(With many apologies for any cross-posting)
Poverty – by Ruth Lister, published 15 October 2004
It is not often that a social policy book is the subject of a breakfast
seminar at 11 Downing Street so that I thought that it was well worth
noting with a special puff on this mailbase.
Immediately below is the Polity Press publicity for Ruth’s book with
price and other details, and below that is the talk she gave last week
to the Smith Institute on the day the book was published. Altogether
that takes up some pages, but I hope that you will agree that this is
preferable to an attachment.
Could I encourage you to treat Ruth’s talk as an invitation to follow
up with your own comments on the subject?
Adrian Sinfield
Poverty – by Ruth Lister – from Polity Press publicity
· A stimulating new text exploring one of the most urgent issues of our
time.
· Introduces readers to the meaning and experience of poverty in the
contemporary world.
· Opens with a lucid discussion of current debates about poverty in
industrialized societies, before embarking on a thought-provoking
exploration of its conceptualization.
· Draws on thinking in the field of international development as well
as real life accounts to emphasize aspects of poverty such as
powerlessness, lack of voice, loss of dignity and respect.
'This thought-provoking analysis is informed by its understanding of
both the experience and meaning of poverty. It deserves to be made
compulsory reading for all those engaged in making, carrying out or
studying policies that affect the lives of people in poverty in any
way'.
Adrian Sinfield, University of Edinburgh, and a Vice Chair of CPAG.
Poverty remains one of the most urgent issues of our time. In this
stimulating new book, 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 thought-provoking and multi-faceted exploration of its
conceptualisation. It draws on thinking in the field of international
development and real life accounts to emphasize aspects of poverty such
as powerlessness, lack of voice, loss of dignity and respect. In so
doing, the book embraces the relational, cultural, symbolic as well as
material dimensions of poverty and makes important links between
poverty and other concepts like well-being, capabilities, social
divisions and exclusion, agency and citizenship. It 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.
This book will be essential reading for all students in the social
sciences, as well as researchers, activists and policy-makers.
Publication details – and the book can be ordered from www.polity.co.uk
- but you have to click on your area, Rest of the World or USA, and not
the book order icon!
229 x 152 mm 208 pages Publication date: October 2004
0-7456-2564-9 paperback - price £14.99
0-7456-2563-0 hardback price £50.00
Below is the text of Ruth’s talk in 11 Downing Street to which Polly
Toynbee and Ed Miliband replied. This gives you a fuller idea of what
she covers in her book. I hope that the whole discussion may appear
as a Smith Institute publication shortly. My main recollections of the
seminar are (a) the number of times that inequality of outcome was
explicitly acknowledged by many present to be a major problem that has
to be tackled if any real progress is to be made toward ending child
poverty – and if a third term is to mean anything; and (b) the extent
to which those in office presented tackling child poverty as a ‘lonely’
struggle with no strong demand from inside or outside government.
Adrian Sinfield.
‘Conceptualising poverty’ – Ruth Lister
Smith Institute Seminar. 13 October 2004
Thanks. Your invitations said I would be drawing out some policy
implications from one of the central arguments of my book. I will do
that but I hope you won’t feel you were brought here under false
pretences if I first set out part of the argument itself.
I plan to make three main, related, points:
It’s important to think about poverty at the conceptual level and also
to make a clear distinction between concepts, definitions &
measurements.
We need to listen to what people with experience of poverty themselves
have to say. Why? Because it helps us understand better the meaning of
poverty, in particular how it is experienced as a shameful and
corrosive social relation as well as a material condition.
This then has implications for politics and policy, which I sum up
under the rubric of a politics of social justice that combines
redistribution and ‘recognition&respect’.
1. Conceptualisation, definition & measurement
When I was asked to write a book on the concept of poverty, before
agreeing, I asked myself what it might add to the poverty literature.
I decided that it allowed me to focus on the meaning of poverty in a
way that texts that are preoccupied with definition, measurement and
material impact do not.
My first step was to make a clear distinction for myself between
concept, definition and measurement. And though it may seem rather
obvious, people seem to have found it really helpful because in
practice the three are all too often conflated and thus confused.
How often have you heard someone say that the government defines
poverty as 60% of median income? This is not a definition, it’s a
measure. Measures attempt to operationalise definitions within the
constraints of methodology and available data. The function of a
definition should be to distinguish the state of poverty from
non-poverty. The literature points to a number of key elements:
inadequate material resources and living standards and consequent
inability to participate fully in society.
People working in the international development field would probably
respond that that is too narrow. UN definitions, for instance, include
elements such as ‘lack of participation in decision-making’, ‘violation
of human dignity’, ‘powerlessness’. These are vitally important. But
I would argue they are better understood at the level of
conceptualisation rather than definition because they are not unique to
the condition of poverty.
And because they are so important to understanding the meaning of
poverty, the starting point of my book is that we must not lose sight
of the conceptual level in the understandable preoccupation with
measurement of trends and material impact.
Concepts of poverty operate at the more general level of meanings and
understandings and also discourses, as articulated through language and
images. Traditionally, it has been the understandings held by more
powerful groups – politicians, journalists, academics [though we may
not feel very powerful!] – that have been reflected in dominant
conceptualisations. This is beginning to change thanks, in part, to
the work of organisations (like Oxfam and ATD Fourth World) that call
on us to listen to the ‘voices of the poor’ (a phrase used as the title
of a series of World Bank reports). Important too has been the growing
acknowledgement of the value of participatory approaches to poverty
research. As explained in the recent JRF report by Fran Bennett with
Moraene Roberts, this means enabling people with experience of poverty
to have greater authority, influence and control throughout the process
of researching poverty.
