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.

Keywords:

• perceptions of poverty
• categorization
• families
• deserving
• undeserving
• social exclusion

Acknowledgements

Field research in Russia has been organised and made together with Nina Ivashinenko, Alexander Soldatkin, Ann-Mari Sätre, and Margarita Lobanova. We want to express our gratitude to them and to several other persons who participated in research work in different important roles.

Notes

1. See for example: http://www.poverty.org.uk/summary/social%20exclusion.shtml, or http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/poverty-definitions.pdf for standardised measures of relative poverty in European contexts.

Additional information

Funding

The authors greatly appreciate funding from the Nizhny Novgorod Scientific Research Centre for Economics, Society and Science (EON), the research collaboration grant from the Swedish Institute, and funding from the Lobachevsky State University of Nizhniy Novgorod.