Key Concepts

Overview

Poverty remains one of the most urgent issues of our time. In this stimulating new textbook, 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 conceptualization. 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 capabilities, social divisions and exclusion, agency and citizenship. Lister 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.

Poverty will be essential reading for all students in the social sciences, as well as researchers, activists and policy-makers.

About the Author

Ruth Lister is Professor of Social Policy in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Abbreviations
• List of Figures
• Introduction
• 1. Defining Poverty
• 2. Measuring Poverty
• 3. Inequality, Social Divisions and the Differential Experience of Poverty
• 4. Poverty and Social Exclusion
• 5. Discourses of Poverty: From Othering to Respect
• 6. Poverty and Agency: From Getting By to Getting Organized
• 7. Poverty, Human Rights and Citizenship
• Conclusion: From Concept to Politics
• Notes
• References
• Index

Endorsements

“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

“This important book provides a compelling analysis of the nature of poverty. Ruth Lister succeeds in making complex ideas clear and accessible to the reader – and in highlighting the challenges and dilemmas that have to be confronted if poverty is to be eradicated.”

— Alan Deacon, University of Leeds

“This is a highly scholarly book, which presents the most up-to-date review of the most relevant theoretical and methodological literature and debates in research on poverty, carefully threading their links with policy traditions and cultural assumptions.”

— Chiara Saraceno, University of Turin