Poverty and democracy—self-help and political participation in third world cities, edited by Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Norbert Kersting (London: zed books, 2003, pp. 237 + xiv, h/bk)

✍ Scribed by Irini Sotiropoulou

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 32 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1097

✦ Synopsis

BOOK REVIEWS

Poverty and Democracy-Self-help and Political Participation in Third World Cities, edited by DIRK BERG-SCHLOSSER and NORBERT KERSTING (London: Zed Books, 2003, pp. 237 þ xiv, £16.95 p/bk, £50.00 h/bk).

This book presents the results of inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural research on the urban poor in shanty towns near two cities (the capital and a smaller one) in each of Brazil, Chile, Ivory Coast and Kenya. The field research was undertaken by four doctoral students as part of a larger research project by the German National Science Foundation and Ministry of Science of the State of Hessen, Germany. The results of the research are presented in eight chapters, in addition to an introduction and conclusion, each with different author(s).

The first chapter (introduction) sets the context of possible contradictions between poverty and democracy, and outlines the criteria for selecting the fieldwork areas, the methods used and the problems encountered during the project. The second chapter presents the political and social contexts of each country studied-including the political and economic history of the country, the social structure and the economic conditions, the system of government and the political structures in each society, and the policies of local authorities towards the illegal urban settings.

The third chapter of the book is dedicated to the conditions that the urban poor of shanty towns have to face: precarious living conditions and lack of basic infrastructure, housing policies performing in situations of expanded clientelism, and clearance, indifference/toleration or voterexploitation policies by the housing authorities. The fourth chapter describes the social structures in the shanty towns themselves and how those structures affect the inhabitants' living conditions and their subjective perceptions of their personal situation.

The remaining chapters give information about the political responses of the people living in the illegal settings to the situation the face (as described in the previous chapters). Chapter 5 describes the different forms of organizations (social groups, religious associations, neighbourhood, local, ethnic and cultural groupings, economic associations and formal political parties), their characteristics according to the country they appear and their membership profile. Chapter 6 addresses political culture as it appears in the illegal settings in the four countries and as it is expressed in the answers to questions concerning the interest in political affairs, the knowledge about political affairs, the political values widely approved, the legitimacy of each political system and the perceived responsiveness and effectiveness of the government.

Chapter 7 creates a typology of political participation of the shanty town inhabitants and analyses participation by country and via the voting behaviour of individuals. Chapter 8 is an effort to link the quantitative findings to several qualitative features of the studied communities. The ninth chapter is a policy-orientated text that explains how urban poverty could be addressed considering the dynamics of political participation existing in the communities of the shanty towns. The final chapter draws conclusions from the research results. This is a very interesting research report, which provides the reader with information about a topic on which it is difficult to find reliable primary sources. Moreover, the combination of two continents, two different countries in each continent and two different cities in each country has enabled the authors to have a broader view of political life in shanty towns and to detect features of political participation that comparison only can reveal. At the same time, the structure of the book and the structure of each chapter are really well-defined, so that they permit the reader to have a systematic view of the political phenomena being researched.

Given the difficulty of presenting such an extended research project in two hundred pages, the analysis of the findings is not always as detailed as one might like or need. Consequently, the book will be of more use to specialists in politics and development, as the density of the text requires a