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What is poverty? A diachronic exploration of the discourse on poverty from the
1970s to the 2000s
Federica Misturelli a; Claire Heffernan a
Livestock Development Group, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, The University of Reading,
UK
a
Online Publication Date: 01 December 2008
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The European Journal of Development Research
Vol. 20, No. 4, December 2008, 666–684
What is poverty? A diachronic exploration of the discourse
on poverty from the 1970s to the 2000s
Federica Misturelli* and Claire Heffernan
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Livestock Development Group, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development,
The University of Reading, UK
Poverty is central to the concept of development. However, the relevance given to particular
aspects of poverty has changed over the years and with it the manner in which poverty has
been represented. The following paper explores how concepts of poverty within the ‘poverty
discourse’ have altered over a 30-year period. A diachronic analysis is performed to explore
changes in the topical and thematic composition of the definitions, in addition to the manner in
which poverty has been ‘framed’. The results illustrated that poverty was variably framed
across the decades ranging from a ‘neutral’ fact to a highly contested state with little
agreement over causes and consequences. Nevertheless, the relational analysis revealed the
de-problematization of poverty over time. The finding has clear implications for development
praxis: poverty needs to be ‘attacked’, but the root causes, at least from a discursive
perspective, may be ignored.
Cet article se penche sur la manière dont la conceptualisation de la pauvreté a changé lors des
trente dernières années. La pauvreté est un concept central dans le discours sur le
développement. La perception de l’importance du phénomène a cependant énormément
évolué, et de ce fait, la façon dont la pauvreté a été représentée au sein du discours sur le
développement aussi. Cet article propose une analyse diachronique afin de mieux cerner les
changements de thèmes et de définitions à travers lesquels le concept de pauvreté a été formulé.
Cette analyse démontre que la pauvreté a été représentée de manière extrêmement variable à
travers les décennies, comme étant un fait « neutre », mais aussi comme un phénomène
fortement contesté à propos duquel il n’y a aucun accord quant aux causes et conséquences.
L’analyse démontre aussi que le phénomène de la pauvreté a clairement été « dé-problématisé »
au cours des dernières années, ce qui a des implications critiques pour les politiques de
développement: la pauvreté est de plus en plus perçue comme étant un phénomène qui doit être
attaqué, mais ses causes peuvent être ignorées, au moins dans le discours.
Keywords: poverty; discourse; development; diachronic analysis; the poor
Introduction
Defining poverty is not a straightforward matter.1 For example, Shostak (1965) claimed that
poverty is such a personal experience that only the poor can understand it. Most authors agree
that, at very least, a working definition is required in order to underpin appropriate praxis.
However, the manner in which poverty is represented and understood is likely to influence the
boundaries of development. For example, if poverty is considered an economic problem then
interventions will naturally focus on economic issues (Green 2006; Øyen 2007; Spicker 2007).
Conversely, if poverty is considered a national-level phenomenon, then interventions are
likely to be framed at the national level. Within the literature, numerous definitions of poverty
*Corresponding author. Email: f.misturelli@reading.ac.uk; federica_misturelli@yahoo.it
ISSN 0957-8811 print/ISSN 1743-9728 online
q 2008 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes
DOI: 10.1080/09578810802464888
http://www.informaworld.com
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The European Journal of Development Research
667
have been formulated, each with differing implications with regard to approach and/or solutions
(Townsend 1993; Ruggeri Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003). However, it has been claimed that
there are three conceptual fault-lines dividing definitions: income-based or money-metric,
capability, and multi-dimensional (Lok-Dessallien 2000; Ruggeri Laderchi et al. 2003).
Income-based definitions regard poverty as a state in which individuals lack the financial
resources to satisfy their basic needs and/or reach a minimum standard of living. This description
of poverty is the closest to common usage.2 Within this category definitions have focused on
income and expenditure or nutritional deficits. All of these criteria fit well with the concept of a
poverty line that provides a distinct and measurable cut-off between the poor and the non-poor
(Lok-Dessallien 2000). However, poverty lines have come under attack for not capturing the full
experience of poverty (Sumner 2003; Francis 2006). Indeed, the construct is rather blunt,
i.e. one is either poor or not poor and differences within and between these large groups are
largely concealed (Baulch and McCulloch 1998; Green and Hulme 2005). Relevant social factors
are also ignored (Lok-Dessalien 2000). Finally, it has been argued the use and implementation of
such lines depict poverty as a static and neutral fact (Baulch and McCulloch 1998).
