(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Globalization has left a bitter sweet taste. It tasted sweet when the Millennium goal of halving extreme poverty was reached a full five years before the goal. Unfortunately, a very bitter aftertaste followed when the shadow of extreme inequality was cast over us.
Following Oxfam's report "An Economy for the 99%", a phrase has spread like wildfire: "The world's eight richest men own as much as the poorest half of the world." Although the weight of the figures can be discussed, as Anders Hofseth did in NRKBeta (9.2.2017 February XNUMX), the report nevertheless emphasizes the grotesquely skewed distribution that exists in the world. Inequality is a fact, both between countries and within countries.
The big question then becomes: How can extreme poverty be halved, while the gap between poor and rich still exists at best? To find the answer to this, we must first understand what "poverty" really is.
What is Poverty? Ideological views determine the outcome of the international development system. Ideologies form the framework for goals, opinions, expectations and motivations to change a society. In other words, the development system is a collection of beliefs and ideas – a way to imagine about the world at. But humans need to be able to deal to the world: to seek order in chaos, to concreteize the abstract and to arrange the unspoken. With better discourses we can thus better understand the world.
If one takes a historical look at globalization, one can clearly see that the development agenda has changed in line with the dominant discourse. If we peel all layers of the onion, we sit back with definitions og Measurement units, which in turn legitimizes development policy and who benefits from it.
A crack in society. Here are some examples: The discourse of social evolutionism and the distinction between the barbaric "underdeveloped" societies and the civilized "developed" communities, legitimized Western intervention. This has also been known as the white man's burden. The discourse on development that is synonymous with "economic growth" has led to units of measurement such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – where distribution of wealth and goods was hidden in the blank. With the criticism of the purely economic point of view, a greater focus was placed on basic "human needs" and the Human Development Index (HDI) was introduced.
Neoliberalism is particularly interesting: With its focus on radical reforms, free trade, open markets, competition, deregulation and restructuring, neoliberalism has played an important role in the discourse of development policy. The globalization of liberal finance, privatization, increasing invisibility of national borders and the realization of natural resources put the power in the hands of a handful of people. Already resourceful people were rewarded and valued, while people with poorer conditions were considered lazy. Ideology is a totalignorant for a context of educational systems, housing markets, and uneven distribution of the earth's resources. This created a rift in society, which has later grown to an extreme inequality.
A product of discourses. The notion of "poverty" is simply a product of discourse, and the meaning of the word has changed since then. The development discourse – no matter what form it has taken over the years – comes with its set of power and abuse. Therefore, it is important to be aware of how we measure and define both poverty and development.
Good quality of life should be right for all people. What this means, however, varies from country to country and person to person. Nevertheless, it requires that each individual has a fairly similar starting point in order to achieve this. As long as the distortion of the earth's resources remains as it is today, it is difficult to challenge the power of existing discourses.
Fortunately, you could say, both "inequality" and "quality of life" have entered the stage of development relatively recently. Hopefully this will mean more voices in the discourse language of the future.
