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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Poverty
"A powerful expose of Parisian haute couture" - Book of the Week, Times Higher Education Fashion is one of the most powerful industries in the world, accounting for 6% of global consumption and growing steadily. Since the 1980s and the birth of the neoliberal economy, it has emerged as the glittering face of capitalism, bringing together prestige, power and beauty and occupying a central place in media and consumer fantasies. Yet the fashion industry, which claims to offer highly desirable job opportunities, relies significantly on job instability, not just in outsourced garment production but at the very heart of its creative production of luxury. Based on an in-depth investigation involving stylists, models, designers, hairdressers, make-up artists, photographers and interns, anthropologist Giulia Mensitieri goes behind fashion's glamorous facade to explore the lived realities of working in the industry. This challenging book lays bare the working conditions of 'the most beautiful job in the world,' showing that exploitation isn't confined to sweatshops abroad or sexual harassment of models, but exists at the very heart of the powerful symbolic and economic centre of fashion.
It is established that the informal sector plays an important role in the creation of job opportunities for many rural and urban people. However, there is a scarcity of academic research on the relationship between gender, informality of employment and poverty reduction in Morocco with particular reference to the city of Fez. This book focuses on investigating the contribution of women's self-employed work in the informal sector in reducing household poverty in the city of Fez. This is done through the medium of specific framework objectives. First, the book sets out the types of women engaged in informal sector activities in the city of Fez. Secondly, it makes a situational analysis of the contribution of women's work in the informal sector to reduce poverty in their households in this region of Morocco. Thirdly, it identifies the linkages between working as self-employed persons and emancipation of women through their participation in political and social activism in Fez and lastly, it uncovers the main difficulties impeding the development of women in self-employed activities in the informal sector and identifies the various challenges for the development of their businesses in Fez.
This edited volume studies the complex interrelation of poverty, work, and different stages in the life course, and how it contributes to the permanent existence of poverty and inequality in vulnerable groups in society. Mechanisms of productions and reproduction of these relationships are identified through empirical research carried out in four Latin American countries: Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. This book centers on the experiences of individuals in those less favored social groups who may have suffered structural poverty for decades, or who may have been simply deprived of a basic income to cover their most essential needs.
________________ 'There's no understanding global inequality without understanding its history. In The Divide, Jason Hickel brilliantly lays it out, layer upon layer, until you are left reeling with the outrage of it all.' - Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics * The richest eight people control more wealth than the poorest half of the world combined. * Today, 60 per cent of the world's population lives on less than $5 a day. * Though global real GDP has nearly tripled since 1980, 1.1 billion more people are now living in poverty. For decades we have been told a story: that development is working, that poverty is a natural phenomenon and will be eradicated through aid by 2030. But just because it is a comforting tale doesn't make it true. Poor countries are poor because they are integrated into the global economic system on unequal terms, and aid only helps to hide this. Drawing on pioneering research and years of first-hand experience, The Divide tracks the evolution of global inequality - from the expeditions of Christopher Columbus to the present day - offering revelatory answers to some of humanity's greatest problems. It is a provocative, urgent and ultimately uplifting account of how the world works, and how it can change for the better.
