Following the closure of the Webb Memorial Trust at the end of 2017, the Rethinking Poverty blog has been relaunched as Rethinking Poverty: The Webb Legacy. The aim is to make this a hub for discussions on eradicating poverty and creating a good society, a resource for all those working in the field. We will continue to publish blogs produced and commissioned by Rethinking Poverty, but we will also include more on other blogs, research, publications and events. We want to create and sustain the narrative on a good society, to help connect promising approaches, and, most importantly, to convene key people and initiatives.
Here we feature selective posts from the Rethinking Poverty blog.
A low ebb Those of us working for social justice and human rights have faced strong headwinds in recent decades. A world obsessed with economic growth has led to environmental degradation, the removal of social safety nets, deregulation of planning controls, fragmented communities and increased conflict. Ever-growing inequality has fuelled political extremism and the emergence…
As the pandemic has stood the world on its head, one of the debates which has been thrown wide open is that of the future of the economy. PSJP has launched an inquiry into how markets can be made to work for the common good and how economies can be made to serve the general…
In this post Barry Knight takes a look at failed approaches to poverty in the UK, things worsening with the pandemic and ‘making life next to impossible for people towards the bottom of the income distribution, with minorities and women most affected’. He points out how politicians are ill-informed about poverty. As a result, mistakes…
By Andrew Milner, Lisa Jordan and Stef van Dongen As the pandemic has stood the world on its head, one of the debates which has been thrown wide open is that of the future of the economy. PSJP has therefore launched an inquiry into how markets can be made to work for the common good…
Looking at the history of poverty, there appears to be one certainty: poverty has been a feature of every human society since time immemorial. As the Bible says: ‘The poor you will always have with you’ (Matthew 26:11). A breakthrough In the 19th century, philanthropy worked hard to overcome this, and by 1909 there was a…
Coronavirus has changed our world forever. Plans made a few weeks ago seem outdated at best or undoable at worst. The speed of this has been remarkable. In a recent article, former UK prime minister Gordon Brown quotes Lenin: ‘There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.’ Those of us…
By Barry Knight and Colin Greer I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the Attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dream’d that was the new City of Friends. Walt Whitman The unseen driver of our troubles causes no pain. But it is quietly destroying you…
Many working in the ‘development set’ have been grappling with the failure of philanthropy and development to have any significant impact on the most pressing problems facing the world including inequality and poverty. In this article Gerry Salole analyses some of the ‘conscious and unconscious vested interests in the development and philanthropic sectors’ that cause him to…
‘Every year billions of dollars are spent in aid to help the poor, the vulnerable, the excluded. But how much really changes?’ This animated film by the Global Fund for Community Foundations talks about ‘new paths’, alternative ways of doing things, i.e. the growing community philanthropy movement that challenges traditional development approaches (that often undermine the agency of…
Recent books by Barry Knight and by Alan Marsh and colleagues have shown that efforts to end poverty in low-income neighbourhoods in the UK have failed to make much progress. Darren McGarvey, or Rapper Loki, in his book Poverty Safari criticises the well-meaning but fundamentally misguided behaviour of the poverty industry which behaves ‘much like an imperial power’ and is not tuned into what…