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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Key Concepts
- Sprache: Englisch
Poverty remains one of the most urgent issues of our time. In this fully updated edition of her important and widely acclaimed intervention on the topic, Ruth Lister introduces readers to the meaning and experience of poverty in the contemporary world. The book opens with a lucid discussion of current debates around the definition and measurement of poverty in industrialized societies, before embarking on a multifaceted exploration of its varied interpretations. Drawing on thinking in the field of international development and real-life accounts, the book emphasizes key aspects of poverty such as powerlessness, lack of voice, insecurity, loss of dignity and respect. Ruth Lister embraces the relational, cultural, symbolic as well as material dimensions of poverty, and makes important links between poverty and other concepts such as capabilities, agency, human rights and citizenship. She concludes by making the case for reframing the politics of poverty as a claim for redistribution and recognition. The result is a rich and insightful analysis, which deepens and broadens our understanding of poverty today. It will be essential reading for all students in the social sciences, as well as researchers, activists and policymakers.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Series Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Abbreviations
Introduction
Concepts, definitions and measures
Concepts: the meanings of poverty
Definitions: distinguishing poverty from non-poverty
Measures: operationalizing definitions
Why concepts matter
Chapters and themes
Notes
1 Defining Poverty
Approaches to defining poverty
Broad or narrow?
Material resources or living standards?
Material resources or capabilities?
Beyond the absolute–relative dichotomy
‘Absolute’ and ‘relative’ poverty
Understanding needs
Rereading Rowntree and the implications for the notion of absolute poverty
The reconciliation of absolute and relative
Sen and the ‘absolutist core’
Doyal and Gough’s translation into a theory of human needs
Social exclusion
Public perceptions and political functions
Conclusion
Notes
2 Measuring Poverty
‘Why?’ and ‘how?’ questions
‘What?’ questions
The indicators of poverty
The poverty standard
‘Who?’ questions
Who decides?
Professional expert
Democratic
Participatory
Unit of analysis
Subjects of comparison
Conclusion
Notes
3 Inequality, Social Divisions and the Differential Experience of Poverty
Inequality, social class and polarization
The experience of poverty
Gender
The ‘feminization of poverty’’?
Hidden poverty
Economic dependence
Self-sacrifice
Time
Individuals or households?
Family, labour market and state
‘Race’ and ethnicity
Incidence
Racial discrimination and racism
Racialized stereotyping
Disability
Incidence
Causal factors
Exclusion and discrimination
Age
Older age
Childhood
Geography
Conclusion
4 Discourses of Poverty: From Othering to Respect
Othering and the power of discourse
Rooted in history
Labelling in the late twentieth and the twenty-first century
The ‘p’ words
Representations of poverty
Stigma, shame and humiliation
Dignity and respect
Conclusion
Notes
5 Poverty and Agency: From Getting By to Getting Organized
Agency
Agency and structure
Models of agency
Types of agency
Getting by
Coping strategies
Personal resources
Social resources
Augmenting resources
Getting (back) at
‘Everyday resistance’
Psychological and discursive resistance
Getting out
Getting organized
The constraints on getting organized
Subjectivities and identities
Barriers to getting organized
Overcoming the constraints
Collective self-help
Political action
Gendered action
Conclusion
Notes
6 Poverty, Human Rights and Citizenship
Human rights
Citizenship
Citizenship rights
Citizenship participation
Voice
The expertise of experience
Voice without influence?
‘Power not pity’
Empowerment
Conclusion
Notes
Conclusion: From Concept to Politics
Key themes
Structure and agency
Dynamics and process
Discourses and representations
First-hand perspectives and expertise
Research, policy and practice
Research
Policy and practice
A politics of redistribution and recognition&respect
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure 0.1
The relationship between concepts, definitions and measures of poverty
Figure 0.2
Material and non-material wheel of poverty
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
Forms of agency exercised by people in poverty
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Copyright Page
Copyright © Ruth Lister 2021
The right of Ruth Lister to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition first published in 2004 by Polity Press
This second edition first published in 2021 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4596-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4597-1(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lister, Ruth, 1949- author.
Title: Poverty / Ruth Lister.
Description: 2nd edition. | Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Series: Key concepts series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "The essential introduction to a persistent social ill"-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024398 (print) | LCCN 2020024399 (ebook) | ISBN 9780745645964 (hardback) | ISBN 9780745645971 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509546336 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Poverty.
Classification: LCC HC79.P6 L57 2021 (print) | LCC HC79.P6 (ebook) | DDC 362.5--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024398
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Dedication
To J. with love and thanks
This second edition is also dedicated to the memory of Moraene Roberts and Peter Townsend, who each, in their own way, contributed so much to the anti-poverty cause.
Preface to the First Edition
As I explain in the Introduction, my understanding of poverty has been shaped in part by my experience with the Child Poverty Action Group and more recently as a member of the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power. Over these years, I have been privileged to learn from many people – with and without experience of poverty – too numerous to name. However, before acknowledging those who have directly assisted me with this book, I do wish to pay tribute to Professor Peter Townsend. He has been an influence on my own career; but more importantly, his lifetime’s commitment to the anti-poverty cause continues to be an inspiration to many.
In writing this book, I was fortunate to be able to employ Jan Flaherty as a part-time research assistant for a year. I am grateful to her for the excellent assistance she provided and also subsequently for her insights when commenting on the draft text. I am grateful too to a number of friends and colleagues who have commented on the text. Fran Bennett, Jim Kincaid and Adrian Sinfield gave generously of their time to read the whole draft. John Clarke and David Taylor commented on all or part of Chapter 6. Advice on particular chapters from Dennis Smith, Peter Golding and Mike Pickering – all colleagues in the Department of Social Sciences – was testimony to how much I have gained from working in this collegial, inter-disciplinary department. I thank all these colleagues and friends for their feedback, even though I have not been able always to do it full justice, largely because of space constraints. I would also like to thank Andrew Arden, Saul Becker and Jane Lewis for their encouragement and wise counsel at a moment of crisis, and Louise Knight, my editor at Polity, for her patient and good-natured support.
