What is poverty? A diachronic exploration of the discourse on poverty from the 1970s to the 2000s

Abstract

Poverty is central to the concept of development. However, the relevance given to particular aspects of poverty has changed over the years and with it the manner in which poverty has been represented. The following paper explores how concepts of poverty within the ‘poverty discourse’ have altered over a 30-year period. A diachronic analysis is performed to explore changes in the topical and thematic composition of the definitions, in addition to the manner in which poverty has been ‘framed’. The results illustrated that poverty was variably framed across the decades ranging from a ‘neutral’ fact to a highly contested state with little agreement over causes and consequences. Nevertheless, the relational analysis revealed the de-problematization of poverty over time. The finding has clear implications for development praxis: poverty needs to be ‘attacked’, but the root causes, at least from a discursive perspective, may be ignored.

Cet article se penche sur la manière dont la conceptualisation de la pauvreté a changé lors des trente dernières années. La pauvreté est un concept central dans le discours sur le développement. La perception de l'importance du phénomène a cependant énormément évolué, et de ce fait, la façon dont la pauvreté a été représentée au sein du discours sur le développement aussi. Cet article propose une analyse diachronique afin de mieux cerner les changements de thèmes et de définitions à travers lesquels le concept de pauvreté a été formulé. Cette analyse démontre que la pauvreté a été représentée de manière extrêmement variable à travers les décennies, comme étant un fait « neutre », mais aussi comme un phénomène fortement contesté à propos duquel il n'y a aucun accord quant aux causes et conséquences. L'analyse démontre aussi que le phénomène de la pauvreté a clairement été « dé-problématisé » au cours des dernières années, ce qui a des implications critiques pour les politiques de développement: la pauvreté est de plus en plus perçue comme étant un phénomène qui doit être attaqué, mais ses causes peuvent être ignorées, au moins dans le discours.

Keywords:

• poverty
• discourse
• development
• diachronic analysis
• the poor

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to DFID for supporting this work.

Notes

1. Poverty is one of the central development topics. Therefore, when investigating poverty discourse, the focus is on identifying changes in the concept itself, as well as how these changes impacted on praxis. Conversely, development discourse is concerned with the different paradigms that have influenced development thinking over the decades. The paper focuses on the discourse of poverty.

2. The Oxford English Dictionary (2000) defines poverty as ‘the state of being extremely poor; the state of being insufficient in amount; Lacking sufficient money to live a comfortable or normal standard’.

3. The authors make a distinction between the wider development discourse and the subset of this discourse specifically relating to poverty.

4. ‘Development’ is a very contested concept, which ranges from economic growth and modernization, to the notion of human and participatory development. Nevertheless, it has been argued that two main paradigms have dominated the arena: neo-Marxist and neoclassical economics (Kothari and Minogue 2002). Alternative discourses, such as anti-development and post-development, have been rapidly absorbed into the mainstream discourse and consequently loose their subversive potential (Nederveen Pieterse 2001; Kothari and Minogue 2002). As such, the dominant discourse remains within the framework of neoclassical economics (Kothari and Minogue 2002).