The collective message of this compendium is caution: don't put excessive pressure on African institutions. Sayre Schatz, Ravi Gulhati and Satya Yalamanchili, and Raymond Hopkins, in particular, argue that laissez-faire won't work in Africa; that reforms must be carefully sequenced; and that evidence on the relationship between food subsidies and declining agricultural productivity is scanty. Foreign Affairs This collection of essays was assembled to address the problems of Africa from a variety of perspectives. The contributors have attempted to ask some basic but up-to-now unaddressed questions and to reframe many of the issues. The overall approach is intentionally interdisciplinary. Although recognizing that Africa's economic decline has resulted from poorly designed policy, the contributors also attempt to place that policy in its historical and cultural context. Similarly, they establish a comparative perspective for Africa's economic performance, and point to outside forces that have been overlooked. Finally, the contributors investigate some key issues in agricultural policy, such as decentralization, the role of women, and food subsidies.

An understanding of personal debt requires an understanding of the complex social systems that produce poverty. By drawing upon international perspectives, this book investigates why more and more people are in debt, why it is causing so much mental distress and exactly who is benefiting from what has become the world's number one growth industry.

This book represents the first attempt to identify and describe a workhouse reform 'movement' in mid- to late-nineteenth-century England, beyond the obvious candidates of the Workhouse Visiting Society and the voices of popular critics such as Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale. It is a subject on which the existing workhouse literature is largely silent, and this book therefore fills a considerable gap in our understanding of contemporary attitudes towards institutional welfare. Although many scholars have touched on the more obvious strands of workhouse criticism noted above, few have gone beyond these to explore the possibility that a concerted 'movement' existed that sought to place pressure on those with responsibility for workhouse administration, and to influence the trajectory of workhouse policy.

This book provides unique insights into the challenges and potential solutions to alleviate poverty in western China. Many people are interested in China's economic and social development; the development of Tibet is an important part of this narrative. Unlike big cities in the east of China, Tibet is still underdeveloped, with severe poverty, relatively poor communications, poor infrastructure, transport links, and limited social services. Using deep and well-researched analyses, learned Chinese scholars share their policy insights, experience and knowledge of the underlying causes and potential solutions to this underdevelopment and poverty. The reader is also provided with firsthand accounts of different people in Tibet, ranging from local government officials to poverty-stricken herdsmen. This book gets at the heart of problems faced by ordinary Tibetans, such as dealing with impacts of natural disasters, lack of education, managing ecological resettlement, and trying to prevent the transmission of intergenerational poverty.Looking at these issues from a theoretical, policy, government and practical perspective, Breaking Out of the Poverty Trap -- Case Studies from the Tibetan Plateau in Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu covers the full range of issues in the development of the Tibetan Plateau.

In the first substantial study of mounting urban problems in the Middle East, contributors present case studies of cities in Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Yemen, Sudan, and Iran. In particular, they address problems of urban planning and administration (including historic preservation issues), poverty and marginalization, health and gender in the urban environment, and the impact of politics on the city, including the actions of Islamicist groups. The authors stress that Middle East cities are indeed in crisis; in a concluding chapter, Michael Bonine asks whether or not they are sustainable.

Almost four decades since AIDS was first reported in Africa, the epidemic has reached a watershed moment where progress in prevention, care and support programs confronts intransigent socioeconomic and gender rights barriers and emerging funding uncertainties. While there are grounds for cautious optimism that the incidence of HIV infections and AIDS-related mortality can be further reduced, they cannot, by themselves, end the epidemic. This will require overcoming gendered inequalities, HIV stigma and neglect of high-risk youth and socially peripheralized groups.

The authors discuss the impact of foreign aid and tackle the question of why assessing the impact of aid is so difficult. The authors focus on peer-reviewed, cross-country studies published over the last decade and draw together some global-level assessments, considering the context and conditions under which aid might be said to 'work'. Glennie and Sumner argue that the evidence in four areas shows signs of convergence that may have direct relevance for policy decisions on aid and for aid effectiveness discussions. These are as follows: Aid levels (meaning if aid is too low or too high); Domestic political institutions (including political stability and extent of decentralisation); Aid composition (including sectors, modalities, objectives and time horizons); and Aid volatility and fragmentation. Notably, this study finds that there is no consensus that the effectiveness of aid depends on orthodox economic policies.

A "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year
Fifty years after Michael Harrington published his groundbreaking book "The Other America," in which he chronicled the lives of people excluded from the Age of Affluence, poverty in America is back with a vengeance. It is made up of both the long-term chronically poor and new working poor--the tens of millions of victims of a broken economy and an ever more dysfunctional political system. In many ways, for the majority of Americans, financial insecurity has become the new norm.
"The American Way of Poverty" shines a light on this travesty. Sasha Abramsky brings the effects of economic inequality out of the shadows and, ultimately, suggests ways for moving toward a fairer and more equitable social contract. Exploring everything from housing policy to wage protections and affordable higher education, Abramsky lays out a panoramic blueprint for a reinvigorated political process that, in turn, will pave the way for a renewed War on Poverty.
It is, Harrington believed, a moral outrage that in a country as wealthy as America, so many people could be so poor. Written in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, in an era of grotesque economic extremes, "The American Way of Poverty" brings that same powerful indignation to the topic.

The author presents us with the first collection of facts on the cultural aspects of food and eating among the Southern Bantu. She demonstrates conclusively that this universally neglected subject can and must be treated in the science of human civilization. This analysis considerably enlarges and deepens our conception of early human organization, especially in its economic aspect.