March 2004
Preface to the Second Edition
In this second edition, I try to do justice to the extensive and rich literature on poverty that has been published since I wrote the first edition. In particular, I have been able to draw on a growing body of participatory research and psychosocial writing that add depth to many of its arguments. As well as a renewed emphasis on the relational/symbolic dimensions of poverty, including this time its dehumanizing effects and a more in-depth discussion of human rights, I pay greater attention to insecurity. This, I realized, was a serious omission in the first edition. I have also expanded the implications for policy and practice in the Conclusion. To provide space for these developments, I have removed the separate chapter on social exclusion, which is now integrated into other chapters.
The second edition has been a long time in coming. I owe my editors, in particular Jonathan Skerrett and Karina Jákupsdóttir, a debt of gratitude for their patience, as I missed deadline after deadline, largely due to my commitments in the House of Lords. But, as I write this preface a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic, the issue of poverty is taking on a new enormity throughout the world and I hope the book might contribute to public understanding of it. Thank you too to all those who helped me assemble material over the years; to members of ATD Fourth World and other ‘experts by experience’ for what I have learned from you; to Paul Dornan for his invaluable help with Chapter 2; to Fran Bennett and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on the first draft; and to J for your continued love and support.
May 2020
Abbreviations
APPGP
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty
APLE
Addressing Poverty through Lived Experience
BSAS
British Social Attitudes Survey
CASE
Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion
CLASS
Centre for Labour and Social Studies
CEC
Commission of the European Communities
CESCR
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
CoPPP
Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power
CPAG
Child Poverty Action Group
CRESR
Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research
CV19
Covid-19
DWP
Department for Work and Pensions
EAPN
European Anti-Poverty Network
EC
European Commission
EHRC
Equality and Human Rights Commission
EU
European Union
EU-SILC
European Union Statistics on Incomes and Living Conditions
IDS
Institute of Development Studies
ILO
International Labour Organization
IPPR
Institute for Public Policy Research
JRF
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
NWRO
National Welfare Rights Organization
OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OHCHR
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
ONS
Office for National Statistics
PSE (Survey)
Poverty and Social Exclusion (Survey)
SDGs
Sustainable Development Goals
SEU
Social Exclusion Unit
SLA
Sustainable livelihoods approach
STICERD
Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines
SUWN
Scottish Unemployed Workers Network
UKCAP
UK Coalition Against Poverty
UN
United Nations
UNDP
United Nations Development Programme
UNHRC
United Nations Human Rights Council
UNICEF
United Nations Children’s Fund
1Introduction
The need to lend a voice to suffering is a condition of all truth.
Adorno, 1973: 17–18
In both richer and poorer countries, millions still suffer the indignities and hardships of poverty, described in the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development as ‘the greatest global challenge’ for ‘the entire world, developed and developing countries alike’ (UN, 2015: 1, 3). Poverty as a material reality disfigures and constrains the lives of millions of women, men and children. As a preventable ‘social harm’ (Pemberton, 2015), its persistence diminishes those among the non-poor who acquiesce in or help sustain it. It is therefore not surprising that many who write about poverty emphasize the word’s moral and political claims:
If the term ‘poverty’ carries with it the implication and moral imperative that something should be done about it, then the study of poverty is only ultimately justifiable if it influences individual and social attitudes and actions. This must be borne in mind constantly if discussion on the definition of poverty is to avoid becoming an academic debate worthy of Nero – a semantic and statistical squabble that is parasitic, voyeuristic and utterly unconstructive and which treats ‘the poor’ as passive objects for attention, whether benign or malevolent – a discussion that is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. (Piachaud, 1987: 161)
I write this book with that warning ringing in my ears. There are also ethical issues involved when writing a book about poverty from a position of relative affluence. These include the danger of silencing or taking up what we might call voice-space on the issue and treating as objects those with the everyday experience of poverty who are rarely in a position to have their thoughts published. To ‘lend a voice to suffering’, as Theodor Adorno puts it, should not mean erasing the voice of suffering in speaking the ‘truth’ of poverty. It is therefore important to acknowledge that, in addition to traditional forms of expertise associated with those who theorize and research poverty, there is a different form of expertise borne of experience.
My aim is to draw on both forms of expertise. My own understanding of poverty derives not just from the academic literature but also from 16 years of working with the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), a campaigning charity; from participatory research with Peter Beresford; and from my membership of an independent Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power (CoPPP), half of whose members had direct experience of poverty. The last experience involved ‘an extraordinary journey’ in enhanced comprehension, as those of us without direct experience of poverty learned from those who live it daily (CoPPP, 2000: v; del Tufo and Gaster, 2002). I have also subsequently learned from meetings with members of ATD Fourth World (a human rights organization working with people in persistent poverty) as well as from the academic work of ‘poverty-class scholars’ (Adair, 2005: 817), writing ‘from the inside’ (McKenzie, 2015: 108), and more popular attempts ‘to walk you through what it is to be poor’ from both the inside and outside (Tirado, 2014: xx; McGarvey, 2017; Carraway, 2019; Hudson, 2019; Arnade, 2019).