In contrast to income-based definitions, the capability approach claims that poverty is not
measured on the basis of what one has, but rather on what can be done with it (Sen 1985).
As such, poverty is defined as failure to achieve certain minimal or basic capabilities, where
‘basic capabilities’ refer to the ability to satisfy some ‘functioning’ up to a certain minimally
adequate level (ibid.). Within the framework, income and economic growth become instruments
to support human development (Clark 2006). Thus, the notion of poverty as a lack of material
things began to be viewed as limited and partial.
Many authors now caution that poverty is not an inevitable and neutral condition, but rather
its origins may be found in iniquitous social and economic relations as well as specific political
choices (Yapa 1996, 1998; Green and Hulme 2005; Shiva 2005, 2006). Poverty, we are now told,
is among other things a social construct (Rahnema 1992; Shiva 1998). Thus, the multidimensional notion of poverty has been born. Multi-dimensional constructs of poverty are
largely linked to the participatory paradigm. Indeed, with the introduction of participatory
methodologies, the subjective account of what it means to be poor became ascendant (Chambers
1997; Kothari and Minogue 2002).
Poverty, during this time period, also became synonymous with ill-being i.e. a state of mind
and physicality where the individual experiences the deprivation of material, physical and social
needs. The advantages of such a conceptual approach are clear: first, by highlighting the
psychological aspects of ill-being and well-being, the definition makes clear that the term
‘poverty’ covers a wide range of experiences. Second, by recognizing the psychological factors
linked to ill-being, it implicitly acknowledges the existence of various individual experiences. In
this manner, many different categories of the poor could be disaggregated, underlining the
perception that the poor were not homogeneous (Guijt and Kaul Shah 1998).
Thus, poverty became viewed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon deeply rooted in social and
cultural norms, at the community level (Narayan, Patel, Schafft, Rademacher, and Koch-Schulte
2000a). In describing this construct, there appears to be a general attempt by authors to ‘out do’ one
another by leaving nothing out. For example, Narayan, Chambers, Kaul Shah, and Petesh (2000b,
p. 21) in a participatory assessment conducted for the World Bank, characterized poverty as follows:
Experiences of ill being include material lack and want (of food, housing and shelter, livelihood,
assets and money); hunger, pain and discomfort; exhaustion and poverty of time; exclusion,
rejection, isolation and loneliness; bad relations with others, including bad relations within the
family; insecurity, vulnerability, worry, fear and low self-confidence; and powerlessness;
helplessness, frustration and hunger. All these factors have psychological consequences . . .
[including] mental distress, breakdown, depression and madness.
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F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
The arrival at our current conceptualizations of poverty, as a series of explicit characteristics,
encompassing virtually all elements of the human condition, has been a long journey.
While work has been done to expand our notion of poverty, adding more to the concept often
says more about actor perspectives than about the condition itself. Thus, it may be argued that
categorizing poverty into three conceptual areas, each with a separate and distinct historical
contribution, is far too simplistic. First, such an approach misses the interactions and influences
of wider trends within the development discourse and thereby treats this discourse as somewhat
monolithic or at minimum tripartite in nature. Equally, such neat categories ignore the change in
the terms comprising the definitions of poverty itself. Therefore, to both better identify and
understand the conceptual shifts within the poverty discourse,3 changes in emphasis regarding
the component parts of the definitions must be explicated.
To address these issues, the authors performed a diachronic analysis of the definitions of
poverty from the 1970s to the 2000s. Diachronic analysis is associated with the study of linguistic
changes over a period of time (Trudgill 2003). Within the context of the paper, the analysis focused
on changes to the linguistic ‘frame’ for the term poverty. A frame is a conceptual tool
which reflects social values and norms utilized by an actor when presenting a specific concept
(Goffman 1974; Yamaguchi and Harris 2004). Frames were assessed by investigating the
syntactical organization of the definitions of poverty offered by four groups of actors: researchers,
donors, NGOs and governments. In total, 159 definitions of poverty formed the core of the analysis.
Methods
Overall, 578 documents were reviewed in the process of selecting the core definitions of poverty
utilized in the analysis. Three broad criteria were utilized in the initial screening of documents:
first, the main theme had to relate to poverty; second, each document had to contain a unique and
original definition of poverty; third, the authorship had to correspond to the key actors involved,
i.e. researcher, donors, governments or NGOs. To uncover the deeper layers of meaning within
the definitions and changes over time, the diachronic analysis disaggregated the topics, themes
and consequently frames within the definitions over the 30-year period of interest.
