If people are interested in this they may want to look at my unpublished thesis:

‘I mean we’re not the richest but we’re not poor’: Discourses of Poverty and Social Exclusion’ (2008) which explored discourses of poverty and social exclusion with people defined as living in poverty.  Respondents reproduced many mainstream poverty discourses, including scepticism of real poverty existing in Britain and the othering of people who might be seen as ‘poor’. ‘Poverty’ was formulated in extreme and ‘absolute’ terms and was perceived as occurring ‘elsewhere’: another neighbourhood, another country or historically.  Dis-identification with ‘poverty’ was therefore accomplished in a number of ways, from its ‘absolute’ conceptualisation through to strategies of distancing and the presentation of socially positive subjectivities, such as ‘good parent’ and paid worker.  In this way respondents dis-identified with the characteristics and the label of ‘poverty’ but without denying economic and material hardships.  People’s discursive power therefore resided in their ability to renegotiate the label of poverty as one that was inapplicable to them and to redefine their difficult economic position in terms of ‘managing’.  ‘Responsibility’ was also a key concept to emerge, deployed by respondents to avoid social censure for their own economic circumstances whilst simultaneously reproving others for theirs.

The research focus developed in part because of my personal experiences of poverty at different points in my life, including being raised in a lone parent family in receipt of benefits, married as a teenager and as a lone parent on benefits myself.  

Dr Jan Flaherty
School of Applied Social Sciences
Durham University
Durham
DH1 3JT



Debt on Teesside: 01642769570


________________________________________
From: Social-Policy is run by SPA for all social policy specialists [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Shildrick, Tracy [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 30 March 2013 12:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Recent letter in  Guardian

But we do know from research that people experiencing poverty will often deny that they are poor and frequently talk about how they are able to 'cope' and 'manage' with limited resources. My colleague, Rob MacDonald and I have recently written a paper for The Sociological Review which engages with some of these issues.

In the paper we draw on our research with people experiencing poverty and the ways in which they talked about poverty both in respect of their own experiences and how they talked about others. Our interviewees were keen to deny that they were poor and  instead they talked - almost exactly like the mother in the email message below - about being able to 'cope' and 'manage' with limited resources. This was despite the fact that many were in deep poverty and at times, could not afford to feed or clothe themselves or their families properly.

It is in a context where poverty is either invisible (thought to exist elsewhere but not in the UK) or that is it deemed to be a consequence of personal failing, that our interviewees made sense of their own lives. Interviewees were not only rejecting the stigma of 'poverty' but they were also constructing a self-identity which set them apart from the (usually) nameless mass of ‘Others’ who were believed, variously, to be workshy and to claim benefits illegitimately. These ‘others’ were people who were described as being unable or unwilling to 'manage' their money and who engaged in blame-worthy consumption habits (spending money on drink and drugs). Interviews were heavily loaded with these moral assessments of the poverty of others. The popular and political invisibility and/ or distortion of the realities of poverty feeds this widespread belief that, where poverty does exist, it must be self-imposed.

Our research shows that these discourses about the ‘undeserving poor’ are not simply the ‘top-down’ rhetoric of the powerful (or the ‘non-poor’) but are shared and enacted by those at the bottom, skewed downwards towards ‘others’. In the paper we argue that our interviewees displayed deeply felt and strongly held discursive devices deployed to protect the self from social and psychic blame, by deflecting it on to others, even though those ‘others’ were objectively just like them. In doing so our interviewees sought to distance themselves from the stigma of poverty and the shame of ‘welfare dependency’ as well as attempting to bolster a sense of family respectability and personal pride in managing to get by in hard conditions. So when people experiencing poverty talk about coping and managing, we should be wary of accepting these accounts at face value (or as evidence that others in similar circumstances are failing to cope or manage). The reality is far more complex than this and furthermore, to do so, risks falling into the trap of perpetuating a hegemonic discourse which seeks to explain poverty as a failing of the individual when evidence shows that this is very rarely the case.

If you are interested in any of these ideas please do look out for the forthcoming publication, Shildrick, T. and MacDonald, R. (2013) 'Poverty Talk: how people experiencing poverty deny their poverty and why they blame the poor' in The Sociological Review, (forthcoming)

Best wishes
Tracy
________________________________________
From: Social-Policy is run by SPA for all social policy specialists [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Paul Ashton [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 29 March 2013 23:02
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Recent letter in  Guardian

John

My last post was merely in response to Adrian's desire to see reviews of BB. That was the only one that I could see when I googled. Of course, it was rather fortuitous for me since it was the thoughts of a single parent of three on benefits who could not understand why some parents in her position claim that they could not afford to send their children to school without "a breakfast in their bellies". Neither can I -- even after watching the programme. She may only be an 'outlier' who manages well, but coming from this lady, in her circumstances, it was a powerful reminder of where poverty researchers have consistently failed to properly look into the causes of poverty.

This, John, is the very point on which I have argued before and one which no poverty researcher in this country (that I am aware of) has yet bothered to include in their investigations. Nobody wants to know about those who manage well, or even okay, on their low incomes, and to investigate why others in similar positions do not.