The importance of incorporating the perspectives of those with experience of poverty into the theorization of and research into poverty, through participatory methods, has tended to be recognized in the context of poverty more in the global South than in the global North. The use of such an approach in the global South has provided new insights into what poverty means and feels like for those experiencing it. The results also offer important lessons for poverty analysis in the global North, which is the main, though not sole, focus of this book, at a time when globalization means that the causes and consequences of poverty are increasingly common to both (Townsend, 1993; Townsend and Gordon, 2002; Atkinson, 2019; Spicker, 2020), and the UN has emphasized the universal applicability of its sustainable development goals (2015: 13–14; Bennett, 2019). The disproportionate impact of the 2020 Covid-19 (CV19) pandemic on people in poverty and other marginalized groups throughout the world has served as a brutal reminder of that commonality. Breaking down the intellectual barriers between global South and North has helped to enrich and revitalize thinking about poverty (Maxwell, 2000; Chase and Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, 2015a).
While I write from a UK perspective, I will attempt to apply these lessons from the global South to my own analysis. I will also be referring to material from the wider continent of Europe and from the US. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that what it means to be poor can be very different in different societies, not just as between global North and South but also, for instance, as between the US and Scandinavia. Socioeconomic structural and cultural contexts shape the experiences and understandings of poverty. Yet a major global study, which bears out a central theme of this book, ‘demonstrates that, despite massive differences in material conditions, the psychosocial experience of poverty is very similar and is much shaped by the shaming to which people in poverty are exposed and the stigmatizing and discriminatory practices to which they are frequently subjected’ (Walker, 2014b: 197; see also Bray et al., 2019). Thus ‘poverty is at the same time culture-bound and universal’ (Øyen, 1996: 4).
Concepts, definitions and measures
This means that there is no single concept of poverty that stands outside history and culture. It is a construction of specific societies. Moreover, different groups within a society may construct it in different ways. Yet, ‘to suggest that poverty is socially constructed is not to deny its reality, but to implicate the whole of society in the nature of its meaning’ (Dean, 2016: 13). For these reasons, and because of the moral imperative of poverty and its implications for the distribution of resources both within and between societies, it is a political concept. As such it is highly contested. In the words of American historian Michael B. Katz, ‘poverty remains a national disgrace in part because of the way we define and think about it – which, in turn, shapes the energy we put into its eradication’ (2013: xiii). Concepts of poverty have practical effects. They carry implicit explanations that, in turn, underpin policy prescriptions. The emphasis placed upon socioeconomic structural conditions, power relationships, culture and individual behaviour varies. The policies developed to tackle poverty reflect dominant conceptualizations. In practice, concepts are mediated by definitions and measures and it is important to differentiate between these three, as they are frequently conflated and used interchangeably. A clearer separation between the three terms helps to avoid confusion and unnecessary polarization between broader and narrower notions of poverty.
Concepts: the meanings of poverty
Concepts of poverty operate at a fairly general level. They provide the framework within which definitions and measurements are developed. In essence, they are about the meanings of poverty – both to those who experience it and to different groups in society. An example would be a ‘lack of basic security’, understood as ‘the absence of one or more factors that enable individuals and families to assume basic responsibilities and to enjoy fundamental rights’ (Wresinski, 1994: 2). As we will see, insecurity associated with poverty is experienced more acutely than insecurity as it is increasingly found among those on middling incomes (Hacker, 2019).
A study of concepts of poverty also embraces how people talk about and visualize poverty: ‘discourses of poverty’ as articulated through language and images. These discourses are constructed in different forums, most notably politics, academia and the media. Each of these influences the ways in which poverty is understood by the wider society. In general, it is the understandings held by more powerful groups, rather than by those who experience poverty, that are reflected in dominant conceptualizations. The box below contains some examples of how people living in persistent poverty completed the statement ‘poverty is’. They bring out both the material and psychosocial dimensions that I will be exploring.
Poverty is:
‘Having all the same dreams for the future that everyone else has, but no way on earth to make them come true.’
‘Saying no to my kids every day of their lives.’
‘Dreading every Christmas and birthday because of the disappointment in the children’s eyes.’
‘Sleeping in a bed that used to be someone else’s, wearing cast-off clothes, and being expected to be grateful.’
‘Being just one crisis away from collapsing – every day.’
‘Being treated like nothing, less than nothing, and accepting it.’
‘Having no hope left in me at all.’
Source: ATD Fourth World workshop, Surrey, n.d.
Definitions: distinguishing poverty from non-poverty
Definitions of poverty (should) provide a more precise statement of what distinguishes the state of poverty and of being poor from that of not being in poverty/poor. Note: this does not imply ‘a firm boundary between the poor and the non-poor’ (Wolff et al., 2015: 32; Hacker, 2019) for, as we shall see in Chapter 5, there is often movement between the two categories.
Following Peter Townsend’s pathbreaking work (e.g. 1979), poverty researchers commonly define poverty in relative terms, as having insufficient resources to meet socially recognized needs and to participate in the wider society. However, as we shall see in Chapter 1, definitions differ not just according to the absolute–relative yardstick, but also in their breadth. Thus, in practice, there is sometimes a degree of overlap between definitions and concepts. For example, broader definitions like those deployed by some UN bodies incorporate notions such as a violation of basic rights and human dignity, which are not unique to the state of being poor but are associated with it. Such ‘definitions’ are perhaps better understood as conceptualizations.
Measures: operationalizing definitions
Measures of poverty represent ways of operationalizing definitions so that we can identify and count those defined as poor and gauge the depth of their poverty. This is important not least in order to hold governments to account. Official measures of poverty tend to be based on incomes (sometimes complemented by deprivation indicators), while one-off surveys are more likely to deploy indicators of living standards and of different forms of deprivation. Examples of such indicators are whether someone does not have, and is unable to afford, two meals a day, or is unable to visit friends and family because of lack of resources. Increasingly, it is argued that a rounded measure of poverty needs to combine both income and living standards (see Chapter 2). The case has also been made for listening to what people in poverty themselves think are the best measurement indicators (Bennett and Roche, 2000).