Utilizing Huckin’s (2002) approach to the conceptual analysis of texts, each definition was
first disaggregated into its basic component parts or topics. Once the topics were identified, they
were grouped according to their semantic meaning or theme. For example, topics such as
housing, assets and clothes were grouped under the theme material assets or possessions, while
topics such as food, nutrition, and life expectancy were categorized as physical factors. Finally,
references to rights, political participation, ability to vote etc. were denoted as political factors.
The following sentence illustrates the process: poverty is the ‘inability to meet life necessities
(topic 2), food (topic 3), clothing (topic 4), shelter (topic 5), health care (topic 6) and education
(topic 7)’ (Oakley 1987, p. 2). In this example, the identified themes included institutional
factors (healthcare and education) and physical and material needs. Therefore, across the
analysis, the definitions and their linguistic organization were the sole basis from which the
themes were derived, in order to lower interpretive bias.
This is not to say, however, that all definitions were clear in their meaning. For example,
many authors referred to a ‘minimum standard of living’ without specifying exactly what this
might denote. As a ‘minimum standard of living’ may refer to both physical factors and material
factors (see DFID 1997; Sumner 2003; Bellù and Liberati 2005), therefore, the expression was
classified according to predominant context in which it was utilized.
The definitions also varied widely in their length and complexity. Some definitions were
comprised simply of a sentence and thus were formed by a single theme. Further, in some of the
more lengthy definitions, the themes were often embedded in one another:
The European Journal of Development Research
Table 1.
Relations linking themes.
Relation
Expansion
Juxtaposition
Cause/effect
Contrasting
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669
Realization
Any additional information which elaborates on a particular topic
or explains a point of view
A list of topics with no apparent relation
One event is represented as the cause of another or the consequence
Two events affirm opposite things, i.e. two individuals act in an
opposite manner
One fifth of the world population, more than a billion people live in poverty. They earn, on average,
less than 1 US dollar per day (Economic factor) . . . but being poor is about more than material
deprivation (Material factor). It is about powerlessness (Political factor). Not only are poor
people unable to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, health and education (Physical and Material
needs; Institutional factor) they have few or no rights or freedom to improve their position (Political
factor). They have little or no control over productive resources (especially land) and often little
opportunity to use their own energies and capabilities to generate a better life for themselves and their
families (Economic factor). They have limited access to the kind of public services which are taken for
granted in the rich world (Institutional factor) and their needs are frequently ignored by powerful, often
corrupt, local elite (Political factors). (Davidson, Myers, and Chakraborty 1992, p. 5)
Next, the relationships between the themes were explored to investigate how definitions
were ‘framed’. A ‘frame’ is the manner by which an element of rhetoric is packaged in order to
encourage certain interpretations. Therefore, it was important to discover how the definitions
were rhetorically constructed. The method utilized was adapted from Rhetorical Structure
Theory (RST) (Mann and Thompson 1988; Mann, Matthiessen, and Thompson 1992), a core
theory of linguistics offered to analyse texts. According to RST, texts are formed by building
blocks of which one is central (the ‘nucleus’) and contains the main message with others acting
as ‘satellites’ and containing information that completes the message (ibid.). Thus, the
interaction between the nucleus and the satellites is just as important to divining meaning as
the actual content of the linguistic building blocks themselves. Therefore, within the context of
the study, the following four relations i.e. expansion, juxtaposition, cause/effect, and contrasting
were explored (Table 1).
The manner in which the themes were linked to each other and the message they conveyed
were identified as follows:
The rural poor form an economically and socially heterogeneous group, made up of tenants, share
croppers, small peasant land holders, landless labourers, artisan fishermen and other vulnerable
groups. Within each group there are the very poor and destitute, who require special attention in
developing programmes. (FAO 1986, p. 3)
The above definition is composed of two sentences, with the second clarifying the information
offered in the first. As such, the relation is classified as ‘expansion’. Conversely, the following
definition contains both ‘cause/effect’ and ‘expansion’ relations: ‘Much of the poverty is caused
by the way communities and countries are arranged. The caste system in India makes sure that
people who are born poor stay poor’ (Moyes 1981, p. 3).
In this example, the first portion of the definition clearly focuses on the cause of poverty, i.e.
the social and political organization of communities and countries, whereas the second, while
still detailing a cause, offers a further explanation. Therefore, it was classified as expansion.
