Global Poverty: Rethinking Causality

Much ink has been spilled on poverty measurements and trends, at the expense of attempts to understand root causes. Assembling multi-disciplinary and international contributions, Global Poverty shows that a causal understanding of poverty in rich and poor countries is essential for relieving its ravages. Contributors to this volume argue that our understanding must be based on a critical interrogation of the wider social relations which set up the mechanisms producing poverty as an outcome. Processes that widen/strengthen crisis-ridden market relations, that increase income/wealth inequality, and that 'enhance' the policy-biases of nation-states and international institutions toward the affluent-propertied strata cause global poverty and undermine poor people's political power. The processes concentrating wealth-creation are the same processes causing poverty. Through theoretical and empirical analyses this volume offers important insights and political prescriptions to address global poverty.

Contributors are: Raju J. Das, Deepak K. Mishra, Steven Pressman, Michael Roberts, Jamie Gough, Aram Eisenschitz, Anjan Chakravarty, Mizhar Mikati, Marcelo Milan, Tarique Niazi, John Marangos, Eirini Triarchi, Themis Anthrakidis, Macayla Kisten and Brij Maharaj, David Michael M. San Juan, and Thaddeus Hwong.