Authors: Cindy Holder

Year: 2012

Public Affairs Quarterly, V26, N1, January 2012

Chronic poverty comes in a variety of forms. It is multi-dimensional in its causes and multi-dimensional in its impacts . Although poverty “has an irreducible economic connotation,” this connotation “does not necessarily imply the primacy of economic factors” . For example, violent conflict, access to land, and social relations of power are among the most important factors in food security . Integration into global economic markets is as likely to be a source of immiseration and impoverishment as it is a solution . Access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation are significantly impacted by displacement and violent conflict and its aftermath; displacement and violent conflict often have an ethnic dimension. Gillian Brock’s cosmopolitan model of justice offers an apt framework for recognizing and addressing these facts about global poverty. […] Given these features of her view, we might expect Brock to adopt a human rights approach to global poverty. But Brock opts instead for a distributive approach. In so doing, she takes over a framing of the problem of global poverty that mischaracterizes what is at issue and makes the case against the reforms she advocates seem more plausible than in fact it is. Brock’s project is a much better fit with a human rights approach, not least because it allows a more pragmatic treatment of international institutions.

Feel free to contact me if you can’t access the publication.