Structural Transformation and Personal Coherence

In recent years, the problem of structural violence has developed in various parts of the world. In Latin America, it has become common over the last several decades to incorporate reflection on such structural dimensions into social analysis. This has been part of an intellectual tradition which seeks to explain poverty and inequality by stressing the role played by economic and political structures. Such a structural perceptive in social analysis certainly includes various schools of thought. This reality of violence is characterized by misery and unemployment which especially affects families. On top of this, the reality in Latin America is characterized by an additional feature: great social and regional inequalities. All of these features make it possible to characterize a situation injustice, a situation of institutionalized violence.

As Amartya Sen has said: "Development can be conceived as a process of expansion of the substantive freedoms which individuals enjoy". The questions that Sen raises for debate and public deliberation in connection with economic reforms include: "Why do we seek development? What will we reach if we succeed? How can we judge the success or failure of policies?" The debate on the means and strategy on development, then as Sen insists, can only be articulated in a correct way if there is an explicit recognition of its proper objectives and aims.

Structures are always difficult to change. Consequently, this change requires nothing less than a social revolution. For many, solidarity means just that. At the same time, the debate on the proper aims of development and the centrality of its human dimension makes it possible to establish measurements to achieve freedom as the necessary conditions for development and social transformation.

Concern for structures does not prevent us from focusing on the decisions taken by individuals in their daily lives. Neither history, as is the case for Marx, nor the State as it is with Rawls, exempts people, from their decisions and their daily responsibility in favor of equality. In other words, the option for equality must relate to the daily decisions,(in the family, at work, etc). This is especially important for those who confess themselves as egalitarians (according to Gerald Cohen). This coherence requires that our objective should be clearly identified. As Sen indicates, one can regard the intellectual task as a dimension of morality: "the first requirement to conceptualize poverty consists in building a criteria which makes it possible to define who is in the center of our interest."

Javier M. Iguiniz Echeverria jiguini@pucp.edu.pe
(The complete article can be obtained from the ICMICA secretariat)