'A mesmerising book, full of story, truth, pain, lyricism, humour and astonishment: the stuff of a difficult life, fully lived, and masterfully transformed into art' SALMAN RUSHDIE 'Intimate and wise, poignant and compassionate, redemptive and raw. You have to read this beautiful book' CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild An electrifying, dazzlingly written reckoning and an essential addition to the conversation about race and class, Survival Math takes its name from the calculations that award-winning author Mitchell S. Jackson made to survive the Portland, Oregon, of his youth. This dynamic book explores gangs and guns, near-death experiences, sex work, masculinity, composite fathers, the concept of 'hustle' and the destructive power of addiction - all framed within the story of Jackson, his family and his community. Mitchell S. Jackson presents a microcosm of struggle and survival in contemporary urban America - an exploration of the forces that shaped his life, his city, and the lives of so many black men like him. As Jackson charts his own path from drug dealer to published novelist, he gives us a heartbreaking, fascinating, lovingly rendered view of the injustices and victories, large and small, that defined his youth. 'Jackson's mesmerizing voice and style draws you into the survival calculations for millions of American kids and families, revealing a need-to-know reality for all of us' PIPER KERMAN, Author of Orange is the New Black 'Jackson's musings skillfully illuminate the bloodlines, both inherited and earned, that pulse through the body of America's gang-graffitied carceral state' TYEHIMBA JESS, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olio
'An excellent and intelligent investigation of the realities of urban living that respond to no design or directive... This is a book about the nature of London itself' Peter Ackroyd, The Times A powerful exploration of the seedy side of Victorian London by one of our most promising young historians. In 1887 government inspectors were sent to investigate the Old Nichol, a notorious slum on the boundary of Bethnal Green parish, where almost 6,000 inhabitants were crammed into thirty or so streets of rotting dwellings and where the mortality rate ran at nearly twice that of the rest of Bethnal Green. Among much else they discovered that the decaying 100-year-old houses were some of the most lucrative properties in the capital for their absent slumlords, who included peers of the realm, local politicians and churchmen. The Blackest Streets is set in a turbulent period of London's history when revolution was in the air. Award-winning historian Sarah Wise skilfully evokes the texture of life at that time, not just for the tenants but for those campaigning for change and others seeking to protect their financial interests. She recovers Old Nichol from the ruins of history and lays bare the social and political conditions that created and sustained this black hole which lay at the very heart of the Empire. A revelatory and prescient read about cities, class and inequality, the message at the heart of The Blackest Streets still resonates today.
Why do some development projects succeed where others fail? This book looks at some macro and some less known micro success stories and considers what enabled them to bring change in some of the world's most deprived communities. Using case studies from ten countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, Tiwari's innovative approach offers a multi-layered understanding of poverty which provides insights into causal, enabling and impeding factors. While a macro level analysis of development is a common feature of the current literature, there has been little attempt to develop a micro level understanding of development at the grassroots. Tiwari's work fills this important gap while drawing attention to the importance of engaging local actors at an individual, collective, and state level, demonstrating how achieving a "convergence" of goals among all actors is a crucial component to a development project's success. Looking beyond the case studies to consider how this unique "convergence framework" might be usefully applied to other contexts, the book has profound implications for how we view fragile states and conflict zones, and the ability of the international agencies to take effective action. A unique study based on extensive empirical research, Why Some Development Works will make essential reading for students and researchers studying international development across the social sciences, as well as humanitarian and development practitioners and policy makers.
Assembled from a series of newspaper articles first published in the newspaper Morning Chronicle throughout the 1840s, this exhaustively researched, richly detailed survey of the teeming street denizens of London is a work both of groundbreaking sociology and salacious voyeurism. In an 1850 review of the survey, just prior to its initial book publication, William Makepeace Thackeray called it "tale of terror and wonder" offering "a picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it." Delving into the world of the London "street-folk"-the buyers and sellers of goods, performers, artisans, laborers and others-this extraordinary work inspired the socially conscious fiction of Charles Dickens in the 19th century as well as the urban fantasy of Neil Gaiman in the late 20th. Volume III explores the lives of: the "destroyers of vermin" street musicians "exhibitors of trained animals" dock laborers cab drivers steamboatmen vagrants and more. English journalist HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) was a founder and editor of the satirical magazine Punch.
Two-thirds of UK government spending now goes on the welfare state and where the money is spent - healthcare, education, pensions, benefits - is the centre of political and public debate. Much of that debate is dominated by the myth that the population divides into those who benefit from the welfare state and those who pay into it - 'skivers' and 'strivers', 'them' and 'us'. This ground-breaking book, written by one of the UK's leading social policy experts, uses extensive research and survey evidence to challenge that view. It shows that our complex and ever-changing lives mean that all of us rely on the welfare state throughout our lifetimes, not just a small 'welfare-dependent' minority. Using everyday life stories and engaging graphics, Hills clearly demonstrates how the facts are far removed from the myths. This revised edition contains fully updated data, discusses key policy changes and a new preface reflecting on the changed context after the 2015 election and Brexit vote.
