Governing the Poor: Exercises of Poverty Reduction, Practices of Global Aid by Suzan Ilcan and Anita Lacey

Centre for Studies in Social Justice members Dr. Suzan Ilcan and Dr. Anita Lacy have written a new book which was recently published by McGill-Queen's University Press.

Read more about this book at the publisher's website.

SUZAN ILCAN AND ANITA LACEY
GOVERNING THE POOR
Exercises of Poverty Reduction, Practices of Global Aid

A telling study of the global aid regime, which preferences the market over the impoverished. Every day, we are barraged by statistics, images, and emotional messages that present poverty as a problem to be quantified, managed, and solved. Global generations present the poor as a heterogeneous group and stress globalized solutions to the problem of poverty. Governing the Poor exposes the ways in which such generalized descriptions and quantifications marginalize the poor and their experiences.

Drawing on field research in Namibia and the Solomon Islands and case studies of international organizations such as USAID and Oxfam, Suzan Ilcan and Anita Lacey argue that aid programs have forged new understandings of poverty that are more about governing the poor through neo-liberal reforms than providing just solutions to poverty. By analyzing these programs they reveal that concepts of privatization, empowerment, and partnership are tools that treat the poor as a governed entity within a system of actors – governments, international organizations, and private businesses – that make up the global aid regime.

An illuminating work of critiques and solutions for the current global aid regime, Governing the Poor shows the consequences of championing market-based solutions to poverty while neglecting to provide social infrastructure.

"Arguing that there is an increasingly common global approach to aid and poverty reduction, Governing the Poor provides a persuasive hypothesis about globalization and global governance as they bear upon the poor in many parts of the world. I have not seen this theoretical argument laid out as comprehensively and as competently it is here. This book will provoke discussion and debate among the large number of scholars and researchers outside the academy in NGOs and government bodies interested in the politics of aid." William Coleman, professor of political science, Balsillie School of International Affairs and University of Waterloo

"Governing the Poor is an outstanding and innovative piece of work on one of the fundamental challenges of our time. Its contribution to the field of poverty reduction and development programs is profound, while the authors' work on partnership and USAID is essential to understanding contemporary governance. While governmentality has been a theoretical perspective actively researched for about twenty years, few of its practitioners have teased out the complex constitution of a field of governance through such multiple sites and at a global level in the manner of this book. Academics and policymakers interested in how we attempt to solve problems of global poverty will find it to be a vital resource." Mitchell Dean, professor of sociology, University of Newcastle

Suzan Ilcan is a professor of sociology and Canada Research Chair at the University of Windsor.
Anita Lacey is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Auckland.