Poverty as ideology : rescuing social justice from global development agendas / Andrew Martin Fischer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fischer, Andrew Martin, 1967- author.

Series:

CROP international studies in poverty research

CROP International Studies in Poverty Research

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poverty--Social aspects.

Poverty.

Poverty--Developing countries.

Developing countries.

Physical Description:

xv, 316 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

London, UK : Zed Books, 2018.

Summary:

Poverty has become the central focus of global development efforts, with a vast body of research and funding dedicated to its alleviation. And yet our fundamental understanding of the causes of poverty has seen little progress. Despite the vast literature on poverty studies, this scholarship has not resolved, and often does not even address, the central debate around the creation and division of wealth within and across societies.0In Poverty as Ideology, Andrew Fischer shows that these shortcomings stem from ideologically driven views of poverty and anti-poverty policies, which have in turn shaped how it is conceived and measured. Poverty studies have, in effect, served to reinforce the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy, and have too often ignored the wider interests of social justice. An effective and lasting solution to global poverty, Fischer argues, requires us to reclaim the development agenda from the `poverty industry' this orthodoxy has created, and to reorient our efforts away from current fixations on productivity and towards the more equitable distribution of wealth and resources. Offering a comprehensive and accessible critique of the key concepts and research methods within development and poverty studies, the book upends much of the received wisdom to provide an invaluable resource for students, teachers and researchers across the social sciences.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Poverty, ideology and development p. 1

Uncomfortable questions p. 3

Deconstructing the politics of poverty measures p. 6

Understanding poverty as ideology p. 8

The fundamental relativity of modern poverty p. 12

Three dominant approaches and a framework p. 22

Appendix: Note on the use of the terms 'neoliberal' and 'globalisation' in this book p. 26

2 Unpeeling the politics of poverty measures p. 28

The politics of representation p. 28

The politics of prioritisation p. 41

The politics of conception and production p. 49

The plentiful pathways of poverty analysis p. 53

Conclusion: The moral politics of poverty studies p. 57

3 Money-metric measures of poverty p. 60

Clarifications on the metric of money and unidimensionality p. 62

The arbitrariness of money-metric poverty measurement p. 68

Secular underestimations of absolute poverty p. 92

4 Multidimensional measures of poverty p. 107

Direct approaches to poverty measurement p. 111

Composite indicators and quandaries of aggregation p. 113

Subtle ideological shifts in Senology p. 128

5 The social exclusion approach p. 142

A synthesis of the social exclusion approach p. 147

The ambiguities of social exclusion p. 152

Differentiating social exclusion from poverty p. 165

The benefits of differentiation p. 174

6 Locating modern poverty within the creation and division of wealth: Towards a structuralist and institutionalist political economy approach in poverty studies p. 184

Production, distribution and redistribution: The classical triad p. 189

Supply, demand and terms of trade and wages p. 198

The fallacy of productivity reductionism and development p. 205

7 Social policy and the tension between identification and segregation within social ordering and development p. 221

Social policy and social ordering in development p. 227

Universalising universalism p. 240

8 Conclusion: Poverty as ideology In an age of neoliberalism p. 254

Deconstructing for social justice p. 259

The poverty of poverty studies p. 261

The return of segregation p. 263

The political consequences of shifting modalities of targeting p. 265

Beyond absolute poverty p. 267

Re-politicising social justice within global development agendas p. 273.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781786990457

1786990458

9781786990440

178699044X

OCLC:

1050719258