Poverty Strategies in Asia is an examination of a wide range of measures aimed at reducing poverty in the region. It is widely recognized that while high and sustained economic growth is critical for poverty reduction, there are other policy interventions that may also be significant in a 'growth plus' approach to poverty reduction. This volume brings together a series of case studies on the poverty impact of alternative interventions in a broad range of Asian economies. The measures examined within the book cover trade liberalization both in general and in a specific market, infrastructure investment (particularly in roads), population policies, cash transfers, microfinance, employment guarantee programs and contract farming. The countries covered include the Philippines, Lao PDR, Pakistan, India and Thailand. While the results illustrated by the contributors are mixed, they demonstrate the potential for further progress in poverty reduction. This latest joint publication by the ADBI and Edward Elgar Publishing will be warmly welcomed by scholars and researchers of Asian studies and development. Professional economists within international and bilateral development agencies and policymakers will also find much to engage them.
An ambitious new approach to African studies, utilizing indigenous sources to bring back the voices of the native Africans in their own words rather than that of colonizers and foreigners. Elizabeth Isichei explores the Atlantic slave trade, as reflected in the poetics of rumour and the poetics of memory -- an approach different from the quantitative and demographic studies which have transformed the subject over the past twenty years. To this and to her study of popular consciousness in the colony and postcolony, she brings together a wide range of disciplines -- ethnography, art and art history, and contemporary literary theory among them -- to look at the intellectual history of Africa, from African rather than European premises. The result is a history of popular consciousness which shows the experiences of ordinary people, often in protest to an ongoing experience of exploitation. Elizabeth Isichei is Professor of Religious Studies, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand and author of over a dozen books on African history and religion. She holds an Oxford doctorate, and aD.Litt from the University of Canterbury, and is a fellow of the Royal Society [N.Z.]
People are hungry to make a difference in their community, yet most don't know where to start. In fact, 'serving the least' is often one of the most neglected biblical mandates in the church. Barefoot Church shows readers how today's church can be a catalyst for individual, collective, and social renewal in any context. Whether pastors or laypeople, readers will discover practical ideas that end up being as much about the Gospel and personal transformation as they are about serving the poor. Here they will see how the organizational structure of the church can be created or redesigned for mission in any context. Drawing from his own journey, Brandon Hatmaker proves to readers that serving the least is not a trendy act of benevolence but a lifestyle of authentic community and spiritual transformation. As Hatmaker writes, 'My hope is that God would open our eyes more and more to the needs of our community. And that we would see it as the church's responsibility to lead the charge.'
This book is a succinct and distinctive presentation of current research addressing educational issues in relation to children and young people with disabilities in Southern contexts. Even though people with disabilities are disproportionately over-represented in the majority world, there is a lack of texts which bring together empirical insights highlighting the unique socio-economic and cultural realities of these contexts and the ways in which these have shaped developments in education. This book provides a comprehensive and critical overview of a range of issues, such as the dilemmas in conceptual translations, analysis of international aid and national policies, evaluation of various educational interventions, and issues interrogating the purpose of education. Bringing together various research projects conducted in eight different countries, this book successfully captures a unique spread of cross-cultural issues. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Inclusive Education.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Though a globally shared experience, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected societies across the world in radically different ways. This book examines the unique implications of the pandemic in the Global South. With international contributors from a variety of disciplines including health, economics and geography, the book investigates the pandemic's effects on development, medicine, gender (in)equality and human rights, among other issues. Its analysis illuminates further subsequent crises of interconnection, a pervasive health provision crisis and a resulting rise in socioeconomic inequality. The book's assessment offers an urgent discourse on the ways in which the impact of COVID-19 can be mitigated in some of the most challenging socioeconomic contexts in the world.
'Standard' employment relationships, with permanent contracts, regular hours, and decent pay, are under assault. Precarious work and unemployment are increasingly common, and concern is also growing about the expansion of informal work and the rise of 'modern slavery'. However, precarity and violence are in fact longstanding features of work for most of the world's population. Lamenting the 'loss' of secure, stable jobs often reflects a strikingly Eurocentric and historically myopic perspective. This book argues that standard employment relations have always co-existed with a plethora of different labour regimes. Highlighting the importance of the governance of irregular forms of labour the author draws together empirical, historical analyses of International Labour Organisation (ILO) policy towards forced labour, unemployment, and social protection for informal workers in sub-Saharan Africa. Archival research, extensive documentary research and interviews with key ILO staff are utilised to explore the critical role the organization's activities have often played in the development of mechanisms for governing irregular labour. Addressing the increasingly widespread and pressing practical debates about the politics of precarious labour in the world economy this book speaks to key debates in several disciplines, especially IPE, global governance, and labour studies. It will also be of interest to scholars working in development studies and critical political economy.
