Agents for Change or Conflict?

In today’s Latin America, governments implementing public policies for development and against poverty and inequality meet with social movements that engage in practices for social change, poverty reduction, and empowering. In this context, we analyze the interplay between both processes, describing its conflicts in three specific dimensions: the material, the democratic, and the environmental. Social movements are permanently contesting and challenging public policy when they autonomously appropriate public policy resources; yet, governments respond with criminalization and cooptation strategies. In a setting where social conflict takes place in response to existing poverty and inequality levels, movements challenge development and poverty reduction projects of an ‘assistentialist’ and extractivist nature, and propose an integral understanding of development and the emergence of new relationships among individuals, society, and the environment.     

Poverty talk: how people experiencing poverty deny their poverty and why they blame ‘the poor’

Drawing on life history interviews with sixty men and women in north‐east England who were caught up in ‘the low‐pay, no‐pay cycle’, this article describes how people living in poverty talk about poverty – in respect of themselves and others. Paradoxically, interviewees subscribed to a powerful set of ideas that denied poverty and morally condemned ‘the poor’. These findings are theorized in four ways: first, informants deployed close points of comparison that diminished a sense of relative poverty and deprivation; second, dissociation from ‘the poor’ reflects long‐running stigma and shame but is given extra force by current forms of ‘scroungerphobia’; third, discourses of the ‘undeserving poor’ articulate with a more general contemporary prejudice against the working class, which fuels the impetus to dissociate from ‘the poor’ (and to disidentify with the working class); and fourth, the hegemonic orthodoxy that blames ‘the poor’ for their poverty can more easily dominate in contexts where more solidaristic forms of working‐class life are in decline.     

A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: data issues,methodology and initial results

The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the World Bank’s international poverty line. In revising the line, we have sought to minimize changes to the real purchasing power of the earlier $1.25 line (in 2005 PPPs), so as to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Bank’s twin goals – which were set with respect to that line. In particular, the new line was obtained by inflating the same fifteen national poverty lines – originally used by Ravallion et al. (World Bank Econ. Rev. 23(2): 163–184 2009) to construct the $1.25 line – to 2011 prices in local currency units, and then converting them to US dollars using 2011 PPP conversion factors. With a small approximation, this procedure yields a new international poverty line of $1.90 per person per day. In combination with other changes described in the paper, this revision leads to relatively small changes in global poverty incidence for 2011: from 14.5 % using the old method to 14.1 % using the new method. In 2012, the new reference year for the global count, we find 12.7 % of the world’s population, or 897 million people, are living in extreme poverty. There are changes in the regional composition of poverty, but they are also relatively small. This paper documents methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. It also describes various caveats and limitations of the approach taken.     

‘It’s all bollocks!’ and other critical standpoints on the UK Government’s vision of global citizenship

The UK Government’s International Citizen Service (ICS) sends volunteers abroad to ‘fight global poverty’ as ‘global citizens’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the construction of development on the ICS programme forecloses important political and historical contexts, resulting in a model of global citizenship we might term ‘soft’. This article presents data from interviews with ICS volunteers with a specific methodological concern of recognizing the agency of young people and allowing their responses to lead discussion. The outcome is a range of themes across the data that critique the Government’s model of citizenship and, I argue, shows the volunteers to be ‘critical’ global citizens. I then ask whether we can consider this a mode of resistance. I conclude with a final data set that – the case is made – presents an imperative to allow these volunteers to have their perspectives on historical and contemporary North–South relations recognized as a critical mode of global citizenship.     

International income poverty measurement: which way now?

We critically review conceptual and empirical issues surrounding the derivation of the international poverty line, expressed in PPP-adjusted dollars and linked to various rounds of the International Comparison Program (ICP). We find that there are some limitations in the current estimation of these lines, but show that statistically superior methods lead to lines that are relatively robust and confirm the $1.25 using 2005 PPPs and suggest $1.67–1.71 using 2011 PPPs (or close to the $1.90 proposed by the World Bank if we follow the World Bank’s approach of adjusting inflation rates in some countries); they also roughly confirm the current shape of the proposed ‘weakly relative’ poverty line. Using the new absolute line based on 2011 PPPs would lead to substantially lower poverty in our estimation. The extent of the decline depends on whether and how one treats China, India, and Indonesia differently from other countries in the 2005 and 2011 PPPs. More seriously, we note that the dependence on successive ICP rounds creates conceptual and empirical problems that have become worse over time so that we suggest that it would be best to consider alternatives to the current reliance on ICP rounds and the resulting PPPs. As a short-term solution we propose to fix the international poverty line in national currencies using either the 2005 or 2011 level; in the medium term, we argue for global poverty measurement based on internationally coordinated national poverty measurement.     

