Chapter by chapter resources - Chapter 7
Review Questions
- Using the evidence from this chapter, do the results of the past sixty years provide grounds for optimism or pessimism with regard to overcoming global poverty?
- Does the MDG compact place an equal responsibility on the richer and poorer worlds alike in meeting the targets?
- Why does neoliberalism look upon goal-oriented targets with suspicion?
- If, as the Millennium Project argues, the world has the means to overcome global poverty, what’s stopping it? Answer this question from both a structuralist and individualist perspective?
- Does the Millennium Project adopt a structuralist or individualist approach to global poverty?
- To what extent are the MDGs poverty focused, rather than inequality focused?
- Is there a relationship between wealth and political power?
- In what contexts can statistics be empowering or disempowering?
- Is ‘schooling without learning’ an example of ‘false progress’?
- Provide examples of the interconnected nature of well-being, education and development?
- What general impressions can be gleaned about poverty from regional perspectives?
- What exogenous and endogenous forces are required in order to meet the MDGs?
- What does the UN Millennium Project mean when it states that geography is not destiny?
- What criticisms have been levelled at the MDGs?
- Are the MDGs potentially this millennium’s new form of conditionality?
- Does ODA promote or hinder development and global equality?
- How do the MDGs relate to neoliberal perspectives on development?
- How do the MDGs relate to modernization theory?
- How do the MDGs relate to dependency and world systems perspectives?
- Is exploitation inherent in the nature of capitalist development?
- Are the MDGs too ambitious?
Further Reading
Easterly, W. (2002), The Elusive Quest for Growth, Cambridge, MIT Press.
Payne, A. (ed.), The New Regional Politics of Development, Basingstoke, Palgrave.
Sachs, J. (2005), The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen In Our Lifetime, London, Penguin.
UN Development Programme (2003), Human Development Report 2003: Millennium Development Goals: A Compact Among Nations to End Human Poverty, New York, Oxford University Press.
UN Millennium Project (2005), Investing In Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, New York, United Nations.
Websites
The homepage for the UN Millennium Project:http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/who/index.htm
Professor Jeffrey Sachs has a homepage for his book Make Poverty History :http://www.makepovertyhistory.com.au/home.html
Professor William Easterly has a homepage with useful resources: http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/
Oxfam's international 'Make Trade Fair' campaign has a website: www.maketradefair.com
A good on-line Africanist journal is Mots Pluriel:http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP.html
Volume 51 of the leftist journal Monthly Review contains good summaries of regional economies at the end of the millennium: http://www.monthlyreview.org/volume51.htm
The OECD homepage:http://www.oecd.org/home/0,2987,en_2649_201185_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
The Make Poverty History website:http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/
