Introduction

Abstract

Poverty is as old as mankind. Organised attempts to alleviate it are more modern. Since World War II, those efforts have often been launched at national and international levels. This book deals with poverty and the problems of large-scale attempts to help poor people. Its main thrust explores a potentially serious flaw in traditional strategies of poverty intervention. The central target of programmes is usually seen as a spatially bounded ‘poverty area’ — a slum or ghetto, a depressed region or an ‘underdeveloped’ country taken as a unit.