Business as usual? The global political economy of childhood poverty

Abstract

This paper reviews the contemporary political economy of childhood poverty in relation to an entrenched inequality between wealthy, powerful states principally located in Europe, North America (plus Japan) and others, particularly countries in Africa and parts of Asia. Such inequality is evidenced and reinforced by the workings of global institutions such as the UN, the WTO, World Bank and IMF in which members of the G8 wield disproportionate influence. Thus, this paper proceeds on the understanding that while the bifurcation of the world into ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ runs the risk of grossly oversimplifying many complex and evolving dynamics, it nevertheless remains important to consider childhood poverty in light of long-standing asymmetries of power. Such power relations – that retain a topographical dimension - continue to serve the interests of elites and nations in certain locations whilst marginalising, as a matter of course, millions of children and their families elsewhere. The following discussion is divided into four sections. In the first I make explicit the conceptual basis for my enquiry. Attention is paid most particularly to the notion of ‘political economy’. In order to account for the approach taken this section also explains some of the limitations in recent literature on childhood poverty. Sections Two and Three explore key shifts in thinking entailed in the pursuit of understanding of the political economy of childhood poverty that is properly mindful of issues of power. The first of these two sections offers a view on how the construction of childhood as a social institution might be understood in light of the workings of political economy and how they intersect with ideology/culture. The third section reverses the perspective to explore the challenge of developing an approach to political economy that is mindful of children. The final section of the paper takes the key elements of the foregoing theoretical discussion and applies them in the articulation of an approach to exploration of childhood poverty that locates local experience in relation to global political economy. Social reproduction is the particular theme around which this aim is pursued.

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