Extra vigilance required

A boundless optimism leaps from every page of this book. It is a book of audacious ambition, unrestrained passion, unbridled hope, and unstinting ethical commitment. Fueling this optimism is an inextinguishable conviction that poverty theory illuminates a discernable path from our present circumstances to an auspicious future and that an implicit link connects knowledge of poverty to knowledge for its elimination. The ultimate contribution of Territories of Poverty may rest on how well the editors and contributors are justified in these beliefs. Editors Ananya Roy and Emma Shaw Crane state unequivocally in their Preface that " this project is unapologetically concerned with theory. " The editors fully endorse the Enlightenment precept that knowledge is power. They are confident in their wager that theorizing poverty in the right way, correcting the false starts and misguided theories that litter the history of poverty knowledge, will finally prepare the ground for its elimination. That belief rests on two presumptions. First is the certainty that poverty is knowable, is available to the knower, and is willing to let itself be known—not only seen but known in its ontological essence. Second is the wager that poverty knowledge is the avenue to progress, and that better knowledge constitutes a political tactic that can be marshaled to make a world without poverty. The chapters that follow the editors' preface and introduction, however, challenge such optimism in a series of astute analyses of existing poverty policy. With unerring insight and incisive analysis, the authors narrate an unbroken record in which policy ostensibly claiming to reduce or eliminate poverty instead exacerbated or redistributed the problem and found new ways to subject its intended beneficiaries to new forms of indignity, degradation and further immiseration. The collective lessons of these penetrating analyses are twofold: first, that regardless of its particular form or focus, poverty policy consistently accommodates the changing requirements of a social, political and economic order that repeatedly reinvents itself; and, second, that a discourse of poverty alleviation legitimates programs and actions that align with the changing requirements of that structural and procedural reinvention. It is unclear, as a result, how these incisive analyses of poverty policy contribute to the book's optimistic premise. A theory of poverty is not a theory of the absence of poverty and an analytic theory is not a theory of change. Calling out the failures of existing policy is not the same as calling for an alternative solution, and critique of current policy does not in itself reveal a route to a different future. Despite the Enlightenment belief that knowledge is power, how to use that knowledge moving forward still remains to be explained before collecting on the wager that theory opens the path to a better future. Further challenging the book's optimistic premise is the possibility that better knowledge may reveal that poverty is impermeable to solution, an intractable element of the human condition. The editors and contributors adopt a broadly relational approach to theorizing poverty, an approach that I strongly endorse for its ability to probe beyond reductive

When William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) exhibited the painting Indigent Family (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) at the 1865 French Salon, Paris was undergoing an extensive rebuilding program. The Indigent Family, however, instead of focusing on the renovated city of modernity, fashion and consumerism, revealed the backstage of Paris, and focused on the new forms of social misery and alienation that lay behind the urban improvements. Utilising Howard S. Becker's (1982) definition of the art world as consisting of all the people whose coordinated activities produce works that are defined as art, this article examines the relationship between Bouguereau's oeuvre and its social environment. Through an examination of the artist's aims, his dealer's strategies and the critics' reception, it analyzes the difference between the French buyers' lack of interest in the painting and the British collectors' enthusiastic response. The article uses the assimilation-contrast theory in order to claim that embellished poverty, which was rejected by critics on account of commercialization, attracted the bourgeoisie because it could be assimilated into its own range of experiences. Combined with theories of empathy, which decrypt the benefits of self-interest that lie at the heart of empathic feelings, the article asserts that Bouguereau's idealized beggar generated public empathy because its embellishment produced compassion through the process of assimilation and shared identity. By purchasing an image of an idealized beggar that fell within their range of acceptance, the article claims that the clients not only verified their imagery-imaginary benevolence, but also generated genuine generosity.

