Summary Interpretations of Poverty - A Critical Review of Dominant Approaches

1. Introduction Poverty is defined and interpreted in different ways and academic debates on the subject are packed with controversies over how to differentiate the ‘poor’ from the ‘non-poor’ and ascertain the different levels and causes of poverty among the former. In describing and conceptualising poverty, researchers, policy makers and activists often employ terms such as vulnerability, destitution, deprivation, hunger, degradation, exclusion and powerlessness. There is no doubt that these words mean or connote a lack of certain things regarded as necessities of life. Yet, Rahnema (1992: 158-159) insists that ‘poverty is also a myth, a construct and the invention of a particular civilization… Everyone may think of themselves as poor when it is the TV set in the mud hut which defines the necessities of life, often in terms of the wildest and fanciest consumers appearing on the screen’. Such an extreme construct of relative deprivation assumes that certain TV images alone define everyone’s perception of his or her state of well-being. It is true that the TV is a most powerful tool of global capital in demonstrating and promoting consumerist lifestyles. However, current debates on poverty have very little to do with people who feel deprived because they cannot live like the ‘wildest and fanciest consumers appearing on the screen’. They are about distributional problems and social justice, about people who are unable to cope with stresses and shocks impacting on them because of their social location and individual susceptibilities. These stresses and shocks may originate in the institutional structures in which they find themselves and the ecosystems to which they are linked through the same structures. Furthermore, none of the current definitions of poverty can be faulted for being so indeterminate as to include everyone. In fact, a major grouse of the critics of the most widely adopted definition of poverty, which is based on the income criterion, is that it is not inclusive enough. There are competing and complementary conceptions of poverty and inevitably the ongoing debates are politically and ideologically charged. Constructions of poverty by researchers and policy advisors vary due to disciplinary biases and ideological values. They also vary over time and space due to differences in the political, economic, cultural and ecological conditions of the contexts in question. These contexts are neither static nor closed to the outside world. It should also be noted that the distinction between absolute and relative deprivation/poverty has been a controversial issue (Sen, 1984, 1985; Townsend, 1985). While there are sharp differences in views on the relationships between the neoliberal globalisation policies and poverty, there appears to be a consensus that poverty is a much broader and deeper issue of deprivation than having an income below a ‘poverty line’. However, this apparent consensus has become yet another point of departure for different analytical approaches to poverty. On poverty and social justice, there have been clear shifts of focus from income (or purchasing power) alone to broader categories such as a combination of basic material and non-material goods including rights and liberties, best captured by the Rawlsian concept of ‘primary goods’ (Rawls, 1972); individuals’ freedom to achieve valuable functionings, defined as capability by Sen (1993) and; social exclusion, which is interpreted in different ways as a negative state or process but generally around notions of disadvantage, citizenship, social integration, identity, power relations, agency and institutions (Rodgers et al, 1995; Gore and Figueiredo, 1997). The UNDP’s conceptual framework on human development has drawn heavily on Sen’s capability approach. It has also been inspired by the West European debates on exclusion. Concepts such as entitlement and capability and social exclusion have been adopted and adapted by studies dealing with the political economy of poverty as a process with reference to the structural causes of vulnerability and deprivation from different perspectives. Some of these studies have focused more systematically at the local and meso levels and developed frameworks to map vulnerability and poverty (Watts and Bohle, 1993; Moser, 1998; Rakodi, 1999). There is also a growing emphasis by researchers and social movements on people’s own perceptions of well-being (or ill-being) and on assessments of development and poverty reduction policies and programmes from local perspectives (Shanmugaratnam, 2001a).