Poverty as Ideology: Rescuing Social Justice from Global Development Agendas

Poverty has become the central focus of global development efforts, but the field of poverty studies remains deeply ideological and has been used to justify wealth and power within the prevailing world order. Andrew Martin Fischer's book "Poverty as Ideology" clarifies this deeply political character and argues that an effective and lasting solution to global poverty requires us to reorient our efforts away from current fixations on productivity and towards more equitable distributions of wealth and resources.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 15 December 2018
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The International Studies in Poverty Prize, awarded by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and Zed Books, recognizes the centrality of poverty in global development efforts. However, the field of poverty studies has been deeply ideological and has been used to justify wealth and power within the prevailing world order. Andrew Martin Fischer's book, "Poverty as Ideology," clarifies this deeply political character, from conceptions and measures of poverty through to their application as policies. Fischer argues that our dominant approaches to poverty studies have, in fact, served to reinforce the prevailing neoliberal ideology while neglecting the wider interests of social justice that are fundamental to creating more equitable societies. Instead, our development policies have created a "poverty industry" that obscures the dynamic reproductions of poverty within contemporary capitalist development and promotes segregation in the name of science and charity. Fischer argues that an effective and lasting solution to global poverty requires us to reorient our efforts away from current fixations on productivity and towards more equitable distributions of wealth and resources. This provocative work offers a radical new approach to understanding poverty based on a comprehensive and accessible critique of key concepts and research methods. It upends much of the received wisdom to provide an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and researchers across the social sciences.

Weight: 470g
Dimension: 144 x 224 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781786990457