During the 1930s and 1940s, artists sought to represent the social and economic injustices that had affected millions of people during the Great Depression. An artistic movement, known as Social Realism, took hold and is a term used to encompass the artists of the period who produced socially conscious art in a realist manner. Despite a lack of true stylistic unity, the artists were joined in their social and political cause to depict class and racial oppression, with a particular focus on the plight of the laborer. Art was viewed as a political tool used to achieve social change. The government had a leading role in this endeavor. The Federal Art Project (FAP), the visual arts division of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA), employed approximately five thousand artists with the purpose of creating prints, murals and paintings detailing American life. One of the main objectives of Social Realism and the commissioned FAP projects was to make art accessible to the common people. To that end, the projects developed in two main artistic forms: 1) public murals, which enabled art to be directly experienced by the populace, unrestricted by museum entry fees; and 2) graphic media, which was an effective means of inexpensively producing, multiplying and disseminating images to the public. LSUAM’s WPA exhibition demonstrates the range of subject matter, from individual laborers to urban, industrial scenes, that characterized printmaking during this period. This essay examines Social Realism as an intercultural movement that was impacted by two distinct, but related artistic periods: Mexican muralism and the New Negro movement. Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco’s use of vivid colors, monumental figural forms, and portrayals of social realities inspired many of the WPA artists included in this exhibition, such as Hale Woodruff, Dox Thrash and Thomas Hart Benton. In addition, Alain Locke played a prominent role in nurturing and promoting the race- and class- conscious works of African American artists, such as Woodruff and Thrash, during the New Negro movement. Although these artists created images that sympathized with the plight of American workers, they also spoke to the injustices experienced by Mexican Indian peasants and African slave laborers. The working class types portrayed by these artists, although rooted in cultural specificity, were meant to transcend and speak to a universal condition.

International Studies Review, 2002

But you were tireless; you came again. 'Poverty is a meaningless term ... You have suffered deprivation all your life ...' My suffering was endless... But you did not forget me; This time, hand knotted into a fist, you said in a rousing voice, 'Wake up, wake up, you the dispossessed of the world ...' ... Many years passed, by now you were cleverer. ... You brought a blackboard and carefully chalked a neat, long line on it; Your strain showed; wiping sweat from your forehead, you said, 'This line you see, below it, much below it you live.' Fabulous! ... Thank you for my poverty, deprivation, dispossession... Above all, thank you for the neat, long line, that luminous gift. ... My profound well wisher, thank you many times over.-From Tarapada Roy, 'The Poverty Line'. Back Volumes Back Volumes of Economic and Political Weekly from 1976 to 2003 are available in unbound form.

Philosophy Research Archives, 1986

Social topic called poverty is examined mainly through the literature of Georg Simmel. Religious implications, and those of philosophy, mysticism, law etc, enhance the consideration. This is no field investigation report or empirical study.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2020

This study would like to examine manifestations of poverty in the light of world literature. For this purpose, it would like to investigate the selected-literary texts, like Kazi Nazrul Islam's "Poverty", Thomas Montague Traherne's Poverty, and Charles Dickens' Hard Times. It aims to look at the real picture of poverty of the age, which has been reflected in their works. It would like to focus upon the manifestations of poverty and its relation with the current age. Nazrul, Dickens, and Traherne have led their personal lives with great hardship, bitterness experiences, psychological problems, like trauma and paranoia during their life span. They have tried to draw a light upon personal inflicting senses and mental disorders of the poor communities through their literary works. They have wanted to explore the practical circumstances and dark aspects of human society, community, and culture with a view to bringing about revolutionary changes of the poor community of the world around. Of course, such writers and their literary works are the symbol of today's society as well as literature. In this sense, it may be expressed that Nazrul, Dickens, and Traherne are the representatives of the age. The researchers' goal is that poverty is profoundly dealt with human life; no literature can express his perfect feeling and imagination if he has not tasted the bitterness experience of poverty in life. In many countries of the world, many litterateurs have focused upon the practical experiences of social problems of their hard times in the name of poverty. Thus, this study would like to foster unexplored-glaring themes of poverty through investigating the selected-works as well as the critical comments regarding poverty made by critics and scholars.