From: "wendy olsen" <wendy.olsen-AT-man.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:15:48 -0000
Subject: BHA: Poverty


Dear critical realists,
Does anyone have suggestions on the topic of poverty and critical 
realism?  My thoughts begin with :
the normative overtones and under-harmonics of poverty discourses;
the problem of meaning-realism;
how empirical reserach on poverty uses diverse techniques 
illustrating the value of the structure/agency dynamic which CR 
advocates;

and then a series of exemplars, ranging from the explicitly CR to 
the less explicity but potentially CR:

Gryffyd Jones' [similar to, but more explicit than,  Barbara Harriss-
White, Gordon White, John Cameron forthcoming, Brohman, Hardt 
& Negri, and H. Friedmann, Bernstein, and Byres] explicit link of 
marxist thought with growth/poverty debates;
feminist analyses of empowerment as they link to poverty debates, 
notably grass-roots development agency research, illustrating 
emergence of new power (as capabilities, ie power-to);
recent work by Pip Bevan stressing explicitly that causal 
mechanisms and emergence need to be integrated into 
poverty/well-being studies;
the framework of well-being arising from Macgregor et al. in Bath, 
as a non-explicit but implicitly CR approach;
capabilities approach of Nussbaum as having the link between 
abstract conceptions of The GOod with Empirical research on what 
people think is good -- from their diverse socio-historical locations - 
consistent with CR but not explicitly so.
Study of chronic poverty and social exclusion as identifying the un-
truths of reformist anti-poverty discourse whilst also doing empirical 
reserach on the reality of experience of poverty.

All this begs the question of the existence of poverty as an 
intransitive or prior condition, before the research starts.  In my 
view what we refer to as poverty is that which is unacceptable 
suffering.  Thus I'd finish up by linking poverty studies to 
emancipation, distinguishing realism [a la Malcolm Williams' book] 
from critical realism [a la the human flourishing school].

If you have suggestions to add to this review, or want detailed 
references sooner, let me know.

This will go into my 'poverty ' 500 word entry in the Encyclopedia, 
but is only a first stab at it
Yours
Wendy


Wendy Olsen
Lecturer in Socio-Economic Research
Cathie Marsh Centre for Census & Survey Research
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
0044-161-275-3043


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