The Global Poor as Agents of Justice

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique Deveaux

“Agent-centered” approaches to global poverty insist that effective arguments for poverty reduction must specify the concrete duties of particular duty-bearers. This article takes up a recent, influential, version of this view, Thomas Pogge’s human rights-based argument for global economic reforms to reduce chronic deprivation. While signaling a welcome shift from the diffuse allocation of responsibilities common to much philosophical writing on poverty, I argue that Pogge’s approach too readily assigns to powerful institutions in the global North the role of devising and directing anti-poverty initiatives. In so doing, he overlooks the agency—actual and potential—of the poor themselves, as evidenced by poor-led political movements and poor-centered, participatory models of poverty reduction in development theory and practice. While agent-oriented approaches are right to focus our attention on structures that cause poverty, they ought not to assume that the powerful agents responsible for these are the only—or most appropriate—agents to lead the way to poverty reduction. Just as development organizations working in the global South have come to recognize that the participation of poor communities is critical to the success of development strategies, so should normative theorists writing about global injustice acknowledge the importance of the poor as active agents in poverty reduction efforts.

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (Special Edition) ◽  
pp. 189-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sohail Jehangir Malik

The structural transformation of Pakistan’s economy has not been accompanied by a concomitant decline in the proportion of labor employed in agriculture. While this transformation has resulted in a non-farm sector that is large and growing it has not lead to the rapid absorption of the pool of relatively low productivity labor away from the agriculture sector, as predicted by conventional development theory embodied in the models of the 1960s. Despite the obvious importance of the role of a vibrant rural non-farm economy (RNFE), and in particular, a vibrant non-farm services sector to address the challenges of poverty, food security, agricultural growth and rural development, this sector has received inadequate attention in the debate in Pakistan. Based on a review of literature and data from two large surveys – the Rural Investment Climate Survey of Pakistan 2005 and the Surveys of Domestic Commerce 2007 – this paper attempts to analyze the factors underlying the low level of development of the rural non farm economy and the potential role it can play in Pakistan’s economic development.


2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R Rosenzweig

In Poor Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo eschew grand theorizing about poverty reduction in favor of an approach in which intelligently designed and tested small interventions, based on a scientific understanding of the lives of the poor, marginally improve their welfare. In so doing, they describe the findings from the recent large literature describing the behavior and institutions of the poor and the consequences of policy and experimental interventions targeted to poverty populations. In this review, I assess whether “thinking small” with its associated policy regime of transfers, subsidies, and nudges, is both a practical and effective policy prescription for “fighting” poverty and whether the set of studies that have focused on populations that have not escaped poverty has improved our fundamental understanding of both the consequences and causes of poverty. (JEL I32, I38, O15)


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Laura Skeaff

<p>This study is based on two premises: the centrality of knowledge to processes of development and the centrality of spirituality and religion to the lives of the majority of the world’s population. It is through the generation and application of knowledge that communities and societies progress, and for many this change involves “a dynamic coherence between the spiritual and the material” (Tyndale, 2003, p. 23). Religion can be regarded as a system of knowledge, based upon the sacred texts that lie at the heart of the world’s major religions, addressing aspects of spiritual reality. Historically, religious knowledge in development has been marginalised or discredited; secularism has been identified as the normative, rational position. This position has increasingly been challenged over the last decade, which has witnessed a ‘global resurgence in religion’ (Berger, 1999). A growing number of voices are calling for serious engagement with religion in development. This research sets out to explore some of the questions raised in an emerging discourse between religion and development by engaging with religion as a system of knowledge that informs development theory and practice. The work focuses on a Bahá’í-inspired organisation in Zambia as a case study. Inshindo Foundation offers an education for development programme, Preparation for Social Action, that emphasizes harmony between the material and spiritual in processes of development. Over a ten-week period in 2010, I used qualitative methods to investigate the conceptions and experiences of PSA students and tutors in relation to their participation in the programme. The findings highlight the potential role of religious knowledge and spiritual values to inform and motivate individual action for change and sustain commitment and effort to achieve collective goals. This makes an important contribution to understandings of how to promote participatory development. At the level of theory, the findings draw attention to a vision of development based on spiritual values and principles that is fundamentally different from mainstream conceptions.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Liu ◽  
Fubin Huang ◽  
Zihan Wang ◽  
Chuanmin Shuai ◽  
Jiaxin Li

Motivating the endogenous impetus of the poor to eradicate poverty is an endogenous dilemma that is difficult to solve using the current external poverty alleviation model. In this paper, based on the field survey data of 1112 poor rural households in China, we examine the impact of the poor’s endogenous impetus on their poverty reduction. Firstly, we identify two different components of endogenous impetus: thought impetus and behavior impetus. Secondly, the poverty reduction (livelihood status) of farmers was used as an endogenous variable to construct a partial least squares model to verify our explanation of the role of endogenous impetus of the poor in poverty reduction. The results indicate that (1) both thought impetus and behavior impetus have a positive impact on the livelihood status of the poor; (2) the human capital, physical capital, and social capital of the poor have a positive relationship with the two components of endogenous impetus; and (3) endogenous impetus plays a mediation role between livelihood capital and livelihood status. As expected, human and physical capital have a positive and significant relationship with poverty reduction. The important enlightenment of this study is that it is very important to motivate the poor’s endogenous impetus of escaping poverty in addition to improving external conditions such as livelihood capital owned by farmers in an effort to realize sustainable poverty reduction.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Rahman

