ABSTRACT
Common phrases and objectives in the aid debate are for those living in aid recipient countries to be helped to‘be lifted out of poverty’ or to escape from a‘recalcitrant’ poverty. Traditionally the view of both donors and recipients has been that poverty can be quantified into extreme or absolute (according to the World Bank group from 2008, defined as living on less than $1.25 a day) or is a relative concept and process which impacts differently on different communities and constituents. Overarching this particular issue is the widespread assumption of previous mainstream donors and institutions that poverty occurs in‘poor nations’ and these nations can be helped and lifted out of their poverty by the‘rich nations’ and‘rich donors’. The new geography of aid (or the Aid-2) approach, however, suggests that poverty (however defined or quantified) occurs both within emerging-power middle-income states and developed nations (Sumner 2013a, 2013b). Traditionally, poverty has been understood as‘something’ that can be technically eradicated through effective institutional mechanisms and by economic and political development. However, conditions for short- and long-term poverty can be produced by uneven economic, political, cultural and social processes. Moreover, eradicating or‘solving’ poverty, through growth, does not necessarily mean eradicating or solving processes of economic, political or cultural discrimination, exclusion or inequality in a recipient country. On the contrary, Sumner (2013b) noted that a lot of the world’s poor now live in emerging middle income economies.