2. Poverty as a social relation as well as a material condition
Accounts by people in poverty of the contempt and disrespect with which
they are treated and the sense of shame and worthlessness this can
engender have helped me to understand better how poverty is experienced
as a destructive social relation as well as a material lack. The two
aspects are, of course, inter-related, most acutely perhaps for
children. Tess Ridge’s research shows how children in poverty can be
bullied and generally excluded from the social activities of their
peers if they don’t ‘fit in’ because of the ‘wrong’ clothing. The
children spoke of ‘their fears of social difference and stigma’.
Mothers, as the main managers of poverty, feel their children’s
exclusion particularly keenly.
And the stigma and humiliation of poverty are painfully injurious to
the identity and self-respect of adults also. Two quotes illustrate
this: ‘The worst blow of all is the contempt of your fellow citizens.
I and many families live in that contempt’ and ‘You’re like an onion
and gradually every skin is peeled off you and there’s nothing left.
All your self-esteem and how you feel about yourself is gone – you’re
left feeling like nothing and then your family feels like that’.
What people in poverty are reacting to is a process that I call
Othering i.e. they are treated and talked about as people who are
‘other’ to the rest of us. It is a process of differentiation and
demarcation by which social distance is established and maintained.
Language is an important part of the process. As a parent living on
benefit, participating in a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary
Group on Poverty put it ‘We hear how the media and some politicians
speak about us and it hurts’. Labels like 'underclass' and ‘welfare
dependant’ are applied without thinking of the consequences for their
recipients. Even ‘poor’ is an adjective that many people in poverty
experience as stigmatising. Typically they are not asked how they want
to be described.
This reflects a more general unwillingness to listen to what people in
poverty have to say and to treat them as subjects of their own lives,
who possess the expertise borne of experience, rather than as the
objects of professional judgement, research and policy. As I said
earlier, this is beginning to change and that brings me, at last, to
some political and policy implications.
3. Politics and policy
We can identify two principles at the heart of an alternative approach
pursued by organisations that promote the participation of people with
experience of poverty. One is respect for the dignity of all human
beings, which represents the core of the human rights conceptualisation
of poverty articulated by the UN. The other is the notion of ‘voice
with influence’, which encapsulates the desire not just to be heard but
to have one’s ideas taken seriously by those with power. In the
language of social justice theory they reflect a politics of
‘recognition’ (or ‘recognition&respect’ as I call it because of the
emphasis placed on respect by people in poverty themselves).
As such it is intertwined with a politics of redistribution – be it of
material resources or opportunities – which is the traditional stuff of
poverty politics. I think you’d fall off your chairs if I said a
politics of redistribution was no longer important! Of course, it’s
still absolutely central to any anti-poverty strategy. Indeed, the
notion of human dignity is a touchstone for judging the adequacy of
benefits and also of low wages (as Polly brought out so well in her
book and Smith Institute pamphlet). Back in 1992, the EU recommended
that member states ‘recognise the basic right of a person to sufficient
resources and social assistance to live in a manner compatible with
human dignity’.
But linking in a politics of ‘recognition&respect’ encourages us to
think also about the ‘how’ of policy – how we can develop mechanisms
that enable people in poverty to participate in decision-making that
affects their lives, if they wish to do so; how we can ensure that the
professionals and officials who staff our public services respect the
dignity of people in poverty.
To end on a positive note, we can learn from initiatives that point the
way. A project at Royal Holloway, in conjunction with ATD Fourth World
and Family Rights Group, is involving parents with experience of
poverty in the training of social workers. The aim is to enable social
workers better to understand the implications of poverty and to reflect
self-critically on how they treat their clients. As one participant
put it, ‘it is about how we are treated, we just want them to treat us
the same way they want us to treat them – with respect’. Research into
parenting in poor environments highlights how necessary this is. It is
a lesson that could have wider implications for the training of
professionals and officials. And perhaps there is something to be
learned from the attitudinal campaign the government has launched to
tackle the stigma associated with mental health?
With regard to ‘voice with influence’, a participation working group,
established by the DWP, has produced a toolkit to facilitate the
participation of people with experience of poverty in the drawing up of
the next EU National Action Plan on Social Inclusion. The goal was ‘a
real partnership between people living in poverty…and government at all
levels in order to improve anti-poverty policy and practice’. This
represents a real step forward but I’m sure all would acknowledge there
is a long way to go in achieving a genuine ‘partnership at all levels’.
Such a partnership would help strengthen social inclusion and
citizenship. Moreover, if those people with experience of poverty, who
wanted to be, were themselves engaged in the development and promotion
of anti-poverty strategies, it might help reinvigorate the government’s
anti-poverty crusade and, as the Chancellor put it to the Labour Party
conference, ‘win more people to this cause’.
[End of Ruth Lister’s presentation.]
Community Care’s review of the book can be read at
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/articles/article.asp?
liarticleid=46765&liSectionID=22&sKeys=poverty&liParentID=26
Ed Balls in the New Statesman Political Studies Guide in which it asked
'five experts' to'recommend a work you mustn't miss' can be read at
http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?
newTemplate=NSReview_Bshop&newDisplayURN=300000089779