Abstract PROSHIKA is one of the largest non-government development organizations (NGOs) in Bangladesh. It is an acronym for three Bangla words, viz. proshikshan (training), shiksha (education) and kaj (action). Since its inception, PROSHIKA has made efforts to generate a participatory process of development and has succeeded in pioneering an approach that puts human development at the centre. The central ethos is human development and empowerment of the poor who gradually stand to achieve freedom from poverty themselves. The process is founded upon the understanding that poverty reduction and promotion of sustainable development are dependent on human and material capacity building of the poor to enable their socioeconomic and cultural empowerment. PROSHIKA implements an aquaculture programme through groups, federations and community-based organisations (CBOs) linked with government, national and international organisations and NGOs to promote access to water-bodies and to lobby with policy-makers for sustainable management of aquatic resources. PROSHIKA has enabled 256,000 men and women to directly benefit from the formation of private institutions undertaking policy development.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Lenhardt

This report explores approaches to participation in humanitarian response and evidence on the contributions of community engagement in effective response and recovery efforts.It begins with a brief overview of decolonial perspectives on the Covid-19 pandemic to situate participation in the wider context and history of humanitarian and development theory and practice. This is followed by a brief summary of evidence on the role of participation in humanitarian activities andsituates the now ubiquitous concept of ‘Building Back Better’ (BBB) inthe discussion of participatory crisis response and recovery. The remaining sections of the report introduce participatory approaches that have been applied through the Covid-19 pandemic: decentralised decision-making, technological adaptations to engage local communities, and Southern-led research and participatory research methods.


2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1530) ◽  
pp. 2643-2655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Perry ◽  
Delia Grace

Poverty is now at the heart of development discourse; we discuss how it is measured and understood. We next consider the negative and positive impacts of livestock on pro-poor development. Taking a value-chain approach that includes keepers, users and eaters of livestock, we identify diseases that are road blocks on the ‘three livestock pathways out of poverty’. We discuss livestock impacts on poverty reduction and review attempts to prioritize the livestock diseases relevant to the poor. We make suggestions for metrics that better measure disease impact and show the benefits of more rigorous evaluation before reviewing recent attempts to measure the importance of disease to the poor. High impact of a disease does not guarantee high benefits from its control; other factors must be taken into consideration, including technical feasibility and political desirability. We conclude by considering how we might better understand and exploit the roles of livestock and improved animal health by posing three speculative questions on the impact of livestock diseases and their control on global poverty: how can understanding livestock and poverty links help disease control?; if global poverty reduction was the aim of livestock disease control, how would it differ from the current model?; and how much of the impact of livestock disease on poverty is due to disease control policy rather than disease itself?


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinko ŠKARE ◽  
Romina PRŽIKLAS DRUŽETA

The objective of this paper is to review and attempt a synthesis of the relevant literature on growth versus poverty, and to analyze the causal link between the two phenomena. Research issues that drive our study are: Does economic growth tend to “raise all boats” as Kuznets (1955) pointed out? What is the role of the pattern of growth in the process of development? Which factor must we consider in designing appropriate pro-poor growth policies? This paper finds considerable variation in the poverty–reducing effectiveness of growth across time and authors. Also, our analysis speaks in favour of the fact that as growth occurs poverty reduces, no matter the level of inequality. Identically, similar growth pattern has different effects on poverty reduction. We conclude that growth is good for poverty alleviation but it is not enough. The extent to which growth reduces poverty depends upon how we measure poverty, and upon absorptive capacity of the poor, the pace and pattern of growth. In times when the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, “trickle-down” effect becomes a scenario that need to be reviewed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 1243-1250
Author(s):  
Sutrisno ◽  
Razali Haron

Purpose of the study: The aim of this study is to identify zakat programs that have been implemented by zakat institutions in the context of increasing social roles, especially to reduce poverty. This study concludes that a strategic program in the distribution of zakat to help the poor improve their welfare. Methodology: This study adopts a document analysis approach involving a series of systematic steps to review the research documents with the checking of data, interpreting them to get a deep understanding, obtaining the meaning contained, and scientific development in research. Main Findings: The implementation of the productive zakat program carried out by zakat institutions in Indonesia can reduce poverty. Almost all the funds' distribution programs carried out by zakat institutions run smoothly and have been proven to reduce poverty. The recipients of zakat who participated in the productive zakat program also showed an increment in their welfare. Applications: Zakat institutions in Indonesia can adopt productive zakat programs to reduce poverty. Besides, zakat institutions can increase their role in improving the welfare of the poor. On the other hand, the role of empowerment, primarily through the productive zakat program, can be applied in all zakat institutions in Indonesia. Novelty/Originality: The productive zakat program can be used as a model by the government as a means to improve the welfare of the community. Furthermore, the role of the zakat institution as a representative of the implementation of social care will increasingly be felt by the community, especially the needy recipients of zakat.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document