Why concepts matter
As Figure 0.1 shows, the movement from concepts to measures involves a steady narrowing of focus. To move straight to definitions and measures without first considering the broader concepts can result in losing sight of wider meanings and their implications for definitions and measures. In particular, it can exclude the understandings of poverty derived from qualitative and participatory approaches. These frequently highlight aspects of poverty that lie outside definitions focused on income and material living standards and that can be difficult to measure in surveys designed to monitor trends over time and between countries (Baulch, 1996b). Likewise, starting at the bottom with measures can encourage confusion between measures and definitions, so that arguments about competing definitions of poverty often turn out to be about competing measures. The measure of 60 per cent of median income used in EU and UK official statistics is frequently referred to as a definition. The result of treating it as such is an attenuated and highly limited technical definition, which is constrained by limitations of methodology and available data. Measurement is then in danger of becoming a substitute for analysis.
Figure 0.1 The relationship between concepts, definitions and measures of poverty
In both cases, omitting the conceptual level can encourage a myopic, technocratic approach that, in its preoccupation with measuring poverty’s extent (and sometimes depth), overlooks how it is experienced and understood. Poverty becomes reduced to statistics, described as ‘people with the tears washed off’ (Sidel, 1992, cited in Featherstone et al., 2014). In our preoccupation with counting ‘the poor’, we blind ourselves to how they constitute ‘the category of people who do not count’ (Rancière, 2001, cited in Tyler, 2013: 173) and to their suffering. At the end of his book on ‘back row America’, Chris Arnade warns that, however well-intentioned, in doing so ‘we are diminishing them by seeing them as simply numbers to be manipulated’ (2019: 283). As Else Øyen argues, some of the energy devoted to ‘measurement research’ could profitably be channelled to trying to achieve greater ‘poverty understanding’ in terms of what it means to be poor (1996: 10). If we are to achieve greater understanding, we must pay adequate attention to the conceptual level.
What is at issue here are the nonmaterial as well as the material manifestations of poverty. This changes the angle of vision so that poverty is understood not just as a disadvantaged and insecure economic condition, but also as a shameful and corrosive social relation (Jones and Novak, 1999). The latter introduces the psychosocial dimension of poverty, part of the ‘psychic landscape of social class’ (Reay, 2005: 912; see also Sayer, 2005a, 2005b; Walker, 2014b). At the heart of this psychic landscape of poverty lies social suffering: ‘the lived experience of the social damage inflicted … on the least powerful and the intra-psychic and relational wounds that result’ (Frost and Hoggett, 2008: 440). The relational wounds stem from the fact that ‘the experience of poverty is determined by others as well as by the self’ (Walker, 2014b: 120). People in poverty are wounded at the societal level (through, for example, political and media discourses that shape their experience) and at the interpersonal level (including interactions with officials and professionals) (Ridge and Wright, 2008: 3). This has led one analyst to propose a relational understanding of poverty situations as comprising a web of relations of multiple disadvantage – material and nonmaterial – created by more powerful others (Vasilachis de Gialdino, 2006: 481).1 For those caught in this web, the material and the psychosocial are ‘interwoven’ in their everyday experience of poverty and social suffering (Hooper et al., 2007: 18).
In his relational account Paul Spicker conceptualizes poverty as ‘constituted by social relationships – relations such as class, low status, social exclusion, insecurity, lack of rights’ (2020: 6, emphasis in original). Applying this globally, he argues that ‘a relational perspective’ brings out the similarities between countries in the global North and South (2020: 138). In particular, the relational perspective has been illuminated by the participatory approaches developed in the global South. Perhaps surprisingly, given the more extreme forms of material poverty in the global South, such approaches highlight certain nonmaterial aspects of poverty, such as: lack of voice; disrespect, humiliation and an assault on dignity and self-esteem; shame and stigma; powerlessness; denial of rights and diminished citizenship. These represent what I shall call the ‘relational/symbolic’ aspects of poverty, which are at odds with ‘relational equality’ (Wolff and de-Shalit, 2007: 5–6; Juncture, 2014). They exemplify what Nancy Fraser terms ‘symbolic injustice’, ‘rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication’ (1997: 14). In other words, they stem from people in poverty’s everyday interactions with the wider society and from the way they are talked about and treated by politicians, officials, the media and other influential bodies. Terms such as the ‘the poor’ and ‘poor people’ can themselves be experienced as dehumanizing and ‘Othering’ (see Chapter 4). They are therefore avoided here except where appropriate to the context, when they are placed in inverted commas.
As Caroline Moser (1998) observes, some of the development literature sets up a dichotomy between, on the one hand, ‘conventional’, ‘objective’, ‘technocratic’ approaches that reduce poverty to measurable income, and, on the other, consumption and participatory ‘subjective’ approaches grounded in people in poverty’s own understandings. While, at one level, the two approaches reflect different philosophical underpinnings, arguably they offer complementary rather than incompatible research agendas (see Chapter 2). Bob Baulch (1996b) reaches a similar conclusion. He uses the image of a pyramid to schematize these different approaches. The apex of the pyramid focuses on private consumption or income. Moving down, the pyramid broadens out to embrace access to public resources and amenities and also to assets (including human capital such as education). The base widens further to include ‘dignity’ and ‘autonomy’, which ‘are stressed by local people in participatory poverty assessments’. As Baulch points out, the last two ‘challenge the hierarchy implicit’ in the pyramid itself (1996a: 3).
