Poverty And Development

Poverty and development are frequently discussed topics in modern political, philanthropic, and global conversations. The topics incite conversation on the eradication of poverty, the best theoretical ideas of how to eradicate it, even whose job it is to try an erase it from the global community. One unchanging detail in these conversations is that the two topics tend to be discussed together. What exactly are poverty and development, and why are they consistently associated? This paper, using writings from Ananya Roy, Phillip McMichael, and Gilbert Rist, explores the definitions of poverty and development and how interrelated the topics really are, and the questions that arise from the exploration. To begin, in her book Encountering Poverty:

As a philosophical theory to advance the human experience, 2. Practically as a process of planning and devising social reform to create more successful nations (McMichael, 3). In Gilbert Rist’s chapter, “Metamorphoses of a Western Myth” he defines development as a social change of, “economic production, material infrastructure, political systems,” as well as attitudes and relationships between people and perceptions of nature (Rist, 25). Both of these definitions imply a sharing of technology and policies from a developed nation to an undeveloped nation to improve the life of those affected. Ideally development would be the key to the eradication of poverty. The theoretical idea of development can be illustrated through the intent of the colonial era. Western nations wanted to spread technologies and policies that led their respective nations to undeveloped nations, again theoretically, to improve the quality of life for the undeveloped nations. In theory this is a positive process for the people of the undeveloped nations, however, Rist and McMichael agree that development has not materialize in this way, and rather development became corrupt and propagates poverty of nations

There is a cycle that is propagated between the two with one creating a need for the other. Development is ideally a means to abolish poverty, however development has inevitably led to the exploitation of undeveloped nations goods for the profit of developed western societies. This in turn perpetuates the poverty of undeveloped nations, which again leads to development. This cycle of injustice brings to light a few questions; the first being whether the development of western societies should be the standard of development given that nations differ in a number of internal (culture, materials, space) and external (political alliances, wars) ways? Likewise is there a way to affectively change the current system to not be exploitive? If there is no way to revise the existing system of development, what does the new system look like to effectively help developing nations? These are all big questions with complex and nuanced answers I am aware, but as one of the millennials passionate about the eradication of poverty that Roy talks about, they are questions that are in desperate need for