CAREER: The Impact of Poverty Mapping on the Geography of Development

George Washington University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

For decades, the eradication of poverty has been a primary goal of policy-makers. Poverty mapping is an important tool that experts contend can enable institutions to more effectively and efficiently target poverty interventions. This project investigates the production, use and impact of poverty mapping. The project investigates the forms of measurement, the types of knowledge and expertise mobilized, and how these maps may capture or mask layers of scaled politics regarding the poor. The research bridges the gap between geographers who use Geographic Information Science (GIS) to advance policy interventions and those who critically analyze poverty and governance using qualitative and contextual methods. This project contributes to the education of university students on both these tools and these critical questions of poverty governance, and builds capacity in how local people can understand such assessments or interventions taking place in their own localities. The research also has broad implications for policy-makers and NGOs engaged in poverty identification and policy alleviation of this problem. Together, researchers and participants will produce maps of interventions that could be used by local stakeholders, policy-makers, development practitioners, and governments of multiple scales to understand the impact of geographical targeting areas in most need of immediate assistance. An online, open-source map of development interventions, infographics and a k-12 teaching module will expand the impact of the research to a wider public. The research creates a framework for analyzing the spatial patterns of successful intervention and remaining challenges resulting from the geographical targeting of poverty. The project is informed by relational poverty, critical cartography and actor network theory; it approaches poverty mapping as a network consisting of a tool, a set of actors involved in its production, and specific sites and subjects of intervention. The project analyzes the field of poverty interventions and the spatial patterns associated with this technique of poverty alleviation. Using multi-sited research and case studies from North Africa, the researchers will employ oral surveys, interviews, ethnographic village assessments and spatial analyzes to generate a localized and contextualized understanding of poverty. The research will reveal the aspects of poverty that may have hidden behind aggregate indicators, highlight how the spatial patterns associated with poverty mapping act as an intervention, and illustrate how poverty reduction strategies impact the geography of development.