Given the hierarchical nature of the pyramid image, Figure 0.2 proposes an alternative ‘poverty wheel’ to represent a relationship of parity and interdependence between the material and the relational/symbolic aspects of poverty. Within the wheel, the material core of poverty represents the hub. This core is referred to as ‘unacceptable hardship’ in an alternative schema, developed by Spicker (2007, 6; 2020, 17). The rim of the wheel represents the relational/symbolic aspects of poverty as experienced by those living in unacceptable material hardship. Both hub and rim are shaped by social and cultural relations. Thus, material needs at the hub are socially and culturally defined and are mediated and interpreted at the relational/symbolic rim, which itself revolves in the sphere of the social and cultural to produce social suffering.
Figure 0.2 Material and non-material wheel of poverty
Chapters and themes
This is a book about the concept of poverty. Where appropriate, general reference is made to debates about causes and policy responses. Although these are not the main focus, it is important to bear in mind the interconnections between explanations, policy responses and concepts, definitions and measures.2 The book’s structure mirrors the move from the material hub to the relational/symbolic rim. It starts, in Chapter 1, with definitions of poverty, which are the bread and butter of many textbooks on the subject, but nevertheless raise some tricky questions. The chapter considers the current state of the debate and locates what is a relatively narrow approach to definition within a broader social scientific literature, with reference also to the concept of social exclusion. The operationalization of definitions is the subject of Chapter 2, which gives a flavour of the increasingly sophisticated literature on measurement.
Chapter 3 looks at the structural intersecting inequalities that frame, shape and interact with poverty. In addition to the more general context of socioeconomic polarization that exists both globally and within many societies, it details how poverty is both a gendered and a racialized phenomenon. It also looks at how disability and age interact with poverty and at how poverty is experienced at the level of the individual, household and wider community. The experience of poverty at the relational/symbolic rim of the wheel is the subject of Chapter 4. Through the notion of discourses of poverty, it explores how ‘the poor’ are represented in political and academic discourses and media images. It discusses the language of poverty, and its historical associations, together with more contemporary discourses, which serve to ‘Other’ and stereotype ‘the poor’. It emphasizes the importance of language and image both to how those in poverty are perceived and treated by the wider society and to how they may perceive themselves.
The cultural meanings created by such discourses create the context within which people in poverty exercise their agency as social actors. These meanings all too often label ‘the poor’ as passive, be it in the role of benign ‘victim’ or malign ‘welfare dependant’. Within the structural framework developed in Chapter 3, Chapter 5 in contrast draws on contemporary sociological and international development theory, as well as poverty research, to explore how people in poverty can be characterized as actors in their own lives, exercising agency, including political agency. This then leads into Chapter 6. Here, the focus is on human rights, citizenship, voice and power. One of the most striking developments in the contemporary politics of poverty is the growing demand for poverty to be understood as powerlessness and a denial of fundamental rights and for the voices of those in poverty to be heard in public debates.
As well as discussing some implications for research and policy, the Conclusion draws out a number of key themes. They point to a conceptualization of poverty that gives due regard to four key aspects: its relational/symbolic/cultural and discursive facets as well as its material core; the agency of those living in poverty (within structural constraints); the importance of process and dynamics as well as outcomes; and, underpinning each of these, the perspectives and views of those with experience of poverty. Such a conceptualization, it is argued, could help to overcome the false dichotomy between the material/socioeconomic and the symbolic/cultural/relational, and underpin a combined politics of redistribution and recognition that integrates distributional and relational equality (Wolff and de-Shalit, 2007). More generally, it aims to integrate the all-too-often marginalized concerns of those in poverty into wider political and theoretical debates about citizenship, democracy and human flourishing in a good society and to locate the analysis of poverty within a broader, interdisciplinary, social scientific framework.
Notes
1
This is rather different from, although not inconsistent with, the relational approach advocated by Elwood and Lawson, which, they explain, treats ‘poverty and privilege as mutually constituted, examining poverty not as a category or material position but as a relationship and a site of conflict, crisis, and contestation’ (2018: 6).
2
Some of these issues are dealt with more fully by Alcock, 2006; Deacon, 2002; Mooney, 2008; Lister, 2011b; Katz, 2013.
1Defining Poverty
The concept of poverty is translated into policy through a more precise set of definitions and measures. While, as argued in the Introduction, it is important not to confuse definitions and measures, some of the issues raised straddle the two and loop back into conceptualizations. Definitions are the subject of this first chapter; measures are dealt with in the second. After a general discussion of different approaches to defining poverty, this chapter looks at the traditional opposition between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ definitions and at alternative formulations that attempt to reconcile the two.
Approaches to defining poverty
How we define poverty is critical to political, policy and academic debates about the concept. It is bound up with explanations and has implications for solutions. Value judgements are involved. Definition thus has to be understood as a political as well as a social scientific act and, as such, has often been the source of controversy. There is no single ‘correct’ definition. However, as we shall see, most researchers now accept that any definition has to be understood, at least in part, in relation to particular social, cultural and historical contexts. This has implications for studies that attempt to compare poverty in very different kinds of society.
Broad or narrow?
