other regions of Indonesia who were able to help them find a job, but most of them just moved to one of the bigger towns in Flores and started asking for jobs in any of the restaurants and hotels on site. All of them started at the bottom. When he came to Labuan Bajo, Augustinus did not know much about tourism. “It was a new thing for me,” he remembers, “It was very difficult for me. I only knew how to speak English but I didn’t know how actually a [tour] guide also becomes a teacher for the client. At that time I had little… very little knowledge about guiding. But I tried. I never said no to these things.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). It took him three years on one of the tour boats to learn the basics about how tourism works. When Kanitius came to Labuan Bajo, he had three years of tourism high school to show for, but still a lot to learn about how tourism works. He felt like his level of education was very low. Whenever he could, he would engage the tourists who stayed at the hotel in discussions about what they thought about tourism, about how to become more professional as a guide and about how to get ahead in life (K. Mite, interview, June 15, 2010). What most of my interview partners told me is that they didn’t know how tourism worked when they started their work life. Despite their high school education, they still had to learn the basic know-how and skills required for a qualified position in tourism. Being able to speak English at a certain level was one of them. All of those who managed to work their way up to qualified tourism jobs invested a lot into studying and practicing English and other languages. Then there was the specific knowhow required for certain types of jobs in tourism. A tour guide in the national park, for example, has to know something about the flora and fauna of the park, a cook on a tour boat or restaurant needs to know how to prepare the standard dishes demanded by the guests, a travel agent needs to know how to book a flight ticked and so on. These practical skills people learnt on the job and through their peers. In addition, they had to learn how to treat their customers, the tourists mainly coming from western countries. When explaining what the most important factor was that lead to his promotion, Franz Suhardi, the manager of a dive shop in Labuan Bajo, puts it this way: “Because I, when I studied in University, I used to learn about how to do 106 with people, foreigners, their culture about … ya all of that. I can feel it.” (F. Suhardi, interview, June 23, 2010). One thing that struck me about almost all my interview partners was that they remember their career paths as a sequence of continuous learning. “I just learned by doing.” Augustinus said, “Everyday I opened the… how to say… so much things to learn at that time about Komodo, about Flores and everything. I always changed my place to work, you know and then I started working with my boss, the owner of this hotel, from 2004 until now. And I really got the best situation in this place. Because my boss gives me freedom to do what I like to find the good situation – the good way… how to make this hotel better and better.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010).He also remembers how doing his first tour as an independent guide with a western tourist inspired him to further invest in his professional skills: “She was American. Her name is Catrin. The first… and I took her to Komodo at the time. This was a very magic moment for me. I felt like that: ‘Wow, this is really incredible for me.’ […] I never thought to get like the best teacher in my life. The only thing for me was that I can do my job, tried to change to the better and better.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). 6.4. The social purpose of work Most of the people I talked to in the Labuan Bajo tourism sector grew up in one of the rural villages in the mountains of the Manggaraian region and came to Labuan Bajo as young adults in search of work. The villages of their childhood were remote and only marginally connected, economically and culturally, to the outside world. Some of them were accessible through gravel and dirt roads that are open only in dry weather; some were accessible only on foot. Their families depended on agriculture for their livelihoods, just as the majority of people in West Manggarai still do today (Allerton, 2001, p. 181f). To get to my village, Juventus told me, one needed to walk for about three to four hours from the road to reach it. His parents were farmers. “One hundred percent farmer,” he says. They mostly grew corn. “I tell you, in Flores, in the western half of Flores, corn is very common. This was our main food before the government opened some rice field irrigation in some area. I think at this moment my parents still use corn, mixed with the rice, but I remember when I was three to five years old in the 107 mountains, we only ate corn.” (J. Tongkang, June 10, 2010). His parents did what most other people did at that time. “We had more than ten hectare of land, but it was not all together on the same place […] you know in the village, they need go out to the field, they need one hour go, and then work there, and then in the evening, late evening back to house and they get shower on the river, every day until now, it never changed” (J. Tongkang, June 10, 2010). Agricultural practices in the traditional Manggarai society are guided by a system of the exchange of labor that works without any monetary exchange. “We have our system,” Arie Daru says. “Most the farmers system that they don’t have to spend the money to pay for the workers, but they work routinely. So, for example, today it is my turn, tomorrow I have to work to another family’s garden and so on. So if we, in our group are let say ten, so I have to work ten time in different places to pay for those who working to my garden for example. That’s the system, we don’t spend money, we only give food for them.” Traditional Manggaraian fields, which are known as lingko, form a “circular spiders web” pattern on the land. Catherine Allerton (2001), in her ethnography of the places and spaces of traditional Manggaraian life, describes these communal fields like this: “At the centre of a lingko is the lodok, the communal ritual centre where a number of agricultural rites are held. Around this lodok spiral [are] the individually-owned, wedge-shaped gardens (moho)” Today, the majority of fields in the mountains are either circular (lingko) or “on stretches of land where creating a centered circle is difficult, a semi-circular version known as haung sue.” The communal field is not only an important stage where the social and economic order is reproduced, but it also shapes the traditional understanding of time. “The local description of shifting agriculture as ladok kole lingko,” Allerton writes, “creates a sense of the permanence of lodok ritual centers, around which fields will be periodically reopened and then left to become fallow again. Indeed, the system of shifting cultivation, and people's experience of it, fundamentally influences local understandings of time. […] The cycle of shifting cultivation does not simply influence how people describe the past, but also how they re-experience it, and how they view the changing nature of their surroundings” (p. 184). The exchange of agricultural goods plays an important role within the village community. For example, in the form of the exchange of aliments in times of need, which Arie explains to me like this: “If somebody had a problem, everyone should 108 come to help. So we helped with rice, or with sugar. Everyone would give support. We knew our system. […] A problem can be for example if somebody died, if somebody got sick or somebody had an accident. Then they have a party, or something like that. Because at the party, we have to give food for them. So the way we support is by giving sugar, at least one or two pieces, and rice. Depending if we were close family, maybe five to ten kilos or more. A neighbor outside of the family can support with two or three kilos. We have a system that we call mangkok, which means ‘play it.’ One takes about two kilos inside. There is a ceramic plate, so the rice is measured on it. So then, everybody will remember when [the others] have a problem next time.” (A. Daru, interview, June 8, 2010). There is a similar system of exchange when it comes to the support of the children of community members who want leave the village to pursue higher education. In this case, the families of the community come together and everyone makes a contribution to the school fees, which the family will have to cover. On such occasions, most of the families meet and put the rice or its money equivalent that they can contribute into the pot, Wilhelminus, one of the leaders of the village community of Perang, tells me. “We hold a kind of meeting, like a family meeting,” he explains, “there, we decide how much every family can support. It includes support in form of money or rice. When the meeting takes place, we always put those things together. Then about the result, we evaluate at the end of the meeting. We count on how much is the income, and how much is the whole expenses. However, the rest of the things that we collect, we give to the child who will continue his or her study to a higher education level.” (Wilhelminus, interview, June 20, 2013). Not every family will be able to give the same amount, but everyone will contribute. How much one gives, depends on how successful they had been with their harvest. “It depends on one’s ability,” Wilhelminus says, “for example, we see that this person is having difficulty economically, it’s hard for them to fulfill their own needs, so we cannot force them. Then the decision in the meeting said that it’s Ok for them to have an exception. However, there are the others who have more income, so they must give more than the target. That’s the criteria” (Wilhelminus, interview, June 20, 2013). The childhood villages of the tourism workers in Labuan Bajo still worked to a large part according to non monetary, pre-capitalist economic practices. In this sense, they are pre-capitalist economies. Here are some similarities to Kabylian villages that Pierre 109 Bourdieu studied in Algeria. These “isolated and remote mountain people, like those I explore in Kabylia,” Bourdieu (2000) writes, “retained a more or less intact tradition of a pre-capitalist economy” (p. 7). Trade in the villages of Kabylia, Bourdieu (2000) writes, “followed the logic of gift and gift in return, where honorable people do not sell things, but are rather ‘injured to the benefit of one’s neighbors’” (p. 9). Relationships that were reduced to their economic dimension were perceived as a hostile act, so to speak, which would only take place between strangers. The place where such prototypical “bellicose” practices happened is the market, where goods are kept for sale by strangers from which one has to assume only the worst intentions (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 9). Another example is the practice of borrowing livestock. “I remember spending many an hour peppering with questions a Kabyle peasant who was trying to explain a traditional form of the loan of livestock”, Bourdieu (2003) writes, “because it had not occurred to me that, contrary to all ‘economic’ reason, the lender might feel an obligation to the borrower on the grounds that the borrower was providing for the upkeep of an animal that would have had to have been fed in any case” (p. 131f). In the rural Manggaraian village, the work one does as a farmer and the role one fulfills within the community are closely linked. The exchange of agricultural labor and of agricultural produce is embedded into a traditional system that fulfills several functions for the wellbeing of the community, for example, fields are harvested in time without the proprietor of the field having to spend a large amount of time or money for paid labor, and that in times of need people are insured against the worst risks, and in times of opportunity they can make sure that the means to invest are available. To fulfill ones social obligations towards the community, it is important that everyone does their best to come up with the produce necessary to support their own family and contribute their share to the community. “In the village we have a system,” Arie says, “like if you don’t have something and you have to ask to your neighbor, you get shy. So the way to protect yourself from this, you have to plan yourself instead of asking to other people.” If you cannot provide for yourself, your children and your parents on your own, that would be “a symbol of lazy. You are lazy and only hoping from other people. You have to have your own, instead of asking to other people every day or every week. So the best way if we have to plan our own. Ya... because we are farmers, 110 that’s our job, planting everything as much as possible. That’s the principle.” (A. Daru, interview, June 8, 2010). For people working in the tourism sector in Labuan Bajo, the distinction between work and the social sphere is clear. When I ask people what they do, the answer usually is one of a range of different professions that