|
Editorial, volume 6, number 2
Poverty is endemic in Northern as well as Southern societies, a reminder that 'The Poor' are neither a homogeneous nor a static group, and that poverty itself is multi-dimensional. Gone is the belief that economic growth implies progress towards a fixed goal. For it is now clear that poverty is embedded in social, economic, political, and cultural relations of inequality.
That poverty, exclusion, and insecurity are mutually reinforcing is well recognised, though less well understood. Material deprivation may be the most visible dimension, but is often not the most critical. To eradicate poverty means disentangling the relationships between human suffering and those ideologies, policies, and structures that generate and maintain insecurity.
In building on diverse forms of knowledge in combatting poverty, we must inevitably define priorities for action. Focusing is not the problem; but tunnel vision is. A blinkered view of poverty leads to replacing old orthodoxies with new ones, using rhetoric as a substitute for reflection. Our contributors show the damage that is done when development policies are built on slogans and fanaticism rather than close analysis. Ben Rogaly in his critique of the micro-finance cult, Manzurul Mannan looking at the blanket promotion of 'appropriate' technology, and Edmundo Werna surveying the (largely imposed) deregulation of urban services demonstrate the dangers of applying all-purpose solutions to complex and changing problems. Caroline O'Reilly advisedly warns against development blueprints in her review of women's savings schemes in urban Zambia.
Innovation flourishes in an open environment. Rajagopal describes business links between the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) and the Indian government; and D Wijesundra describes those between a commercial bank and rural communities in Sri Lanka. But when ideas are put into universal packaging for global export, analysis becomes ossified and the possibility of alternatives is overlooked. Martin Whiteside (on emergency food aid), Marina Ottaway (on policy options for rural South Africa), and Rumana Jamaly and Ebel Wickramanayake (on factory workers in Bangladesh) show the need to think beyond the articles of development faith.
It is often through what are marketed as 'neutral' technical fixes that ideologies are transmitted, the most pernicious of which is to rule out other ways of thinking. No one chooses to live in absolute poverty. No one chooses to be denied the right to development. No one chooses to sacrifice their children on the altar of 'pain now, gain later' structural adjustment policies. Yet all 'development professionals' help to shape policies and decisions that affect the lives of others. We have a duty, therefore, to scrutinise both the practical impact and the ideological import of any efforts to alleviate poverty. The Latin dictum Caveat emptor -- cautioning us to examine the goods, rather than taking the vendor's word for their quality -- is as valid in the context of the competing solutions for eradicating poverty before the twenty-first century as it was in the market-places of Rome, some 2,000 years ago.
Deborah Eade
 Previous
|
Next Abstract 
|