I made the point also in a recent article on child poverty that under our current benefit system we give an unemployed childless couple £111.45 a week plus housing costs. A similar couple with two children gets £258.83 and housing costs, i.e. more is given to support the children (£147.38) than for the needs of the adults themselves! Even in work, a single-earner couple with two children on £18,000p.a. gets around £145p.w. in child benefit and child tax credit. So why cannot these parents send their children to school with "a breakfast in their bellies"? Could it be that many parents are not spending those relatively generous state benefits given for their children on them, but are instead absorbing the money into general household outgoings unconnected or only loosely connected with the children's welfare? This is what researchers, charities and governments should now be addressing, instead of sidestepping.

There; I'm worse even that Michael's son, aren't I?

Regards,
Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Veit-Wilson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Paul Ashton" <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, 29 March, 2013 6:43:58 PM
Subject: RE: Recent letter in  Guardian



Oh come on, Paul, you can do better than that! You were an economist and know perfectly well that outliers like this Netmums' letter prove nothing about the shape of the distribution. Frankly, if this and the contents of the Telegraph's Toby Young blog and various people's comments there is the best that they can do to replicate, test and refute the PSE evidence of the scale, intensity and nature of poverty in the UK today, it suggests that even the government's friends recognise the PSE evidence stands securely and the contents of the Guardian letter are fully justified.

This list is, I believe, for social scientists not anecdotalists, and while it's a commonplace to say about the latter that one should ignore them because to answer encourages them so, in present political circumstances it is a mistake to ignore them since dependence on anecdotalism as a substitute for robust and reliable evidence exemplifies a serious and growing problem of the appalling quality of social policy making and implementation by this government. To spell it all out would take far too much space here and would be redundant for almost all list members, but it has to be said somewhere. There are so many examples, and not only in social policy.

One of the curious issues in the responses which Paul commended in the Toby Y. blog and comments is the assertion that the signatories are all members of the Labour Party. What a strange idea such correspondents must have of anybody who opposes current cruel government social policies. For myself [not a member], I wish the Labour Party would find the guts it once had to express the social democratic principles of freedom, equality and solidarity in all its everyday policies. Then we would, for example, not be talking about welfare for others but social security for us all. The income maintenance system would have to be minimally adequate according to what the population itself on average considers acceptable for all [see PSE and MIS] and not be based on politicians' prejudices and anecdotes. As these FES principles are those expressed since the French revolution, one might expect them to be supported by the bourgeiosie nowadays as they were then. So are
 we to assume that Mr Young and those who support his assertions are all 18th century Bourbon reactionaries against even the middle classes? I'm sure he and they would want us to produce better evidence that he is, than such flippancies as they seem to believe is evidence against the signatories and the case they put forward.

But of course most real social scientist list readers know all that. It's just a pity that the level of proper political debate has descended to such depths, especially at a time when the government is deliberately making some people suffer bitterly but let other people suffer a good deal less if at all. That is what concerns the signatories, because none of the sufffering is necessary [as many reputable economists have shown], and even if it were, the broadest shoulders should carry the heaviest loads. Is that simple and ancient principle one which Paul Ashton and others find so very reprehensible and radically left-wing? If so, they should come clean about their egregious ideas of fairness about the distribution of national burdens to solve problems we are all in together instead of being magnificently abusive to those of us who do care about the deliberate infliction by government politicians of avoidable human suffering.

Have a good holiday!

John VW.

------------------------------------------------------------
From Professor John Veit-Wilson
Newcastle University GPS -- Sociology
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England.
Telephone: +44[0]191-222 7498
email [log in to unmask]
www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/j.veit-wilson/


-----Original Message-----
From: Social-Policy is run by SPA for all social policy specialists [ mailto:[log in to unmask] ] On Behalf Of Paul Ashton
Sent: 29 March 2013 14:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Letter in today's Guardian

From Netmums: Breadline Britain: "I would, be grateful on what you actually think about the state of the UK at the moment, with all the changes to the benefit system, child poverty and child abuse including neglect in the home also that of domestic abuse (sorry if that offends anybody). plus the claims that parents cannot afford to send their children to school with a breakfast in their bellies not just those on benefits but those parents on a working wage.
I am a single mum of three girls. living on benefits, I can afford to pay my bills each month, buy clothes for my children and buy adequate fitting shoes. My girls have three meals a day as do I.
Do you think, that It is all down to being able to budget your money with either that of benefits or a working wage or that the cost of living is just to high in Britain today." Lisa T

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adrian Sinfield" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, 29 March, 2013 10:44:31 AM
Subject: Re: Letter in today's Guardian


I rather think that it is Toby Young's riposte to social policy 'experts' in the Telegraph that Paul Ashton is inviting us to read. As he says:

And a magnificent response to it in their second favourite newspaper: http://tinyurl.com/cd777zn

Could really liven up a tutorial, and just the thing to forward to family and friends. I had hoped someone might respond but am intrigued that it can come out so very quickly. Helps to get the message out beyond the Guardian anyway - and surprised by some of the responses.

I will be interested to see what coverage the Breadline Britain report and the programme based on it last night gets. The report is at http://www.poverty.ac.uk / That certainly deserves and needs as much dissemination as possible.

Best wishes, yours, Adrian

On 29 Mar 2013, at 09:12, Kirstein Rummery wrote:

I think this may be the link Paul is referring to

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/27/benefit-cuts-poverty-stopped-experts

Kirstein