Analysing the World Bank’s view on poverty

A new poverty research project is analysing the publications of the World Bank.

“We want to find out why poverty in third-world countries is not being reduced in spite of the existence of huge piles of action plans and political resolutions” says Vigdis Broch-Due, Professor of Poverty Research at the University of Bergen .

The three-year project entitled “Poverty politics: Current approaches to its production and reduction” is studying whether the World Bank is dominated by a market-oriented mind-set that is incompatible with the cultures to which it supplies development aid.

The Research Council of Norway has given the project NOK 3 million to support its theoretical and empirical studies of poverty and of strategies to reduce it. The researchers will therefore be analysing discourses, ideas and perceptions that concern poverty, primarily in the World Bank and other development aid organisations, but also within the tradition of the social sciences. The project will also carry out field studies in India , Kenya , Morocco , Guatemala , Bolivia and Argentina.

Most of the researchers involved in the project are anthropologists, historians and political scientists. The project will also have partners in developing countries.

 www.svf.uib.no

Back to front page

To order a free example of the paper edition of Features, contact the Communication and Media Centre either by e.mail or telephone +47 55 58 69 00