Frontmatter

Abstract

Conventionally, poverty is often represented as a lack of resources, but it is much more than that. A considerable amount of work has been done in recent years to establish a view of poverty as a complex, multi-dimensional set of experiences. The poverty of nations goes further still. The nature of poverty is constituted by social relationships - relationships such as low status, social exclusion, insecurity and lack of rights. The relational elements of poverty tell us what poverty really means – what poverty consists of, what poor people are experiencing, and what kind of problems there are to be addressed. The more emphasis that we put on such relationships as elements of poverty, the more difficult it becomes to suppose either that poverty is primarily a matter of resources, or that poverty in rich countries means something fundamentally different from poverty in poor countries. The book considers how poverty manifests itself in rich and poor countries, and how those countries can respond to poverty as a relational issue.