commonly exist in the tourism industry. They are tour guides, office managers, drivers, cooks or receptionists. Their work is clearly distinguished from their family life. They work during daytime at the offices, restaurants or hotels and they go home in the evenings to their houses in the residential areas of Labuan Bajo and Battu Cermin. When I ask people in the villages what they do, people often do not respond and let Arie answer directly for them. That people work in the garden, feed their livestock or look after their children seems just too trivial to them. It is what everybody else in the village does as well. In a traditional village community, there is no distinction between work life and social life. Work matters not primarily because of the produce or income it generates, but because it is part of fulfilling a social purpose. People do not differentiate between their subsistence farming, their income generating activities, and the other tasks and activities that are part of everyday life in the village. To understand non capitalist forms of the economy, one has to clearly differentiate between work as a source of income and work as a social purpose (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 53f). When I asked Petronela Lanes, an older woman in the village of Perang to tell me about her life, she said: “I did what people usually do here. I worked in the field, did mat weaving, did everything that I could do.” (P. Lanes, interview, June 21, 2013). Petronela was maybe around sixty years old (she doesn’t know when she was born and has never counted the years). She was sitting in the entrance room of her wooden house, surrounded by more than fifteen of her daughters, daughters in law and granddaughters. Her white hair and weathered face gave her an air of wisdom. Her teeth are painted black and the sweater she wears is torn. 111 Figure 4 - Petronela Lanes with family and neighbors As a young woman, Petronela lost her parents and lived in the common house of the village. Life was tough back then. Food was scarce and she suffered a lot. “You know what I am talking about, mister,” she said to Arie, who translated during our conversation with her, “I picked the fruits from sugar palm trees and ate them. […] We are used to [living] this kind of life.” When she speaks about her work as a farmer, she moves her hands in front of her, opening and closing her fingers like she is moving dirt. It means “working hard,” Arie explains. The house Petronela now lives in belongs to one of her daughters in law. It was not very long ago that she moved here from the common house. “I don’t have anything, don’t you listen to me child,” she says to Arie, “it’s not good to live here nor to live at the traditional house. I live with my daughter in law here.” With her lifelong hard work, she did not accumulate any material wealth of her own, but she managed to raise eleven children, who now care for her. “That’s what we did, now I enjoy the result,” Petronela said and pointed at her daughters sitting in the on the wooden floor of the unfurnished hut (P. Lanes, interview, June 21, 2013). 112 According to Bourdieu (2005), it not the accumulation of wealth but the reproduction of the existing economic and social order that is the primary goal of economic activity for people in the villages. “The opposition towards accumulation and the resulting social differentiation has to be understood as a means for the protection of the economic fundament of the social order” (p. 46). Conformity is more important than individual success. Doing things differently from the rest of the community is disapproved. To do things without regard to the rest of the community means “to violate the imperative of conformity with the social order” (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 56). 6.5. Income as a means not an end Most of families in the mountains of West Manggarai grow some crop. Some of them farm only for their own consumption. Some have a few cash crops like coffee or candle nut which they sell in the market from time to time. Some worked part time as daily laborers on the fields of other farmers or as carpenters supporting the construction of bamboo houses to earn a little income. All the people I interviewed in Labuan Bajo, like most people in Manggarai, they grew up in monetary poverty, with a household income of less than a dollar a day (T. Ulrich, interview, January 20, 2009). Aloisius Beda Liuk, who runs a little travel agency, the “tourism information point” in the center of Labuan Bajo, grew up in a remote village in the mountains. It was a small village in central Manggarai, close to the Kings village of Todo, which today is on the itinerary of some of the tourists who travel overland through Flores. Tourists drive to Todo to see how the traditional Manggarai houses, which have been rebuilt in the old style, with bamboo walls and grass roofs and buy some handicraft that is sold by the people living in the village. “My village is on the way to Todo village,” Aloisius says, “it's called Lantemajok.” (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). Originally, the village was at a different location, even more remote than it is now. Over time, more and more people moved closer to the road to Todo, until the majority of inhabitants had abandoned the original settlement. “When I was a child, we had a village... I still remember that. So that village was around. And at that time there was no main road, no car. […] And then later on when the main road opened to my village, and then most of the people they moved to the main road. Our village was called "tenger" at first. In that village there are now I think seven houses left. But the rest moved to the main 113 road and then to the area around the village, depending on the field.” (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). Aloisius’ parents were also farmers, but his father earned additional income as a carpenter, helping people build their houses. “My father told me that when he was young he actually worked outside of Flores. There is a place called Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, that one he worked. He was a mariner, the people work in the docks, work in the big ships. And then later on, my father went back to Manggarai, Flores, and then he worked as a carpenter and also looked after the field, because carpenter is like a... yeah, his profession and my mother looked after the field but sometimes is my father also, but he always worked from one village to another village, depending on the people.” (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). Margareta grew up in Reo, in one of the coastal villages. Her father always did his best to support the family. They grew some banana, pineapple and avocado on their small field, and they had some livestock, chickens and pork. “And sometimes at night,” Margaretha remembers, ” [my father] went to the sea to go fishing, but with a traditional lamp, and with like knife, the big one, I don’t know in English, and then he went to find some fish, find some octopus, and then crab... not to sell, but for, for our family dinner together. We don’t need to spend money to buy it.” (M. Yunita, interview, June 24, 2010). Like Margaretha’s father, most of the people I talked to remembered their parents having diversified their livelihood to some extent to ensure that their families can cover their basic needs. “I think it is common in Flores, this is one of the islands where the people work many jobs. For example, my father, he worked as a farmer and then we had cattle also, a cow, buffalo, horses, a pig, a dog, or chicken, so it’s run together” Juventus says (interview, June 10, 2010). While in Manggarai, non monetary economic practices still exist to this day, the production of agricultural goods for the acquisition of income has been widespread for many decades. Coffee, for example, was introduced as a cash crop as early as the 1950 (Cole, 2008, p. 67). Very often, people start generating income when they come to the point where they need it to meet the needs of the family. Mikael Nongko, for example, who works as a tour guide in Labuan Bajo, tells me how his parents were able to pay for his schooling. Mikael comes from a family where everyone, apart from himself, is a farmer. He grew up in the town of Borong, which is the center of the Borong region in the south of the Manggarai. He came to Labuan Bajo fifteen years ago. Of his 114 parents he says that they were “small farmers and not really successful. But it was enough for their life. We don't have many like.... we have a garden and also a rice field but not much. I mean they get product for their live. So every three months they get a harvest and they plan, so they can do the rice three times a year.” (M. Nongko, interview, June 24, 2010). Sometimes they sold a bit of their crop on the market. “They sold but not much. It depended if they got an offer when they harvested. If not, just for their family.” Only when Mikael and his siblings got to secondary school, and the family had to pay for school fees, the family had to make sure to get a more regular monetary income. “Here, if you go to basic school it's free. It's when I was in basic school it was free. My parents only bought uniform and books, the rest was free. Maybe they pay, but not much. And when I was in secondary school of course my father paid. So they paid when they got a harvest and they got an offer. They collected the money and paid for this school. It's not only rice but also ‘Kapok,’ the big trees that have flowers, so they pick up the ‘Kapuk’ and they make ‘Poket’ and they share. Not expensive; maybe one thousand per kilo. The money they get, they collect and pay for this school. And also the Tamarind. In my village we have a lot of Tamarind. Every year, from August to October, they pick up the fruits and sell to the market. But now people come to the village and buy them directly. So they don't have to go to the market.” (M. Nongko, interview, June 24, 2010). Fatima Janis, the office manager at the Reefseeker dive shop, remembers life being quite difficult for her family when she was a child. She grew up in a small, remote mountain village in the area between Labuan Bajo and the Manggaraian capital Ruteng. “The road to my village is bad; it’s not like this one [she points outside to the road in front of the dive shop, which is only partly paved and full of potholes]. So, it takes around three hours from here. The bus will stop not direct in my village, so I still have to walk, on foot, for around one hour.” (F. Janis, interview, June 24, 2010). Her parents had a small rice field but that was not enough for subsistence, so her father collected palm sugar and made liquor for sale. “My father makes local sugar, the red sugar, sometimes just for our own ‘konsumsi’. But for have money, my parents make Arak.” (F. Janis, interview, June 24, 2010). To talk about her father’s side business makes Fatima uncomfortable. She stresses that he never drank any alcohol himself and only made it to earn much needed money for the family. After all, making Arak is not something that people are proud of; it is a last resort and done out of necessity. 115 Another example is the parents of Inosius Kelawu, whom we visited during the first field study. Inosius is a young graduate from the tourism high school in Labuan Bajo who recently found a job as a page in one of the hotels. For the first time, he has a small but regular income, of which he sends his parents a part every other month. “This money is much needed in the family”, Inosius’ father tells us. “First, we need it to invest in our other children; then we need it to fix the roof of the house.” (I. Kelawu, and family, interview, February 2, 2009). What distinguishes income generation as it is practiced in the villages of Manggarai from income in the modern capitalist economy is the motivation that stands behind it. Weber, in his study of the origins and nature of the capitalist economy quotes Sombart as having distinguished between the acquisition of income for the satisfaction of needs and the acquisition of purpose of accumulating profit “free from the limits set by needs” as the “two great leading principles in economic history” (Weber, 2005, p. 27). For the people of rural West Manggarai, the purpose of earning income is not to accumulate wealth but to satisfy clear and tangible needs for themselves and their families. 6.6. Work as vocation Fatima Yanis, the office manager of the Reef Seeker dive shop in Labuan Bajo, explained her daily work to me like this: “In the morning. In the morning we have to prepare all everything the boats need. The boats are needed for diving. Then after that when we have a guest a... that want to check in to the hotel or come for diving, we have to pick them up at the airport. Or some guest want to check out, we have to prepare all everything also for they check out. And also I do all everything about the administration in the office. Reporting about all the menu, everything. Make the bill for the customer for the diving, customer for the hotel, reconfirm the ticket, booking for the ticket for the customer. Everything.” (F. Janis, interview, June 24, 2010) “Normally we are three at the office,” Margaretha, who works with Fatima at the dive shop, explains, “at the moment, we [are] just me and Fati, and then we work [starting]from seven o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock in the afternoon. So, full day. Sometimes tired, but ya if we enjoy with our works, with our, our job. Ya, just follow it“, (M. Yunita, interview, June 24, 2010). 