The Politics of Poverty
I'm not planning to blog much this summer; I'm spending most of my days hanging with The Kid and/or working on a project for RESOLVE Alberta. But I'm going to post a couple of the reviews/etc. that I've got hanging around my desktop. These will eventually be posted on the main site, once I finish the CSS changes.... which, at this rate, should happen sometime this fall.
Poor-Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion. Jean Swanson, 2001. Review originally published in the viec review 4(2), July-August 2003.
Jean Swanson, formerly of End Legislated Poverty (publisher of The Long Haul newspaper), writes from a place of experience, empathy, and activism. Her words are clear, as are her expectations: she wrote this book to challenge the notion of poverty in Canada.
Swanson’s analysis is detailed, especially when it looks at how the understanding of poverty has changed in the past decades. In one chapter, she contrasts “Income Security for Canadians”, a 1970 document which cited the importance of all persons having “an adequate income on which to live” and the role of the economy in supporting social objectives, with “Improving Social Security in Canada”, a 1994 document which abandons these ideas and instead extols the virtues of independence and initiative by individuals in their quest to rid themselves of poverty. In two short decades, she concludes, the blame for poverty has moved from the economy to the individual. This is consistent with the continual privatization and deregulation agendas of the provincial governments; there has been a complete shift in awareness, understanding, and expectation. It is in this type of climate that poor-bashing flourishes.
The simplicity of focusing on individuals in poverty prevents an analysis to develop around the conditions that keep people from employment, education and other dignities. Swanson cites Jo Grey, an activist with a Toronto anti-poverty group, in relation to this issue; instead of the continual “putting a face on the problem [of poverty]” sentiment that people have come to expect in media stories about poverty, Grey advocates for an analysis of the problem in the first place. Grey even coined a new word, poornography, to describe the “poor as victim” stories that dominate Canadian media; these stories re-victimize people in poverty as they reduce them to the category of “deserving” poor.
Swanson certainly does not shy away from the systemic issues: chapters include a look at the role of charities in poor-bashing, how people in poverty can self-bash, and what tools we can use to challenge poor-bashing as we encounter it. She is straightforward and does not hesitate in naming poor-bashing behaviour where she sees it. In the end, the reader is left not only with an enhanced awareness of poor-bashing behaviours, but also a variety of tools to use in challenging poor-bashing in its countless forms.
Jean Swanson, formerly of End Legislated Poverty (publisher of The Long Haul newspaper), writes from a place of experience, empathy, and activism. Her words are clear, as are her expectations: she wrote this book to challenge the notion of poverty in Canada.
Swanson’s analysis is detailed, especially when it looks at how the understanding of poverty has changed in the past decades. In one chapter, she contrasts “Income Security for Canadians”, a 1970 document which cited the importance of all persons having “an adequate income on which to live” and the role of the economy in supporting social objectives, with “Improving Social Security in Canada”, a 1994 document which abandons these ideas and instead extols the virtues of independence and initiative by individuals in their quest to rid themselves of poverty. In two short decades, she concludes, the blame for poverty has moved from the economy to the individual. This is consistent with the continual privatization and deregulation agendas of the provincial governments; there has been a complete shift in awareness, understanding, and expectation. It is in this type of climate that poor-bashing flourishes.
The simplicity of focusing on individuals in poverty prevents an analysis to develop around the conditions that keep people from employment, education and other dignities. Swanson cites Jo Grey, an activist with a Toronto anti-poverty group, in relation to this issue; instead of the continual “putting a face on the problem [of poverty]” sentiment that people have come to expect in media stories about poverty, Grey advocates for an analysis of the problem in the first place. Grey even coined a new word, poornography, to describe the “poor as victim” stories that dominate Canadian media; these stories re-victimize people in poverty as they reduce them to the category of “deserving” poor.
Swanson certainly does not shy away from the systemic issues: chapters include a look at the role of charities in poor-bashing, how people in poverty can self-bash, and what tools we can use to challenge poor-bashing as we encounter it. She is straightforward and does not hesitate in naming poor-bashing behaviour where she sees it. In the end, the reader is left not only with an enhanced awareness of poor-bashing behaviours, but also a variety of tools to use in challenging poor-bashing in its countless forms.
Labels: activism, books, poverty, violence against women
posted by Trasie @ 7:39 PM
Read more!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home