Publication Details

Thinking through chronic poverty and destitution: theorising social relations and social ordering

Maia Green
2006

Abstract

This paper takes an anthropological look at the concept of chronic poverty. It asks what the concept does, both within and outside of specialised poverty and development discourses, investigates its genealogy and considers what kinds of social phenomena it captures. While economistic conceptions of chronic poverty, whether based on income or consumption measures, are reliant on neo-liberal characterisations of agency and markets, alternative propositions from the human development perspective merely infer the social impacts of a range of deprivations on abstract potentialities. Neither approach has the capacity to apprehend the social constitution of poverty, that is as an effect not of deprivation of income or entitlements but of a system of social relationships.

Publication Type(s)

Conference Paper

Conference: Concepts and Methods for Analysing Poverty Dynamics and Chronic Poverty

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