The giving of giant pandas by China to other states can, it has been suggested, serve as a window on the evolution of capitalism. Giant pandas in this analysis morph from being strategic communist gifts in Mao’s era, to state controlled capitalist gift loans in Deng’s era, to the current phase of them being “guanxi loans” (Buckingham et al. 2013). James Ferguson turns to the giving of another nonhuman as an entry point for identifying and reflecting upon a new type of welfare state that is emerging in parts of the global South. To be precise, he reflects on the popular developmental slogan: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” This commonplace saying exemplifies a central desire of welfarism of getting men – problematically, it is about men – off any form of dependency such as aid or charity by converting them into active, fulsome producers. Ferguson contends that this oft-used slogan with the centrality it explicitly accords to the production process and the concomitant creation of employment holds increasingly limited pertinence. Given that high levels of unemployment and a generalised despair over finding jobs are striking features of the contemporary, why would the objective of imparting skills in aid of employability no longer be considered critical? If employment is not or cannot be the goal to strive for then what alternative paths lie ahead? What also of the welfare state and radical politics and progressive hopes for a more equal world? And how is all this linked to Marxism, anthropology, critical academia, the push and shove of the vast development apparatus and state policy-making, the global South, and that much-debated thing called neoliberalism? Ferguson offers subtle and thought-provoking reflections upon all these in his timely Give a Man a Fish.

The book opens by posing a question that has been puzzling many commentators and students of capitalism, neoliberalism, and development. The question is: how is it that social protection and neoliberalism are increasing at one and the same time? In other words, in an era when the free market is on the ascendant and neoliberal thought is firmly entrenched, why has there been a simultaneous expansion in state policies that enjoin a greater amount of spending on welfare functions? Neoliberalism is, after all, widely associated with a rolling-back or downsizing of the welfare state. Neoliberal states should, one assumes, minimise any “intervention” in “the social” as all faith is ultimately reposed in the unfettered actions of the market. But what we are witnessing in many states of the global South that can be legitimately considered neoliberal/neoliberalising, Ferguson contends, is not less but greater levels of social assistance. Furthermore, these policies are not comprised of the type that can be easily tarred with the neoliberal brush such as microfinance or microcredit. Rather, the really astonishing new measure, one that has been heralded as the “big” development story not just in southern Africa but also in parts of Latin America and South Asia, is that of cash transfers. This is a policy of just giving money to the poor. Furthermore, this cash is being handed over to “able-bodied” men – the traditional worker/producer figure – and not just to those categories that had been previously deemed “vulnerable” such as the old and infirm or single mothers.

Before our very eyes, the classic heteronormative, patriarchal figure of the man of the “give a man a fish…” slogan is being reconfigured as deserving of state assistance. He is to be handed cash not in return for labour expended but just by virtue of being a member of society; as his rightful share and not as a loan or charity. This move would have been unthinkable not so long back given a widely-held distaste both for “just giving” and for cash/money that is seen as a substance that can breed idleness, dependency, alcoholism, and other assorted moral and social ills. It is nothing short of remarkable, then, that such a move has gained popular acceptance; that it is being implemented in large swathes of the global South; and that it is widely supported by states ranging from India to Brazil to Namibia and organisations such as the World Bank as well as prominent intellectuals, development practitioners, and political commentators. This leads Ferguson to herald the arrival of a new kind of a welfare state.

