Governing through empowerment: Oxfam's global reform and trade campaigns

Within the context of globalization and governmentality studies, this essay analyses Oxfam's global reform and trade campaigns as a form of governance. These campaigns are based on advanced liberal programmes of empowerment which aim to shape poverty relations and the conduct of the poor in the ‘developing’ world. Oxfam's campaign to ‘Make Trade Fair’ and its influential report on ‘Rigged rules and double standards’ serve as a basis from which to understand the organization's governing practices, and how these are embedded in the NGO's programme statements and policy documents. Following Barbara Cruikshank's insights on the will to empower, we argue that self-management and self-empowerment have been tirelessly put forward by Oxfam as solutions to poverty which have in turn obscured this organization's means of government.