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Fall 1999: The Poor And Their Place Within Society
Categorisations, Territories and the Individual: What Place for the Poor? (PDF, 8 pages, 30.2 KB) , by Dominique Vidal
The author shows, in this article, how the space a society keeps for its poor reveals a major mode of articulation between the social and the political. Managing social inequalities, and imagining a society where the individuals would be equal in rights is a common paradox for so called democratic societies. Faced with the gap between political conceptions and the reality of social facts, the author wonders if there remains a space in western societies for those poor individuals and groups, whether they be so called by themselves or not.
The Thatcherian Revolution put into perspective: Great Britain and its Poor (PDF, 10 pages, 36.8 KB) , by Jacques Rodriquez
The British social policy revealed increasingly strict and selective during the 1980s and 1990s, and specifically towards those in the right age to work: young people with no work experience or opportunity, and the unemployed. The old dichotomy between the deserving and the undeserving poor reappeared when the social welfare rights of Beveridge's welfare State were called into question. This contribution tries to retrace the itinerary of the "bad" poor while insisting on the essential and ambiguous role played by the emerging social science in the construction of a social citizenship. In this way, the author suggests that the thatcherian "revolution" did not exclusively express the influence of neo-liberal ideas: in the case of social policies, this "revolution" indeed reactivated the negative perception of assisted poverty, a perception stronger than the traditional social cleavages and that crossed the British social history from the 19th century onwards.
Mass Poverty and the Stigmatisation of the Poor (PDF, 40 pages, 157.7 KB)), by Karine Clement
When poverty is resituated into time it appears as a phenomenon existing in the soviet past but that was suddenly aggravated by market reforms. The light is put on the difficulty to consider the reality of a phenomenon, subject of a great number of interpretations, generating in turn political stakes. The most frequent interpretation, though not the only one, is that of a lack of individual capacity, a failure to assume the values of liberal individualism. The poor tend to denigrate themselves due to such perceptions and to their material living conditions. Observing their lives and their working conditions indicates, however, some ways to more objectively evaluate the reality of their situation. Such an observation leads us to consider poverty as a proletarisation or a social destabilisation process that far from touching a well identified minority of the population menaces the majority at various degrees and in different temporalities.
The Experience of Impoverishment of the Argentine Middle Class (PDF, 22 pages, 67.7 KB) , by Gabriel Kessler
The Argentine society has gone through dramatic events for the last two decades. Such events have led to situations of an unprecedented gravity and generated profound changes. These events are printed in the collective memory: the military dictatorship and State violence (1976-1983), the Falklands War in 1982, the 1989 and 1990 hyperinflation, and, during the recent years, the social consequences of the wide neo-liberal reforms put into place by the Carlos Menem government since 1991. At the same time, in a more discrete way, a large part of the population suffers from every day impoverishment. One can for instance observe middle class citizens entering into poverty: they are the so-called "new poor" which number has increased by 338% between 1980 and 1990. This article seeks to enlighten the characteristics of what Robert Castel calls the "destabilisation of stables". In sum, we question ourselves on the specificity of impoverishment as a social experience.
Poverty in India: A Matter of Casts? (PDF, 16 pages, 51.2 KB) , by Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirski
One third of the Indian population lives under the poverty line. Yet, the statistical accountings do not consider poverty in India in its specificity, i.e. a matter of status as of income. In the cast organised Indian society, birth determines one's position on the social status ladder. This position used to generate relative wealth and power levels. The poorest were also the untouchables and the lower casts, serving families from upper ranks. Since the end of the 19th century, political and economical evolutions have called into question the congruence between lower ritual status and poverty. The 1950 Constitution establishes a social justice and equality of opportunities objective and launches a positive discrimination policy in favour of the "backward classes", defined with a cast criterion, showing in turn that the reflection occurs in terms of status more than of class. The paradox of the categorical poverty policy enlarged in 1990 to half of the Indian population is that it favours a fragmentation – increased by the patronised political game – of the benefiting groups into rival interest casts. However, the relation between politicians and the poor have changed. Those who have been registered as "backwards" currently represent a major political force due to their number. Though this contradicts the principles of equality of the democratic society, politicising and considering the poverty stake in function of casts seems to be necessary for a bettering of the condition and an emancipation of the poor.
The Homeless in Old Delhi: Urban Insertion and Economic Strategies (PDF, 28 pages, 82.8 KB) , by Véronique Dupont
This article analyses the residential and economical practises of the homeless of Old Delhi, the historical centre of the Indian capital city. Such an investigation seeks to question, through various angles, the space homeless people occupy in the Indian society: integration into family and community structures or individualisation, social marginality and anaemia; insertion into the job market and role in the urban and rural economies; home exclusion and establishment of residential and adaptive strategies; the disputed space within the urban space, the right of homeless, and, eventually, the place within the civil society.
Review Essay: A Socio-historical Approach of Wandering: Jean-François Wagniart, the Vagrant at the End of the 19th Century (PDF, 19 pages, 60 KB) , by Jacques Rodriguez
The author discusses in this bibliographical study the book by Jean-François Wagniart on vagabonds and 19th Century social representations of wandering. How can one historically analyse the forms and images of wandering at the light of judicial and police archives? It is in regards to this latter question that the author questions Jean-François Wagniart. Do such archives of repression not show how a society reveals itself through the way she treats her margins and the image of what is unbearable?