Premium
The Great Global Poverty Debate: Is Something Missing?
Author(s) -
Chandhoke Neera
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
global policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.602
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1758-5899
pISSN - 1758-5880
DOI - 10.1111/1758-5899.12091
Subject(s) - poverty , normative , remedial education , politics , order (exchange) , culture of poverty , political science , development economics , economic justice , environmental ethics , social justice , law and economics , political economy , recreation , sociology , basic needs , law , economics , philosophy , finance
Over the last two decades, academics (based largely in the west) and activists have invested a great deal of energy in global poverty. This article asks: why should people not be poor? Surprisingly, this question elicits a number of answers. The pragmatically inclined can suggest that the existence of a large number of poor people poses a direct threat to the social and political order. Humanitarians are likely to argue that poverty breeds unfortunate consequences, which demoralises human beings, and violates our best‐held convictions that no one should be compelled to live below the threshold of decency. The response of normative theorists might be that society is complicit in the creation and recreation of poverty. Then society is obliged to remedy the wrongs that it has visited upon the heads of the poor. This constitutes a basic code of remedial justice. These responses can form the axis of separate and distinct arguments on the reasons why people should not be poor. In this article, I argue that there is more to the question.