How To Make Poverty History

An analysis of the production and consumption of the communications of Make Poverty History , a high profile episode of social movement protest in the UK. The book follows the campaign throughout its lifetime and explores how attitudes towards government and political opportunities influenced the negotiation of communications.

This year you can change the world. Every single day 30,000 children around the world are dying from extreme poverty and Make Poverty History, a huge global campaign, has decided that 2005 is the year for this crisis to be taken in hand. In the lead up to the G8 Summit in Scotland this July Make Poverty History will be campaigning heavily to influence the world leaders to finally do something about it. Ending poverty is not about charity, it's about justice. The changes we need aren't monstrous or unimaginable. But they will require everyone to do something this year. This book tells you what and how. 'Make poverty history in 2005. Make history in 2005. Then we can all stand with our heads held high' NELSON MANDELA, Trafalgar Square, 2005

In this clear and intelligent book, Thomas Lines examines the role that global policies have played in creating a crisis of rural poverty. He explains the mechanisms of markets and supply chains, charting their impact on agricultural trade in the world's poorest countries. A desperate situation is emerging which could soon leave little place for hundreds of millions of smallholders across the world, as the global supply chains of giant food corporations and supermarkets swallow them up. Poor countries have become newly vulnerable to price changes for crops like rice and wheat, and the situation is set to deteriorate further if global policies do not change. The author argues that debates about world trade negotiations have only highlighted part of the problem: we must turn our attention to wider economic policies, the workings of the markets themselves and the division of power along the supply chains, to establish a practical set of solutions. Combining analytical rigour with a clearly accessible examination of the key factors, the author deftly points to the forms that these solutions could take.

In this compulsively readable social history, political scientist Stephen Pimpare vividly describes poverty from the perspective of poor and welfare-reliant Americans from the big city to the rural countryside. He focuses on how the poor have created community, secured shelter, and found food and illuminates their battles for dignity and respect. Through prodigious archival research and lucid analysis, Pimpare details the ways in which charity and aid for the poor have been inseparable, more often than not, from the scorn and disapproval of those who would help them. In the rich and often surprising historical testimonies he has collected from the poor in America, Pimpare overturns any simple conclusions about how the poor see themselves or what it feels like to be poor—and he shows clearly that the poor are all too often aware that charity comes with a price. It is that price that Pimpare eloquently questions in this book, reminding us through powerful anecdotes, some heart-wrenching and some surprisingly humorous, that poverty is not simply a moral failure.

"Celebrates the transformative trend within international aid of super-charged advocacy networks, mega-philanthropists, and mass public involvement through Internet charitable giving and increased overseas volunteering and offers lessons to ensure that this wave of generosity yields lasting and widespread improvements to the lives and prospects of the world's poorest"--Provided by publisher.

"An overview of the economic development of and policies intended to combat poverty around the world"--

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.