116 Like most people, Fatima and Margaretha had different jobs in the past. Fatima had worked in a copy shop before. Because the shop had many foreign customers, she was able to improve her English that in turn enabled her in getting the job at the dive shop, where being able to speak good English was a requirement. Margaretha started working in one of the small mobile phone shops along the main road in Labuan Bajo after she finished tourism high school. It wasn’t the type of job she wanted after graduation, but it was better than not working at all. “Because my friend who works at the cellular shop, she is wanted to resign, and then [I took it], because I need a job. I need a job and because my friend give me the job, so it’s okay just until I find the real job I want. Ya, ya, it’s better that’s why I just stay at home, make me not boring. Salary is not good, but I have something to do.” (M. Yunita, interview, June 24, 2010). When the shop closed after little more than a year, Margaretha was again without a job. So she applied at an office nearby, where she had heard of an opening. It was the office of a Swiss NGO. “I stayed not so far from Swisscontact office, and I knew they needed [staff] because they were still new, and then I thought maybe […] they will give you chance, they give you the opportunity and then I applied, tried, then yes, they gave me the opportunity. I just said to myself, ‘Try this, try this. If you can do this, try this and take it.’” (M. Yunita, interview, June 24, 2010). When Margaretha and her husband had their first baby, she quit the job at Swisscontact and stayed home for a year and then started looking for a job again. Because of her English skills, she got the job at the dive shop. While the choice on how to earn a livelihood in the rural villages of Manggarai is very limited, it is different for those who leave. The larger cities and tourism hot-spots of Indonesia provide many different work options. This leaves room for improving one’s situation by changing jobs. This is what Arie tells me about his beginnings in the tourism sector. He had started working for one of the hotels in Labuan Bajo after finishing high school, worked there for several years before resigning. “I resigned from the Bajo Beach Hotel because I had a problem with my boss. This was small interest conflict between me and another tour leader from Holland, and this tour leader from Holland reported to my boss in Makasar and they said they give me like… about one week they don’t let me take a tourist, and then in the Hotel they, they gave me another job and I disliked it. […] So with a lot of tourists that time and most of my friend in the hotel said, ‘You did the bad decision.’. I said in my life, in my principle, outside there, there are many more opportunities than in these small places. This is rice 117 only, always. That’s why I don’t worry to go outside, if I don’t have a job here, I’m the hundred percent have something outside, and that’s the reason I resigned from Bajo Beach.” It took only one week before a representative of a Travel Agency from Jakarta offered him a job. “He came to me and he said, ‘Okay now you work with me, we have a travel agency in Jakarta if you want, later we will develop you to Jakarta, you study marketing there and everything. […] I said okay. […]’ Three years I worked in this company. Then I also decided, because our management in the company was not good for me, I was always in the office, I had no chance to develop myself, and then I said, ‘Okay, I stop working here. Then I went to [another] Hotel.” (A. Daru, interview, June 8, 2010). Others tell me similar stories about their beginnings in tourism. Many worked for a few months in their first jobs in Labuan Bajo, then signed on one of the tour boats that circle the Islands between Flores and Bali. Or they moved further away to other tourism destinations, like on the islands of Bali, Lombok or Sumbawa for their second job, especially if friends or relatives who had left before them told them about a job opportunity. All of them can look back on several different jobs in different places which they remember as a sequence leading up to where they are now. With every step of the way in their career path, they tried to better their employment situation, get more interesting, and better paid work and gain further professional skills. Augustinus, the manager of the Green Hill hotel, tells me how he moved up the career ladder to where he is now. He started working at the same Hotel as Arie, the Bajo Beach, in 1995 and stayed there for two years. The salary was very low. “At that time, the hotels like Bajo Beach or Mutiara were not big hotels. It was difficult for them to pay us. They paid, but very, very little. We only got money from commission, as I told you, when we arranged something like a tour or whatever… when we fulfilled a special wish for a client we got some money.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). Augustinus quit his job at the hotel to become a tour guide, taking tourists to the Komodo National Park and later on a tour boat all the way to Lombok. “Well, to become a tour guide was… let’s say that was a new thing for me. It was very difficult for me. I only knew how to speak English but I didn’t know how actually the guide also becomes a teacher for the client. At that time, I had very little knowledge about guiding. But I tried. I never said no to these things. I always tried to get better and better.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). After four years as a tour guide, he 118 started a job at a travel agency in Labuan Bajo. It was his first office job and again, he had to prove himself in a new position. “I just learned by doing. Every day, I opened the… how to say… so much things to learn at that time, about Komodo, about Flores, everything.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). After another three years, he changed jobs again, starting to work as a manager of the small Green Hill Hotel in the center of Labuan Bajo. The job as Hotel Manager does not only pay well but it allows Augustinus to fulfill his potential as a manager. “I really got the best situation in this place. Because my boss, he gives me the freedom to do what I like to find the good situation, the good way… how to make this hotel better and better.” Augustinus set up a website where guests can book rooms in advance. This is a much more efficient way to acquire new guests he says. Before, he and his staff would go to the Airport to “hunt” guests, standing at the exit of the arrival hall, inviting tourists to stay at their hotel and offering a free ride into town. Now, their business practices are much improved, he says. “I run this hotel – I’m the Manager of this hotel. […] I just want to be professional in this. I don’t want to be hunting guests on the way. This is not the way, you know [he laughs]. I just want to focus – focus on the tourism business.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). Many of those I talked to who work in formal jobs in the tourism sector claim to have a high level of job satisfaction. Fatima Yanis for example says that when it comes to finding her job, she follows her heart: “At the moment I have no plan to go anywhere yet. I just follow what my heart wants to do. Normally, if I decided like, four years ago, when I thought that I have to go back home now, I want to work in Flores. Then I just follow what I want. Normally, my heart will tell me what things for me to do. […] My wants brought me to this place. So, now I’m working. But now, I still want to be a teacher, later.” (F. Janis, interview, June 24, 2010). Being happy in ones job is very important, Franz Suhardi, tells me. “I’m quite selective to find a good place for me to be, because I have to look for some place where I can feel like I’m happy, whatever I do and that company has to be happy.” (F. Suhardi, interview, June 23, 2010). Weber’s (2005) concept of profession as a “vocation” or, even more accurately, a “calling” (“Beruf als Berufung”), captures the difference of the purpose of work in the agricultural sector and in the tourism sector. To succeed in a modern capitalist work environment, he argues, it is indispensable to have not only a “developed sense of responsibility” but in general an attitude which is freed from continuously calculating 119 how much wage may be earned with a minimum of effort. Labor must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an end in itself, or a calling. Such an attitude is not inherent in human nature, nor can it be evoked by monetary incentives. It can only be the product of a long and arduous process of education (p. 25). For the people in the tourism sector, their work lives are less driven by the necessity to satisfy needs or fulfill social obligations and have more become an end in itself. The work is detached from their household and their family, but it is the place where they spend most of their days; it is the place where they learn and grow professionally. By trying to become better at what they do, and by changing their jobs, they increase their income and their responsibilities, improve their skills and advance their standing at their places of work and in the business community as a whole. Working for them means progressing or in other words “accumulation.” According to Weber (2005), there are two ways to run a business: a traditionalistic or a capitalistic-acquisitive one (p. 27ff). What characterizes a business built on the modern capitalist principle of acquisition is not the form of organization that can be capitalistic in every aspect. An entrepreneurial activity, like the selling of agricultural produce that is common in the villages of West Manggarai, can have a purely business character. A farmer may for example utilize capital, in the form of money and goods with a money value, by buying and planting seeds and make a profit by selling his produce on the market, but his business can have a traditionalistic character anyway. It is traditionalistic in the sense of the “spirit which animated the entrepreneur.” The means of production are traditional and not set to maximize yield, the amount of work invested follows a traditional pattern, relationships with competitors (other members of the community) are regulated in a traditional manner and the profit is moderate. What such a traditionalistic economic activity lacks is a particular “ethos” of accumulation. This ethos, in which the spirit of modern western capitalism can be found, is based on an attitude to seek and accumulate profit rationally and systematically (Weber, 2005, p. 27). The ethos of accumulation, I would argue, while hardly recognizable in the village communities of West Manggarai, can be found, to various degrees in the biographies of those who work in the tourism sector. People move from job to job, to acquire more skills, income, or responsibility. Many have plans to invest the money they saved to open their own business. With the money he earned at the hotel in the last few years, 120 Augustinus for example is building up his own tour operating business. He acquired an official license to organize sightseeing tours in West Manggarai and to other tourist attractions in Flores. He bought a car and hired his brother as a driver. Tours can be booked on the website he set up for his new business (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). Another example is Isabudin, who comes from a family of fisher people from Labuan Bajo. After working for several years on different tour boats, ferrying tourists back and forth between Labuan Bajo, Komodo and Lombok, he found a job as the local representative of a travel agency from Lombok, organizing the accommodation and transportation for western tourists who want to visit Flores for a couple of days. Unlike on the tour boat, where the salary was barely enough to cover his basic expenses, Isabudin was able to put some money aside from his new job. After more than ten of beginning his career in tourism on the tour boat of his uncle, he was able to buy his own boat – a rundown fishing boat he found through relatives in South Sulawesi. He restored it and started organizing his own tours to the National Park. After some time, he was able to buy a second boat and took over the management of two other boats with different owners (Isabudin, interview, June 12, 2010). The ethos of accumulation, according to Weber (2005) cannot only be found in entrepreneurial, profit-seeking activities, but also in the attitude towards professional employment itself. The ethos of accumulation has transformed work from a necessity to fulfill basic human needs to an end in itself. Those who have incorporated the ethos of accumulation are “dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs” (p. 18). The “accumulative” approach to one’s economic activity is one of the core features of the modern capitalist system. “This peculiar idea,” Weber (2005) writes, “so familiar to us today, but in reality so little a matter of course, of one’s duty in a calling, is what is most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture, and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It is an obligation which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of his professional activity” (p.19). This sense of having to continuously improve and maximize one’s potential has of course not been adopted by everyone to the same extent, but what I observed in how the people I interviewed talked about their entrepreneurial activities or how they (self-) improved their skills and knowledge to get better at doing their jobs is that the 121 “capitalist ethos” was somewhat more distinct the longer someone has worked in tourism, and the higher they had climbed the ladder of their professional career. John Raja, who had worked in the senior management of a five star hotel at Bali after he left Flores as a young man, and who would later become the manager of the largest and most expensive hotel in Labuan Bajo, for example, says the following about his career plans: “I think the possibility to improve, to develop ourselves is more in the private sector. We can maximize our potential better if we are working in the private sector, […] but even better if we have our own company. Then we can think; we can do whatever we want to be.” (J. Raja, interview, June 13, 2010). 