Poverty Capital

Introduction Debtscapes, Double Agents and Development: Reflections on Poverty Capital It is an honor for me to introduce this series of reflections on Ananya Roy’s important book Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (2010). Her work is an extraordinary inspiration to many geographers, and so it was no surprise that the session about her book at the 2010 meetings of the Association of American Geographers generated a giant audience that spilled out into the corridor. Vicky Lawson, Katherine Rankin, Michael Watts and Stephen Young all provided provocative readings informed by their own diverse ethnographic and intellectual insights into microfinance and millennial development. And to these, Roy responded with more new insights and provocation of her own. The result was a highly energized and engaging encounter which—thanks to the editorial support of Vinay Gidwani—we are now pleased to be able to share with the wider community of Antipode readers. At the conference a number of audience participants remarked on how generative the collective effort at review and criticism had been. Yes, “author meets critics” sessions can degenerate into “author meets sycophants” or “author meets attack dogs” spectacles, but this was neither. Instead, persistent critique—the Spivakian idea that our writings have essential limits that are best made open to the antiessentializing enquiry of others—was enacted with care (and without picky pointscoring about who reads Spivak most correctly). Indeed, this included care about our complicitous double agency as academics, our organic intellectual aspirationscum-cooptations, and our ongoing struggles to think and engage outside of the privileged, albeit besieged and debt-disciplined, box of the university. More substantively, but relatedly, the session further provided reports from the frontlines of development and debt beyond the university. This is a world in which, as Roy argues and as her commentators discuss, academically trained double agents also play an influential role, a world where intellectual debts to Gramsci and Grameen go hand in hand with the financialization of microcredit as microfinance by the world’s biggest banks. And it is a world, therefore, that is better understood and navigated by those who can come to terms with how their own complicities compare with those of other double agents working in capitalist organizations that range from the World Bank to Hezbollah. By recording and amplifying the key notes of the conference conversation the following commentaries provide readers with an opportunity to do some critically comparative self-reflection of their own. Yet by connecting the concern with academic double agency to the double agents of microfinance, the main

Book Review Symposium

1. Small Worlds: The Democratization of Capital and Development 2. Global Order: Circuits of Capital Truth 3. Dissent at the Margins: Development and the Bangladesh Paradox 4. The Pollution of Free Money: Debt, Discipline, and Dependence in the Middle East 5. Subprime Markets: Poverty Capital

For decades, climate researchers have highlighted the unprecedented emissions reductions necessary if we are to meet global mitigation ambitions. To achieve these reductions, the climate change mitigation scenarios that dominate the literature assume large-scale deployment of negative-emissions technologies, but such technologies are unproven and present considerable trade-offs for biodiversity and food systems. In response, energy researchers have postulated low energy demand scenarios as alternatives and others have developed models for estimating the minimum energy requirements for the provision of decent material living standards considered essential for human wellbeing. However, a key question that our study aims to explore is how a climate-safe, low energy demand future, and universal decent living could be achieved simultaneously, given the magnitude of current global inequalities in energy consumption and technological access. In this modelling study, we combined data that described current global and regional inequalities in energy consumption with scenarios for low energy demand in 2050, and compared the resulting distributions with estimates of decent living energy, drawing all of this data from published academic literature. Using a threshold analysis, we estimated how much of the 2050 global population would fall below the minimum energy required to support human wellbeing if a low energy demand pathway was followed but inequalities in energy consumption remained as wide as they currently are. We then estimated the reductions in energy inequality and increases in technological equity that were required to ensure that no one falls below decent living energy in a climate-safe future. Finally, we speculated about the implications for global income inequalities. We found that unprecedented reductions in income and energy inequalities are likely to be necessary to simultaneously secure a climate-safe future and decent living standards for all. If global energy use is reduced enough to ensure climate safety, but the extent of energy inequality remains as it is today, more than 4 billion people will not have access to decent living energy. To avoid this occurrence, after remaining essentially flat for 150 years, the Gini coefficient for income inequality globally might have to fall by a factor of two (ie, to a lower extent than for some of the most egalitarian European countries) and at a rate of reduction more than double that observed in the so-called golden age of capitalism. In the Global South (South America, Central America, south Asia, southeast Asia, east Asia, the Middle East, and Africa) even greater reductions in inequality would be required, unless the average living standards in the Global North (North America, Europe, Australasia, central Asia, and Japan) and in the Global South fully converged, which would require even more substantial reductions in consumption in the Global North than low energy demand scenarios assume. Resolving the contradiction between the current global economic system (with its inherent inequalities) and the need for planetary and human health necessitates transformational change. Reflecting on the limitations of our analysis, we discuss four ways that these global challenges could be met without the need for such drastic reductions in inequality. The Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions and the Leverhulme Trust.

