‘Rain or Shine, One Must Attend’: An Ethics of Responsibility, Presence and Reciprocity

Abstract (English)

Responsibility narratives have been widely documented in Latin American conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs). By examining this poverty-reduction policy, in which governments periodically transfer cash to targeted households with children under 18 years old, contingent upon their compliance with conditions officially called ‘coresponsibilities,’ anthropologists have demonstrated how CCT staff and local authorities often evaluate the behaviour of predominantly female recipients as ‘responsible’ or ‘irresponsible’ concerning their adherence to programme conditions and, specifically, to the state’s expectations regarding child care—thus imposing ‘responsible motherhood’ norms on women. In this sense, responsibility has been analysed as a means through which CCTs seek to discipline their recipients. In this paper, I analyse responsibility through the lens of reciprocity and ethics rather than discipline in the context of a CCT implemented in Mocoa, capital of the Colombian Putumayo. The emphasis on discipline, I argue, responds to a critical view of CCTs that is necessary yet insufficient for approaching what different actors involved in these programmes mean by and do with notions of responsibility. I focus on the responsibility of attending meetings organised by ‘madres líderes’ (leader mothers), who intermediate between the state and recipients, and their definitions of the (ir)responsible. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with them, I contend that the language of reciprocity was adopted from the state, reworked at the grassroots, and transformed into an ‘ethics of responsibility.’ This ethical framework mobilised norms and sanctions upon recipients and reflections from leaders regarding the feelings and dilemmas of occupying this position.