Results
Table 2 disaggregates the definitions under study by actor and decade. As the table illustrates,
the majority of definitions of poverty under review were sourced in documents written
670
Table 2.
F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
Number of definitions per decade by actor.
Year
Donors
NGO
National governments
Researchers
Total
9
12
25
21
65
2
4
5
11
22
3
2
6
10
21
11
7
10
21
49
25
25
46
63
159
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1970– 1979
1980– 1989
1990– 1999
2000– 2005
Total
by development agencies and researchers with fewer non-governmental organizations and
national governments represented. On the face of it, a number of reasons may be offered for
this disparity. First, it may be argued that governments and NGOs are largely the implementers
of development and therefore their literature is more concerned with the practical aspects of
development praxis (Edwards and Hulme 1992). A second potential reason may be that as the
NGO and government literature often repeated definitions offered by both researchers and
donors, this literature was the least original and therefore the least represented. Finally, as
Gill (1970) argues, NGO programmes in the past were more independent and did not
mirror donor interests as is common today. For example, during the 1970s, NGOs were less
interested in poverty per se than disaster mitigation and famine relief (Gill 1970; Tvedt 1998;
Maxwell 2001).
While it is not terribly surprising that the donors produced documents discussing poverty,
nevertheless definitions were not as frequent as might be expected. For example, from 1978 to
2006, only five World Development Reports (World Bank 1978, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2004)
offered a definition of poverty, although poverty is discussed in each report. In total, seven
themes were identified across the definitions. Table 3 illustrates the main themes and component
topics identified across the definitions. It shows that three of the above themes referred to the
factors required to support basic human life, i.e. ‘material factors’, ‘physical factors’ and
‘economic factors’, whereas the remaining four referred to the socio-political and psychological
spheres of the individual involved.
While one might expect that the frequency of themes to have increased over the years, as
Figure 1 displays, the highest number of themes per definition was offered in the 1970s.
To explore this fluctuation, an obvious starting place is the wider poverty discourse. Indeed, it
may be argued that during the 1970s the belief that poverty was simply a function of
economic disparity began to be challenged (Seers 1971; World Bank 1978). Therefore,
development actors began to describe poverty in wider terms. Conversely, during the 1980s,
within the discourse the neo-liberal perspective on development dominated, along with the
Table 3.
Definitions of poverty: major themes.
Themes
Material factors
Physical factors
Economic factors
Political factors
Social factors
Institutional factors
Psychological factors
Topics
Housing, clothing, standard of living
Food, water, health, physical survival
Poverty lines, low income, unemployment
Rights, lack of political participation (community-level), no voice
(individual-level), references to the wider international setting
Lack of social esteem, lack of social life, inability to participate in
community life
Lack of access to services and institutions such as education and health
services
Feelings and beliefs associated with poverty
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The European Journal of Development Research
Figure 1.
671
Average number of themes per definition: 1970s– 2000s.
focus on economic growth (Brock, Cornwall, and Gaventa 2001), which may explain the
low frequency of themes. By the late 1980s, however, the participatory paradigm began to
increase in influence (Brock and McGee 2002) and with it new elements began to enter
the poverty discourse. Further, during the 1990s, with the introduction of the New Poverty
Agenda, it may be argued that poverty regained a central position within development
(Baulch 2006) and therefore definitions became richer. Nevertheless, such conclusions are
too simplistic and as the following sections demonstrate, ignore nuances in the poverty
discourse itself.
The conceptualization of poverty in the 1970s
During the 1970s, the major themes comprising the definitions of poverty were as illustrated in
Figure 2. During the 1970s, physical and material factors comprised 50% of all of the themes in
the definitions under study. Interestingly, these factors were often mentioned together as the
following excerpts demonstrate:
Poverty is reflected in poor nutrition, inadequate shelter and low health standards. (World Bank
1975, p. 5)
there are hundreds of millions of people who are illiterate and inadequately sheltered even from the
rain, virtually without furniture or shoes, perpetually undernourished. (Seers 1971, p. 13)
some 800 million continued to be trapped in what I have termed absolute poverty: a condition of life
so characterized from malnutrition, illiteracy, diseases, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality,
and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency. (World Bank
1978, p. 1)
In the above examples, poverty is largely described in relation to meeting the most basic
level of human existence, thereby equating poverty to the notion of subsistence. Nevertheless,
the latter definition contains a reference to education, which indicates that in this particular
instance poverty was considered more than merely physical survival. Overall, 12% of responses
included an institutional factor to poverty.
