Representing poverty and attacking representations: Perspectives on poverty from social anthropology

Abstract

This article considers the potential contribution of social anthropology to understanding poverty as both social relation and category of international development practice. Despite its association with research in communities and countries now considered poor anthropology has remained disengaged from the current poverty agenda. This disengagement is partly explained by the disciplinary starting point of anthropology which explores the processes though which categories come to have salience. It is accentuated by the relationship of anthropology as a discipline to the development policy and the research commissioned to support it. An anthropological perspective on poverty and inequality can shed light on the ways in which particular social categories come to be situated as poor. It can also reveal the social processes through which poverty as policy objective becomes institutionalised in development practice and in the social institutions established to monitor, assess and address it.

Gender, HIV and Risk

“…As Mowforth's (2014) recent work considers, development is predicated on force and systemic violence, which permeates the policy response. The concern here is that the inherently political nature of many development problems, including inequality, discrimination and the local and national political processes, is obscured (see Hickey, 2009;Green, 2006). Hickey (2009) argues that, despite some lip-service paid to new forms of political analysis and efforts to support 'pro-poor' initiatives, these are limited and the agenda of liberalism -based on ideology rather than evidence -is entrenched.…”

Respectable Rags: Working-Class Poverty and the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal Strike

“…As Green (2006Green ( , pp. 1109Green ( , 1124, further suggests, "anthropological perspectives on poverty prioritize poverty not as an absolute measurable condition but as a qualitative social relation… not a 'thing' to be attacked, but the outcome of specific social relations that require investigation and transformation."…”

“…This quantification objectifies the social relationships involved in poverty's production. According to anthropologist Maia Green (2006Green ( , p. 1124, "the quantification of poverty permits the homogenization of poverty across time and space." While they, both absolute and relative approaches, rely on quantification, the differences between them inform on historic conversations of deserving and undeserving and the locus of blame and responsibility, the same themes that permeate Lucas's article.…”

The Power of Wellbeing Discourses among Indigenous and Non-Indigenous People in Mexico

“…This promotes collective association rather than focusing on individual accumulation. In doing so, they reinforce their identity and self-definition (Green 2006). …”