The Politics of Development Policy Labelling

Abstract

Labelling feature of all social communication is an aspect of public policy (utterance and practice) an element in the structure of political discourse. Contributors to this volume have become more sharply aware of this through their preoccupation and experience with development issues in various parts of the 3rd world. The purpose of this focus on labelling is to reveal processes of control regulation and management are largely unrecognized even by the actors themselves. The significance of labelling has been underestimated as an aspect of policy discourse and especially for its structural impact upon the institutions and their ideologies through people are managed. Since the process of labelling affects the categories within people are socialized to act and think the object of this concern is fundamental rather than peripheral. Labelling refers to relationship of power in that the labels of some are more easily imposed on people and situations than those of others. Focus here is on the particular kind of labels or abstractions arise in development policy areas as an aspect of the donative political discorse associated with the 3rd world development agenda. The interest is in how specific acts of designation or classification reflecting specific interests become universalized. It is not sufficient to say that concept of the state (as an endorsement or imposition of legitimate public actions) is a condensate of class relations or is derived from thelogic of capitalist production relations a particular from because of the contradictions of its peripherality. It is necessary to understand how this endorsement actually occurs and can continue to do so how it comes to be constructed and then persists. The process is insidious and centrally involves labelling. Labelling is the attribute of certain kind of public management of resources i.e. bureaucratic professional formal institutionalized and often central. It is the counterpart of access in that the authors of labels of designations have determined the rules of access in that particular resources and privileges. A central feature of the labelling proces is the differentiation and disaggregation of the individual and the individuals subsequent identification with principal label e.g. landless or single parent. Labelling refers to the weighting applied the differentiated elements. Problems calling for attention and policy are constructed and defined in this way leading to 1 label or element representing the entire situation of an individual family. Exercises required in an attempt to demcratize the which and whose aspects of public policy labelling are identified.