Begging, Street Politics and Power explores the complex phenomenon of begging in the context of two different religions and societies in South Asia. Focusing on India and Pakistan, the book provides an in-depth examination of the religious and secular laws regulating begging along with discussion of the power dynamics involved. Drawing on textual analysis and qualitative field research, the chapters consider the notion of charity within Hinduism and Islam, the transaction of giving and receiving, and the political structures at play in the locations studied. The book engages with the conflicting compassionate and criminal sides of begging and reveals some of the commonalities and differences in religion and society within South Asia. It will be of interest to scholars working across the fields of religious studies, social science, law and Asian studies.
Slum tourism is a globalizing trend and a controversial form of tourism. Impoverished urban areas have always enticed the popular imagination, considered to be places of 'otherness', 'moral decay', 'deviant liberty' or 'authenticity'. 'Slumming' has a long tradition in the Global North, for example in Victorian London when the upper classes toured the East End. What is new, however, is its development dynamics and its rapidly spreading popularity across the globe. Township tourism and favela tourism have currently reached mass tourism characteristics in South Africa and in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In other countries of the Global South, slum tourism now also occurs and providers see huge growth potential. While the morally controversial practice of slum tourism has raised much attention and opinionated debates in the media for several years, academic research has only recently started addressing it as a global phenomenon. This edition provides the first systematic overview of the field and the diverse issues connected to slum tourism. This multidisciplinary collection is unique both in its conceptual and empirical breadth. Its chapters indicate that 'global slumming' is not merely a controversial and challenging topic in itself, but also offers an apt lens through which to discuss core concepts in critical tourism studies in a global perspective, in particular: 'poverty', 'power' and 'ethics'. Building on research by prolific researchers from ten different countries, the book provides a comprehensive and unique insight in the current empirical, practical and theoretical knowledge on the subject. It takes a thorough and critical review of issues associated with slum tourism, asking why slums are visited, whether they should be visited, how they are represented, who is benefiting from it and in what way. It offers new insights to tourism's role in poverty alleviation and urban regeneration, power relations in contact zones and tourism's cultural and political implications. Drawing on research from four continents and seven different countries, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, this ground-breaking volume will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in this contemporary form of tourism.
Why are development discourses of the 'poor child' in need of radical revision? What are the theoretical and methodological challenges and possibilities for ethical understandings of childhoods and poverty? The 'poor child' at the centre of development activity is often measured against and reformed towards an idealised and globalised child subject. This book examines why such normative discourses of childhood are in need of radical revision and explores how development research and practice can work to 'unsettle' the global child. It engages the cultural politics of childhood - a politics of equality, identity and representation - as a methodological and theoretical orientation to rethink the relationships between education, development, and poverty in children's lives. This book brings multiple disciplinary perspectives, including cultural studies, sociology, and film studies, into conversation with development studies and development education in order to provide new ways of approaching and conceptualising the 'poor child'. The researchers draw on a range of methodological frames - such as poststructuralist discourse analysis, arts based research, ethnographic studies and textual analysis - to unpack the hidden assumptions about children within development discourses. Chapters in this book reveal the diverse ways in which the notion of childhood is understood and enacted in a range of national settings, including Kenya, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom. They explore the complex constitution of children's lives through cultural, policy, and educational practices. The volume's focus on children's experiences and voices shows how children themselves are challenging the representation and material conditions of their lives. The 'Poor Child' will be of particular interest to postgraduate students and scholars working in the fields of childhood studies, international and comparative education, and development studies.
A fresh look at the complex question of outdoor poor relief in the nineteenth century. The consequences of extreme poverty were a grim reality for all too many people in Victorian England. The various poor laws implemented to try to deal with it contained a number of controversial measures, one of the most radical and unpopular being the crusade against outdoor relief, during which central government sought to halt all welfare payments at home. Via a close case study of Brixworth union in Northamptonshire, which offers an unusually richcorpus of primary material and evidence, the author looks at what happened to those impoverished men and women who struggled to live independently in a world-without-welfare outside the workhouse. She retraces the experiences ofelderly paupers evicted from almshouses, of the children of the aged poor prosecuted for parental maintenance, of dying paupers who were refused medical care in their homes, and of women begging for funeral costs in an attempt toprevent the bodies of their loved ones being taken for dissection by anatomists. She then shows how increasing democratisation gave the labouring poor the means to win control of the poor law. ELIZABETH T. HURREN is a Reader in the Medical Humanities, University of Leicester.
