From Charity to Justice

This book focuses on the ethical demands of extreme poverty and develops a political theory of practical change. Welding together political realism and moral aspirations, it argues that a re-imagined form of development NGO can help the global North break free from the dominant and persistent charity paradigm and drift towards a justice-based understanding of extreme poverty. It offers an original explanation of why the charity paradigm persists and why the "e;justice not charity"e; messages from development NGOs have changed few minds. The author argues that anyone concerned with a paradigm shift from charity to justice need to radically rethink the problem of political communication: who should communicate what messages about extreme poverty in what ways?Based on a rational choice critique of the competitive development NGO sector, the author calls for sector-wide reform and the emergence of a new political agent - the Avant-garde NGO - which transcends the charity frame that NGOs currently find themselves locked in. Further, inspired by literary theory and social psychology, he offers a fresh account of how the Avant-garde NGO could, through reflective public engagement, induce attitude change and lead genuine social and political reform.