The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.
What is poverty and how can it be tackled? Taking the Third Way out of its narrow party political context, this book argues that it is necessary to harness work beyond employment in order to pave a Third Way beyond capitalism and socialism. The outcome is a thought-provoking new approach towards combating poverty. Poverty and the Third Way uncovers how New Labour's employment-focussed approach causes, rather than resolves, poverty. Searching for another approach, the authors find the seeds of an alternative 'Third Way' in radical European social democratic and ecological thought which seeks to transcend capitalism and socialism by developing work beyond employment. Exploring the reasons why such an approach is needed and how it can be implemented, the authors transcend the 'there is no alternative' to capitalism school of thought dominant in many advanced economies by providing a clearly marked route map of the way towards a post-capitalist economy.
This insightful and progressive book proposes a new moral approach to public policy to replace Third Way governments' failed attempts to reconcile global markets with ethically-informed public policies.
The Third Way is said to be the guiding philosophy for New Labour and center-left parties and governments across the globe. Moving beyond attempts to define and defend the Third Way, this innovative collection embarks on a critical examination of this key concept. The editors draw on expert contributions from a range of disciplines and perspectives to dissect the Third Way in theory and in practice, assess its legacy and suggest alternatives. The book begins by reviewing attempts to define the Third Way. It then examines what the Third Way implies for our understanding of the economy and the state, before critically addressing the philosophical and practical implications of its attempt to use the term "community." The final section deconstructs Third Way rhetoric and discourse. The conclusion reviews how these critical insights might form a basis for alternative political projects.
This collection examines the power and transformative potential of movements that fight against poverty and inequality. Broadly, poverty politics are struggles to define who is poor, what it means to be poor, what actions might be taken, and who should act. These movements shape the sociocultural and political economic structures that constitute poverty and privilege as material and social relations. Editors Victoria Lawson and Sarah Elwood focus on the politics of insurgent movements against poverty and inequality in seven countries (Argentina, India, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, Singapore, and the United States). The contributors explore theory and practice in alliance politics, resistance movements, the militarized repression of justice movements, global counterpublics, and political theater. These movements reflect the diversity of poverty politics and the relations between bureaucracies and antipoverty movements. They discuss work done by mass and other types of mobilizations across multiple scales; forms of creative and political alliance across axes of difference; expressions and exercises of agency by people named as poor; and the kinds of rights and other claims that are made in different spaces and places. Relational Poverty Politics advocates for poverty knowledge grounded in relational perspectives that highlight the adversarial relationship of poverty to privilege, as well as the possibility for alliances across different groups. It incorporates current research in the field and demonstrates how relational poverty knowledge is best seen as a model for understanding how theory is derivative of action as much as the other way around. The book lays a foundation for realistic change that can directly attack poverty at its roots. Contributors: Antonádia Borges, Dia Da Costa, Sarah Elwood, David Boarder Giles, Jim Glassman, Victoria Lawson, Felipe Magalhães, Jeff Maskovsky, Richa Nagar, Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, LaShawnDa Pittman, Frances Fox Piven, Preeti Sampat, Thomas Swerts, and Junjia Ye.
Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.
In 1974, the International Congress on World Evangelization met in Lausanne, Switzerland. Gathering together nearly 2,500 Protestant evangelical leaders from more than 150 countries and 135 denominations, it rivaled Vatican II in terms of its influence. But as David C. Kirkpatrick argues in A Gospel for the Poor, the Lausanne Congress was most influential because, for the first time, theologians from the Global South gained a place at the table of the world's evangelical leadership—bringing their nascent brand of social Christianity with them. Leading up to this momentous occasion, after World War II, there emerged in various parts of the world an embryonic yet discernible progressive coalition of thinkers who were embedded in global evangelical organizations and educational institutions such as the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians. Within these groups, Latin Americans had an especially strong voice, for they had honed their theology as a religious minority, having defined it against two perceived ideological excesses: Marxist-inflected Catholic liberation theology and the conservative political loyalties of the U.S. Religious Right. In this context, transnational conversations provoked the rise of progressive evangelical politics, the explosion of Christian mission and relief organizations, and the infusion of social justice into the very mission of evangelicals around the world and across a broad spectrum of denominations. Drawing upon bilingual interviews and archives and personal papers from three continents, Kirkpatrick adopts a transnational perspective to tell the story of how a Cold War generation of progressive Latin Americans, including seminal figures such as Ecuadorian René Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar, developed, named, and exported their version of social Christianity to an evolving coalition of global evangelicals.
Authors Paul Polak and Mal Warwick describe their Zero-Based Design of starting from scratch to create innovative products and services tailored for the very poor to show how their design principles and vision can enable unapologetic capitalists to supply the very poor with clean drinking water, electricity, irrigation, housing, education, health care, and other necessities at a fraction of the usual cost and at profit margins attractive to investors.