First published in 1972, Victorian Aspirations is the story of the personal struggles and achievements of Charles and Mary Booth, as remembered by their families and as revealed in private family papers, especially in their letters to each other. Charles Booth started his investigations into the social conditions of the English lower classes at the critical moment in the history of social reform. From this work, he produced Life and Labour of the People in London, a comprehensive and instructive account of the condition of the London poor. All seventeen volumes were carefully revised and corrected by his wife Mary. This book reveals a detailed and fascinating picture of the way of life of the late Victorian intelligentsia and provides interesting glimpses of many well-known figures of English public life who were relatives and friends of the Booths, such as Macaulay and the Webbs. It will be of particular interest to students of Victorian social history.

First published in 1979, Urban Poverty in Britain 1830-1914 examines the plight of the poor in towns as a direct result of industrialization. This valuable study examines the major causes of poverty - low pay, casual labour, unemployment, sickness, widowhood, large families, old age, drink and personal failings - and society's response to the problem. It also pays attention to the changes in food consumption brought about by migration to the urban areas. Detailed accounts of specific problems and specific situations are combined with a look at the broader questions, and subsequently provides a thorough account of urban poverty in this period.

Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions: Counternarratives of Black Family Resilience offers a unique perspective on the complexities of being a Black mother addicted to crack, powder cocaine, heroin, and crank. Qualitative interviews provide rich narratives from five Black mothers challenging negative controlled images and stereotypes of Black motherhood and drug addiction. Using Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Feminism, and Resilience as conceptual frameworks, this book confronts hegemonic constructions of Black mothers and their children within the context of drug addictions. Particular attention is focused on using the mothers' self-definitions of struggles and family resilience to dismantle the negative controlled images of the junkie and the crack ho' and her crack baby. The mothers in this book speak truth to their experiences with motherhood and addictions to some of the most powerful street drugs that explicitly defy the junkie, crack ho', and crack baby images. The book also addresses tensions existing within researcher-participant relationships and nuances unique to research with Black mothers in recovery. Personal lessons learned and challenges experienced during the research process are highlighted as Tivis shares dilemmas of self-reflections of positionality, accountability and use of language. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions contains important implications for research and practice in education and across other disciplines concentrating on mothers and children from racially diverse backgrounds. This book will be relevant for both undergraduate and graduate students and academics within these disciplines. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions will be of interest to advanced pre-service teachers and other disciplines engaging in clinical and professional practice with addiction and with families.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was enacted in India with the multiple objectives of providing employment in a rights-based framework, addressing rural poverty, checking migration, and building rural infrastructure. As such, every year around 15-20 per cent of households in India overall and 30 per cent in rural India receive some form of employment share under the MGNREGA programme. This volume looks at various aspect of the scheme, its linkage with employment, agricultural wages, livelihood and food security, gender issues, and migration in rural India. It also discusses challenges in implementation, hurdles and the relative successes of the scheme. Based on primary survey data from 16 major states in the country, the findings of the study provide key insights into MGNREGA and assess the implications for other welfare-oriented programmes. Rich in empirical data, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of political economy, economics, agriculture, rural development and sociology, as well as policymakers and nongovernmental organisations.

This book is the most authoritative study of poverty and social exclusion in Britain at the start of the 21st century. It reports on the most comprehensive survey of poverty and social exclusion, ever to be undertaken in Britain: The Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey. This enormously rich data set records levels of poverty not just in terms of income and wealth but by including information about the goods and services which the British public say are necessary to avoid poverty. The relationship between poverty and factors such as age, gender and paid work are explored, as well as other social issues such as crime and neighbourhood disadvantage. Poverty and social exclusion in Britain charts the extent and nature of material and social deprivation and exclusion in Britain at the end of the 20th century; makes the first ever measurement of the extent of social exclusion based on a survey specifically designed for this purpose and provides a clear conceptual understanding of poverty and social exclusion from both an national and international perspective. This important book should be read by officials and policy makers in national and local government, NGOs, charities and voluntary organisations dealing with poverty and social exclusion. It will also be required reading for academics and students of social policy, sociology, public health, economics and politics.