The defining feature of the new welfare state is that it is centred not upon creating greater employment for the man-who-could-be-a-fisherman. Rather it is one which is more concerned with crafting new and more efficient distributive measures. In so doing, the new welfare states of the global South are responding to the reality that they currently face whereby, firstly, the demand for labour or skilled workers is vanishing. Ferguson argues that this is particularly true for places such as South Africa where there does exist a large labour pool but it is difficult, bordering on the impossible, to insert these labourers into the production cycle. Secondly and relatedly, waged work is not the means through which most people in Africa obtain their livelihoods. Ferguson notes that vast numbers of the poor in southern Africa are managing to survive through “improvisation in conditions of adversity”. What he calls a “survivalist improvisation” is achieved by accessing or making claims on others’ resources – through the cultivation of relations of dependence. The desire for independence that is often assumed in liberal thought, he suggests, just doesn’t hold true ethnographically or historically in the African context. Ferguson is careful to point out that reliance on forms of re-distribution should not be seen as yet another instance of African “backwardness”. It is, in fact, a global phenomenon as evidenced, for instance, by the official statistics of the United States where only 58.6 % of the adult population is to be found in employment; even in the classic “breadwinner” category of men aged 25-54, one out of five men remain out of employment. The rest are just managing to, somehow, get by.

The new welfare state is thus a pragmatic response to the twin contemporary features of massive unemployment and overproduction. Finding newer and more efficient means of distribution is the need of the hour. Enter cash transfers and the demands for basic incomes/sustenance that are in evidence in many parts of the global South. This compelling book walks us through how these new politics of distribution have emerged by concentrating on the southern African literature. It draws our attention to the claims and counterclaims that are currently being voiced and argues for moving beyond “productionist” thinking by appreciating the criticality of distribution processes. Give a Man a Fish, with its elegant argumentative style, is effective in persuading the reader not just that there is a new politics of distribution at work but also how this new way of thinking and acting has become possible.

The book also extends some of the arguments made previously by the author in a brilliant article on neoliberalism (Ferguson 2010). Give a Man a Fish doesn’t concern itself with nit-picking over what constitutes neoliberalism. The author doesn’t walk around with a magnifying glass to see if this policy or that project is, in fact, neo-liberal or socialist or communist or an unpalatable mishmash of them, or some other ism altogether. For the most part the reader is happily spared the need to note the strategic use of ironic or self-distancing scare quotes over the word neoliberal. By extension, we are not treated to moralising discourses on how bad neoliberalism is or, even worse, how bad those anthropologists are who are or – even – aren’t engaged in studying neoliberalism. In place of denunciation of the thing itself as well as anthropologists wrestling/not-wrestling/badly-wrestling with neoliberalism, we find a refreshing and sorely-needed stance. In this, the author turns to the policies and practices operating under conditions of neoliberalism – yes, he appears to be of the unapologetic opinion that we do live in a neoliberal world – to query its political potentials and possible dangers.

Through a focus on the terrain of possibility opened up by these specific forms of welfare activities, Ferguson makes a powerful argument against the “hopelessly Eurocentric” (68) discussions of welfare and “the social.” These hegemonic discussions that are evident as much in academia as in policy discussions have their roots and derive their terms of argument and engagement from post-World War II Europe and Keynesianism. The task for anthropologists is to escape this structuring discourse to study that which is unfolding in practice. This work also mounts an innovative critique of traditional Marxist thinking that remains fixated on challenging capitalism through a focus on the labouring process and aspects of production. To construct a legitimate criticism of Marxism that stems not from an oppositional Right or conservative position, but rather from the realities of welfare states in the global South is, again, compelling. Ferguson argues for rehabilitating alternative Left traditions that have always had a greater interest in distributive justice. Through the work of some of these thinkers, particularly the anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, Ferguson makes clear that a focus on the issue of distribution does not entail giving up a challenge to capitalism. Rather, what is proposed is the seizure of the opportunity to craft creative new forms of distribution. He appears to be cautiously optimistic about the emergent distributive formations discussed in Give a Man a Fish. What he is keen on is the encouragement of a curiosity about their political potentials, as opposed to suspicion or mere critique.

