The Development Trap: How Thinking Big Fails the Poor
by Adam D. Kiš (Author)

About the Author
Adam D. Kiš is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the International Studies Program at Burman University in Canada. He holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Florida, USA. He has lived and worked in the United States, Benin, Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Madagascar, the Philippines and Canada.

About this book
A wave of optimism is sweeping through the international aid and development industry, championed by leaders such as Jeffrey Sachs and Jim Yong Kim, who believe that poverty eradication could be within our grasp. Yet in stark opposition come those who believe that all international development intervention is hegemonic, paternalistic, and neocolonialist and must be done away with. In this book, the author argues for a middle ground. Poverty is an entrenched, intractable problem that will never be entirely eradicated. However, if we reorientate our objectives in line with realistic goals that improve the way that poverty is confronted on a smaller scale, we can still continue the fight for meaningful change.
Using rigorous scholarship illustrated with vivid storytelling and personal anecdotes from fighting against poverty in the field, The Development Trap argues that we need to make progress against poverty on the micro, rather than the macro scale. Instead of shooting for a single overarching end of poverty, our goals must be modest and reachable.

Brief contents
PART 1 The case against poverty eradication 1
1 The development delusion 3
2 Semantics 29
3 Culture 54
4 Confounders 82
5 The perversion of idealism 118
PART 2 The case for continued engagement in fighting poverty 135
6 Fighting the good fight 137
7 The pursuit of happiness 144
8 The ends of poverty 155
Index 168

Pages: 190 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (March 5, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1138574546
ISBN-13: 978-1138574540