6.7. The spirit of the modern capitalist economy It is important to understand that the ethos of accumulation when it comes to one’s economic activity is not universal to human behavior, but rather the product of a particular historic process. The genesis of the ethos of accumulation along with other key features of the modern capitalist economy, can, according to Weber, be found in the economic development of Europe from the 16th to the 18th century. Capitalism, he argues, had existed at other times in other places in human history. China, India, and the Middle East all had economies that worked according to capitalist principles, during certain historical periods. But in all these cases, Weber argues, the particular “spirit” of modern capitalism was lacking (Weber, 2005, p. 17). Instrumental in the genesis of the spirit of modern capitalism is what Weber calls the “protestant ethic,” which in essence is a key variable for the entire cultural development of western society. The protestant-Calvinistic teachings, in which success in the professional life is a means for religious beatitude, according to Weber, ensured the particular work ethic that was a necessary prerequisite for the logic of rational economic practice to be established in modern business (Habermas, 1981, p. 300ff). For anyone growing up in a modern capitalist economy, it is easy to mistake the principles of modern capitalist economic practice simply as a natural part of human nature, while, in fact, they are rather a set of beliefs and practices that have to be acquired. To illustrate how society shapes economic dispositions from childhood on, Bourdieu quotes an anecdote from a school in Britain that went through the press during his years in Algeria: the children of a middle school in Lowestoft, England, mutually insured themselves against punishment- the insured was paid 4 shillings for a 122 hiding. But faced with abuse of the system, the 13-year-od chairman had to envisage a supplementary clause under which the company was not responsible for voluntary accidents”12 (Bourdieu, 2000, 28). What Bourdieu observed in Algeria was similar to what can be observed in West Manggarai. People from the rural communities of Kabylia left their villages to escape poverty and resettled in the urban areas surrounding the larger towns in Algeria. The traditional economic practice of people did not follow any institutional-rational logic. A conversion of the economic mindset was required in order to successfully transition from the rural communities to the urban, non agricultural areas. Bourdieu, in particular, considered the differences of people’s mindsets when it came to the calculability of future gain. Growing up in a society that worked according to non capitalist or only partially capitalist principles, he argued, did not mean that one will not pursue economic gain or lack any foresight in doing so. What he observed in the rural areas of Kabylia was that the future value of produce was seen as inherent in its present value. Economic decisions, for instance the acquisition of resources for agricultural production, were based on previous experiences and not calculated with regard to the achievement of a goal that explicitly lay in the future. According to Weber, the modern capitalist economy is based on the principle of instrumental-rational behavior, which means: 1. “The systematic allocation between present and future utilities, on the control of which the actor for whatever reason feels able to count (these are the essential features of saving). 2. The systematic allocation of available utilities to various potential uses in the order of their estimated relative urgency, ranked according to the principle of marginal utility. […] 3. The systematic procurement through production or transportation of such utilities for which all the necessary means of production are controlled by the actor himself. Where action is rational, this type of action will take place so far as, according to the actor’s estimate, the urgency of his demand for the expected result of the action exceeds the necessary expenditure, which may consist in (a) the irksomeness of the requisite labor services, and (b) the other potential uses to which the requisite goods could be put; including, that is, the utility of the 12 Translation based on: Bourdieu, Pierre (2013). Algerian Sketches. Cambridge : Polity Press, p. 347 123 potential alternative products and their uses. This is “production in the broader sense, which includes transportation. 4. The systematic acquisition, by agreement (Vergesellschaftung) with the present possessors or with competing bidders, of assured powers of control and disposal over utilities. […] The relevant rational association with the present possessor of a power of control or display may consist in (a) the establishment of an organization with an order to which the procurement and use of utilities is to be oriented, or (b) in exchange” (Weber, 1999, p. 207ff). Instrumental-rational economic practice, in other words, means: saving, investing, producing and trading according to the estimated present and future value of goods or services with the goal of maximizing future gain. To allow for an exact calculation of present and future value at any point in time, what is needed is a monetary exchange value. This means “that the rational economic actor will harness all opportunities for the temporal, geographical or personal exchange of goods or services which will, on the bases of the estimation of their value in monetary terms, create an added value. Monetary calculation therefore means that the value of goods or services do not only manifest itself according to their present, local and personal value but also incorporating all possibilities for future utilization and valuation by others, as far as this expresses itself in monetary terms to the present owner” (Weber, 1920, p. 244ff). Since the successful participation in the modern capitalist economy fully depends on the application of this instrumental-rational thinking to ones economic activity, Bourdieu concluded that it was necessary to adopt a particular mindset with regard to time. It required for one’s life to become oriented towards an imaginary, anticipated goal. The capitalist system of production requires a detachment between the invested work and the gains that come from it. The extended length of production cycles in the capitalist economy requires a more abstract and more detached notion of the future. Calculation replaces the intuitive comprehension of the entire production process and intuitive predictability of the impact of present economic decisions on future outcomes. To enable rational calculation, the production process has to be detached from natural processes. The traditional unity between the present work and the “future” gain it incorporates has to be disintegrated (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 34f). 124 6.8. Conversion of the economic habitus The tourism economy of Labuan Bajo with its western customers, its strong links to other tourism markets within Indonesia and internationally, with its high proportion of western owned small and medium tourism enterprises, and national and international businesses that have entered the market, works to a large part according to the principles of a modern capitalist economy. The traditional agricultural sector of West Manggarai, while not being untouched by the monetization of the economy and the introduction of certain capitalist economic practices, still works largely according to non capitalist principles. The difference in the attitudes towards work in villages and in the tourism sector of Labuan Bajo can be therefore, at least to a certain extent, be attributed to an adaptation that the locals who participate in tourism have gone through, somewhere along their way from leaving their villages as children or young adults to where they stand now as entrepreneurs or formal employees in non agricultural jobs. In order to cope with the realities of the modern capitalist principles of the tourism sector such as the differentiation of work and social sphere, the merit based selection principles in the employment market or the principles of saving, investing and accumulation, they had to adapt some of their social and professional attitudes and practices they had acquired as children and young adults. The modern capitalist economy, as Weber (2005) put it, is like an “immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live” (p. 19). Just like the traditional economy of the rural communities in West Manggarai force the individual to incorporate pre-capitalist economic practices, the capitalist system forces those who participate in it to conform to its capitalist rules of action. Understanding the process of the introduction of a capitalist economic system in a pre-capitalist society means realizing the extent to which the adaptation to the new order requires the adaptation of deep-seated beliefs of those who transition into it and the transformation of one’s entire way of life. “To simply talk about adaptation in this case would be inadequate, when in fact is actually a conversion” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 14). The difficulties that the tourism workers and entrepreneurs experienced on their journey from being newcomers in the tourism market, leaving the familiar 125 surroundings of the village community, starting at the bottom and working their way up through a long and arduous process of formal and informal learning, changing jobs and places of work, experiences life outside of Flores and engaging with people from all over Indonesia and the world, can therefore be best understood as a slow and continuous adaptation of their beliefs and practices, or in other words, their habitus, resulting in a conversion of how they think and act as economic actors. The extent of conversion that is required can be illustrated by looking at how the established members of the tourism sector talk about those who are newcomers now, starting at the bottom, just like they did several years ago. Many of the young people who graduate from the tourism high school in Labuan Bajo want to become freelance tour guides, Aloisius Beda Liuk, said. So they go to the airport and watch for tourists disembarking from the planes from Bali, shouting at them across the fence, trying to offer their services. “They just do whatever they want, not really in a professional way. Not really in the right way.” (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). These youngsters sometimes ask for his advice, Juventus Tongkang says. “They graduate in the academic tourism school, also they come. When they start first to become a guide, sometimes they ask and come to my home. “How, how do I start? What is the first thing that I should tell them at the airport for example?” Because for young people it’s difficult to start”. “I think it’s difficult. You know, until now they don’t know how it is I work. How I get money, how I make business. They, they don’t know exactly because when I come to the village, normally I don’t translate my job, because for me it’s difficult. I need a long time to explain. I always say, ‘It’s the same like your job. If you are farmer, so do it as a real farmer’ […] but they are saying, ‘Oh, you don’t grab the tourist? You don’t force them to buy something?’ You just say ‘hello do you want to buy?’ Are you interested with my souvenir or you can buy these fries or something like that, not more.” (J. Tongkang, interview, June 10, 2010). People do not understand how tourism works, because of misconception they have about the foreign tourist. “Look at the good people,” Juventus says, “When they are selling their souvenirs, [they wonder], why don’t they buy one thing? Because in their mind, tourist is rich man, and this is actually the local tourism government and the National Park authority [that should] explain that, to give them an input or source 126 education, something like that, to teach them very well how it is, who is the tourist in real.” (J. Tongkang, interview, June 10, 2010). Pak Isabudin, who is the owner and manager of a fleet of small tour boat smiled when he told me about the young people who work on his boats. Most of them come from the islands. “After they finish senior high school, they try to ask for a job vacancy to become tour guide in some, some a… travel agency or they say ‘please give me a client, I become your tour guide with a plan.’ Me, I say no, I have to see first how they communicate. Not only how they communicate on the boat, but many things I have to see. For example, when they invite the client, that’s to take dinner, then on the table how… how do they sit, how do they take a food from the plate, ya like we call it table manners. Ya, that’s very important also because the client will see you” (Isabudin, interview, June 12, 2010). The newcomers think and behave according to the dispositions they have acquired in the world that they were born into, a traditional agricultural society. Their habitus was shaped to fit the setting that they grew up in and is, at this point more or less incompatible with the setting that they transitioned to as young adults (Bourdieu, 2003, p. 163). They are only at the beginning of the process of conversion of their mindset and practices that is necessary to succeed in the modern capitalist economy of Labuan Bajo. The conversion to the logic of the capitalist system is not limited to a passive, “mechanic” adjustment to the new rules. It requires what Bourdieu calls a “creative reinvention.” The techniques and practices which are required to survive in the capitalist system cannot be detached from a particular “life philosophy” that was acquired during the course of an individual biography through ones upbringing within the family and community and through formal education (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 27). 6.9. Broken habitus Today, those who established themselves in the tourism sector during the last 20 years benefit from the boom that Labuan Bajo is experiencing. They earn far higher and more regular incomes than those who stayed in the villages and are respected and envied for their income and the sophistication that is attributed to their travels and their collaboration with foreign tourists. “I don’t try to pride myself when I come to my 127 village, you know,” Augustinus says, “[but] people really wonder when I drive my car. The price is more than 100 Million. They wonder: Why can this guy buy this car?” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). “For them I am a success,” Kanitius says, “for the village standard. They say: Kanitius is already a success, I have to follow him. This is one point, which makes me happy. […] from my village side I'm a success, because I live in the town (K. Mite, interview, June 15, 2010). But when they look at where they stand with their careers in tourism, people paint a different picture. “I work like a part timer.” Kanitius explains, “I don't have a future job. If I'm not careful with my income for today, I get blind after. That's why I have to be careful, really spend well about my money. That is a big point. I really have to do that otherwise it the worst for my children, because today there is a lot of competition. Competition era, we call it. You can see my condition,” he continues, “It's like this, my performance. So I cannot explain. You can see what my performance is right now. But maybe forever, because I'm now 43 years. So difficult to decide if I will be a businessman or be a stakeholder in this activity - I don't know, because it depends if I have some money or some loan. So maybe I can change from just a guide to be a tour operator. I don't know” (K. Mite, interview, June 15, 2010). Like Kanitius, many of those who work as self-employed tour guides or work in very low paying jobs feel like they are stuck where they are, unable to fulfill their potential within the growing market. It is very difficult to get the money to start a company in Labuan Bajo; Mikael Nongko, who works for a large travel agency from Bali, explains. The salaries most people earn are too low to put anything aside. “My salary is very, very low. It's not enough for my family. Very, very low. And also, the money they don’t send it at the end of the month; they send only once every three to four months” (M. Nongko, interview, June 24, 2010). It is very difficult to make ends meet in Labuan Bajo; Margaretha Yunita, who works at one of the dive shop, tells me. She usually starts her work at seven in the morning and works until eight in the evening. In the morning and in the evening she attends to her two children who spend the day at one of her neighbors’ place. “It’s a full day. Sometimes I’m tired, but if we enjoy our work, our job… just follow it,” she says. After the birth of her second child, it took her a long time to find a job. She is grateful that she can contribute to the family income, which otherwise would not be sufficient to live in Labuan Bajo. “Woman in Manggarai, they are hard workers,” she says, “because here everything expensive. If 128 we just get the money from our husband, it’s not enough. Like me, I rent house, I buy water, everything I buy. So if just from my husband salary, it’s not enough. So… ya, we fight together” (M. Yunita, interview, June 24, 2010). Thomas Ulrich, the manager of the first Swisscontact PPG project, tells me that it is common for employees in the tourism sector to face unfavorable conditions. There are no labor laws, no labor unions and employment conditions are often unfair, he says. There is a “Jack of all trades” mentality in the tourism sector (T. Ulrich, interview, January 20, 2009). Getting a loan from a bank to invest in a new business is also not easy for them. As the manager of the local provincial bank in Labuan Bajo and the head of the local savings cooperation both tell me, there need to be sufficient collateral or previous savings for someone to receive a loan. With no land or real estate and no sufficient income to make any substantial savings, loans remain unavailable for most people working as employees or freelancers in tourism – at least for the amounts necessary to build a business in tourism (A. Negara, interview, June 19, 2013). Those few who manage to start small businesses often fail to sustain them over a longer time, or do not get beyond earning a little extra income on the side with a small scale part-time business. Aloisius, for example, opened a small tour operating business in a little shop right in the center of Labuan Bajo ten years ago. Tourists would walk into his shop and book boat tours to Komodo Island or buy bus tickets to continue their journey overland. Last year, the owner of the building cancelled his lease. Property prices in central locations of Labuan Bajo had risen, and many outside investors were looking for shops to rent. Today, Aloisius is back to working as a freelance guide. Without the shop he was not able to sustain his business (A. Beda Liuk, interview, June 12, 2010). Pak Danny was one of the few Indonesians in Labuan Bajo who managed to get into the lucrative diving market. All the other shops were run by Westerners. He managed to compete with the other dive operators for a while but eventually had to give up his business (A. Daru, interview, June 27, 2013). While there are of course many factors that can lead to the failure of a business venture or the plateauing of a career, I will argue that the challenge of conversion of economic and social beliefs and practices that is required to succeed in the modern capitalist economy of the Labuan Bajo tourism sector is one of the underlying reasons why those who transitioned from the villages of Manggarai to the tourism sector are less successful than the outsiders who came to Labuan Bajo from western countries and 129 from the larger cities of Indonesia, as they did not have to accomplish the same extent of conversion. This can be illustrated by the way people are torn between the building and sustaining of their businesses or their professional careers and the financial obligations they still have towards their family and kinship. Obligations towards their families are keeping them from saving and investing money. The problem, Franz Suhardi says, is that the money that one could save all goes into supporting the family. In his case, not only his wife and his daughter, but also his sister, who is still in school, his parents who want to build a new house and the wider family whenever there is an occasion where the whole community contributes, like weddings or funerals or when members of the extended family have problems. “I told my wife already that I owe a lot of things to my family. I cannot even repay everything what they have already given to me. But, maybe these things, because their house [is] almost falling down, and they’re already old. And if you don’t help them now, they maybe die -[in the] same condition. And they probably never feel the... You know it’s like a family here or parents here, they feel really successful when the child graduates from the University, and when it graduated, they always expected that he or she can have a good job, and the whole family will have a good life too. So we have to prove them. So this is the chance for me to prove that I have graduated, you help me before, now I’m graduated and I find a work, I find the job and I got salary every month, and I want to share with you. This is to prove that [I can] payback“ (F. Suhardi, interview, June 23, 2010). There is a strong social obligation to support, even for those who moved away. On the one hand they still strongly believe in traditional clan solidarity and on the other, they know that their family has invested in them at great cost to themselves, and now it is their turn to return the favor. This is one of the principles on which Manggaraian society is built on, Arie tells me. “Thirty years ago, when I was in the village, if you didn’t support others, you were the enemy of the village” (A. Daru, interview June 8, 2010). When someone leaves the village, expectations are high, as Wilhelminus, the secretary of the Ponto Ara village community tells me. “When we choose someone from the young people of the village to be supported to get some higher education”, he says, “the selection depends also if people see that ‘in the future their kid will be very helpful for the development, and especially maybe learning about the technology” (Wilhelminus, interview, June 20, 2013). 130 The occasions when those who have left send money to the family and kinship are numerous and usually the same for everyone: when there are medical emergencies, when someone has a wedding ceremony or when there is a funeral in the family, when money is short to pay the schools fees for younger siblings or when the home of the parents needs to be renovated. “If you have your own family and you also have another family, your parents, and your sister and you wanna help them. To help both of them with a certain, small money, amount of money, is very difficult,” Franz says. (F. Suhardi, interview, June 23, 2010). The people in Labuan Bajo are stuck between two worlds that require different strategies. With one foot, they are still part of their extended families and village communities and are expected to contribute to the community according to their financial means, in the same way the others do. With their work they fulfill the social function that is still required from them as part of the community. With the other foot, they are in the tourism sector that would require them to save money and invest in their businesses or their professional careers in order to survive in the competition for market share. While they might have converted their economic mindset in understanding what to do to succeed in a modern capitalist economy, they have not or only partially adapted their attitudes and practices in the social sphere. They are to some part still integrated into the communities that they left and are obliged to fulfill the social obligations, which in the village are inseparable from their economic activity. My meeting with Augstinus, the manager of the Green Hill Hotel, can further illustrate this point. When I arrived for the interview, he was sitting at the computer in the front office of the hotel, explaining something to the two employees standing behind him. He made a very competent and confident impression. The friendly way in which he interacted with them answering some of their questions before he left to come to meet me, seemed like he was well respected by the young men who worked at the hotel. The way he walked up the stairs while engaging me in a friendly conversation, the way he sat relaxed at one of the tables in the terrace, the ease with which he spoke English and even the way he is dressed in a t-shirt, Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, made me feel like I was talking to one of the western