Amis, Ashley and Maxwell, and Shepherd/Hulme all address questions around 'chronic poverty' - Essay Example

How are their approaches similar and different with each another? One can say that a fundamental similarity in their works is that they have been instrumental in drawing attention to the phenomenon of chronic poverty. All authors have identified chronic poverty as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Reading the articles, one can point out that although Ashley and Simon did not use the term “chronic poverty,” they were instrumental in introducing the term “chronic poverty” through their notion of “persistence of rural poverty.

” Further, as the work of Ashley and Maxwell focused on rural development, an impression was created that poverty is only a rural phenomenon. In contrast, the work of Amis has emphasized that chronic poverty is not only a rural but an urban phenomenon as well. In other words, the focus or level of analysis of Amis on poverty as an urban phenomenon as well served to correct the mistaken notion that poverty is purely rural or purely rooted to the rural sector. Ashley and Maxwell pointed out that that rural poverty has continued to persist despite a changing rural landscape based on demography, diversification, and linkage with the national and global economies (395).

Ashley and Maxwell’s article addressed rural development not chronic poverty but they covered chronic poverty under the term “persistence of rural poverty”: rural poverty is persisting despite “rural development” (Ashley and Maxwell, 395). This is why the opening line of their article is that “rural development is in a troubled state” (395). Complicating that troubled state is the phenomenon that the notion of the term “rural” has been changing and its distinction from the term “urban” has been arbitrary (Ashley and Maxwell, 395).

For Ashley and Maxwell, addressing rural development and persistent rural poverty would involve something much more than making prices right or without subsidies and investing in public goods (405-406). Ashley and Maxell argued that advancing rural development and overcoming persistent rural poverty would involve capitalization, farm size diversification, livelihood diversification, stronger linkages with the national and global economies, protection of the poor, moving from simply participation to governance or “deep democracy”, and mobilization of multi-sector approaches (405-418).

In line with their diagnosis, Ashley and Maxwell develop five principles for a successful development strategy and ten “more specific recommendations” (418-419). Following his 2001 work with Ashley, Maxwell in 2005 formulated “eight-step program recommendations” for multilateral institutions to strengthen their collective action. Essentially, the recommendations on how multilateral institutions can develop viable “collective action programs” as a multilateral institution involves itself in the task of eradicating or alleviating chronic poverty or persistent rural poverty.

In addressing the issue of chronic poverty, Philip Amis reviewed the “relevant” literature and found out that the notion of chronic poverty had been “almost nonexistent” (2). Amis perceived his work as an attempt to “reconsider more general urban poverty literature through a chronic poverty lens” (2). At that time, he noted that the latest issues of the World Development Report of the World Bank do not disaggregate poverty into urban and rural categories (Amis, 1). Amis stressed