ABSTRACT
It is widely believed that poverty is caused by economic underdevelopment, and that the problem can be solved through economic development-increasing investment, creating jobs, raising incomes, and improving the general standard of living. I shall refer to this as the “axiom of economic development”—“axiom” because these claims seem so obviously true they have become an integral part of “common sense.” The principal purpose of this chapter is to contest the validity of this axiomatic belief. I argue that poverty is not the result of lack of development, poor technology, or scarce resources, but a normal manifestation of the very process of economic development that is supposed to cure it; development causes modern poverty through “socially constructed scarcity.” The argument for development-induced scarcity is made by narrating a story about the Green Revolution-how “improved seeds” are implicated in the social construction of scarcity.
