BROKERING SDI RITUALS SAVINGS ENUMERATION ROLE OF WOMAN TENURE EXCHANGES HOUSE MODELS TOILETS BROKERING ADVOCACY DEALS

The 1960s and 70s marked the beginning of new forms of political activities and social movements, particularly the civil rights, the environmental, the women's movements, the peace and the human rights movements.

In the post cold war period, there has been a spurt of non-state interventions by NGOs and grassroots movements, including the anti-globalization movement. Social movements have taken on new institutional forms.

While the old social movements were country-specific, the new social movements cut across national boundaries. These new transnational networks are part of what the scholarly literature refers to as a growing global civil society of transnational advocacy networks.

The nature of these movements is different from the workers' movements and the traditional movements of the political left. The issues of their concern extend to human rights and democracy. They are more concerned about equity than social equality and much more focused on the self-determination of the individual and society than on power politics and the state. These movements are dominated by a western, highly educated middle class and attract people from a similar class position in the developing countries.

Because of this class bias, there is generally a lack of understanding and knowledge about the forms of social mobilization and action undertaken by the disadvantaged and the poor. These people, who are vulnerable because of their limited formal access to power, are often invisible to national politics, national civil society and the established political system.

In terms of the pursuit of basic needs at the level of the household, the poor women (and men) who float in and out of these social movements are basically pragmatic in nature. Their extraordinary capacity to survive under impossible conditions is - more often than not - based on their capacity to seek compromise and mediation.

This pragmatic approach is compatible with the agendas of citywide and national movements of the urban poor, who now operate in an environment in which the role of the nation state has changed dramatically.

The SDI affiliates generally fall squarely in this camp. Regardless of the ideological posture of any given nation state in relation to the urban poor, SDI affiliates are convinced that they themselves - and not the state - are best positioned to redefine their relationships with power, with the state and with other social classes. They seek to devolve power not to seize it, nor to inflate it by handing over their problems and their possible resolution.

They prefer to engage state institutions from a position of strength and self-reliance - not to let the state off the hook, but to broker deals that work for poor people, for politicians and officials seeking new strategies and for cities as a whole.

They recognize that the state is an essential actor in development, especially local governments. They also recognize that they are generally bad at development and by nature unreliable partners. Like all stakeholders in any interaction over resources, the state can only be held accountable by the poor, if the poor have the capacity, the knowledge and the scale of organization to set the terms of engagement or at the very least to negotiate more favourable outcomes for the poor.

Whilst this approach is often perceived as being the easy way out, or as an instrument for co-optation, it is in fact the much more difficult and more transformative route. Instead of finding safety in affiliation with any political party or coalition (the general route for "confrontational" social movements), SDI affiliates develop complex political affiliations with the various levels and forms of the state bureaucracies in their cities and countries. This includes national civil servants who execute state policy at the highest levels, high level politicians, quasi-autonomous arms of the national governments (public and private utilities) and municipal authorities who control critical aspects of land use, infrastructure, water-supply, sanitation and housing.

From this perspective, the politics of SDI affiliates is a politics of accommodation, negotiation and long-term pressure rather than of confrontation or threats of political reprisal.

This pragmatic approach is grounded in a complex political vision about means, ends and styles, which is not entirely utilitarian or functional. It is based on a series of ideas about the transformation of the conditions of poverty by the poor in the long run. In this sense, the idea of a political horizon implies an idea of patience and of cumulative victories and long-term asset building, which is wired into every aspect of the activities of the SDI network.