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672
Figure 2.
F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
Major themes in the 1970s.
During the decade, poverty was measured largely in monetary terms, with poverty lines the
main tool to differentiate between the poor and the non-poor (Ravallion 1998). Therefore, it is
somewhat surprising that economic themes within the definitions under study comprised only
14% of the total. However, during this time period, perceptions regarding the primacy of
economic growth, as a key weapon for poverty alleviation, began to be challenged (Brock et al.
2001). The notion is somewhat reflected in the different topic comprising the theme economic
factors (Table 4).
As Table 4 illustrates, topics included in the economic aspects of poverty in addition
to strictly monetary criteria included the wider world economy and distribution of resources.
The usage of social and psychological themes at the time attempted to put a more human face on
poverty, as the following definitions illustrate:
the physical insecurity, personal unhappiness, intensified mortality, the sense of being dwarfed by vast
and incontrollable physical, mechanical and corporate structures, the hatred and contempt of other
people, the lack of opportunity for contemplation, the loss of community life. (Hensman 1971, p. 4)
Hunger, alienation, homelessness, hopelessness. Poverty has many symptoms, but the root is a single
universal problem. (Oxfam 1975, p. 1)
Thus, during the 1970s the components of the multi-dimensional definitions of poverty so
popular today were already evident. Table 5 links the themes to the actors involved, showing that
researchers tended to utilize the more ‘qualitative’ themes, i.e. those more frequently relating to
the psychological, social and political factors. Nevertheless, researchers also were responsible
for the majority of the economic themes cited. Alternatively, the donors emphasized physical
and material needs. However, when the linguistic relations between the themes were examined,
it appeared that the majority of the themes were linked via ‘expansion’ (Table 6).
By mainly utilizing ‘expansion’ relations, the results suggest that during the 1970s,
definitions of poverty tended not to be contested. Indeed, the predominance of these relations
means that there was a generally accepted view in which authors had little need to detail
673
The European Journal of Development Research
Table 4.
Economic factors: breakdown of topics (1970s).
Economic factors: Topics
Frequency
Monetary indicators
Wider economic context
Unequal distribution of resources
Table 5.
Frequency of themes and development actors (1970s).
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Themes
Economic factors
Material factors
Physical factors
Social factors
Political factors
Institutional factors
Table 6.
4
3
1
Development agencies
Researchers
NGOs
National governments
1
6
6
3
2
2
7
7
6
9
1
4
1
2
2
1
2
3
1
1
1
Thematic relations in the 1970s.
Linking relations
Expansion
Juxtaposition
Cause/effect
Total relations
Total number
19
6
4
29
persuasive arguments to the reader. Rather, authors simply had to ‘expand’ or offer descriptive
detail.
Poverty is a multivariate phenomenon, in which income, standard of living, health, education, and
status are all relevant to its identification; and employment, occupation, wage levels demographic
factors and a number of other variables in the social framework all play a role in its generation.
(Osutongun 1975, p. 191)
However, despite the predominance of expansive relations, the reframing of poverty as
problematic was starting to emerge with the identification of cause/effect relations, as the
following quote illustrates:
It is necessary to distinguish between three types of poverty: intrinsic or basic poverty, which can be
characterized by the absence or insufficiency of significant possibilities of enrichment (expansion)
. . . induced poverty: resulting from the iniquitous economic order, the exploitation of ignorance or
weakness, although possibilities of enrichment exist; (cause/effect) emergency poverty, brought
about by more or less temporary circumstances, for example, the energy crisis, natural disasters
(cause/effect). (Doo Kinguè 1975, p. 27)
Within the example, the presence of a cause/effect relation begins to undermine the perception
of poverty as a neutral and inevitable situation. Conversely, poverty is the result of iniquity or
specific circumstances on which individuals have no control.
The excerpt illustrates early attempts to categorize the poor that would become so popular in
later decades. Indeed, the author offers three types of poverty: intrinsic, induced and emergency,
which require three different explanations for the reader. Where ‘intrinsic poverty’ presents
poverty as an inevitable fact and ‘induced poverty’ is presented as the result of injustice with
674
F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
‘emergency poverty’ as a situation caused by external events, outside of the control of individuals.