Humanitarian Melodramas,Globalist Nostalgia: Affective Temporalities of Globalization and Uneven Development

Abstract

The formal conventions of global humanitarianism when performed as melodrama, structured around temporal devices such as peripeteia, deferral, delay, and missed chances, reveal some of its affect-making roles in globalization. The melodramatic flourishing of Live Aid commemorative events and commodities in the twenty-first century suggests there is a melancholic attachment to Euro-American global hegemony, retroactively and repetitively constructed as a missed chance to do good that always meant well. The melodramatic enactment at Live 8 of the ‘end’ of global poverty promised by Live Aid patches over the discontinuities between the era of development internationalism and neoliberal globalization, creating a moralized image of Euro-American globalization as a ‘long-standing’ form of humanitarian power that can be lamented in place of confronting the absence of any alternative explanatory framework for escalating processes of uneven development. By suspending time, melodrama creates a fantasmatic site for aspiration, ambivalence, melancholy, and nostalgia without resolving their contradictions.     

DisPovertyPorn: Benefits Street and the dis/ability paradox

In this article, we offer a timely socio-cultural analysis, informed by a critical disability perspective, of UK Channel 4’s reality television series Benefits Street. Drawing on the work of Allen, Tyler, and De Benedictus and Jensen on ‘poverty porn’, we broaden their analysis to ask how dis/ability disrupts the ‘poverty porn’ narrative. We pay attention to the dis/appearance of dis/ability on Benefits Street and, in doing so, we also extend an analysis of how impairment labels function in people’s lives as socio-cultural categories that place limits on what labelled people can do and can be. We suggest that both the articulation and erasure of dis/ability are used as a form of narrative prosthesis to support the overarching story line that people on benefits are unworthy ‘scroungers’.     

Voices from the bottom

Despite many years of poverty eradication programs in numerous countries, 25% of the world's population continues to live in poverty. In the light of this global crisis, it is clear that anti-poverty strategies have not been as successful as they should have been. This paper argues that continuing poverty may be related in part to the fact that policies developed to alleviate the problem are mainly based on monetary definitions developed by ‘experts’, rather than by the poor themselves. Thus this paper will demonstrate that expert definitions invariably neglect the more qualitative aspects and experiences of poverty. In contrast, it is argued here that the poor are the ‘real’ poverty experts and their voices should be included in the definition of poverty and the formulation of solutions. While there is increasing recognition of this latter approach in developing nations, often taking a human needs perspective, this response is only in its infancy in Australia. After a discussion of the conceptualisation of human needs, this paper reports on a small pilot study that presents the voices of 10 disadvantaged men, identifying what poverty is for them in Melbourne     

Politics of ‘Leaving No One Behind’: Contesting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Agenda

Abstract

In this article, I develop a critical analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda and its commitment to ‘leave no one behind’. The Preamble to the Resolution on the SDGs adopted by the United Nations General Assembly stated the following: ‘We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. (…) As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind’. Through a close examination of the SDG initiative—and aligned concrete policy proposals—I demonstrate that the project to ‘leave no one behind’ rests on specific ideological premises: it is designed to promote and consolidate a highly contested neo-liberal variant of capitalist development. The SDGs are framed as a universal project, with quite substantial institutional monitoring mechanisms aimed at ensuring the successful implementation of aligned policies. Indeed, as I demonstrate, the implementation of highly contested neoliberal policies are themselves explicit goals of the SDG agenda. In this respect, the SDGs differ significantly from the Millennium Development Goal initiative. The argument I develop demonstrates that the SDG agenda may be aimed in part at undermining political struggles that aspire for more socially just and ecologically sustainable approaches to development. Overall, I argue that the explicit commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ is a discourse that is strategically deployed to justify the implementation of a highly problematic political project as the framework of global development. This is a framework that privileges commercial interests over commitments to provide universal entitlements to address fundamental life-sustaining needs. Political struggles over development will continue against the ideology of the SDG project and for transformative shifts for actually sustainable development.     

Doing Biopolitics Differently? Radical Potential in the Post-2015 MDG and SDG Debates

Abstract

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been critiqued as an ambitious project which sought to produce entrepreneurial neo-liberal subjects. From this perspective, the opportunities and dangers of the post-2015 debates acquire a more urgent importance than the cynical dismissal of the MDGs as ‘minimum development goals’. This article identifies two potentially radical shifts in development discourse offered by the proposals for global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): first, that they might be genuinely global and hence destabilise long-standing divisions between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ societies; and second, that they might challenge existing growth paths of resource-intensive development. Two scenarios are offered through which these potential shifts are manifesting: first, a status-quo and growth-orientated outcome to the post-2015 agenda, and second, a more radical revisioning of development as a transformative project of global sustainability. However, even such an apparently attractive prospect as the latter has potential dangers, whether or not it is possible, which this article highlights. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations over the post-2015 SDGs, therefore, the process can tell us something about the opportunities and limits of processes of reform. The stakes could not be higher: whether a renewed and reshaped development project can drive future developmental governmentalities in radically new directions.     