This volume brings together leading public intellectuals-Amartya Sen, Martha C. Nussbaum, Francois Bourguignon, William J. Wilson, Douglas S. Massey, and Martha A. Fineman-to take stock of current analytic understandings of poverty and inequality. Contemporary research on inequality has largely relied on conceptual advances several decades old, even though the basic structure of global inequality is changing in fundamental ways. The reliance on conventional poverty indices, rights-based approaches to poverty reduction, and traditional modeling of social mobility has left scholars and policymakers poorly equipped to address modern challenges. The contributors show how contemporary poverty is forged in neighborhoods, argue that discrimination in housing markets is a profound source of poverty, suggest that gender inequalities in the family and in the social evaluation of the caretaking role remain a hidden dimension of inequality, and develop the argument that contemporary inequality is best understood as an inequality in fundamental human capabilities. This book demonstrates in manifold ways how contemporary scholarship and policy must be recast to make sense of new and emerging forms of poverty and social exclusion.

In the Company of Men examines representations of male-male sexuality in literature from the Meiji period (1868-1912), the era when Japan embarked on an unprecedented modernization campaign. Because male-male sexuality occupied a prominent place in the literary culture of the preceding Edo period (1600-1868), the issue was of importance to Meiji writers and intellectuals, especially given the stigma attached to male-male sexuality in Europe and America, the civilized societies that Japan strove to emulate as it modernized. The heterosexualization of literature thus emerged as a key component of the production of Japanese literary and cultural modernity. At the same time, male-male sexuality also surfaced as an important cultural symbol for segments of society opposed to the push to modernize. In the Company of Men considers how these conflicting attitudes toward male-male sexuality manifested themselves in Meiji literary history.

In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi's "most-everything girl," might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers, "based on years of uncompromising reporting, ""carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds--and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.
Winner of the National Book Award - The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award - The Los Angeles Times Book Prize - The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award - The New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"The New York Times - The Washington Post - O: The Oprah Magazine - USA Today - New York - The Miami Herald - San Francisco Chronicle - Newsday"
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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"The New Yorker - People - Entertainment Weekly - The Wall Street Journal - The Boston Globe - The Economist - Financial Times - Newsweek"/The Daily Beast" - Foreign Policy - The Seattle Times - The Nation - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - The Denver Post - "Minneapolis" Star Tribune - "Salon" - The Plain Dealer - The Week - Kansas City Star - "Slate" - Time Out New York - Publishers Weekly"
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"NEW YORK TIMES" BESTSELLER
"A book of extraordinary intelligence and] humanity . . . beyond groundbreaking."--Junot Diaz, "The New York Times Book Review"
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"Reported like Watergate, written like "Great Expectations, "and handily the best international nonfiction in years."--"New York"
"This book is both a tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece."--Judges' Citation for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award
" A] landmark book."--"The Wall Street Journal"
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"A triumph of a book."--Amartya Sen
"There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them."--Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
" A] stunning piece of narrative nonfiction . . . Katherine] Boo's prose is electric.""--O: The Oprah Magazine"
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"Inspiring, and irresistible . . . Boo's extraordinary achievement is twofold. She shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.""--People"

"From the Hardcover edition."

Cash Transfers, for all their notable successes, have been criticised for their limited ability to move poor households to provide sustainable routes out of poverty. This book draws on original qualitative research by leading scholars and development policy experts from a range of disciplines to examine whether cash transfers can have transformative spillover effects on individuals, households and communities. Case studies from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America show that, while there are limits to the sustainability of the transformations brought about by Cash Transfers, they can bring about changes affecting the social and political integration of very poor households. With chapters on Psycho-Social Wellbeing, Social Accountability and Social Capital, this comprehensive volume casts new light on the ongoing debates over the significance of the Cash Transfer 'revolution'. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Development Studies.

Throughout their lifetime, men and women are subject to a wide variety of risks, such as illness, accident, death, or less directly, unemployment, crop failure, loss of property, disability, business failure, and skill obsolescence.This book investigates the relationships between rural poverty, risk, and development. Building upon the author's work in the area, it summarises the contributions of recent theoretical and empirical work to our understanding of how risk affects rural poverty levels in developing countries. In particular the book examines what we do and do not know about risk coping strategies among today's poor rural societies. Ways in which these strategies may be re-examined and improved by governments and international organisations are proposed. Rural Poverty, Risk and Development is an important contribution to the development literature and should be read by anyone interested in exploring the causes of and solutions to poverty in rural areas.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Chapter 1.

