The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada
Development Programs and Democracy, 1964-1979
A history of development initiatives that approached the problem of ending poverty through the active participation of the poor.
Description
In the 1960s and 1970s, in the midst of the Cold War and an international decolonization movement, development advocates believed that poverty could be ended, at home and abroad. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada explores the relationship between poverty, democracy, and development during this remarkable period. Will Langford analyzes three Canadian development programs that unfolded on local, regional, and international scales. He reveals the interconnections of anti-poverty activism carried out by the Company of Young Canadians among Métis in northern Alberta and francophones in Montreal, by the Cape Breton Development Corporation, and by Canadian University Service Overseas in Tanzania. In dialogue with the New Left, liberal reformers committed to development programs they believed would empower the poor to confront their own poverty and thereby foster a more meaningful democracy. However, democracy and development proved to be fundamentally contested, and development programs stopped short of amending capitalist social relations and the inequalities they engendered. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada explores how Canadians engaged in informal and formal politics in the course of their everyday lives, locally and transnationally. Langford provides an enduring record of otherwise fleeting anti-poverty programs and their effects: the lived activism and opinions of development workers and ordinary people.
Awards
- Long-listed, Wilson Book Prize 2020
Reviews
"Historian Will Langford has pro¬duced an impressive study. Characterized by wide-ranging research and nuanced analysis, Langford’s volume is a sign¬post for scholars working on modern Canadian history and a model for histori¬ans keen to foreground the links between the Canadian past and global processes.” Labour/le travail
“The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada presents a nuanced portrait of the development paradigms of the time. It is a deeply researched book that refocuses our attention on people in the development milieu and adds historical and comparative context to readers’ perspectives on the complexities of development practice.” Canadian Journal of Political Science
"Will Langford has produced an important and valuable book. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada examines the Canadian dimension of the 'development' phenomenon from an expansive perspective. At once global and local in scope, it presents the reader with a critical yet nuanced appraisal of the diverse efforts to address poverty, along with the communities and individuals involved in and affected by such efforts." David Meren, Université de Montréal and co-editor of Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada's International History