Intersectional Inequalities

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Given that inequality can be measured on different scales- not only across but also within countries- what are the implications for how we define and measure development? Answer using both theory and examples
The 20th and 21st Century has seen remarkable developments in geography, perhaps most notably around development. As with many topics within the subject, development involves a myriad of complexities and its definition varies temporally and spatially (Willis, 2014). As Fraser (2010) notes, it is extensively acknowledged that many inequalities exist on a variety of scales, from global to local. A lack of appreciation of intersectional inequalities has severe consequences for policy. As data from the World Bank (2016) shows, India’s GDP
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Many scholars have dated the start of development studies to President Truman’s inaugural speech in 1949 where he called for the global north to co-operate with the global south to bring them out of poverty (Bull and Bøås, 2012). However, Bull and Bøås (2012) argue later that a concern by academics at the time was that modernisation was prone to be based on general economic analysis and policy, and fail to recognise the variations in political frameworks, institutions and societies which occur both regionally and nationally. Moreover, Milanovic (2016) presents a variety of examples of countries in the global north that have had major variations in inequality within them, especially in the USA, where whilst Gini was decreasing until 1979 at around 35 points but after that inequality has risen steadily to 40 Gini points by the start of the second decade of the current century and is rising further still. One may argue that this shows a fallacy in the modernisation theory as inequality highly varies on a national scale in all countries, and if you were to “make the rest like the west” then only GDP would increase and large gaps in equality would still be …show more content…
Neoliberalism rose to the fore of development discourse in the 1980’s and focused on enabling market forces to drive development and liberalise and privatise economies to achieve a core goal of economic growth (Pieterse, 2010). Placing economic growth at a national level at the centre of developmental policy may lead to misrepresentations of inequality. Even in countries that are cited as examples of neoliberalism’s success, such as South Korea, many fail to recognise the key role that the national governments played in this growth (Willis, 2014). In addition, many countries have attempted to transform their economies through neoliberal reforms and failed. For example, in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba water supplies were privatised in 2000 as part of a variety of neoliberal reforms in the country (Perrault, 2006). Water rates were increased 200% to pay for infrastructure improvements and this radical increase lead to wide scale strikes and protests, demonstrating an outright rejection of privatisation (Perrault, 2006). It seems clear that when analysing the success and failures of these definitions of development the appreciation of the intersectionality of inequality and development play a key role in their subsequent ‘failure’. It may be the case that the generalisation of inequality and development lead to irregular success in development programs globally. It

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