"Provides important insight into the manner in which federal support of faith-based poverty relief initiatives affect religious identity in the Golden Triangle Region of rural Mississippi."--"Journal of Church and State"

"The book provides a thorough historical overview of the events that led up to the Bush administration's decision to promote faith-based social welfare. This thoughtful book is a useful addition to the growing literature on the subject and should be widely consulted."--"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare"

"Well-written and clearly organized."--"Journal of Social Services"

"In depth profiles...with obvious strengths."--"Contemporary Sociology"

"The findings raise serious concerns related to discriminatory practices around who will get served, and the qualification of those providing the services. . . . Highly recommended."
--"CHOICE"

"The comparative case method stretched across a complex analytical framework sketches the terrain in broad, suggestive, analytical strokes. We benefit from the timeliness of Bartkowski and Regis's study."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"Nothing short of exceptional..."Charitable Choices" is a very readable book that makes an evident contribution to contemporary discourse about welfare reform and its possibilities and pitfalls."
--"Social Forces"

aThese stories reveal not only the profound commitment that clergy can have for their flock but how existing social structures can render the poor invisible. Charitable Choices is more useful as a description of an under-recognized aspect of American religious life than as an analysis of government welfarepolicy.a
"Religious Studies Review"

Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America's welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty.

Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation's highest poverty rate and was the first state to implement a faith-based welfare reform initiative. The book provides a grounded and even-handed treatment of congregational poverty relief rather than abstract theory on faith-based initiatives.

The volume examines how congregations are coping with national developments in social welfare policy and reveals the strategies that religious communities utilize to fight poverty in their local communities. By giving particular attention to the influence of theological convictions and organizational dynamics on religious service provision, it identifies both the prospects and pitfalls likely to result from the expansion of charitable choice.

When discussing health, we talk about ailments and afflictions, the potential of modern medicine and the behaviours that affect our health. Yet although these relationships exist, they undermine a more socio-economic understanding of health. This timely book takes a critical perspective to argue that urban poverty and health inequalities are intimately interconnected, and that the increasing disparity between rich and poor will necessarily exacerbate health issues within urban communities. Urban Poverty and Health Inequalities documents how life has become increasingly insecure and stressful for growing numbers of people due to increased insecurities in employment, income and housing, rising living costs, and the retrenchment of welfare and social services. The book explores the role of history and media depictions of poverty and health inequalities in influencing the current situation. A central objective is to advance ways to understand and respond to urban poverty as a key social determinant of health. The authors pay particular attention to the ways in which punitive responses to urban poverty are further exacerbating the hardships faced by people living in urban poverty. Looking at issues of class, age, gender, ethnic and disability-based inequalities, the book offers both critical theory and grounded solutions to enable those living in poverty to live healthier lives. The collateral damage resulting from current socio-economic arrangements reflects political choices regarding the distribution of resources in societies that needs to be challenged and changed. The authors attend to initiatives for change, offering practical responses to address urban poverty, including efforts to address wealth distribution, the potential of living wage and Universal Basic Income initiatives, social housing and anti-oppressive welfare systems.

In this lively social history, first published in 1988, Lionel Rose explores in detail the plight of the street poor between 1815 and 1985. He describes the Victorian 'Rogues and Vagabonds' who made elicit peddling, begging frauds and other petty crime their profession. He considers the relevant legislation and systems for coping with the street poor, from the 1824 Vagrancy Act and accompanying improvements in policing, through the casual ward systems of the workhouses and the role of common lodging houses, to the development of Social Services in the 1940s and local authority provision of accommodation. This title will be of interest to students of history, criminology and sociology.

Drawing on a range of contemporary evidence, Stephen Constantine studies the nature and causes of unemployment in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s, and analyzes the failure of successive inter-war governments to make a constructive response.

'The alleviation of poverty and the protection of the environment are both critical challenges for the vindication of basic human rights for all of humankind. This relationship is however not necessarily an easy one. While there is an inextricable link between poverty and the degradation of the environment, a sophisticated analysis of a problem needs to deal with those cases where the need to increase economic opportunity for poor communities may appear to conflict with fragile ecosystems or the preservation of traditional practices. This collection provides the most sustained engagement with these problems. Drawing on the expertise of a range of distinguished authors, this book presents the reader with an integrated global engagement with these problems. In doing so, it represents a landmark effort towards the creation of a coherent literature to deal with one of humankind's most pressing challenges.' - Dennis Davis, Judge of the High Court, South Africa This timely book explores the complex relationship between the alleviation of poverty and the protection of the environment. There is every reason to believe that these issues are in many ways interdependent. However this book demonstrates that there are situations where alleviation of poverty and the protection of the environment appear to be in a fraught relationship. The contributing authors illustrate that the role played by law in this relationship, whether at the international or national level, will vary depending on the situation and will be more successful at pursuing environmental justice in some cases than in others. This interdisciplinary study will appeal to academics and students in environmental law and other environmental disciplines, environmental policy makers and NGOs interested in issues of poverty, environment and indigenous peoples. Contributors: C.D. Aceves-Avila, D. Behn, K. Bubna-Litic, M.A. Cohen, E. Couzens, J.J. Gonzalez Marquez, S. Gruber, O.F. Jauregui, M. Kidd, Y. Le Bouthillier, P. Martin, A. Mumma, L.C. Paddock, C.G. Pring, G.W. Pring, S. Sabzwari, D.N. Scott, D. Shelton, S.L. Smith

