Poverty as a label

Various theorists believe the way poverty is approached, defined, and thus thought about, plays a role in its perpetuation. Maia Green (2006) explains that modern development literature tends to view poverty as agency filled. When poverty is prescribed agency, poverty becomes something that happens to people. Poverty absorbs people into itself and the people, in turn, become a part of poverty, devoid of their human characteristics.


In the same way, poverty, according to Green, is viewed as an object in which all social relations (and persons involved) are obscured. Issues such as structural failings (see earlier section), institutionalized inequalities, or corruption may lie at the heart of a region’s poverty, but these are obscured by broad statements about poverty. Arjun Apadurai writes of the “terms of recognition” (drawn from Charles Taylors’ ‘points of recognition), which are given the poor are what allows poverty to take on this generalized autonomous form.


The terms are “given” to the poor because the poor lack social and economic capital, and thus have little to no influence on how they are represented and/or perceived in the larger community. Furthermore, the term “poverty”, is often used in a generalized matter. This further removes the poor from defining their situation as the broadness of the term covers differences in histories and causes of local inequalities. Solutions or plans for reduction of poverty often fail precisely because the context of a region’s poverty is removed and local conditions are not considered.


The specific ways in which the poor and poverty are recognized frame them in a negative light. In development literature, poverty becomes something to be eradicated, or, attacked. It is always portrayed as a singular problem to be fixed. When a negative view of poverty (as an animate object) is fostered, it can often lead to an extension of negativity to those who are experiencing it.


This in turn can lead to justification of inequalities through the idea of the deserving poor. Even if thought patterns do not go as far as justification, the negative light poverty is viewed in, according to Appadurai, does much to ensure little change in the policies of redistribution.