Perceptions of Poverty in Small-town Russia

Abstract

The paper reviews some of the perceptions and categorizations of poverty found through a study of participatory approaches to poverty reduction in provincial Russia. It draws on theorizations of poverty as a subjective reality which is socially constructed and maybe differently perceived by different subsections of the population. The paper argues that perceptions of poverty matter, because they feed into both formal categorizations of need and entitlement to assistance or support and more informal, cultural understandings of impoverishment which may be morally and emotionally inflected.