Definitions vary according to their narrowness or breadth, that is in terms of whether they are confined to the material core, the nature of that material core, and whether they embrace also relational/symbolic factors associated with poverty, as identified in the Introduction. Brian Nolan and Christopher Whelan are among those who argue for a definition towards the narrower end of the scale on the grounds that too broad a definition runs the danger of losing sight of the distinctive ‘core notion of poverty’ (1996: 193). Following Townsend, they define poverty in terms of the inability to participate in society (which is broader than more ‘absolute’ definitions confined to subsistence needs) but emphasize that what is distinctive is the ‘inability to participate owing to lack of resources’ (1996: 188). This confines their definition ‘to those areas of life where consumption or participation are determined primarily by command over financial resources’ (1996: 193). This approach underpins the definition used in a major Joseph Rowntree Foundation UK anti-poverty initiative: ‘when someone’s resources, mainly material resources, are well below those required to meet their minimum needs, including participating in society’ (JRF, 2016: 13).
While such definitions flatten out increasingly popular, more multidimensional accounts of poverty (see, for instance, Tomlinson and Walker, 2009; Hick 2014a, 2016; also Chapter 2) in favour of greater focus, they are not necessarily incompatible with them. By implication they also exclude nonmaterial elements found in broad UN definitions – for example, ‘lack of participation in decision-making’, ‘a violation of human dignity’, ‘powerlessness’ and ‘susceptibility to violence’ (Langmore, 2000: 37). Similarly, they exclude some of the nonmaterial aspects emphasized by people in poverty themselves, such as lack of voice, respect and self-esteem, isolation and humiliation (see Chapters 4 and 6). Given that, as argued in the Introduction, the function of a definition is to differentiate the condition defined (poverty) from other conditions (non-poverty), it makes sense to pitch the definition of poverty towards the narrower end of the spectrum. Aspects such as ‘lack of participation in decision-making’, ‘susceptibility to violence’ and ‘humiliation’ are not unique to the condition of poverty; they can also be associated with other conditions such as being Black in a White-dominated society or living with disability in a disabling society. However, in order not to lose sight of the condition’s multidimensionality and its wider meanings or of the interpenetration of the material and the relational/symbolic, it is important that definitions of poverty are not divorced from wider conceptualizations such as those developed in subsequent chapters.
Material resources or living standards?
Another source of variation in definitions of poverty, reflected in the literature on measurement, lies in whether they are rooted in conceptualizations that are concerned, on the one hand, with a person’s material resources, especially income, or, on the other, with actual outcomes in terms of living standards and activities (Nolan and Whelan, 1996). As Stein Ringen puts it, ‘in the first case, poverty is defined indirectly through the determinants of way of life, in the second case, directly by way of life’ (1987: 146). In practice, these two approaches are often treated as complementary (as in Nolan and Whelan’s definition, above, and Townsend’s, below). Indeed, Ringen’s own definition is not unusual in combining the two: ‘a low standard of living, meaning deprivation in way of life because of insufficient resources to avoid such deprivation’ (1987: 146). Put simply, someone is ‘“poor” when they have both a low standard of living and a low income’ (Gordon et al., 2000: 91).
Tony Atkinson makes a related, but more fundamental, distinction between a concern with standard of living and a concern with a citizen’s ‘right to a minimum level of resources’ (1989: 12, emphasis added). The former is more common in the literature and as the basis for empirical research. The latter might be said to be implicit in measures of poverty based on the numbers falling below a certain point in the income scale or the level of income provided by a country’s social assistance scheme (see Chapter 2). While the ‘right to a minimum level of resources’ has not been widely adopted as an explicit definition of poverty, it does have a value as one element in a broader conceptualization of poverty. It means that people ‘are entitled, as citizens, to a minimum income, the disposal of which is a matter for them’ and which ‘may be regarded as a pre-requisite for participation in a particular society, as a guarantee of “positive freedom”’ (Atkinson, 1990: 8). As we shall see in Chapter 6, poverty is increasingly being conceptualized as a denial of human and citizenship rights.
The conceptualization of poverty in this way is also helpful from the perspective of understanding and combating women’s poverty. Following Atkinson, Stephen Jenkins suggests that a feminist concept of poverty can be described in terms of the lack of an ‘individual right to a minimum degree of potential economic independence’ (1991: 464, emphasis added; see also Chapter 3). Although the feminist definition propounded by Jane Millar and Caroline Glendinning is not couched in the language of rights, it focuses on the individual’s capacity to be self-supporting on the grounds that ‘people who are financially dependent upon others must be considered vulnerable to poverty’ (1992: 9). The notion of vulnerability to poverty is helpful to understanding the situation of women without an independent income who nevertheless enjoy a comfortable standard of living. In the same vein Fran Bennett and Mary Daly propose that such ‘lack of control over an adequate income’ should at the very least be regarded as a (usually gendered) risk of poverty (2014: 39). They also suggest that it constitutes one aspect of a wider financial precarity, as vulnerability to poverty is the condition of a growing number who lack the financial resources necessary to cope with labour market insecurity in what has been dubbed the age of the ‘precariat’ (Standing 2011; Lansley and Mack, 2015; Orton, 2015; Hacker, 2019; see also Chapter 5). The extent of wider financial precarity and vulnerability to poverty has been brought home painfully by the CV19 pandemic.
Material resources or capabilities?
So far, I have outlined a focused approach to defining poverty in terms of an inability to participate in society, involving both a low income and a low standard of living. The work of Amartya Sen (and also Martha Nussbaum) offers an alternative perspective on the role of low income in the definition of poverty. It has been hugely influential within the international development context, contributing to a paradigm shift in the meaning of development away from economic growth and GDP to a focus on ‘poverty as a denial of choices and opportunities for living a tolerable life’ (UNDP, 1997: 2; Vizard, 2001). Although its initial impact on thinking and research about poverty in the North was less marked, increasingly Sen’s and Nussbaum’s ideas have percolated through into both academic and policy thinking (Carpenter, 2009). Their approach offers insights that are helpful to poverty’s broader conceptualization in the North. It also, as we shall see below, throws light on the absolute–relative question.
