Poverty as a Malaise of Development: A Discourse Analysis in its Global Context

In this chapter, a social constructivist approach to poverty discourses is combined with a realist approach to the causes of poverty. A specific argument is set out: that three of the main discourses related to ???poverty??? all tend to mask the real structural elements and relations that perpetuate poverty in capitalist society today. The three discourses I focus on are the charity discourse, the social-exclusion discourse, and the economic poverty discourse. I am quite critical of discourses that have contradictory notions embedded in them. Without meaning to disparage these discourses, I argue that they need to be augmented (and hence radically changed) by the addition of a structuralist element that recognises that some oppressive class, gender and ethnic relationships need urgently to be changed. I point out one specific performative contradiction to illustrate my critique. The chapter ends by offering what I would regard as a better moral reasoning strategy than the simplistic poverty discourses. Thus, I argue, a weak social constructivist approach to poverty discourses can be combined with a realist approach to the causes of poor/rich relations.