Beyond Impoverished Anti-poverty Paradigms

More subtle than the manifestations of poverty are the paradigmatic means of sustaining, deepening or lessening it. Indeed, dominant knowledge structures are insinuated in policy making and conventional anti-poverty measures, some of which reflect the poverty of the intellect. Ensconced in distinctive contexts, poverty itself is shaped by the template of neoliberal globalisation. This paradigm promises that economic gain will benefit all who are faithful to its principles. It evokes a vision not only of economic well-being but also of distributive justice, including poverty reduction. In its centrist and reformist guises, the orthodox anti-poverty paradigm may be best understood as a chain of relationships: neoliberal concepts, a preoccupation with methods for measuring results, a loathness to tackle underlying factors that generate widespread privation, gender ideology, and the delinking of economic reform and social policy. On the rise, too, is growing resistance to this consensual thinking, mainly from transnational civil society organisations and allied intellectuals. Six priorities are suggested as the basis for forming multiple, decentred paradigms to expunge poverty. The challenge is to produce homegrown knowledge structures that open to learning from other experiences.