Thus, within the definitions from the 1970s, the origins of later trends, i.e. the attribution or blame
for poverty and the disaggregating/categorization of the poor, began to emerge.
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The conceptualization of poverty in the 1980s
During the decade, a shift in themes was apparent, as illustrated in Figure 3. Two trends are
apparent, first, there was a decrease in the description of poverty as a material need and second,
economic, institutional and political factors rose in prominence, while social factors declined.
However, despite the apparent increase in attention to more qualitative factors of poverty, i.e.
institutional and political factors, overall ‘quantitative’ indicators of poverty comprised 63% of
the total themes, a percentage similar to that during the 1970s. Interestingly, during the 1980s the
psychological themes decreased in frequency. It may be argued that the choice of themes
reflected the two poverty discourses that co-existed at the time: on one hand, the neo-liberal
perspective that viewed poverty mainly in economic terms is evident (Brock et al. 2001); while
on the other, the alternative view proposed by the participatory paradigm began to emerge.
Further, across the definitions, differences in the usage and meaning of the themes could be
discerned. For example, rather than locate poverty within broad themes such as economic or
physical needs, and absolute and relative poverty, a focus on the geography of poverty began to
emerge. For example, Richards and Thompson (1984) in their ILO publication, describe urban
poverty as separate and distinct from rural poverty. FAO (1986) and UN (1989) also focus on the
rural poor. However, as during the 1970s, categories of the poor and their poverty were detailed.
For example, Iliffe (1987) distinguished the poor from the very poor and described destitute,
structural and conjunctural poverty. Lipton (1988) further made a distinction between the ‘poor’
and the ‘ultra-poor’, as the following excerpt demonstrates:
A line can be drawn between the ultra poor and the rest. In several ways, the ultra poor . . . are
different from the further 25 – 35 percent who falls below the 2,250 calorie-line . . . there are sharp
Figure 3.
Major themes in the 1980s.
The European Journal of Development Research
675
differences in nutritional behaviour induced by economic change. The ultra poor, when income goes
up a little, spend as if their overriding priority were to obtain more and inexpensive calories. Other
poor people do not. (Lipton 1988, p. 4)
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The recognition that the poor were not all the same, and that a single poverty line was not
sufficiently diverse to accurately describe the conditions of the poor, was matched by changes
within the theme ‘social factors’. Indeed, while during the 1970s social factors generally related
to participation in community life, during in the 1980s the relations between the poor and other
social groups became of interest:
Much of the poverty is caused by the way communities and countries are arranged. The caste system
in India makes sure that people who are born poor stay poor. The landlord system in Latin America
enables the landowner to evict any tenant who improves his land. In India the moneylenders fix the
interest rate so that you can never pay back the loan . . . (Moyes 1981, p. 3)
Similarly, the notion of control over resources was introduced: ‘Poverty is capacity of control
over resources: capital assets, land, finance, education, tools, even health’ (Qadir 1982, p. 25).
Thus, within the definitions under study, the poor began to emerge as a distinct group
disadvantaged via social relations in community life and equally due to historical geo-political
forces. Thus, from a ‘quantitative’ perspective, the poor began to be distinguished on the basis of
consumption (vs. the historical emphasis on income), whereas from a ‘qualitative’ perspective
they began to be viewed as being the marginalized and oppressed. Table 7 explores the
relationship of themes to development actors during the 1980s. As it demonstrates, during the
1980s development agencies relied on mainly physical and economic themes to describe poverty
while the researcher choice of themes were more balanced across the groupings. The themes
contained within the NGO definitions under study were highly variable.
The definitions focused not only on the wider causes of poverty, which were attributed to the
manner in which ‘communities and countries are arranged’ (Moyes 1981, p. 3) but also on the
historical exploitation that developing countries suffered (ibid.). Conversely, by 1984, Oxfam’s
definition ostensibly returned to a more ‘traditional’ portrayal of poverty:
Poverty is not just an empty stomach, it is part of human oppression, fear, of hate, of nakedness, lack
of shelter, of education, of security and finality, ignorance which so often comes from age-old
traditions that have not adapted to modern tradition. When we consider this, we can scarcely see that
a plate of porridge and a cup of milk is not sufficient – vitally necessary of course as is every aid to
physical existence . . . but development as we understand it must surely consist of an attack on all the
lacks that I have mentioned above. (Oxfam 1984, p. 1)
In the above excerpt, poverty is portrayed at the individual level utilizing language which
enjoinders the reader to sympathize and empathize with the individual involved. Indeed, use of
terms such as ‘empty stomach’, ‘plate of porridge’, ‘cup of milk’ situates poverty within a
language that the Northern public can understand. Further, by framing the response to poverty as
an ‘attack’, the NGO is clearly situating its response as vigorous and strong and therefore worthy of
Table 7.
