The ‘Enterprising Self’ at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Avon Cosmetic’s Repurposing of South Africa’s ‘Informal’ Workers

In the wake of C. K. Prahalad’s 2004 publication, The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, “bottom of the pyramid” (BOP) schemes have become increasingly prominent on the development landscape. Lauded as the century’s most influential model of socially responsible business (Anderson and Billou 2007), the BOP approach weds development practice and the pursuit of profit, maintaining that development goals can be achieved by simply extending the scope and scale of capitalism to the four billion men and women who live on less than two dollars per day (Cross and Street 2009, Prahalad 2004). It is a vision driven not by corporate largesse, but by a web of entrepreneurs2 who are purported to stimulate capitalism while delivering poverty reduction and gender empowerment door-to-door. From ‘poor’ women selling Danone yogurt and Bata shoes house-to-house in rural Bangladesh, to Unilever’s Shakti Ammas (mothers) distributing soap among remote villages across India and to Avon ladies peddling perfume on the streets of Soweto, Bangkok and Mexico City, BOP schemes advance a form of development that positions the (poor, often female) individual rather than the state or the market as ultimately responsible for generating (or not) development.