tourists that are all over Labuan Bajo. Augustinus seemed like he knew what he was doing, and he was entirely comfortable 131 in his role as manager of the hotel and host to foreign guests. His economic, social, and even his physical habitus fitted the environment that he was in. But then what he told me that he is at a loss when it comes to reconciling his business interests with the obligations that he feels towards his parents. “I have a plan to build a house, even if it is a small one, for my father. I tell you honestly, the condition of my father’s house is really, really bad. I just try to build up a new one, but the problem… at the moment I have financial problems, because… well, I could have done it three months ago but then I bought a new car for my agency. I have so many clients who want to do overland tours through Flores. So I just put it off until the next time; my new house in Ruteng. It’s a pity, it’s a pity… I just have to say I try my best before my father dies. I promised to do it before he dies. I just hope I can do it. I just hope he lives longer than I have expected.” “I went to Ruteng and then I drove around with him… It was a little bit sad for me. He said, when we drove, “when I die, don’t burry me close to your mother. Bury me in front of my house!” It’s a pity for me. I can’t say anything to that” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). Like many of the people I talk to in Labuan Bajo, Augustinus is torn between the need to make ends meet and progress in the tourism sector and the support they feel obliged to provide to their parents and the communities they still belong to. What the participants in the tourism sector have to cope with is what Bourdieu refers to as a “broken habitus” (Schultheis, 2007, p. 28). Through the continuous adaptation of their attitudes and their economic practices and their lifestyles to the new realities of the modern capitalist economy of Labuan Bajo, people experience a growing distance from their social heritage that results in the loss of a familiarity and “implicitness” knowing where one belongs and how to fulfill the expectations of one’s community or, in other words, cope with the necessities of one’s environment. The conversion to the new economic habitus, in other words, happens on the basis of previous dispositions, which are of course not replaced at once but are partially carried forward. This can lead to a discrepancy between the adapted habitus and the new economic structures. When personal dispositions and ideologies do not change at the same pace as the economic structures, different dispositions that are linked with different economic and social structures coexist (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 26ff). A conversion of a magnitude that is necessary to transition from a traditional, premodern rural community to a modern capitalist economic and social environment can 132 in the best of cases only be accomplished to a certain extent in one lifetime and is bound to remain incomplete. The integration into the new setting is fulfilled only as far as the detachment to ones origins takes place – both incomplete. Bourdieu also talks about a “dual foreignness” or “dual alienation” (Schultheis, 2007, p. 28). 6.10. Anomie It is not only tourism workers and entrepreneurs that have to cope with consequences of the rapid expansion of the tourism economy and the changes the rest of the economy of West Manggarai goes through in its coat-tails. Ordinary people who go about their lives without participating in growth or transitioning from a rural to an urban environment are affected by a growing incompatibility of acquired dispositions with the changing environment. When I visited the mountain village of Perang, many people I met were preparing for the arrival of the tourists who would bring prosperity and development to the village. Perang is a mid-sized village in the mountains of West Manggarai. It is about 50km or a 4h drive away from Labuan Bajo. With the help of a government loan, the community had just built an asphalt road up from the small road that runs through the valley below. I had joined a group of English teachers who visited the village to inspect the progression of the first English course ever offered in Perang. Sponsored by YKK, the course was attended by a group of women who wanted to learn English in preparation of the expected business of selling handicraft and woven fabrics to tourists. People I talked to were positive about the future of the village. The possibility of increased trade of agricultural produce and the expected inflow of tourists because of the new road promised good times ahead. “Maybe tourists can bring positive change to this village,” Fabianus, a young man who had just had a new house built for himself and his family, said. “That’s why we are proud; maybe they bring something positive to the village development” (Fabianus, interview, June 21, 2013). Fabianus was sitting with me at a small wooden table in the otherwise empty living room of his new house. The room of the house had the feel of an abandoned construction site. The concrete floor was covered in dust and water that people carried in when crossing the muddy patch of dirt in front of the house before entering. The walls lay bare, the grey concrete blocks and the mortar that held them together visible. Instead of the usual wooden framed windows that can be seen in Labuan Bajo on 133 concrete houses of this type, wooden boards had been nailed across the square openings in the walls. There was barely any sunlight that came through the cracks between the wooden boards. The other rooms were also nearly empty; in one of them there were a few plastic bowls and containers on the concrete floor that were used for washing and storing clothes and in the other room there was a narrow canopy bed, with a large piece of nice colorful cloth hung over the wooden frame, and a mattress on the floor. The kitchen, an open fireplace with some metal pots and pans surrounding it, was outside, in a small woodshed next to the main house. Next to the traditional bamboo houses in Perang, with their walls of braided bamboo, Fabianus’ house looked somewhat out of place. Because he travels around a lot, Fabianus says, he saw that people were building concrete houses in other places in West Manggarai, and since he and his family wanted a bigger house, they decided to have it built like this. The house is not finished yet, he says, but with the little money that he earns as a daily laborer, the family has not been able to build it any further. Fabianus is part of a group of seven daily laborers who work on the larger rice fields in the plains between Labuan Bajo and Perang. Whenever anyone in the group finds out that there is work somewhere, he calls up the others and they go together. Sometimes they also get work helping out on constructing sites, when houses, roads or other infrastructure is built. At the moment, Fabianus is waiting for another opportunity to work to earn enough money for the windows. In the meantime, the family lives in the unfinished house. “There is nothing to be proud about this house,” Fabianus says. It is clear that he does not like to talk about it. Fabianus’ wife, his mother, and one daughter sat on the concrete floor, leaning against the walls, while we spoke (Fabianus, interview, June 21, 2013). Building a modern house as a measure to keep up with the economic and social development put Fabianus and his family in a situation where the discrepancy between their acquired dispositions and the new physical environment widened. The initial building of the concrete structure that used up all the family’s savings comes with the requirement of further investment, which Fabianus is not able to cover with his scarce and irregular income. The family does not have the necessary resources to cover new needs that emerged because of the construction of a bigger house. For example, there is more space, but there is no furniture to fill it. At the same time, old practices like the external kitchen are continued even though their intended purpose, to protect of the 134 bamboo house from inadvertent fire, does not make sense anymore in the new concrete structure. The new rooms are empty. They do not seem like anyone is living in them. Unlike the traditional houses in Perang, the interior does not seem like it is controlled by its inhabitants.13 In Perang, the pressure to keep up with the changing environment is high for everyone. When I talked to Petronela Lanes, for example, who lived in a traditional house with walls made out of wooden board, which is considered even simpler in its build than the braided bamboo houses, she does not know what to make of our visit. “Oh, why did they come here, [to] my dirty and ugly house, not in the other houses which are better than mine? I’m ashamed,” she called out several times (P. Lanes, interview, June 21, 2013). On another occasion, when we sat with the family of Ronnie in their traditional house in Ngkor village, one of the middle aged family members came forward to say to us: “You are sitting here with clean clothes. You must think we are not human.” The disorientation that results from the discrepancy between the habitus, the internalized dispositions that one acquires over a lifetime, and the habitat, the changed realities brought by rapid economic and social modernization leads to a loss of security or self-evidence that one has when dealing with a familiar environment. The loss of compatibility of the habitus with the objective structures inevitably leads to a form of social pathology that can be best described with Durkheim’s concept of “anomie” – the loss of a reliable, collective, normative compass (Schultheis, 2007, p. 102). From the perspective of those who participate in economic growth and social modernization, the attitudes and practices of those who are most confronted by anomie can seem backward and self-defeating. People in the villages, everyone in Labuan Bajo told me, don’t know what to do to improve their livelihoods. One of the most common criticisms that I heard about those who stayed behind is that they do not know how to plan ahead, how to invest in their future. People are only thinking about how to earn enough to get by, Franz explained to me: “If you do something today, you get the money from that. From something you do today, then it’s good. […] after they finish the work, they get the money. No problem if they don’t have education, but they still get the money. So it’s same, same. So why you spend more money for long, long time and you get nothing from it. They don’t Bourdieu had similar experiences in the suburban settlements of the rural poor in Algeria. See: Bourdieu, 2005, 131ff. 13 135 think about the future.” (F. Suhardi, interview, June 23, 2010). Convincing people that they have to invest, if they want to better their lot is not easy; Augustinus said: “It is difficult… to push people like this. They only think, you know, what they can get today, just for today. Tomorrow they take another chance and another needs. It is quite difficult.” (A. Jemparu, interview, June 11, 2010). “What I found in the coastal people, in the fishing communities,” Emmy Halfild, the director of YKK tells me, “they don’t have long-term spending view for life. Because for them, when they need money, they go to the sea, they collect fish or anything they can get, sell it and get it. They don’t invest. They cannot think about next month. It is very hard to change and part of the poverty that they have, which is all over Indonesia, is because of that attitude. The way of seeing things. They have money. They have high catch. They just spend the money” (E. Halfild, interview, June 26, 2013). “The level of education or education background of most of my family members and lots of people in my village are still very, very low.” John Raja, the manager of the Bintang Flores Hotel Labuan Bajo says, “They don't really understand what is tourism, working in tourism industry […] They don't really know what we do. ‘Oh, are you working in the new hotel in Labuan Bajo?’ they always ask like this, because there is the Bintang Flores, the Jayakarta.’ "Oh you join with Jayakarta or Bintang Flores?" (J. Raja, interview June 13, 2010). “Just a few, maybe 1.1 percent of the people can hear us, can listen to us.” Kanitus Mite says, “but most people are like, back to nature or something. Just watching if more luck is coming. This means that they want to change something. They want, I know they want to change, but they don't know how to change. Something like this. They don't know exactly the way. So far they live in the village. All of them are farmers. Being a farmer is really, really sad, because it is like I was sixteen, fifteen years old. […] They don't care about changing. Just like, they run what they had. Never changing.” (K. Mite, interview, June 15, 2010). In Labuan Bajo, the anomie is probably greatest for those who live in town of Labuan Bajo itself, where most of the tourism growth is happening, but are unable to adapt their economic habitus to the changing economic realities. Battu Cermin, for example, has been entirely transformed from a rural village to a suburb for government workers and business people from Labuan Bajo over the course of the past two decades. 