Every day, we are barraged by statistics, images, and emotional messages that present poverty as a problem to be quantified, managed, and solved. Global generations present the poor as a heterogeneous group and stress globalized solutions to the problem of poverty. Governing the Poor exposes the ways in which such generalized descriptions and quantifications marginalize the poor and their experiences.

Suzan Ilcan is professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo and in the Balsillie School of International Affairs. She is co-author of Governing the Poor: Exercises of Poverty Reduction, Practices of Global Aid.

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"Arguing that there is an increasingly common global approach to aid and poverty reduction, Governing the Poor provides a persuasive hypothesis about globalization and global governance as they bear upon the poor in many parts of the world. I have not seen this theoretical argument laid out as comprehensively and as competently it is here. This book will provoke discussion and debate among the large number of scholars and researchers outside the academy in NGOs and government bodies interested in the politics of aid." William Coleman, professor of political science, Balsillie School of International Affairs and University of Waterloo
"Governing the Poor is an outstanding and innovative piece of work on one of the fundamental challenges of our time. Its contribution to the field of poverty reduction and development programs is profound, while the authors' work on partnership and USAID is essential to understanding contemporary governance. While governmentality has been a theoretical perspective actively researched for about twenty years, few of its practitioners have teased out the complex constitution of a field of governance through such multiple sites and at a global level in the manner of this book. Academics and policymakers interested in how we attempt to solve problems of global poverty will find it to be a vital resource." Mitchell Dean, professor of sociology, University of Newcastle