Abstract
‘Power, not pity’ is a demand articulated by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign in the United States. The article discusses the ways in which some poverty activists are deploying an ethical discourse of human rights as a way of thinking about, talking about and mobilising against poverty and as a way of articulating concrete demands. They are staking a claim to power and to recognition as well as redistribution. It concludes that as an ethical discourse human rights performs an important symbolic and mobilising function but that its effectiveness as a political tool in combating poverty is yet to be proven.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to two anonymous referees and the editors for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Notes
1As a member of the Commission it had a big impact on my understanding of poverty and my subsequent conceptualisation of it (Lister Citation2002).