Sen takes a step backwards from both income and living standards to ask why they matter. His answer is that they don’t matter in their own right, for they are simply instrumental to what really matters, namely the kind of life that a person is able to lead and the choices and opportunities open to her in leading that life. At the heart of his approach is an understanding of living as involving ‘being and doing’. Sen uses two key terms to express this idea: ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’. ‘Functionings’ refer to what a person manages to do or be; they range from elementary nourishment to more sophisticated levels such as participation in the life of the community and the achievement of self-respect. ‘Capabilities’ denote what a person can do or be, that is the range of choices that are open to her. Critical here is ‘the freedom that a person actually has to do this or be that – things that he or she may value doing or being’ (2009: 231–2). In their exploration of the notion of ‘disadvantage’, Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit modify this formulation to take account of insecurity so that disadvantage is defined ‘as a lack of genuine opportunity for secure functioning’ (2007: 9, 182).
Money, Sen argues, is just a means to an end and the goods and services or ‘commodities’ it buys are simply particular ways of achieving functionings (1985a, 1992, 1999). The role of money in achieving functionings depends on the extent to which goods and services are commodified (i.e., are exchanged for money), so will vary between societies. Moreover, the relationship between money and capabilities/functionings depends in part on how the former is converted into the latter by individuals. This can vary according to personal factors such as age, sex, pregnancy, health, disability or even metabolic rate and body size, which can affect the level and nature of a person’s needs. For instance, the capability to function of a disabled person may be lower than that of a nondisabled person even if the former’s income is higher than that of the latter. This is because of the costs associated with the additional needs disabled people may have to meet in order to achieve similar functionings to those of the nondisabled (see Chapter 3). Sen’s argument is that poverty should therefore be defined in terms not of income and actual living standards, but of capability failure: ‘the failure of basic capabilities to reach certain minimally acceptable levels’ (1992: 109).
There are thus two main planks to the case Sen makes against defining poverty in terms of low income or material resources. The narrower one, concerning the differences in the ability of people to convert income into capabilities, is addressed by Nolan and Whelan. They point out that, as Sen concedes, it is possible to take some account of such interpersonal factors in the setting of income poverty lines. However, on the basis of their own research, they conclude that, other than in the case of disability, ‘it is not clear that interpersonal variation is so pronounced as to pose a major problem’ (1996: 184). Moreover, there is a danger that too great an emphasis on physical factors that affect the conversion of income into capabilities could encourage a narrow focus on physical needs and their physiological rather than social construction (see below).
The more fundamental plank concerns the relationship between low income and a person’s ability to live the kind of life they value. Sen’s formulation of this relationship is helpful in a number of ways. It reminds us that income is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. In stressing the ‘intrinsic importance’ of that end – what people are able to do and be – Rod Hick comments that it ‘can provide a lens for poverty analysis which emphasizes its normative or ethical dimension’ (2012: 303). It focuses on the individual, thereby rendering gender inequalities more easily visible (Jackson, 1998; Nussbaum, 2006; Wolff et al., 2015). It also constructs human beings as people with agency for whom the freedom to be able to make choices about what they want to be and do and how they deploy the resources available to them is of fundamental importance (see Chapter 5). It is thus ‘better able to accommodate the diversity of human beings and the complexity of their circumstances’ (Dean, 2010: 84). In addition, there is a growing literature that connects capabilities with a human rights approach (developed in Chapter 6), through its attention to the ability of people to exercise rights and their shared ‘focus on the dignity and freedom of the individual’ (Vizard et al., 2011: 2; Nussbaum, 2006; Vizard and Burchardt, 2007; Carpenter, 2009).
What is at issue is, in Nussbaum’s words, ‘a life that is worthy of the dignity of the human being’ (2000: 5). In effect, capability theorists focus on the positive – of the kind of life we want people to be able to achieve in order to ‘flourish’ (Nussbaum, 1995; see also Pogge, 2002) – rather than the negative – of the lack of material resources that can prevent them from achieving it. In doing so, they both reflect the aspirations of some poverty activists (UKCAP, 2008) and usefully integrate poverty into the wider concerns of the population as a whole and into a wider social scientific literature, rather than ghettoizing it in a separate box. In the context of the South, this is reflected in ideas of ‘human development’ and ‘well-being’ (UNDP, 1997; Narayan et al., 2000). Indeed, the concept of ‘well-being’ has gained currency in the North also (including in relation to children; see, for instance, Camfield et al., 2009), where a similar approach can be discerned in the notion of ‘quality of life’ and in the emphasis on human flourishing in the emergent study of ‘social harm’ (Pemberton, 2015).1 These too involve ‘a shift of perspective from negative to positive’ (Baars et al., 1997: 302; Dean, 2010). Sen and Nussbaum have, themselves, made the link between their capabilities approach and the notions of ‘well-being’ and ‘quality of life’, ‘to be assessed’, Sen suggests, ‘in terms of the capability to achieve valuable functionings’ (1993: 31). They point to the strong parallels between their own work and the ‘level of living’ surveys conducted by Scandinavian social scientists (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993). Motivated by a broader concern with inequality rather than poverty, these focus on how individuals as ‘active beings’ are able to use their resources (material and nonmaterial) to ‘control and consciously direct [their] living conditions’ (Erikson, 1993: 73; see also Chapter 5).
