Development and its discontents
Article / 26th April 2010After decades of failing to address the root causes of poverty and inequality, the aid industry is bigger than ever. Is it time for some serious soul-searching on the value of ‘development’? A review of Rasna Warah’s ‘Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits’, by Anna White.
Revisiting economic man
Article / 16th April 2010Recent empirical studies suggest that people, far from being self-interested ‘rational maximizers’, have an innate tendency to share and cooperate. Could renewed scientific interest in the essence of human nature provide the building blocks for an alternative economic order? By Alexia Eastwood.
Unemployment and the free market in Africa
Article / 7th April 2010Growing unemployment across sub-Saharan Africa is linked to the free market restructuring of national economies over recent decades. Governments must embrace an alternative paradigm of development that prioritises social needs above short-term profit, says Adam Parsons in an interview with Uwana Archibong.
Do we care about urban poverty?
Article / 1st April 2010While the United Nations recently claimed victory for the Millennium Development Goal on slums, the global population of slum-dwellers continues to grow. It is time for governments and civil society to give the problem of urban poverty the attention it deserves.
The fugitive humanity of city spaces
Article / 5th March 2010The emergence of a significant middle class – who demand increasing space for their accommodation – means that the urban poor are everywhere being constricted to a decreasing proportion of land. In these city spaces they exist as a ‘fugitive humanity’, writes Jeremy Seabrook.