ABSTRACT
The following essay takes us into a different terrain from the remaining chapters of this volume. It avoids the high-order abstractions of the knowledge/ action paradigm, by delving into one of the burning questions of our own day, which is how best to address massive global poverty, particularly in the countries of the Third World. Here is a challenge – some argue, the principal challenge – of economic development, the very purpose for which development policies should be designed. By the 1990s, however, it was already apparent that the neo-liberal policy regime that for the past 20 years had spread to the far corners of the world, far from eradicating poverty, was actually adding to the misery of the poor.
