From poverty to power:
How active citizens and effective states can change the world
Author: Duncan Green
Publisher: Oxfam International
e-book
pp 522
ISBN: 978-0-85598-593-6
Available: Download Free (here)
From Poverty to Power is essential reading for anyone involved in change processes around the world. A new take on development for the 21st century,
Oxfam International’s new book provides critical insights into the massive human and economic costs of inequality and poverty and proposes realistic solutions. The best way to tackle them is through a combination of active citizens and effective nation states.
Why active citizenship? Because people living in poverty must have a voice in deciding their own destiny, fighting for rights and justice in their own society, and holding states and the private sector to account. Why effective states? Because history shows that no country has prospered without a state structure than can actively manage the development process.
Book back cover blurp:
The twenty-first century will be defined by the fight against the scourags of poverty, inequality, and the threat of environmental collapse – as the fight against slavery or for universal suffrage defined earlier eras.
From Poverty to Power argues that it requires a radical redistribution of power, opportunities, and assets to break the cycle of poverty and inequality and to give poor people power over their own destinies. The force driving this transformation are active citizens and effective states.
Why active citizens? Because people living in poverty must have a voice in deciding their own destiny fighting for rights and justice in their own society, and holding the state and the private sector to account.
Why effective states? Because history shows that no country has prospered without a state structure than can actively manage the development process.
There is now an added urgency beyond the moral case for tackling poverty and inequality: we need to build a secure, fair, and sustainable world before climate change makes it impossible. This book argues that leaders, organisations, and individuals need to act together, while there is still time.
Reviews:
In telling us what can be achieved by ordinary people through organised action, this book generates hope even as it enhances understanding of what is involved in the removal of poverty.”
–
Amartya Sen
“A tour de force…At once shocking, realistic and radical, this book takes us further on the road to understanding the challenges of development and what needs to be done…It should inform and inspire all who are committed to policy and practice for a better world.”
–
Robert Chambers, Institute of Development Studies
(Author of
Whose Reality Counts? Putting the Last First)
“Oxfam’s great strength is that it channels the moral outrage that global poverty evokes into effective action based on solid research. From Poverty to Power is a comprehensive look at development in this tradition.”
–
Dani Rodrik, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
“A unique blend of solid academic understanding, serious activist experience, and political acumen.”
–
Ha-Joon Chang, Department of Economics, University of Cambridge
“Does justice to raising the spectre of inequalities…between the world’s richest and poorest people and countries. It contributes to a better understanding of what to do to reduce global poverty.”
–
Bineta Diop, Executive Director, Fremmes Africa Solidarite
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