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Inequalities and Poverty

IDS works with global partners to generate new knowledge and evidence to identify the underlying causes of inequalities and poverty in all their dimensions and the progressive policies and practices that can help bring about transformative change.

Eradicating extreme poverty remains one of the world’s most pressing challenges, and addressing it requires the rising economic, social and political inequalities that harm people in rich and poor countries alike to be tackled.

IDS has also played a prominent part in promoting an approach that puts power at the heart of development analysis and contributed to strengthening understanding of the relationship between power, gender, sexual rights and poverty.

We continue to provide new analysis on inequalities and poverty trends, particularly in relation to the expansion of digital technologies and their impact on the lives of the poorest and most marginalised, and the growth of global cities and what this means for both urban and rural livelihoods, social relations and sustainability. Moreover, we work with governments, civil society, businesses and many others to help ensure this analysis shapes policies and programmes such as social protection and cash transfers to reduce poverty and vulnerability and strengthen livelihoods including agriculture.

People

Deepta Chopra

Professorial Research Fellow

Keetie Roelen

IDS Honorary Associate

Jerker Edström

Research Fellow

Melissa Leach

Emeritus Fellow

John Gaventa

Research Fellow and Director, Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) programme

Danny Burns

Professorial Research Fellow

Sohela Nazneen

Research Fellow

Patricia Justino

Professorial Fellow

Programmes and centres

Projects

Recent work

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Showing 2749–2760 of 15388 results

Book Chapter

Disputing Security and Risk

Chapter 11

This chapter explores some of the dilemmas that arise in using uncertainty as a lens to interpret societal problems and issues. Using several cases to open up discussion we argue that it is vitally important to understand the historical, political and cultural context in which debates about...

Helena Farrand Carrapico

& 3 others

8 April 2021

Book Chapter

Disasters, Humanitarianism and Emergencies: A Politics of Uncertainty

Chapter 9

Long-standing research on disaster risk has tended to focus on physical science and directly connected and observable cause and effect between hazard and impact. More recently, work has extended into questions of complex causation and social construction, where cause and effect are...

Mark Pelling

& 2 others

8 April 2021

Book Chapter

Expanding Cities

Chapter 6

This chapter presents readers with an opportunity to engage with the concept of uncertainty through the lens of cities and urbanism. Operating within an environment of profound uncertainty relating to the future of humanity, contemporary cities present divergent narratives of hope and...

Sobia Ahmad Kaker

& 4 others

8 April 2021

Book Chapter

Control, Manage or Cope?

Chapter 5

Just as an emancipatory politics of uncertainty recognises that uncertainty and unknown-unknowns cannot be closed down to measurable risk, so too does the politics require better differentiation among controlling, managing and coping with those risks, uncertainties and the unknown-unknown of...

Emery Roe

8 April 2021

Book Chapter

The Unravelling of Technocratic Orthodoxy?

This chapter argues that the contemporary politics of technology regulation play out through a key tension – between an established narrow framing of what is at stake in technology regulation, namely the optimisation of singular pathways of technological progress based on a control-based...

Patrick van Zwanenberg

8 April 2021

Book Chapter

Sharing Risks or Proliferating Uncertainties?

Chapter 3

Amid the proliferating uncertainties of globalised modernity, development institutions have deployed insurance to transfer risk across more geographic and hazard domains. This chapter first explores why insurance and other risk transfer tools are increasingly popular responses in development...

Leigh Johnson

8 April 2021

Book Chapter

The Assault of Financial Futures on the Rest of Time

Chapter 2

The question we ask in this chapter is how financialised capitalism shapes and formats the politics of the future. Our central tenet is that, far from providing an engine for imagining futures that guides collective actions, finance makes use of forecasts, plans or visions of the future to fuel...

Timo Walter

Leon Wansleben

8 April 2021

Book

The Politics of Uncertainty

Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? To explore the underlying reasons, issues and challenges, this book’s chapters address finance and banking, insurance, technology regulation and critical infrastructures, as well as climate change, infectious disease responses, natural...

Andy Stirling

8 April 2021

Past Event

Pakistan Hub webinar series

Polarized Democracies: Causes and Consequences

The Pakistan Hub, a partnership with the Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre (MHRC) at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, is co-hosting the Mahbub ul Haq Distinguished Lecture series.  Watch the recording Watch the events live on the LUMS Facebook page. Registration is not...

8 April 2021

Book

Youth and the Rural Economy in Africa: Hard Work and Hazard

This book unites recent findings from quantitative and qualitative research from across Africa to illuminate how young men and women engage with the rural economy and imagine their futures, and how development policies and interventions can find traction with these realities. Through framing,...

1 April 2021

Why learn with us.

In an extraordinary time of challenge and change, we use more than 50 years of expertise to transform development approaches that create more equitable and sustainable futures. The work you do with us will help make progressive change towards universal development; to build and connect solidarities for collective action, locally and globally. The University of Sussex has been ranked 1st in the world for Development Studies for the past five years (QS World University Rankings by Subject).

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