136 Hermina Mia grew up in one of the inland residential areas of Labuan Bajo, close to the airport. She went to the governmental secondary school in Labuan Bajo and married early. She left her parents home and, with the support of her parents, built a small bamboo house on a plot of land her family owned in Battu Cermin, the village close by. Her husband ran a small, rather unsuccessful motorcycle repair shop in a little wooden shed that they built behind their house. She and her husband had a lot of problems and after ten years of marriage her husband left, leaving Hermina to raise their daughter. This was quite difficult, Hermina says, but her life is still better now that they are separated. Before, they were fighting a lot. She was very unhappy (H. Mia, interview, June 19, 2013). The plot of land that belongs to Hermina’s house is small and she does not grow anything on it. To generate a bit of income for her and her daughter, she fills empty PET bottles of half a liter to one and half liters with petrol at the gas station on the main road to Labuan Bajo. In a little wooden rack next to the street in front of her house, she displays the bottles and sells them for a profit of a few hundred rupees each. This income and the little support she receives from her parents and from her brother is enough to live a very simple life (H. Mia, interview, June 19, 2013). Among the all the houses of government workers and businessmen who have settled in Battu Cermin over the last decades, Hermina’s house stuck out. While most houses on the street are large, one story brick buildings with white painted walls, brown window frames and tin roofs, Hermina’s house is a small, almost square bamboo hut. The walls are made out of thin bamboo strips, braided in traditional Manggarai patterns. The windows are covered by thick bamboo poles, letting only a little bit of light through the narrow spaces between the poles. The walls are covered with sheets of old newspaper from the inside to cover the many holes and cracks in the bamboo braiding. The hut is divided into three rooms by curtains hung from bamboo poles attached from wall to wall – one bedroom for Hermina, one for her daughter and the rest of the hut is the kitchen and living room. The two beds, a few plastic chairs and the many plastic buckets and bowls that are used for eating, washing as storage for food and clothes are enough to make the small hut seem crowded. Like all the people I talk to in the villages surrounding Labuan Bajo, she is very much aware of the tourism boom that is happening in the area, and she would like to do 137 something to improve her family’s standard of living. “Improving my life means, at least I want to have enough food and a good house, like my neighbors do,” she says. Her plan is to open a small food stand, selling snacks to people at the main market of Battu Cermin, a few hundred meters down the road. She had asked her brother for a loan to buy the food stall and get a spot in the market, but she does not know if her brother will support her. “Maybe next month, maybe next year or sometimes,” she says (H. Mia, interview, June 19, 2013). Hermina lives very isolated, Arie says. She does not interact much with the neighbors and therefore does not get much support from them. Most of the time, she just sits in front of her hut and waits for customers driving by to stop and buy a bottle of petrol. A few days earlier, I met another woman from Battu Cermin, who is in a similar situation. Dorothea Lamu is one of Aries immediate neighbors and I sometimes see her when I go and visit Arie and his family. Dorothea was born and raised in Battu Cermin. Her parents were farmers and owned the land on which she still lives today. Her youngest daughter and one of her granddaughters are living with her in a small hut. One of her older daughters and her son are living in the area. Both of them are married. When another one of her daughters had a child out of wedlock, Dorothea took the grandchild and raised her together with her youngest daughter (D. Lamu, interview, June 19, 2013). When Dorothea was a young woman, she worked as a farmer on her family’s land, together with her husband. At the age of 35, her husband died. Because of her bad health, she was unable to continue working in the garden; so she started earning her income by making gravel. Sitting in front of her house, she chops stones into small pieces with a little hammer of gravel and sells it for 5000 RS per sack. The gravel is bought by the construction companies that build the roads and other government infrastructure in the area. She also started breeding pigs. These two businesses barely earn her enough income to survive. “As long as I make the gravel it is that in a day I can produce five sacks of gravel, so I feel that the income from this job per month is not enough because it is just too small in amount, while I have very wide needs,” she said (D. Lamu, interview, June 19, 2013). Every day, she prepares breakfast for her two daughters and sends them to school. In the course of the morning she makes gravel for a few hours and then cooks lunch for her daughters. In the afternoons, she feeds the pigs and then relaxes until the early 138 evening when her daughters return from school. It is very hard to come up with the money to pay for her daughter’s school fees and supplies, she said. To make ends meet she depends on the support of others. Her adult children sometimes support her. From the government she does not get much support; only two 60kg sacks of rice per year from the “rice for the poor” program. Once in a while, she also receives small donations from her neighbors or she gets opportunities to earn some money by doing household chores for them. Her neighbors also helped her when she rebuilt the bamboo house of her parents into a wooden hut with a concrete floor and a tin roof. Many people came to support her then. Family and neighbors collected money for the cement and helped to cut the wood for the walls in the forest. A polish priest donated the tin sheets for the roof (D. Lamu, interview, June 19, 2013). She felt that her life was better when she could still work as a farmer. As a farmer, she was at least able to reap some visible benefits from her labor in the form of all the good food that she was able to grow. Now, her low income does not allow for a varied diet anymore. “A long time ago, when we worked on a farm, we ate our own harvest, fresh from the garden, so every food tasted delicious. But now we buy foods from the market, so that we need to spend money. I should manage to eat. Besides, I think when I eat, because I need to spend money to eat, the food doesn’t come from my own effort. So, that’s the difference. I could eat a lot until I was satisfied because the food came from my own effort, but now the situation is different.” (D. Lamu, interview, June 19, 2013).Dorothea was aware of the tourism development in Labuan Bajo. “There are a lot of differences,” she said, “The hotels weren’t there in the past, but now because of the world’s development, it’s getting more and more crowded. So, foreigners from all over the world are here in Labuan Bajo.” When I ask her if that could be a chance for her to improve her situation, she answers: “Yes, but how to do that? If I had been to school, then maybe I could speak foreign language. As I know, students are taught languages in schools, English … what else? If we know a foreign language, we can easily get money.” “Getting a job means getting money. My problem is I have never gone to school, oh… I just know how to eat.” (D. Lamu, interview, June 19, 2013). When I asked her if she had any plans for the future, she also vaguely talked about maybe selling something, owning a small kiosk or food stall in the market for example. But she didn’t not know where to start, and did not really believe in this 139 possibility becoming reality. When she gets too old or weak to make gravel, she just wants to focus more on pig breeding. On the way to the market, we saw about four or five little huts in front of houses, where people sell snacks or sanitary products. Many more are on the market itself. Everyone tries to make some extra money by selling these things here, Arie laughs; in the end, there is nobody left to buy them. Many people, like Hermina or Dorothea, have bad jobs, but they don’t do anything to change their situation, Arie says. Durkheim used the concept of anomie to explain different situations where the absence or loss of social rules leads to disorientation and human suffering. Anomie in the sense of Durkheim also entails an element of hopelessness where the improvement of one’s situation is perceived as impossible (Atteslander, 1993, p. 13f). In the light of anomie, the perceived lack of prospects of Hermina and Dorothea can be better understood. “With the changing context,” Bourdieu (2000) writes, “and the recognition of the loss of economic and psychological security, which was once provided by an integrated society and a living tradition, an adventurous improvisation takes the place of a precaution based on rites and customs and the reassurance of stereotypical behavior” (p. 85). The pressure of earning monetary income and the lack of support in times of hardship can then cause the collapse of norms and pattern that traditionally guided economic behavior, and can lead to economic practices that are absurd by both the standard of the pre-capitalist economy as well as the logic of the modern capitalistic economy. The precariousness of irregular work and low income can leave people disoriented. “Without the slightest control over their present, which would be the precondition for a self-determinedly shaping their future,” Bourdieu (2000) writes, people are “incapable to devise a plan for their life” (p. 109). 140 7. Some lessons for pro-poor growth In the previous chapter, I established several points. First that a successful participation in the modern capitalist economy requires from any economic actor: at least to a certain extent, to play according to the rules that the capitalist system entails. This means saving, investing, producing or trading according to the principles of accumulation and calculation. Second, depending on the dispositions that a person has acquired along their biographical path, a smaller or larger conversion of their economic habitus is required for them to adopt and internalize those beliefs and practices that make a successful participation in the modern capitalist economy possible in the first place. Third, those who adopted their economic habitus were supported by their family and friends along the way. And fourth, a changing economic landscape can lead to disorientation and hardship for those who do not adapt their economic habitus. There are a few conclusions that I want to draw from this for PPG theory and policy and for further research on the subject. 1) Pro-poor growth theory and policy fails to recognize the conversion of the economic habitus that is necessary for the rural poor to successfully participate in and benefit from the globalised economy. One of the common themes in most of the PPG literature and practice is enabling the poor to claim their rightful place in the modern, global economy by creating opportunities for them to engage in it as entrepreneurs or workers, and to remove the obstacles that would hinder them from doing so. This stresses the agency of the poor. The underlying assumption is that if you give someone the right tools to participate in the market and make sure that nothing hinders them from doing so, this will be a sufficient condition for them to be successful as economic subjects. Where this falls short is in the realization that a person’s economic dispositions and the practices that are associated with it do not necessarily fit the realities of the economic system in which the opportunities await. This is particularly true when the economic sector that is fostered was not part of the sector where most of the poor worked before. PPG policy must not only analyze “the sectors and regions in which poor people are currently working and living,” the BMZ (2006) for example notes, but “sectors and 141 regions to which they may be able to gain access must also be analyzed. In order to be able to develop this potential for growth, development obstacles that are specific to the sector or region must be addressed” (p. 4). The World Bank et al. (2005) state that “understanding the factors that can allow poor households to take advantage of job opportunities in urban areas (and nonagricultural jobs in rural areas) is crucial for a pro-poor growth strategy” (p. 58). A transition from the agricultural sector to the non agricultural sector in the areas where pro-poor growth promotion is implemented as a measure to reduce poverty most often means the transition from a more traditional economic sector that works to a lesser degree according to the principles of the modern capitalist economy, to a more modern economic sector that works to a greater degree according to modern capitalist economic principles. It requires a conversion by the poor that is mostly ignored by PPG theory and practice. What underlies PPG theory, an economic theory as a whole, is the assumption that there is one particular economic habitus, the instrumental-rational type that is associated with the modern capitalist economy that is natural to human behavior and therefore universal to all economic actors. This assumption fails to acknowledge that what has been incorporated into global economic thinking under the label of “homo oeconomicus” or “the theory of rational behavior” is as much the product of the modern capitalist system as economic theory is itself (Bourdieu, 2000). The conversion of the economic habitus is not the only factor that impedes the participation of the poor in growth, and cannot be made solely responsible for instances, as in the case of West Manggarai where the benefits of economic growth are unequally divided. It nevertheless should be recognized as one of the obstacles to participation when designing PPG policy. 