The pendulum of development: From the end of history to make poverty history

Poverty has been a central focus of development since the 1960s. Despite a marked decrease in poverty worldwide, the incidence of poverty remains high; where one in ten people live under the international poverty line of $1.90 a day. In light of the persistence of poverty, international efforts to “make poverty history” have been pursued. Neoliberalism is an economic policy characterized by state retrenchment, free trade, market liberalization, deregulation, privatization, commercialized social programs, and foreign investment. Since its triumph over communism, neoliberalism marked “the end of history.” This thesis examines poverty reduction and neoliberalism in the context of international development in order to illustrate how poverty is perpetuated through international policies of inclusive neoliberalism. Much like a pendulum, international development has oscillated between efforts to reduce poverty to the advancement of neoliberalism. The primary concern of this thesis is how poverty is sustained through international poverty reduction strategies that implicitly employ the tenets of neoliberalism in the pursuit of development. More specifically, this thesis illustrates the tension that is created when the logic of neoliberalism collides with the logic of inclusion as contained in poverty reduction strategies. There is a paradox whereby poverty reduction strategies deployed by international development institutions work against their purported aims when implicitly employing the tenets of neoliberalism. This thesis employs a Gramscian and Neo-Gramscian framework whereby the poor can be examined simultaneously alongside the overarching neoliberal hegemony that is complicit in their abject poverty. Assessing inclusive neoliberalism through a Gramscian framework offers a gateway to analyzing the determinants of existing structural global imbalances that sustain poverty. The thesis is argued through case studies of microfinance and conditional cash transfers internationally followed by a consideration of their application in Egypt. This thesis argues that, as tools of inclusive neoliberalism, these two initiatives undertaken to reduce poverty have instead reinvented ways to integrate the poor into the world market

The Rise of Pregnancy Criminalization: A Pregnancy Justice Report

In 2013, Pregnancy Justice published the first comprehensive national documentation effort capturing pregnancy-related arrests and deprivations of liberty. The 2013 study identified 413 reported cases from 1973 through 2005, arising out of 44 states and the District of Columbia, and involving a range of pregnancy outcomes including abortions, live births, miscarriages, and stillbirths. Overwhelmingly, the cases occurred despite a lack of legal authority, in defiance of numerous and significant appellate court decisions dismissing or overturning such actions, and contrary to the extraordinary consensus across the medical community that prosecution undermines rather than improves maternal, fetal, and child health. In 86% of these cases, pregnant people faced prosecution through the use of existing criminal statutes intended for other purposes.This report begins where the first study left off, documenting cases of pregnancy criminalization from January 2006 until the Dobbs ruling in June 2022. What we found was deeply concerning. Over these 16.5 years, we identified 1,396 cases. In other words, of the 1,800 pregnancy criminalization cases that took place over the last half century, over three-quarters occurred after 2005. Through an alarming combination of carceral approaches to substance use and the spread of fetal personhood laws, state actors have increasingly penalized pregnant people. Understanding this disturbing phenomenon—including who is most affected, how, and under what pretense—will be essential to fighting for pregnant people's liberties as we enter the post-Dobbs era