ABSTRACT
Discussions about the actual and potential role of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in the transformation of social protection systems have highlighted changes in political subjectivities pertaining to expectations of the state, monetization and the individualization of responsibilities. Three diverging views in the literature about CCTs and social protection systems are identified: one that considers the expansion and consolidation of CCTs as desirable but not inevitable; another that is critical of CCTs due to their links with principles of selectivity and financialization; and a transformative view of CCTs (including a fundamental and an incidental strand). Based on fieldwork in a rural municipality in Colombia’s Caribbean region that has spanned five years, this chapter argues that analyzing purported changes in subjectivities requires approaching subjects’ history and particular life experiences, in contrast to mere deduction from policy design. In this municipality, which has been severely affected by Colombia’s armed conflict, displaced peasants’ perspectives of social protection have changed alongside the implementation of the CCT Familias en Acción, yet communities and contentious politics continue to be relevant. Changes in subjectivity pertaining to CCTs, it is argued, are marked by the shift from a register of surprise to one of anticipation.