2) The wider the gap between the existing economic dispositions of the poor and the principles on which the promoted economic sector is based on, the greater the conversion required for successful participation. The disparity of the economic habitus of the poor with the objective realities of a changing economic system is one of the factors that can impede successful participation in the best case and lead to anomie, disorientation, and increased hardship in the worst. It can therefore be assumed that the obstacle for participation of the poor 142 in growth that conversion entails is higher when the introduction of the capitalist economic system is not the product of an indigene process of social and cultural change, but is imported from the outside. In this case, the new economic system fully represents a completely new “cosmos” in which people are thrown into and whose rules they have to learn if they want to survive. This is where the situation of developing countries today, according to Bourdieu (2005), differs from what western societies experienced during the initial stages of capitalist economic development (p. 26). In the situation of imported, or one could also say “imposed” economic capitalism, since the new economic and social reality is not the product of an indigenous development, it is also not the product of the inherent logic of the existing social order. In this situation, the possibilities of the economic actors to shape the new system are limited. They cannot act according to their own free decisions, but have no choice but to adapt to the new system. As in the case of West Manggarai, tourism is considered by many as a suitable economic sector to be promoted to achieve PPG because of its low entry barriers. Gerosa (2003) for example states that “tourism has lower barriers to entry than other sectors, including a range of enterprises from the micro to the multi-national and providing plenty opportunities for linkages in the local economy. […] It is usually a liberalized sector with few formal entry barriers and it provides opportunities for employment and entrepreneurial activity which require less formal education or training than other sectors” (p. 4ff). But if one looks at the level of openness of the tourism sector in terms of the conversion necessary to successfully participate, one would have to come to the opposite conclusion. Actually, there are some particularities in tourism which increase the instrumental-rational nature of this economic sector. Its consumers are predominantly people from the outside who in the case of PPG promotion in poor and marginalized areas, like eastern Indonesia, will be predominantly people originating from societies that are more modern and capitalist in nature. Because of the international mobility of the customer base, any tourism sector theoretically competes with any other tourism sector in the world and therefore faces more pressure to live up to the standards and principles of the globalized economy. Furthermore, the low barriers of entry for individuals and companies from the outside tend to contribute to 143 an increase of modern capitalist nature of the sector, which in turn makes the entry for the local poor more difficult. The disparity between local economic dispositions and the objective structures of imported economic sectors could also be one of the reasons why countries or areas with similar rates of economic growth experience different levels of poverty reduction that according to the OECD (2007) can be attributed to the “initial conditions” of these areas (p. 12). Population density and the degree of urbanization for example determine, according to the World Bank (2005), “the extent to which transaction costs and remoteness preclude rural households from participating in growth” (p. 10). In Bangladesh, with a high level of population density and urbanization, the poor were more likely to participate in and benefit from growth than in Uganda, where the levels of population density are much lower. These variations also occur within countries. In Vietnam, for example, transaction costs to participate in growth are much lower in the better connected rural areas of the southwest of the country than for producers of the remote northern mountain region. The level of conversion that is required for the poor from more remote areas that have been less connected and less influenced by the global economy could be a contributing factor to why participation in growth is lower. Further research would be needed to support this assumption. 3) The non-income dimensions of poverty matter for the participation in growth. While the movement from agricultural to nonagricultural employment was important in raising the incomes of poor households in many countries, there is evidence that the more educated, better connected workers were more successful in this regard (World Bank, 2005, p. 11). What the case of West Manggarai shows is that in order to accomplish the transition to a modern capitalist economy and the conversion of the economic habitus it entails, the non income dimensions are relevant in several ways: First, in the case of tourism workers and entrepreneurs in Labuan Bajo, the entire livelihood base, including their families’ and their communities, contributed to their successful transition to the tourism sector. They were all supported, encouraged and empowered by their families and communities to make the transition. Most of them were able to attend school at least up to high school and have therefore acquired an above average educational level. Their families invested financial resources into their 144 education, which was only possible for those families who had the necessary physical and natural resources to acquire the income necessary to cover the school fees. During their formative years, after the transition to the new economic sector, tourism workers relied on the social capital that they had acquired during their years in higher education. To find their first job in the tourism sector and when transitioning from one job to another on their career path and when it came to the learning process, which are both important aspects in the process of the conversion of the economic habitus, they were supported and guided by peers and mentors. Second, according to the concept of life time poverty, the ability to overcome poverty varies according to a person’s life stage and the particular socio-economic circumstances that it entails (Annen, 1998, p. 34). In the case of West Manggarai, the overall majority of tourism workers and entrepreneurs left their communities as children or teenagers and joined the tourism sector as young adults. They were promoted by their families at a particular stage of their lives, and they joined the tourism sector at a stage of their lives where they did not have own children to support and enjoyed a high level of mobility. Their particular life stage allowed them to more easily change their living patterns during their transition to the tourism sector, allowing for the break with traditional way of life that is necessary for a conversion of the economic habitus (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 18f). Third, overcoming poverty, according to Sen (1999), requires the removal of the constraints that are put on people to take advantage of the economic opportunities that arise (p. 3). As the case of West Manggarai shows, the physical and mental break with the traditional social and economic order of the village was a necessary prerequisite for those who left to successfully participate in the tourism sector. It was only possible with a certain degree of freedom that was granted by their families and communities. Following the common patterns of labor migration in South East Asia, in West Manggarai, it is primarily the young men who make the transition into the tourism sector. They are awarded a high level of physical and social mobility, while the women are more confined by the traditional paths of marriage among the village communities (Allerton, 2001, p. 240). West Manggarai belongs to the least developed regions of Indonesia with over 95% of people living on less than a dollar a day (T. Ulrich, interview, January 20, 2009). From a monetaristic perspective of poverty, the overall majority of those who transition to 145 the tourism sector and benefit from growth therefore can be considered poor. From a non income poverty perspective, those who dispose of the necessary (non income) resources to accomplish the conversion necessary for a successful participation in growth would have to be considered among the least poor. 4) The more rapidly the economy grows, the higher the chance of anomie and the more difficult it is for the poorest to participate in growth. In PPG literature, it is often argued that higher growth rates will lead to higher absolute increases of the incomes of the lowest income segments. Faster growth therefore means growth that is more pro-poor (World Bank et al. 2005, p. 19). According to Sen (1999), objections that rapid economic growth may lead to a loss of traditions and cultural heritage, are dismissed on the ground that it is better to be rich and happy than to be poor and traditional. Keeping or loosing traditions is considered more a matter of choice than the loss of a valuable resource (p. 31). “If a traditional way of life has to be sacrificed to escape grinding poverty or miniscule longevity,” Sen (1999) writes, “then it is the people directly involved who must have the opportunity to participate in deciding what should be chosen” (31f). In contrast, the case of West Manggarai shows that the loss of the traditional order in the wake of economic growth has implications for the ability of the poorest to benefit from growth. The discrepancy between the changing objective realities, brought about by economic and social modernization, and the economic and social dispositions of the poor that are rooted in the traditional order and the resulting anomie, can lead to disorientation and hardship and in that sense to an increase of poverty. The faster the economic growth, the higher is the chance of anomie among those who do not possess the necessary resources and the favorable conditions to keep up with the changing realities. 5) Improving income security and reducing vulnerability of the poorest improves their ability to participate in and benefit from growth. According to the World Bank et al. (2005), the movement of the poor out of the agricultural sector into the non agricultural sector often leads to an overall increase of informal employment. Result from the country cases of the “operationalizing pro-poor growth” study show that moving into formal non agricultural employment is more difficult in some countries than in others. Large movements into non agricultural 146 sectors can lead to a decrease of availability of formal employment. The authors nevertheless conclude that as long as the labor productivity of informal employment in the non agricultural sector is higher than in the agricultural sector, economic development is still beneficial for the poor and growth can be considered pro-poor (p. 55). In the case of West Manggarai, there is some indication that livelihood security of formal employment is relevant for the participation of the poor in growth, not only because it tends to provide higher and more regular incomes, but because it benefits the conversion of the economic habitus. According to Bourdieu (2000), formal employment and income security go hand in hand with a successful conversion of the economic habitus. 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Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc. 158 Curriculum Vitae MANUEL ROTHE * 22nd August 1979 • Flawil SG • Switzerland since April 2014 CBM Switzerland • Thalwil, Switzerland Emergency Response Coordinator 2007 - 2013 University of St. Gallen • MBA Programmes • St. Gallen, Switzerland Head of Finance and Services 2007 -2010 University of St. Gallen • Center for Leadership and Values in Society • St. Gallen, Switzerland Research Associate 2006 - 2007 Deutsche Welthungerhilfe • Islamabad, Pakistan Programme Assistant 2000 - 2005 University of St. Gallen • St. Gallen, Switzerland Graduate Studies in International Relations • Undergraduate Studies in Management, Economics and Law