Parallels can also be drawn with the concept of ‘social quality’ developed by European social scientists as a means of assessing ‘the quality of society or social relations’ (Tomlinson et al., 2016: 346). However, looking at the notion of capability failure through the lens of social quality helps to illuminate not just the strengths of the notion’s positive focus, but also its weaknesses as a definition of poverty. Social quality is defined as ‘the extent to which people are able to participate in the social, economic and cultural lives of their communities under conditions which enhance their well-being and individual potential’ (Beck et al., 1997: 3; see also Tomlinson et al., 2016: 347). Although poverty is ‘central to the concept of social quality’ and its reduction would represent an indicator of social quality, it is only one of a number of conditions that serve to diminish social quality and cannot serve as the sole measuring rod (Beck et al., 1997: 11). Moreover, the opposite of well-being is ill-being, which may, or may not, be associated with poverty (Baulch, 1996b).
The problem with defining poverty as capability failure is that it is, in effect, conflating a wider condition – be it capabilities, quality of life, well-being or social quality – with what is conventionally understood as one aspect of that condition, namely being in poverty or not. If the two are treated as synonymous, it becomes impossible to separate out poverty as conventionally understood from other conditions that serve to undermine capabilities, well-being or social quality, or to distinguish between cause and effect. Sen himself acknowledges that ‘the perspective of capability-poverty does not involve any denial of the sensible view that low income is clearly’ a major factor in poverty, ‘since lack of income can be a principal reason for a person’s capability deprivation’ (1999: 87). He also makes clear that low income is not the only influence on capabilities. The question then arises as to whether it makes sense to describe as poverty a situation of capability deprivation that has nothing to do with low income. For example, if a wealthy person’s ability to be and do is constrained by serious illness, it is misleading to call this a state of poverty.
One way to get around this is to distinguish between the related notions of ‘capability’ and ‘income poverty’ – that is, ‘poverty as capability inadequacy’ and ‘poverty as lowness of income’, as Sen himself does on occasion (1999: 90). The UNDP (1997) similarly distinguishes capability-based ‘human’ poverty from ‘income’ poverty. However, such formulations still involve an elastic use of the term ‘poverty’ to embrace situations that might not involve lack of material resources at all. It might therefore make more sense to talk of ‘capability deprivation’, as Sen sometimes does (1999: 20), so that poverty can retain the more focused meaning discussed above. In similar vein, Hick suggests that ‘deprivation’ could be defined with reference to capabilities, leaving ‘poverty’ to ‘retain its narrower meaning, with a lack of resources at its core’ (2012: 306; 2014b). This chimes with the conclusion reached by Wolff et al. in their philosophical review of poverty: ‘Rather than attempting to redefine poverty as capability deprivation, the clearer approach is to reserve the term poverty for resource-related deprivation while accepting it is only one part of possible human deprivation’ (2015: 26).
While income is, as Sen rightly points out, a means and not an end, the symbolic and actual significance of money in the form of income or wealth and savings – and lack of it – in commodified, wage-based societies should not be underestimated. As Karl Marx understood, money may be instrumental but it is also inseparable from the power that it confers: ‘I can carry [money] around with me in my pocket as the universal social power … Money puts social power as a thing into the hands of the private person, who as such uses this power’ (1987: 431–2).
One danger of downplaying income when defining poverty is that it can be used to justify a policy stance opposed to raising the incomes of those in poverty. It has been argued, for instance, that a capability approach ‘requires a change in public policy focus from the reduction of monetary inequalities to the reduction of inequalities in “capabilities”’ (Raveaud and Salais, 2001: 61; see also Giddens, 2002; Byrne, 2011). Although this is an interpretation that Sen himself might not necessarily endorse, for those who still believe in the importance of a more equitable distribution of income and resources to tackling poverty, it serves as a warning. Valuable as the notion of ‘capability deprivation’ is to the conceptualization of poverty, it should complement rather than supplant more conventional, resource-based definitions.
Moreover, it is important to locate a capabilities approach, with its focus on individual agency, firmly within a broader structural analysis (see Chapters 3 and 5) in order to avoid Townsend’s stricture that it ‘represents a sophisticated adaptation of the individualism which is rooted in neo-classical economics’ (1993: 136). Neither capabilities nor functionings are free-floating, but instead are shaped by structural positioning and also by welfare institutions and levels of collective provision (Raveaud and Salais, 2001). These also affect the ability to convert material resources into functionings. The capability framework is thus able to accommodate the structural constraints and opportunities faced by individuals (Burchardt, 2008a; Wolff et al., 2015), even though it does not address market inequalities as such (Phillips, 2001; Carpenter, 2009; Dean, 2010).
In this section, I have explained how, on the one hand, Sen’s capability approach can enhance our understanding of poverty, but why, on the other, it does not constitute a definition of poverty and why it therefore needs to be deployed with caution. We shall return to Sen’s work in the next section in the context of the distinction made between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ poverty.
Beyond the absolute–relative dichotomy
‘Absolute’ and ‘relative’ poverty
This distinction has been central to post-war debates about how to define poverty. Definitions deployed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree, the pioneers of modern poverty research, were supposedly ‘absolute’ in the sense that poverty was said to be understood as lacking sufficient money to meet basic physical needs. At its most basic, absolute poverty is defined in terms of survival; more commonly, it refers to subsistence, linked to a basic standard of physical capacity necessary for production (paid work) and reproduction (the bearing and nurturing of children). Nutrition is central to such definitions: ‘an absolute standard means one defined by reference to the actual needs of the poor and not by reference to the expenditure of those who are not poor. A family is poor if it cannot afford to eat’ (Joseph and Sumption, 1979: 27).
Implicit in this statement is a rejection of the alternative ‘relative’ definition, developed by Townsend and articulated most fully in his monumental Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979). Townsend criticizes the narrow subsistence notion of needs, divorced from their social context, upon which absolute definitions of poverty were based. According to his alternative, relative, definition:
Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from ordinary living patterns and activities. (1979: 31)
