Poverty.

AuthorStephens, Robert
PositionThe Poverty Wars - Book review

POVERTY by Ruth Lister, Polity Press, 2004

THE POVERTY WARS by Peter Saunders, UNSW Press, 2005

Ruth Lister and Peter Saunders, in their respective books, discuss and debate the important issues around poverty--its conceptualisation and measurement, its causes and consequences, and whether poverty is a useful concept in developed countries.

Both authors have had a long history of research and writing in the area of social policy. Ruth Lister takes a sociological and gender perspective, and incorporates wider notions of social exclusion and citizenship, drawing on her experience with the Child Poverty Action Group (in the United Kingdom) and as a member of the independent Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power. Peter Saunders's starting point is as a social democratic economist, with his work as Director of the Social Policy Research Centre in New South Wales putting him at the forefront of Australian debates on poverty research and social security reform.

Given their backgrounds, it is interesting that Lister's book is the academic tome--with a careful analysis of the links between poverty and related topics of social exclusion, inequality, human rights and citizenship--while Saunders provides more of an emotive plea, both to recognise that poverty still exists in a wealthy country like Australia and for poverty research to move beyond debates over statistical measurement to analysing the causes and consequences of poverty on individuals and society. The approaches taken by the authors reflect the current state of the debate on poverty within their respective countries. In Australia, Peter Saunders's namesake and nemesis at the neoliberal Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) seems to have captured the media and political debate, disputing that the existence of poverty is anything other than a failure by the poor themselves, abetted by overgenerous welfare state programmes. This approach seems reminiscent of New Zealand during the 1990s.

In the United Kingdom, poverty and its alleviation are centre stage for the Blair government, and while there may be debates over causes and cures, the acceptance of the concept of poverty allows Lister time to explore its deeper meanings and implications rather than ensuring poverty remains on the political agenda. She has the luxury of being able to explore the debates as to whether poverty is caused by individual traits or better explained by societal/structuralist concepts of class, gender, race...

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