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LECTURE 4: WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WAR, SOCIAL
VIOLENCE AND POVERTY?
DEFINITIONS:
Definitions change over time and depend on the answers that one receives when questioning
the link between social violence and poverty
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Poverty refers to the severe deprivation of human needs
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The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1
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The figure is adjusted every now and then, in line with adjustments in the cost of
living
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Progress has been much slower at higher poverty lines and it is very misleading
to quote poverty lines because, for instance, some figures for Africa demonstrate only a 6percentage point drop
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Per capita income is a limited and incomplete measure of poverty and its
relationship to war and conflict
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Progress in
economic development is now assumed to be a positive movement in a number of
indicators including education, health, nutrition, housing and the environment
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It is the tool currently in use to determine whether a country is
considered to be a developed or an under-developed country
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Even this kind of tool has been described as being overly simplistic by A
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The move towards a broader definition of development and poverty gained traction at the
time when security and development started to be ever more correlated, after the Cold War
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A proper definition of ‘development’ was given in the Human
Development Report of 1994 and stresses a ‘people-centred’ approach
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There is no doubt that once war breaks out, it feeds on
economic deprivation
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Miller)
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The bottom 25 countries
on the HDI include the DRC, Liberia, Chad, CAR, Mali, Afghanistan, Sudan, Burundi and
Cote d’Ivoire among others and experiences of these countries demonstrate this clearly
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Macro Effects – impact on the economy of a state
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Capital, broadly
defined (not just natural resources but also human capital in the form of health,
migration, skills etc
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Economic infrastructure
(power, irrigation, transport) and social infrastructure (schools, hospital) are also
affected
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The shift to
informal activities (smuggling and subsistence production) is considerable
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Micro Effects – impact on households and firms
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) decline owing to lower government spending
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The impact of war across society
is differential; some societies adjust better and might even benefit during warfare by
exploiting the opportunities that the informal economy of wartime might provide
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It can be called the
coping economy since people do what they can to survive; a predatory economy as
political elites seek to capitalize on the dire situation; and a shadow economy
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All these economies function in
tandem, reinforcing each other as time goes by
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War has a
transformative effect
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There is definitely a connection between poverty and warfare but there is a need to
differentiate between different levels or classes
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Huntington has frequently
referred to the tendency of political institutions to evolve depending on the needs of the
people
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The widening of income and wealth disparities within a society;
2
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The gradual weakening of the capacity of the state to provide public goods such as
security, economic wellbeing, and that with that weakening there is an erosion of the
legitimacy of the existing system leading to greater potential for violent conflict
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The legitimacy of the state was undermined and contributed to the civil conflict that erupted
in various parts of the continent
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Policies that attempt to
lessen income disparities, trying to limit uncertainty and ensuring that the state or another
legitimate entity can continue to provide public goods, can help to limit conflict
THE AWARENESS OF POVERTY
The perception of growing inequality might stimulate growing unrest and lead to warfare
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Advances in information technology and social media make this more
likely than in the past
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This theory has some merit and important propositions have
emerged from it about the relationship between modernization and progress and social
violence
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Increased absolute income and not relative income leads to people becoming rich in a short
time span, the disruption of traditional social groupings in society (class and family, for
instance), increases in exposure to media through increased literacy and education which
might in turn, increase frustration
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The main difficulty in adjusting to these changes is the lack of a political infrastructure
that can mitigate the effects of such change
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Has the relative deprivation thesis been given a new lease of life with the emergence of
social media and, more loosely, globalization? The distinguished economist Robert Wade
spoke of global inequality in 2001
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On the one
hand, the regions of the wealthy pole show a strengthening republican order of
economic growth and liberal tolerance (except toward immigrants), with
technological innovation able to substitute for depleting natural capital
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Here,
a rising proportion of the people find their access to basic necessities restricted
at the same time as they see others driving Mercedes
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Economic growth in these countries often depletes natural
capital and therefore future growth potential
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There are two issues with this theory
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The division of the world into poles runs into the difficulty of being rather
imprecise
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It is not that the sense of deprivation does not lead to conflict but it
needs to be applied to the specific contexts
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As Miller pointed out, the direct link between poverty and war escapes this
opinion entirely
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However, Algeria, scores fairly
well on the HDI despite the historic levels of violence in that country in the 1990s
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DISTINCTION BETWEEN VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL INEQUALITIES
This distinction is associated with the work of Francis Stewart et al
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Inequalities assessed in relation with the distribution of income that take into consideration
everyone in society from top to bottom
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g
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These inequalities are more important in the sense that they can
pinpoint the injustices directed towards certain groups of people
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Existing inequalities
between groups provide opportunities in times of conflict and uncertainty, to mobilise groups
in line with differences in identities
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The media, in particular, may be utilised to raise the
consciousness of that particular group
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The crux of Stewart’s argument is that violence erupts when groups face off
against each other because of horizontal inequalities and that these lie at the heart of
inter-group friction

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