In The Space of Boredom Bruce O'Neill explores how people cast aside by globalism deal with an intractable symptom of downward mobility: an unshakeable and immense boredom. Focusing on Bucharest, Romania, where the 2008 financial crisis compounded the failures of the postsocialist state to deliver on the promises of liberalism, O'Neill shows how the city's homeless are unable to fully participate in a society that is increasingly organized around practices of consumption. Without a job to work, a home to make, or money to spend, the homeless-who include pensioners abandoned by their families and the state-struggle daily with the slow deterioration of their lives. O'Neill moves between homeless shelters and squatter camps, black labor markets and transit stations, detailing the lives of men and women who manage boredom by seeking stimulation, from conversation and coffee to sex in public restrooms or going to the mall or IKEA. Showing how boredom correlates with the downward mobility of Bucharest's homeless, O'Neill theorizes boredom as an enduring affect of globalization in order to provide a foundation from which to rethink the politics of alienation and displacement.

In The Space of Boredom Bruce O'Neill explores how people cast aside by globalism deal with an intractable symptom of downward mobility: an unshakeable and immense boredom. Focusing on Bucharest, Romania, where the 2008 financial crisis compounded the failures of the postsocialist state to deliver on the promises of liberalism, O'Neill shows how the city's homeless are unable to fully participate in a society that is increasingly organized around practices of consumption. Without a job to work, a home to make, or money to spend, the homeless-who include pensioners abandoned by their families and the state-struggle daily with the slow deterioration of their lives. O'Neill moves between homeless shelters and squatter camps, black labor markets and transit stations, detailing the lives of men and women who manage boredom by seeking stimulation, from conversation and coffee to sex in public restrooms or going to the mall or IKEA. Showing how boredom correlates with the downward mobility of Bucharest's homeless, O'Neill theorizes boredom as an enduring affect of globalization in order to provide a foundation from which to rethink the politics of alienation and displacement.

Experts review the leading social policy scholarship from the past year in this comprehensive volume. Published in association with the Social Policy Association, the latest volume in this long-running series addresses current issues and critical debates throughout the international social policy field with a particular focus on employment policy, housing policy and climate justice. Contributors also explore key developments including researching during the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants' access to social benefits in Germany, the right(s) to healthcare in Italy, American and European homelessness policies and much more. This annual review is essential reading for students and academics in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines.

The Eastern Himalaya region covers a geographical area that spans five nations and has diverse landscapes, a multitude of ethnic groups and a rich variety of flora and fauna. The region is relatively poor in terms of GDP and per capita income; industrialisation and infrastructure is under-developed; climate-induced disasters are frequent; and maternal and infant mortality rates are high. Economic constraints combined with restrictive cultural norms create barriers for women in education, employment and decision-making, thus further entrenching unequal gender relations. This book explores the ways in which gender-sensitive and inclusive policies can be developed to address the basic issues of marginalisation, livelihood, poverty and vulnerability in the Eastern Himalayas. The chapters in the volume touch upon current concerns, such as the economic and social challenges faced by women, their control over resources, questions of patriarchy, discrimination, gender rights and equity, information, empowerment and participation, and women as agents of change. This volume will be useful to researchers and scholars in gender studies, sociology and social anthropology, development studies, economic and human geography, politics, northeast and Himalayan studies, South Asian studies, as well as policymakers and those in the development sector and non-governmental organisations.

This fascinating study investigates the experience of English poverty between 1700 and 1900 and in the ways in which the poor made ends meet. The phrase 'economy of makeshifts' has often been used to summarise the patchy, desperate and sometimes failing strategies of the poor for material survival. Incomes or benefits derived from such strategies allegedly ranged from wages supported by under-employment via petty crime through to charity, but allusions to this array of makeshifts usually fall short of answering vital questions about how and when the poor secured access to them. This book represents the single most significant attempt in print to supply the English 'economy of makeshifts' with a solid, empirical basis and to advance the concept of makeshifts from a vague but convenient label to a more precise yet inclusive definition. Individual chapters written by some of the leading, young historians of welfare examine how advantages gained from access to common land, mobilisation of kinship support, resorting to crime, and other marginal resources could prop up struggling households. They suggest how the balance of these strategies might change over time or be modified by gender, life-cycle and geography. A comprehensive introduction summarises the state of research on English poverty, and a thought-provoking conclusion makes valuable suggestions for the direction of future research. This book will be crucial for historians of social life and welfare, of interest to researchers working on eighteenth /nineteenth- century England and will be useful to undergraduates seeking guidance on the historiography of poverty.