* Preface - Jomo K. S. * 1. Global income inequality: What it is and why it matters? - Branko Milanovic * 2. The scorecard on development: 25 years of diminished progress - Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker and David Rosnick * 3. A converging or diverging world? - Bob Sutcliffe * 4. World economic growth and income distribution, 1980-2000 - Albert Berry and John Serieux * 5. Globalizing inequality: 'Centrifugal' and 'centripetal' forces at work - Gabriel Palma * 6. Growth not much good for poor - David Woodward and Andrew Simms * 7. Inequality trends in the developed OECD countries - John Weeks * 8. Inequality and household economic distress in the USA - Heather Boushey and Christian E. Weller * 9. Poverty and Inequality in Eastern Europe and the CIS Transition Economies - Mihaly Simai * 10. Equity in Latin America since the 1990s - Pedro Sainz * 11. Income distribution in the Middle East and North Africa, 1960-2000 - Maria Cristina Paciello * 12. Openness, trade liberalization, inequality and poverty in Africa - Alemayehu Geda and Abebe Shimeles * 13. Inequality in India: A survey of recent trends - Parthapratim Pal and Jayati Ghosh * 14. Economic growth and inequality in East Asia - Jomo K. S. * 15. Understanding the extent and evolution of inequalities in China - Ranja Sengupta and Jayati Ghosh

Empowering the powerless: Does access to energy improve income inequality?

While national inequality has made headlines in recent years, income is far more unequally distributed globally than it is within any state. It is striking that global economic inequality has garnered so little attention in International Political Economy (IPE), given the field’s longstanding interest in the distribution of resources and the structure of the global economy. This paper argues that IPE should regard the unequal global distribution of wealth and income as a central research concern and outlines a research agenda for doing so. Drawing on recent work by economists, it argues that global inequality is distinctively political in cause and consequence and sufficiently different from both global poverty and national inequality to constitute a unique object of inquiry. IPE has the theoretical and conceptual tools to study global inequality, but doing so will require bridging divisions between those who consider distributional consequences, though primarily in a national perspective, and those concerned with global hierarchies, but with less regard to national agency and economic policymaking. The effort is worth it, however, given the rich substantive agenda that foregrounding global inequality opens up on a series of topics that have not all (to date) been recognized as the core of the field.

We use aggregate GDP data and within-country income shares for the period 1970-1998 to assign a level of income to each person in the world. We then estimate the gaussian kernel density function for the worldwide distribution of income. We compute world poverty rates by integrating the density function below the poverty lines. The $1/day poverty rate has fallen from 20% to 5% over the last twenty five years. The $2/day rate has fallen from 44% to 18%. There are between 300 and 500 million less poor people in 1998 than there were in the 70s. We estimate global income inequality using seven different popular indexes: the Gini coefficient, the variance of log-income, two of Atkinson’s indexes, the Mean Logarithmic Deviation, the Theil index and the coefficient of variation. All indexes show a reduction in global income inequality between 1980 and 1998. We also find that most global disparities can be accounted for by across-country, not within-country, inequalities. Within-country disparities have increased slightly during the sample period, but not nearly enough to offset the substantial reduction in across-country disparities. The across-country reductions in inequality are driven mainly, but not fully, by the large growth rate of the incomes of the 1.2 billion Chinese citizens. Unless Africa starts growing in the near future, we project that income inequalities will start rising again. If Africa does not start growing, then China, India, the OECD and the rest of middle-income and rich countries diverge away from it, and global inequality will rise. Thus, the aggregate GDP growth of the African continent should be the priority of anyone concerned with increasing global income inequality.

The level of, and trends in, global inequality and global poverty are indicative assessments of who has benefited from economic growth. The revision of price data has led to a reassessment of those estimates. Through an extensive overview of the implications, we argue that the data can be read in different ways. Official estimates show global extreme poverty and global inequality are considerably lower than previously thought. We argue that these changes are much less significant than they at first appear, and we present a more nuanced alternative interpretation by exploring changes across the entire global distribution.