Frequency themes and development actors.
Themes
Economic factors
Material factors
Physical factors
Social factors
Political factors
Institutional factors
Psychological factors
Development agencies
Researchers
NGOs
6
4
10
3
1
4
4
6
4
2
1
4
1
2
1
3
1
1
National governments
2
1
676
Table 8.
F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
Thematic relations during the 1980s.
Linking relations
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Expansion
Juxtaposition
Cause/effect
Total relations
Total number
21
8
7
36
support. However, rather than signifying a wider trend, it may be argued that such a change in
focus could simply reflect the need for NGOs to raise funds from the public and therefore more
emotive language is required. Thus, from 1981 to 1984 the focus of definitions of poverty ranged
from the wider forces impacting on the poor to the emotive factors important to understanding
poverty from the perspective of the individual involved. In linguistic terms, by focusing concepts
of poverty on the individual, there are implications for development praxis. Indeed, from a
discursive perspective, such language removes the focus of development from the collective
whole, i.e. with the use of an individual frame the implication is that for an intervention
to be successful it would simply have to relieve the burden of poverty from the individual involved.
However, the analysis of thematic relations demonstrated an overall shift in the
conceptualizations of poverty, with a decline in expansion relations and the subsequent rise in
cause/effect and juxtaposition relations (Table 8). The rise in the cause/effect with a decline of
expansion relations supports the finding from the thematic analysis that concepts of poverty
during this decade are under flux. Indeed, it is clear that the definitions during the 1980s began to
reflect changes in perceptions or perspectives regarding what it means to be poor.
The conceptualization of poverty in the 1990s
Figure 4 illustrates the themes utilized in the 1990s. Interestingly, economic and institutional
factors rose to comprise 38% of the overall frequency of themes, rivalling the dominance of
Figure 4.
Major themes in the 1990s.
677
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physical and material needs. References to a ‘minimum standard of living’ became a popular
feature of the definitions from this time period. However, notions of a ‘minimum standard of
living’ or ‘acceptable standard of living’ denotes a specific cut-off point between the rich and the
poor, which fosters a measurable concept of poverty. Indeed, while there was a rise in social and
political factors, these themes were often combined with the factors with more quantitative
criteria, i.e. $1/day cut-off:
Some 1.3 billion people (almost 70% of whom are women) . . . continue to live in extreme poverty
on less than the equivalent of one dollar per day. They lack access to opportunities and services.
They feel isolated and powerless and often feel excluded by ethnicity, caste, geography,
gender and disability. They lack information and access to health and education facilities, to
productive assets or to the market for their goods or labour. They believe nobody listens, and often
have no way of being heard in places where the decisions which affect their lives are made.
(DFID 1997, p. 10)
While during the 1980s definitions of poverty tended to be split – those focusing on the different
types of poverty and those concentrating on social factors – by the 1990s the two factors were
often presented together. Therefore, within the definitions, notions of the complexity and
multidimensionality of poverty were increasingly stressed: ‘Poverty is a complex phenomenon
based on a network of interlocking economic, social, cultural and political factors’ (Kozel and
Parker 1999, p. 2). During this decade, the pattern of relations between themes also varied
considerably, as Table 9 illustrates.
By the 1990s cause/effect relations had risen to 11% of the total relations with an overall
decline in expansion and juxtaposition relations. The finding implies that new conceptualizations of poverty were in ascendance in which detailing the cause of poverty took
on increasing importance. However, when the cause/effect relations were further disaggregated a more nuanced finding emerged. Many of these relations focused on systemic
institutional failures (largely by the governments involved) as a key cause/effect factor of
poverty:
Absolute poverty is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including
food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends
not only on income but also on access to social services. (UN 1995, p. 143)
Poverty exists when people are incapable of satisfying their basic needs for food, clothing, shelter
and health. The causes of poverty are embedded in a nexus of production relations diffused
throughout the larger society that extend far beyond the so-called poverty sector. (Yapa 1998, p. 95)
The root causes of poverty are as much a function of politics as they are of failed economies and
social structures. (CARE 1998, p. 34)
People died because they did not have access to health services or safe water, not because they
were poor. In this manner, the notion that poverty as an inevitable condition appeared to be
progressively fading away, to be replaced by poverty as a consequence of specific failures
that could be traced back to institutional and political conditions. From a discursive point of
Table 9.