Give a Man a Fish insists on moving beyond critique to explore emergent possibilities and to ask what sorts of claim-making we can espy in new programs such as basic income grants (BIG) in Namibia or “basic rent” in Brazil or in the vernacular discourse of populist politicians like Julius Malema in South Africa. Not only is this focus on actually-existing-welfare-politics a welcome corrective to much of the literature on capitalism, neoliberalism, development, and the state but it also makes for a book that is starkly different from the author’s very own Anti-Politics Machine (1990). Both books are concerned with the development apparatus and the welfare state in southern Africa. Yet Anti-Politics was largely about the depoliticisation effected by seemingly benign development projects while Give a Man a Fish is really about seeking out the political potentialities in a capitalist moment that seems particularly un-conducive to progressive or radical thought and action. Both put forth positions that were/are counter-intuitive to the time. The 1990 book was written when the development industry commanded a relatively greater legitimacy and hopefulness while Give a Man a Fish has come out just when there is a widespread lamenting of the abysmal politics of neoliberalising states everywhere. Even though both the works are profoundly animated by a Foucauldian spirit, there is one striking methodological difference between the two. Anti-Politics treated World Bank and other development apparatus reports as constructs that were to be discursively deconstructed; Give a Man a Fish relies on the statistics and arguments of the same sorts of developmental organisations and utilises them as facts. These facts, particularly on the success of cash transfer and basic income programmes, are further marshalled to awaken us to their possibilities to make a positive difference.

Undoubtedly, these distinctions between the two books attest to authorial creativity, openness, and a sharp awareness of a changing world. And, perhaps, Ferguson has also generously taken on board some of the criticisms that were made of Anti-Politics Machine. Path breaking as that book was, it could be read as ignoring the work of politics and mistakenly treating depoliticisation as the end-result of developmental interventions (Li 2007); being fixated upon critique (Venkatesan and Yarrow 2012); and ignoring the complex world and practices of development practitioners (Mosse 2004). While none of these charges can be levelled against Give a Man a Fish, I couldn’t help but wonder at certain points if Ferguson hasn’t gone a tad too far in the opposite direction.

For the majority of the work, until one comes to the last chapter and the conclusion, it would appear that Ferguson is a believer in the new distributive measures that he is describing. He refers to the secondary reports and snippets of conversation that show cash transfers to – in his and his development policy intellectual interlocutors words – “work.” While this book draws largely upon southern African literature and research, the author does very correctly note that the very same issues and trends are observable in much of the global South. In that sense, this is what can be called a “big” book due to the claims it is making, the arguments it is putting forth, and even the regions – the global South – it explicitly includes in its ambit. Indeed, much of the discussions in Give a Man a Fish resonate with what is currently unfolding in India. In the spirit of South-South solidarity, I offer a brief rumination on the applicability of the arguments of Give a Man a Fish to the Indian developmental state. I will concentrate on the cash transfers that feature on the book cover and underpin the core arguments of this very fine work.

The move to cash transfers is in a nascent stage in India and, indeed, this is precisely the time when we should – as Ferguson is urging us to do – keep an open mind about its progressive potentials. However, there are some serious concerns with the cash transfer projects that are not encapsulated in Give a Man a Fish and run counter to its hopeful stance. At the outset, it should be said that the development state in India has a long history stretching well into colonial times and it is widely agreed to possess strong institutional and bureaucratic “capacity”; issues that Ferguson raises as potentially problematic for other states in Africa. There are two major criticisms that are being voiced of cash transfers in India. The first is with the idea of “just giving money to the poor” itself. While some might harbour the traditional Left suspicion of money and the capitalist marketization it allows for, the major distrust of the cash transfer move comes from a different place. It emerges from the fear, not entirely unsupported by emergent policies, that the giving of cash to the poor will allow the state to roll back its other welfare functions such as access to subsidised or free health and education. There is a particular fear that cash transfer will accomplish a systematic dismantling of India’s long-standing public distribution system (PDS) that has provided subsidised food and grains to the poor. Secondly, cash transfers in India are locked in a tight embrace with its new programme for biometric-based identification, a controversial technological infrastructure that comes in for praise by Ferguson as “pioneering.” For various complicated reasons, the cash transfer programme cannot and will not be implemented in the absence of biometric IDs. One must, again, agree to the need to remain open to the possibilities of new technologies such as biometrics and, indeed, greater ethnographic work is required before we can pass judgement. However, were the author to follow the same approach he might hesitate before making such statements, which make the desire for privacy and resistance to surveillance appear as preserves of the rich and/or the West: “But today, under conditions in which labour is in surplus, the poor and cast off may actually aspire to certain forms of surveillance and enumeration…seeing in them forms of incorporation, recognition, and support that are otherwise unavailable (85).” Furthermore, given that states across time and place have been known to use their own records, data, and apparatus to unleash terror on particular communities, it would be a serious mistake to dismiss all healthy suspicion of new forms of surveillance and enumeration.