Do we judge the poor? Do we fear them? Do we have a moral obligation to help those in need? The moral and social grounds of solidarity and deservedness in relation to aid for poor people are rarely steady. This is particularly true under contemporary austerity reforms, where current debates question exactly who is most 'deserving' of protection in times of crisis. These arguments have accompanied a rise in the production of negative and punitive sentiments towards the poor. This book breaks new ground in the discussion of the moral dimension of poverty and its implications for the treatment of the poor in mature welfare states, drawing upon the diverse political, social and symbolic constructions of deservedness and otherness. It takes a new look at the issue of poverty from the perspective of public policy, media and public opinion. It also examines, in a topical manner, the various ways in which certain factions contribute to the production of stereotyped representations of poverty and to the construction of boundaries between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in our society. Case studies from the UK and Italy are used to examine these issues, and to understand the impact that a moralising of poverty has on the everyday experiences of the poor. This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in contemporary social work, social policy and welfare systems.
In the five years since the first edition of Injustice there have been devastating increases in poverty, hunger and destitution in the UK. Globally, the richest 1% have never held a greater share of world wealth, while the share of most of the other 99% has fallen in the last five years, with more and more people in debt, especially the young. Economic inequalities will persist and continue to grow for as long as we tolerate the injustices which underpin them. This fully rewritten and updated edition revisits Dorling's claim that Beveridge's five social evils are being replaced by five new tenets of injustice: elitism is efficient; exclusion is necessary; prejudice is natural; greed is good and despair is inevitable. By showing these beliefs are unfounded, Dorling offers hope of a more equal society. We are living in the most remarkable and dangerous times. With every year that passes it is more evident that Injustice is essential reading for anyone concerned with social justice and wants to do something about it.
There are many problems regarding poverty, inequality and growth in developing countries in Asia and Africa. Policy makers at the national level and at international institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and others have implemented various policies in order to decrease poverty and inequality. This book provides empirical observations on Asian countries and Africa. Each chapter provides theoretical and empirical analysis on regional case studies with an emphasis on policy implications. The book will be of use to many who wish to assess and improve policies in developing countries and mitigate poverty and inequality, and stimulate growth, by drawing on relevant empirical research and economic theories. Clearly, there have been numerous policy failures and the book aims to provide a basis for improving policies and outcomes based on relevant empirical observations.
Does poverty lead to environmental degradation? Do degraded environments and natural resources lead to poverty? Or, are there other forces at play? Is the relationship between poverty and the environment really as straightforward as the vicious circle portrayal of 'poverty leading to environmental destruction leading to more poverty' would suggest? Does it matter if the relationship is portrayed in this way? This book suggests that it does matter. Arguing that such a portrayal is unhelpful and misleading, the book brings together a diverse range of analytical frameworks and approaches that can enable a much deeper investigation of the context and nature of poverty-environment relationships. Analytical frameworks and approaches examined in the book include political ecology, a gendered lens, Critical Institutionalism, the Environmental Entitlements framework, the Institutional Analysis and Development approach, the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, wellbeing analysis, social network analysis and frameworks for the analysis of the governance of natural resources. Recommended further reading draws on published material from the last thirty years as well as key contemporary publications, giving readers a steer towards essential texts and authors within each subject area. Key themes running through the analytical frameworks and approaches are identified and examined, including power, access, institutions and scale.
This unique book depicts the stories of Americans born in poverty, who achieved national or international fame. Accessible to students and lay readers, this scholarly study describes poverty as a disability that typically stunts important areas of growth in childhood. Wagner shows how poverty hampers individuals and groups for their entire lives, even many of those who emerge from poverty. Examples of individuals with difficult childhoods who faced residual lifelong challenges are presented in the stories of 27 Americans, including athlete Babe Ruth, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, singer Billie Holliday, author Jack London, actress Marilyn Monroe, black leader Malcolm X, singer Johnny Cash, comedian Richard Pryor, author Stephen King, and entertainer Oprah Winfrey. In over 200 engaging and accessible pages, Unlikely Fame yields insight into successful individuals and how they coped, adapted and ultimately achieved success. |
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