Global Development, Converging Divergence and Development Studies: A Rejoinder

In the first decade of the 21st century global inequality is becoming an ever more serious global security threat. The most telling fact in this respect is the 3 billion people living below the poverty threshold and in absolute poverty. True, by 2015 this number should decline to 2.6 billion, but even so it will still be a very high proportion of the world's total population. The fact that large areas and regions, mostly of the developing world, are lagging behind in social and economic progress generates not only regional, but potentially also global security instability. Uncontrolled mass migration is a particularly serious threat in this respect. Global inequality can have serious consequences even for the security of the European Union, which is an important destination for migrants especially from Sub-Saharan Africa and potentially also from the Middle East. Social inequality generates even completely new security challenges. One example of this are the "failed cities", mostly an African, Asian and Latin American phenomenon. In order to reduce global inequality as a global security challenge the West will have to implement a set of integrated political and economic measures, which will consist first and foremost in the provision of effective humanitarian and development aid.

The important role of inequality in world politics and the world economy today encourages economic historians to examine the long-term evolution of inequality and its determinants. Recently, Branko Milanovic’s book on “Global Inequality” and Walter Scheidel’s monograph “The Great Leveler” focus on historical trends to gain insight into current and future inequality. For some countries and periods, however, income inequalities are difficult to estimate. I argue in this review essay that complementary methods focusing on inequalities of health, nutrition, and education can provide estimates that allow cross-checking problematic income inequality ratings. The methods presented can also be used for early indicators of inequality in the histories of African, Middle Eastern, Asian and American regions.

The world is very unequal. This applies both to inequalities within countries and between countries. Global inequalities of income and wealth are on the increase, in most respects, while global poverty has been significantly reduced in recent years. However, global income inequality between countries has recently lessened. Improvements are also evident in global health and some aspects of gender inequality. Yet the topic is complex and uncertain. This is partly because inequality and poverty are not easy to measure. Inequality and poverty are also multidimensional involving political participation and cultural acceptance as well as income, health, and literacy. Explanations of inequality and poverty are similarly complex. Globalization, through concentrations of global economic power, is responsible for some inequality. Unregulated markets, however dynamic, do not distribute their benefits equally between individuals and between countries. Yet it is too simplistic to see free trade causing global inequality since free trade can, in some circumstances, lift incomes. More significant is deregulation which undermines social protection and allows massive tax avoidance. New global policies of taxation and more systematic public intervention in health and literacy are more relevant to inequality-reduction than economic protectionism.

The association between socio-cultural factors and well-being among young adult Middle Eastern migrants in Australia

The issue of Turkish entry into the war on the side of the Allies was a subject of great interest to Churchill. Turkish policy in the Second World War, however, was to play for time and pray that she would not be involved in the war, at least, she hoped, not until her rearmament had reached a stage where she would have a greater chance of resisting a German attack. Having underlined this, Turkish officials were not very willing to co-operate with Special Operations Executive (SOE)' so as to avoid provoking the Germans. Taking Turkish attitudes into account, a divergence of view appeared between the British Foreign Office and the SOE regarding the nature of such activities in Turkey. While the Foreign Office did not want to jeopardize its relations with Turkey, SOE was concerned with military and strategic aspects. Moreover, its work in Turkey was very strictly controlled by Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, British Ambassador to Ankara, who placed a stringent set of conditions on the mission's work to prevent anything which might have a disastrous effect on Anglo-Turkish relations. Therefore, SOE's work in Turkey was restricted in scope but there were plans and initial preparations to be made against the time when the situation would change in its favour; it was advisable to be on the spot and prepare to take advantage of any opportunities that might arise. Since the Turkish authorities rejected the approach made by the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C), Middle East, SOE was anxious to lay plans without the knowledge of Ankara. However, from the political point of view, the Foreign Office strongly suggested that any plans for military sabotage in Turkey should be drawn up with the knowledge and approval of the Turkish authorities on the grounds that the establishment of a comprehensive SOE organization in Turkey, which would inevitably bring in equipment and material, would certainly be discovered before long by the Turkish authorities. This would defeat Britain's objective and could not fail to have a bad effect on her relations with Turkey. Therefore, the Foreign Office suggested that the role of SOE should be advisory and consultative and it