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SOCIAL-POLICY  October 2004

SOCIAL-POLICY October 2004

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Subject:

Ruth Lister: POVERTY

From:

Adrian Sinfield <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Adrian Sinfield <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 15:23:18 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (270 lines)

(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

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