Redefining Poverty as Risk and Vulnerability: shifting strategies of liberal economic governance

The existence of global poverty poses a dilemma for liberal economic governance. Its persistence is an irritant to expert assertions that things will get better soon, making it necessary to develop new theories about the causes and nature of poverty and new strategies for managing and reducing it. This paper examines the most recent shift in how the World Bank and other organisations conceptualise and manage poverty, by beginning to view it through the lenses of social risk and vulnerability. The paper examines the evolution in how the Bank has historically sought to contend with the problem of poverty, and then considers the various expert debates and bureaucratic negotiations that shaped how this new conception of poverty as risk and vulnerability came to be institutionalised. Finally, I consider the implications of this shift for how the problem of poverty is governed, suggesting that it involves a much more dynamic ontology of poverty and requires the use of a more proactive set of techniques. While this more active intervention requires a more present and engaged state than was evident in the structural adjustment era, its role nonetheless remains constrained by the liberal preoccupation with limiting governmental power.