In the 1960s, America set out to end poverty. Policy-makers put forth an unprecedented package of legislation, funding poverty programs and empowering the poor through ineffectual employment-related education and training. However, these handouts produced little change, and efforts to provide education and job-training proved inconsequential, boasting only a 2.8 percent decrease in the poverty rate since 1965. Decades after the War on Poverty began, many of its programs failed. Only one thing really worked to help end poverty-and that was work itself, the centerpiece of welfare reform in 1996. Poor No More is a plan to restructure poverty programs, prioritizing jobs above all else. Traditionally, job placement programs stemmed from non-profit organizations or government agencies. However, America Works, the first for-profit job placement venture founded by Peter Cove, has the highest employee retention rate in the greater New York City area, even above these traditional agencies. When the federal government embraced the work-first ideal, inspired by the success of America Works, welfare rolls plummeted from 12.6 million to 4.7 million nationally within one decade. Poor No More is a paradigm-shifting work that guides the reader through the evolution of America's War on Poverty and urges policy-makers to eliminate training and education programs that waste time and money and to adopt a work-first model, while providing job-seekers with the tools and life lessons essential to finding and maintaining employment.

A fundamental question about contemporary Africa is why does Africa remain so poor, long after the departure of the European Colonial domination and in the midst of so many natural resources?

Poverty Reduction Strategies in Africa provides new understandings of the persistent issue of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and makes recommendations for policy frameworks to help African governments alleviate poverty. Each chapters uses case studies to review the old strategies for resolving the problem of poverty in the continent and make the case for new initiatives to address poverty. The contributors focus on practical and day-to-day issues as the best approach to formulate and implement poverty reduction strategies in contemporary Africa.

This book is invaluable reading for students and scholars of African politics and development.

Table of Contents

Part I: Dimensions and Assessments of Poverty Reduction Policies and Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa

1. Poverty in Post-colonial Africa: The Legacy of Contested Perspectives

2. Scaling up Power Infrastructure Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa for Poverty Alleviation

3. The Impact of Anti-Corruption Conventions in Sub-Saharan Africa

4. The Besieged Continent: Interrogating Contemporary Issues of Corruption and Poverty in Africa

5. PEPFAR and Preventing HIV Transmission: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

6. Reflections on the Current Challenges of Poverty Reduction in Africa

7. A Critical Analysis of Poverty Reduction Strategies in Post-Colonial Africa

Part II: Problems of Good Governance and Institutional Failures in West-Africa

8. Weaknesses and Failures of Poverty Reduction Policies and Programs in Nigeria since 1960

9. In the Web of Neo¬-Liberalism and Deepening Contradictions? Assessing Poverty Reform Strategies in West Africa Since the Mid-1980s

10. An Assessment of Abuse of the elderly as an Aspect of Poverty in Akwa-Ibom State, Nigeria

11. Reflections on the Interface between Poverty and Food Insecurity in Nigeria

12. An Appraisal of Poverty Reduction Program in Bayelsa State of Nigeria: “In- Care of the People” (COPE)

13. A Comparative Analysis of Incidence of Poverty in Three Urban Centers in Ghana from 1945-1990

The Gospel Coalition Book Award What does the good news of Jesus mean for economics? Too often, Christian teaching and ministry have focused only on the gospel's spiritual significance and ignored its physical, real-world ramifications. But loving our neighbor well has direct economic implications, and in our diverse and stratified society we need to grapple with them now more than ever. In The Economics of Neighborly Love pastor Tom Nelson sets out to address this problem. Marrying biblical study, economic theory, and practical advice, he presents a vision for church ministry that works toward the flourishing of the local community, beginning with its poorest and most marginalized members. Nelson resists oversimplification and pushes us toward more complex and nuanced understandings of wealth and poverty. If we confess the gospel of Jesus, he insists, we must contend anew with its implications for the well-being of our local communities. Together we can grow in both compassion and capacity.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The economically deprived come into contact with the criminal court system in disproportionate numbers. This collection of original, interactive essays, written from a variety of ideological perspectives, explores some of the more troubling questions and ethical dilemmas inherent in this situation. The contributors, including well-known legal and political philosophers Philip Pettit, George Fletcher, and Jeremy Waldron, examine issues such as heightened vulnerability, indigent representation, and rotten social background defences.