The Divide tracks the roots of modern-day development all the way back to Columbus’s first contact, which catapulted Spain to the top of the 16th-century world order. In reality, international development organizations such as the UN, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund have one main agenda: to take from the poor and give to the rich. The Divide argues that far from eradicating poverty, development initiatives like the Millennium Campaign just cover it up, spinning “development” into an “incredibly beguiling tale to Western ears” in which rich countries in the Global North imagine that they are benevolently stewarding less advanced societies in the South. This is all a sham, according to The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions, by London School of Economics anthropologist Jason Hickel, out this May. It was affirmation that our world was steadily developing, that we are living in a golden age of international aid pulling humanity into a brighter tomorrow. Poverty was falling, they said, largely thanks to a combination of aid from wealthy nations in the Global North, perseverant NGOs working in the South, and technical advancements pushed by the private sector in between. IN 2015, the United Nations announced that their Millennium Campaign had successfully halved the number of hungry people on earth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |