Global Flows, a Spatial Approach Towards Global Development

Throughout a seven-year research about the diffusion of cash transfer poverty-reduction programs across the global south, several challenging political/epistemological issues had to be addressed in order to make such investigation feasible. This paper’s main objective is to share one of these critical discussions. To address a global matter that is traditionally connected to a linear, chronocentric and Universalist narrative a spatial methodological approach was implemented in order to acknowledge: a) the diversity that coexists in the global south, b) the heterogeneous affects that global formulas have in these societies and, at the same time, c) expose the movements, directions and relations in global space that underlie this issue. In a sociological incorporation of the thought of the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos, we will present development and the global diffusion of cash transfers using the author’s perception of "global space" as a "theatre of flows". The paper will discuss in which way this perspective was incorporated to the research methodology and it’s connections to contemporary sociological approaches to global issues. Within this framework, this paper will argue: a) that issues of global development such as poverty reduction schemes can be perceived as flows in global space; b) this approach opens way to a clear perception of the inequality of the global development dialog through the characterization of the flows as hegemonizing, hegemonized and counter-hegemonic, and c) this paper will contend that this strategy of spatial analysis provides a clear cartography of origins (agents and territories) and targets of global development policies exposing the main directions that the flows assume in global space.