Down and Out in Paris and London was George Orwell’s first published book. It is at once a very personal account, and a vivid exposé of hard lives weighed down by poverty in France and England between the wars.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by writer Lara Feigel.

Towards the end of the 1920s, whilst living in Paris, George Orwell’s few remaining funds are stolen and he quickly falls into a life of severe poverty. Living hand to mouth, he shares squalid lodgings with Russian-born Boris and finds tedious and back-breaking work washing up in the bowels of Paris restaurant kitchens. On his return to England, he lives as a tramp, finding occasional shelter in often dangerous doss houses.

If we are becoming increasingly disconnected from our local communities, are there implications for health, well being and happiness, particularly for people on low incomes? This book looks at the interplay between poor people, poor communities and poor health, with a particular focus on social networks as key linkages.

The urban poor suffer many problems beyond pressing financial concerns, including those involving housing, health, and family relationships. Social welfare agencies struggle to cope with the enormity of need presented by individuals and families. The providers frequently lack a framework to guide their priorities and the delivery of services. This volume, based on the authors' close and extensive collaboration with New York's Lower East Family Union, affords a substantive, insightful, and effective approach not only to defining the services needed but also to the delivery thereof. It also examines the cognitive and emotional states which the clients bring as they seek help. Means are provided for establishing priority of needs, assessing the value of preventive services, and formulating family-specific service responses. Potential family dissolution and implicit child welfare concerns are viewed as especially critical and receives extensive constructive discussion.

Stressed, poverty-level families often approach helping agencies in a nearly exhausted condition. The needs of such clients can only be answered, and the last straw avoided, if the agencies are structured to identify the most immediate needs and to supply the understanding, supportive relationship, and the requisite practical assistance. This book, with its extensive base of experience, guides the process wisely. It offers informed hope that the awful conditions of the urban poor can be ameliorated through better planned and effective service delivery, and caring interventions.

By combining history with sociology, Rothstein presents a new way of looking at state-supported schools. He describes the pauper schools of the early 1800s and shows how they became the foundation for the common schools that followed. Compulsory education sought to alleviate urban crime while assimilating the immigrants who flocked to our shores in each generation. In the late 19th century, the militaristic schools became more bureaucratic and set in their ways in spite of the new thinking in education represented by John Dewey. Rothstein shows how Dewey was taught in college but that Thorndike was followed in the public schools. The high school was an attempt to meet the changing needs of the Industrial Revolution. After recapitulating the foundational history of American public schools, Rothstein examines the psychological effects of martinet teaching methods on students' self-perception and performance. A stunning new (old) perspective on American education.

Sumner and Mallett review the literature on aid in light of shifts in the aid system and the increasing concentration of the world's poor in middle-income countries. As a consequence, they propose a series of practical, policy relevant options for future development cooperation, with the aim of provoking discussion and informing policy.

Is fair trade a radical movement aiming to transform global systems of production and exchange, or is it a marketing niche that delivers small benefits to Southern farmers and a clean conscience to Northern consumers? Schisms currently opening between the US-based Fair Trade USA and the rest of the international fair trade movement are reflective of this choice. This book evaluates the extent to which fair trade is likely to be a transformative movement. The authors show that fair trade's most significant, and threatened, contribution is its potential to reveal to otherwise 'blinded' consumers the qualitative aspects of labour and nature embodied in commodities. Integrating insights from economic and sociological theory and research, the book sheds new light on this potential of the movement, its role in producing social change, and, given the recent strategic trajectory of the movement, the serious problems it now faces.

Seekings and Nattrass explain why poverty persisted in South Africa after the transition to democracy in 1994. The book examines how public policies both mitigated and reproduced poverty, and explains how and why these policies were adopted. The analysis offers lessons for the study of poverty elsewhere in the world.

In the post-World War II era, the U.S. government's full employment policy led to rapid mechanization of production by reducing the cost of financing investment. The mechanization of production displaced more blacks than whites because blacks were disproportionately unskilled. In addition, the growth in the import of manufactured goods further reduced the demand for unskilled labor. The author argues that the government should fill the gap with government employment and should discourage imports from developing countries.

Is food aid the way of the future? What are the prospects for integrated public policies informed by the right to food? First World Hunger Revisited investigates the rise of food charity and corporately sponsored food banks as effective and sustainable responses to increasing hunger and food poverty in twelve rich 'food-secure' societies.

The author examines the moral, methodological, and practical problems that arise from poverty measurement. He establishes a methodological framework for analyzing poverty conceptions and measures, and concludes with concrete recommendations regarding both the procedures for and substance of future global poverty measurement.

The book uses Athens as a case study to identify the key features of urban anti-poverty policies in Greece and to discuss them in relation to policy developments in the crisis-ridden countries of Southern Europe. The idea of contested landscapes shapes the focus of the book on urban poverty and homelessness. Contested landscapes refer to the complex dynamics between visible and invisible poverty and to competing strategies on how to address them. The book takes a path-dependent view on the development of post-welfare arrangements, devolution, and pluralism that are being shaped by both neoliberal mentality, solidarity and communitarian practices. The authors draw on their own research and advocacy background in New York and Athens to shape their conceptual and methodological tools; however, rather than uncritically 'importing' North American and North European concepts to Greece, the book highlights the significance of distinctive Mediterranean features for analysing homelessness and anti-poverty policies. This will be a useful read for academics policy makers in areas of urban studies, sociology, social policy, human geography and anthropology.