Dismissals of concerns with new “welfare” mechanisms and technologies are voiced through multiple platforms by experts, development agencies, and state agents – most commonly in the name of transparency, accountability, efficiency, and the curbing of corruption. There are many instances in this book where Ferguson provides precisely the same set of justifications; these are similar to, if not identical to, those put forth by the people he admiringly describes as “policy intellectuals”. Sections of the discussion on cash transfers as well as biometrics in Give a Man a Fish ring familiar because these are, firstly and as he notes, instances of “copycat” ventures by states in the global South. More problematically, they also resonate because they echo the very stance of its advocates and techno-utopians. Does the taking of expert statements seriously lead, of necessity, to an occasional reproduction of their discourse? Is this inadvertent in the sort of exercise that Ferguson is undertaking here? Is he unaware of these slippages? Or is this a deliberate and provocative new style of writing adopted by someone who is associated with the polar opposite style of critique and deconstruction of hegemonic development discourse?

It is similarly worth posing a question to the guiding phrase of this book that also constitutes its title. Ferguson makes clear that the “give a man a fish” phrase is masculinist and misogynistic. His reasons for nevertheless using it are also evident – this work is about how the patriarchal figure of the able-bodied man is being reconfigured as someone a new welfare state can “just give” money to; it wants to redirect our attention from production to distribution. Yet, the repetition of the phrase and discussions of the man-who-could-be-a-fisherman but won’t (and shouldn’t) be one lends this work a male-only hue. Leave aside the gendered concerns of control and access with cash transfers and basic incomes or, for that matter, the debates on whether women have ever been really covered or protected in any meaningful sense by the welfare states of yore. The question remains, what is lost and what is gained when one reproduces the discourse of the development world/states? Even if one does so to take seriously, or to subvert, or to show the outdatedness of such sayings and statements, what does utilisation and repetition do?

Towards the end of the book Ferguson’s enthusiasm for cash transfers and basic income movements gets somewhat tempered and the work assumes a more open-ended nature. The last section could almost be labelled “whither distribution?” for there are many ruminations on possibilities, potentialities, dangers. The absence of professorial pronouncements on what exactly will happen has the effect of making it even more productive for thinking. Ferguson is always just a little ahead of the curve, there is something of the soothsayer anthropologist in his writing. By bringing our attention to the forms the welfare state is assuming in many parts of the global South through a focus on distributive claims and politics, as well as by showing us how such thinking (and, thus, doing) has become possible, this book accomplishes more than most. It alerts us to new conjunctures and potentialities of our times, offers out hope, and – most importantly – encourages a grittier political and ethnographic engagement with that which lies just round the corner.

References

K C Buckingham, J N W David, and P Jepson. 2013. Diplomats and Refugees: Panda Diplomacy, Soft ‘Cuddly’ Power, and the New Trajectory in Panda Conservation. Environmental Practice 15(3): 262-270.

Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticisation, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minnesota University Press

___________2010. The Uses of Neoliberalism. Antipode 41: 166-184

Li, Tania Murray. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Duke University Press.

Mosse, David. 2004. Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. Pluto Press.

Venkatesan, Soumhya and Thomas Yarrow (eds.). 2012. Differentiating Development: Beyond an Anthropology of Critique. Berghahn.