The Governance of Forced Labour in the Global Economy

Abstract

The problem of forced labour in the contemporary global economy is attracting increasing attention in global governance debates and policy circles. The effectiveness of governance initiatives depends on underlying understandings of the root causes of the problem. We explore how the root causes of forced labour in global production networks (GPNs) are framed in global governance debates. Focusing on the dominant frameworks mobilized by international institutions, with some attention to cognate national-level and corporate governance strategies, we identify certain limitations to dominant interpretations, which derive from their ‘residual’ character and their associated neglect of the manner in which the roots of forced labour reach deeply into the organization of GPNs, the forms of exploitation which are integral to them, and the connections between exploitation and poverty. We set out an alternative, ‘relational’ perspective on the roots of forced labour in GPNs, based on the concept of ‘adverse incorporation’, and consider the implications of the insights generated by this perspective for contemporary governance frameworks.     

Global poverty estimates based on 2011 purchasing power parity: where should the new poverty line be drawn?

This paper aims to present a new global poverty line based on the 2011 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). To calculate a new global poverty threshold based on 2011 PPP, this paper moves away from the World Bank’s method of anchoring a single global poverty line on the national poverty lines of the 15 poorest countries. It instead proposes an alternative method of using equivalent poverty lines. Each country is shown to have a different equivalent poverty line. This paper finds that there is no single international poverty line in 2011 PPP that is equivalent to $1.25 in 2005 PPP. Single poverty lines vary for each region because countries have experienced different inflation rates and have different PPP conversion rates between 2005 and 2011. To calculate a single poverty line in 2011 PPP, this paper measures the weighted average of equivalent poverty lines of 101 countries around the globe with weights proportional to their populations. Based on the new method, the corresponding poverty line is estimated at $1.93 in 2011 PPP. The World Bank has officially adopted the poverty line of $1.90 in 2011 PPP. This paper demonstrates that our proposed poverty line performs better than the World Bank’s in terms of preserving the real purchasing power of the previous line of $1.25 in 2005 PPP. Given the new poverty threshold of $1.93, the number of poor worldwide is reduced by 6.42 million, with the reduction largely occurring in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.     

Using a capabilities approach to understand poverty and social exclusion of psychiatric survivors

The purpose of this project is to better understand poverty and social exclusion of psychiatric survivors using a capabilities approach to social justice as part of a larger mixed-methods longitudinal study (N=380) in Ontario, Canada. Using thematic coding, four themes emerged: poverty, ‘You just try to survive’; stigma, ‘People treat you like trash’; belonging, ‘You feel like you don’t belong’; and shared concern and advocacy, ‘Everyone deserves housing’. This analysis provides a deeper understanding of poverty and other social determinants of experiences of psychiatric survivors, including the synergism of poverty and social exclusion.     

Reproducing Inequalities through Development: The MDGs and the Politics of Method

Abstract

This article is a critical inquiry into particular methodological means underlying analyses of development, inequalities, and poverty in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) discourse. A populist approach to poverty reduction, the MDG initiative has gained much exposure at the expense of a closer scrutiny of the specific methodological premises (and their implications) underlining the development frameworks through which the goals were to be realized. A critical examination of premises of this kind demonstrates the way in which the application of specific methods in analyses of development and poverty is carefully crafted to serve discernible ideological ends. In order to explicate this by way of an example, I draw on MDG1 (and target 2 with reference to hunger), which I discuss in relation to its integration with the overarching development objective of realizing economic growth. My aim is to demonstrate how dominant explanations and understandings of poverty and hunger, social struggles for fundamental entitlements, and ultimately ‘development’, are construed in ways that are premised on abstractions from actual social and political relations; they are framed as ‘independent variables’ external to the very policies and strategies of international development. The critical engagement offered in my analysis is timely, given the extent to which the MDG initiative and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals agenda have been presented without any attempt to answer to decades (and more) of critical arguments that offer more rigorous and sustained understandings of inequalities, including deprivations of basic life sustaining needs and fundamental entitlements.     

Bridging inequalities through inclusion: women's rights organisations as the ‘missing link’ in donor government-led participatory policy development and practice

This article focuses on women's rights organisations and their role in challenging inequality within the development process. Women in poverty are excluded as a result of their unequal societal position, geographic location, and the predominance of ‘top-down’ and piecemeal policymaking processes carried out by donor governments. We argue that in-country women's rights organisations provide the ‘missing link’ to bridge the disconnect between grassroots, marginalised women and donor decision-makers. This article focuses on the UK government's approach to developing policy and practice aimed at furthering international women's rights, focusing on the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Engaging with women's rights organisations not only ensures that donor policy and practice responds fully to the interests and needs of the poorest and most marginalised women in the global South, but renders the decision-making process itself empowering to the women involved.     

