The Poetics of Poverty Alleviation Relocation

This study critically examines the ways in which state-led social policies in the Global South conceal their developmentalist goals under the guise of improving people’s social welfare. Drawing on a developmentalism framework and James Scott’s work on the socialist-utopian imaginary, this study explores the similarities between two large-scale poverty alleviation relocation programs in Ethiopia and China through a comparative approach. The analysis reveals that poverty alleviation programs become a presentation of poetics in both countries: on the one hand, they failed to some extend to deliver on their promises of providing resources and improving the lives of the targeted population. Instead, the primary objective of such policies was subordinated to other developmental goals, such as bringing vast farmland to foreign investors or promoting urbanization, ultimately leaving the poor further deprived and marginalized. In these cases, “poverty alleviation” becomes an empty signifier, a term that can be filled with any development goals for the state’s modernization imagination. The human body, land, and settlements are both the representations of this imagination and the tools used to achieve it. This essay argues that if poverty alleviation programs are not initially designed to prioritize the welfare of the targeted population, any form of implementation will fail to bring substantive improvements to vulnerable people. Future research can consider the increasing effects of globalized economics and the wider developmental deployment in these countries.