ABSTRACT
For development scholars, planners and practitioners the argument I have developed about the social foundations of successful interventions in the political economy for work-life reform might, justifi ably, be interpreted as providing a detailed account of the positive and critical role that social capital formation plays in economic development. Indeed the theoretical case I have mounted regarding the social foundations of human agency, and the ‘virtuous dialectic’ that runs between worker identity, agency and economic development strategies at SEWA, might be taken as evidence that, in the case of informal women workers in Gujarat, social capital is indeed the ‘missing link’ to economic development that advocates at the World Bank claim it to be (Grootaert 1998). My focus on the developmental link between the moral quality of social relationships and the capacity for the kind of human agency that can promote economic development among marginalised workers would also appear to bolster social capital theorist Michael Woolcock’s claim that ‘optimal development outcomes…entails “getting the social relations right”’ (Woolcock 1998: 187). At SEWA, workers who are traditionally marginalised from the economy, polity and society come together in their own union where they experience the inter-personal recognition, respect and resources from which they advocate and campaign for public recognition and respect. In the language of social capital theory SEWA builds social ties that bond workers in the same trade together, bridge or connect informal workers from different trades, religious traditions and geographical locations together, and link them to government offi - cials, the courts and other public institutions and represent atives who determine the distribution of productive resources. In doing so, the union establishes strong horizontal and vertical associations between people across the socio-economic spectrum through which SEWA advocates to secure an enabling social and political environment for members. 1
However, in contrast to the dominant conception of social capital as a phenomena that ‘facilitates co-ordination and co-operation’, that gives ‘communities a sense of identity and common purpose’ and through which ‘representatives of the state, the corporate sector, and civil society create forums in and through which they can identify and pursue common goals’ 2 e mpirical data on the experience of union membership and work-life reform show that public action to secure socio-economic security for poor women workers is not defi ned
primarily by the co-ordination, co-operation and common goals social capital theorists suggest. Socio-economic change that promotes the freedom and wellbeing of marginalised women workers is not a simple technical procedure in which ‘problems’ are neatly and easily resolved by the tinkering of well meaning and sympathetic public offi cials. Instead, SEWA’s interventions to improve the socio-economic security of members are defi ned by struggle, confl ict, controversy and sometimes violence.
