ABSTRACT
A major feature of the global condition is the glaring hiatus between wealth and poverty. One would like to say it is a feature of global experience, but for how many of us is it a matter of experience? Worlds of experience are segmented and representations across the fence are coded. Global poverty is routinized-“the poor will always be with you.”Aid fatigue is periodically interrupted by emergencies that prompt selective media attention and out of the sky relief campaigns. Refugees are objects of charity, asylum seekers objects of scrutiny, illegal immigrants are criminalized along with drug traffickers, crime syndicates, and terrorists. Wealth and poverty are both relative and contextual, and according to the soap stories that make up the comfort zones of capitalism “the rich also suffer.” The steady succession of development fixes and failures is papered over by global economic management; poverty alleviation and development are being outmaneuvered by macroeconomic management in the vague expectation that a rising tide will lift all boats.
