Making us Marketable: Reframing Poverty Through CED, Ethnodevelopment and Women's Microenterprise

This paper identifies important similarities in three popular development strategies: Community Economic Development (CED), ethnodevelopment and women’s microenterprise development. All are characterised as ‘grassroots’ and ‘participatory’ approaches to poverty reduction, yet their underlying premise reframes poverty into narrow terms as a lack of effective engagement with existing external markets. Although cultural diversity, gender, and community issues appear to be central to these three approaches, they are often reframed as resources for more effective market engagement, rather than as sources of alternative ways to reduce poverty. This has the unfortunate side-effect of discouraging critical and creative thinking about the larger constraints to economic development that are facing vulnerable individuals and groups. © 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.