Urban land and shelter for the poor patrick McAuslan Earthscan, London, 1985, 136 pp.
| Published date | 01 January 1987 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230070112 |
| Author | Carole Rakodi |
| Date | 01 January 1987 |
112
Book
Reviews
particularly the way
in
which people, conceived as objects
of
policy, are defined in convenient
images’ (p.
1).
This attention to the meaning of words and their implications for policy was
a
constant theme in Bernard’s work.
For
example, his criticism of the prevalent notion
of
decision-making was that it ignored what was actually going on and paid scant attention to
the organizational interests, agendas and language surrounding public policy.
This book is full of cogent examples of the ways in which labels
can
influence attitudes. The
target group vocabulary of ‘the landless’, ‘the poorest of the poor’. ‘women’, ‘squatters’,
puts individuals into categories, leading to the formulation of policies which may not be
appropriate to the needs of the majority in the labelled groups. Bernard emphasized the need
for concrete, detailed empirical work in order to gain a better understanding
of
these matters.
The task of social scentists in his view was
to
analyse the implications and thus help to inform
and influence the consequent decisions, as he himself sought to do in Bangladesh and
elsewhere.
The individual articles cover such diverse subjects as Irish itinerants, low-income housing in
Bogota, refugees in Cyprus, rural work claimants in Bangladesh, nutrition intervention
projects in developing countries, family assistance
in
Fiji and labelling in the language of
international development. Bernard Schaffer’s article on Irish itinerants is naturally of special
interest. It
is
concerned with one queston: ‘whether there is an objective world
of
problems
outside the problems with which the practices of policy claim to be concerning themselves’ (p.
33).
The example he takes is that of poverty, and he uses as
a
case study a group labelled as
itinerants in Ireland. Would the concept of the ‘culture of poverty’ provide a better label for
this group? His conclusion that it would
not
is
based on
a
careful analysis
of
the situation of
these people and the inappropriateness of categorizing individuals by group labels. The article
concludes with
a
more general discussion of the objections to the alliance
of
social science and
social policy
in
the construction and employment of concepts, labels and categorizations.
The development record of recent years underlines the urgency
of
the themes on which he
worked; development studies have provided few satisfactory accounts of the reasons
for
failures
or
successes. Any contribution to greater clarity
of
thinking on these matters is
important, and this book can certainly be recommended
to
students
of
development,
providing
a
cautionary introduction to the dangers attached to indiscriminate use
of
current
terminology. It is
a
pity that such useful references are not covered by an index, nor
a
general
bibliography. This is understandable in
a
journal, but unfortunate in
a
book.
MARGARET
HARDIMAN
URBAN LAND AND SHELTER FOR THE POOR
Patrick
McAuslan
Earthscan, London,
1985,
136
pp.
Patrick McAuslan was commissioned by Earthscan and the International Institute
of
Environment and Development to undertake this survey as part of their contribution
to
the
6th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements in
1983.
It
has
subsequently been updated, with assistance from other staff members
of
the IIED, and
published
as
part of
an
Earthscan information programme funded by UNCHS HABITAT,
leading up to the
1987
International Year of Shelter for the Homeless.
McAuslan starts from the premise that the root cause
of
many urban problems, in
particular illegal settlements, is an urban land market which, through prices or government
decisions, does not allocate land to the poor for housing. He examines in turn issues
of
land
tenure and transfer, credit for land deals, squatting and illegal development, and the
shortcomings of urban planning systems in most countries (‘many plans but little planning’).
The potential for policy related to land acquisition and banking, land taxation, and municipal
administrative systems is explored and the failure in practice
to
realize this potential
is
illustrated. Housing problems are, quite rightly, seen as symptoms of urban land policies and
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