International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Views on poverty are deeply rooted in cultural frameworks about the human condition shaped by histories. In the debate on Modernity perspectives on poverty oscillate between (1) making the poor – their “morals” and “culture” – responsible for their own situation and (2) positioning the causes in structural shifts in the economy and changing forms of governing the population. The relationship between structure and agency, or determination and freedom, thus lies at the heart of the poverty debate with significant implications for how rights, duties, and responsibility towards the plight of the poor are conceived ( Hanson 1997 ). Feminist contributions to poverty debates are wide ranging, covering many disciplines in the humanities ( Fraser 1997 ; Young 1997 ; Okin 2003 ) and social sciences and empirical domains, including the welfare state ( Kingfisher 2003 ), “developing” countries ( Jackson and Pearson 1998 ; Whitehead and Lockwood 1999 ; Kabeer 2003 ; Chant 2007b ), “transition” countries ( Fodor 2002 ; Pascall and Kwak 2005 ), and the South–North circuits of survival ( Sassen 2002 ). They hinge on a key area of contention: the hegemonic and binary treatment of the “production” of things and “reproduction” and nurturance of human life as different and separate social spaces, rather than as both fundamentally integral to a human society. The hierarchy ... log in or subscribe to read full text