Transnational communities and business systems

The paper examines the concept of ‘transnational communities’ as a way of understanding globalization practices in business and management. It argues that ‘transnational communities’ are emergent properties of the internationalizing of economic activity. Three specific aspects of this process are considered in detail: the development of multinational companies; the development of international regulatory bodies; and the development of cognitive and normative frameworks through the practices of business education, management consultancies and other global professional service firms. It is argued that in each case, transnational spaces are emerging; within these spaces, transnational communities are developing. The article calls for more research into the diverse nature of these spaces and communities as a way of avoiding the sterile polarities of what Held et al. (1999) refer to as the ‘hyperglobalists’ and the ‘sceptics’.     

Private‐Sector Investment in Infrastructure: Rationale and Causality for Pro‐poor Impacts

This article reviews the arguments for promoting private investment in infrastructure as a basis for poverty reduction in developing countries. It describes the experience leading to the development of international ‘facilities’ intended to address impediments to private investment. It then explores three ‘levels’ of literature: that of the facilities themselves, of donor organisations, and of academic authors. At each, it investigates the rationale and causal pathways leading from support for private investment to pro‐poor outcomes. It finds there is a possible but not necessary association between private investment, economic growth and poverty reduction, but the causal chain is poorly understood. It proposes the development of such a causal framework.     

Change Makers? Women's Microenterprises in a Bolivian City

If entrepreneurs are society's innovators, what is the role of businesspeople in poor countries — particularly, the ‘micro’ businesspeople that make up the majority? What hope for decreasing poverty and improving livelihoods do microbusinesses offer? In particular, what is the role of women microentrepreneurs, whose incomes have been understood to contribute a great deal to the well‐being of poor households? This paper is based on case studies collected in the late 1990s in Sucre, Bolivia, a context in which many women are the owners of independent microenterprises. Women in Sucre control a range of microenterprises in the commerce, production and service sectors and are recognized as businesspeople by their spouses, families and people in their community. Under such conditions of ‘empowered’ business ownership, what is the potential of these businesses to decrease poverty? The study explores the business experiences of women microentrepreneurs, their priorities, entrepreneurial abilities and the obstacles they face. It suggests the kinds of business activities which women in Sucre are most likely to undertake and the income levels which these activities generally attract. Finally, it indicates that, while women in Sucre can control resources and take advantage of opportunities as businesswomen, other constraints mean that most women's businesses have only a limited ability to decrease poverty. ‘Microenterprise development’ alone is insufficient to address the complex relationships affecting how these women and their households access resources.     

Neoliberal discourses and ethnonormative regime in post-recognition Peru: redefining hierarchies and identities

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the impact of ‘recognition’ of cultural and ethnic diversity in Peru. It proposes that the rise of a new global ‘ethnonormativity’ – a regime to define and administrate cultural and identity differences, to establish boundaries between those who ‘are’ ethnic and those who are not, and to set rights and duties derived from identities – has had meagre effects in Peru. While the past decades have witnessed the emergence of Latin American political actors who regard indigenousness as their basic political identity, there has been no ‘emergence of indigenous movements’ in Peru. The discourses that highlight the importance of diversity have gained terrain – unsettling, to a certain extent, the narratives of assimilation through ‘development’ and mestizaje – and the Peruvian state has officially embraced ‘recognition’, including it in its official rhetoric and creating institutions to design policies to guarantee the rights of the indigenous and Afroperuvian ‘peoples’ (itself a label part of the language of multiculturalism). The state has also crafted a definition of ‘indigenous peoples’ and introduced ethnic variables in censuses and official statistics, thus being active in the production and regulation of subjects. Some civil society actors have also incorporated ethnic labels into their rhetoric to adapt to the global turn to identity politics. Peru remains, however, a fertile terrain for neoliberal policies and discourses of a different kind. A discourse that exalts ‘emprendedurismo’ (entrepreneurship) and states that success depends entirely on personal effort has become a new common sense, obscuring the structural inequality that has historically affected indigenous and Afroperuvian people. Extractivism continues to damage the environment and the rights of indigenous people, while the expansion of agribusiness in the coastal valleys of Peru keeps people – regardless of their ‘ethnic’ self-identification – in poverty and without basic labour and social rights. The article suggests that the ambiguities of the ethnonormative regime in Peru may serve as a diversion from structural issues in a context of neoliberalism and may re-elaborate racial hierarchies, racism and the narratives of mestizaje it allegedly opposes.