Thematic relations during the 1990s.
Linking relations
Expansion
Juxtaposition
Cause/effect
Contrasting
Total relations
Total number
26
5
14
2
47
678
F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
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view, this move heralded a change from the earlier focus on the consequences of poverty to the
causes. Indeed, the cause of poverty was laid squarely at the door of national governments,
again denoting a change from the 1980s where the blame for poverty was often placed on
development itself.
The conceptualization of poverty in the millennium
Figure 5 illustrates the usage of themes with the documents under study from the year 2000 to
the present day. Once more, physical and material factors predominated and comprised nearly
50% of the total themes with an overall decline in social, economic and institutional factors
from the previous decade. However, the multidimensionality of poverty was now a wellaccepted feature:
Poverty is a multidimensional concept involving not only material deprivation, but also deprivation
in terms of capabilities, vulnerability, and influence over institutions that affects ones life. (Bolnick
2004, p. 3)
Poverty is multidimensional. It includes inadequacy of income and deprivation of basic needs and rights,
and lack of access to productive assets as well as to social infrastructure and markets. (GOK 2001, p. 5)
Poverty is a complex human phenomenon associated with unacceptable standards of living. It has
multiple dimensions, manifestations and causes. (Mwabu 2004, p. 1)
From a discursive perspective, the lack of descriptive detail surrounding the concept indicates
the broad acceptance of the term.
Nevertheless, the emotive factors regarding poverty at the individual level remained a key
feature among many definitions of time:
Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being . . . to be poor is to be hungry, to lack shelter and
clothing, to be sick and not cared for, to be illiterate, and not schooled. But for poor people, living in
poverty is more than this. Poor people are particularly vulnerable to adverse events outside their
control. They are often treated badly by the institutions of state and society and excluded from voice
and power in those institutions. (World Bank 2000, p. 1)
Figure 5.
Major themes in the 2000s.
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679
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Poverty has many faces. As well as not having enough money, poverty can mean being unable to
control your life, being vulnerable to the will of more powerful people, having to demean yourself to
make ends meet, not being able to take a full part in community life, and feeling inferior to other
people around you. It also means not having enough to eat, inadequate shelter, poor health and no
education. (Save the Children 2001, p. 1)
Thus, in the 2000s, definitions can be divided in two main groups, the first group, as detailed
above, remains heavily influenced by the alternate and participatory paradigms of the 1980s,
where poverty is portrayed at the individual level utilizing language which enjoinders the reader
to sympathize and emphasize with the individual involved.
The second group of definitions stressed the complexity of poverty, but did not explain it.
The two trends reflect what was already apparent in the definitions from the 1990s: the
expanding and shrinking of definitions of poverty. Thus, the stereotypical expressions such as
‘minimum standard of living’, ‘multidimensionality’, etc. demonstrate that actors no longer felt
it necessary to offer explicit external referents to clarify the concepts and therefore, these
elements could quickly be dispensed with.
However, the influence of wider geo-political forces, in particular the Millennium Development
Goals, was also a factor in forging definitions from 2000 to the present day. Indeed, having set
specific targets for poverty alleviation, it was apparent that to meet these goals poverty would have to
be a measurable phenomenon. Therefore, although qualitative aspects of poverty remained
important and indeed are directly mentioned in the MDGs, the focus, by necessity, had to be on
numbers. Indeed, the categorization of the poor appears to be re-emerging:
The severely poor are very poor since their consumption is far below the absolute poverty line and
the chronically poor are very poor since their consumption persists for long periods below the
absolute poverty line. A combination of chronic poverty and severe poverty must represent the very
worst instance of poverty. (Yaqub 2003, p. 5)
There is no doubt that freedom from severe poverty is among the most important human interests.
We are physical beings who need access to safe food and water, clothing, shelter and basic medical
care in order to live well. People living in severe poverty lack secure access to sufficient quantities of
these basic necessities. This sentence presupposes a narrow . . . definition . . . which corresponds
very roughly to the World Bank $2 per day international poverty line. (Pogge 2004, p. 1)
In this way, categories of the poor became a popular feature of definitions.
With this shift, concepts of poverty appeared to be moving from defining poverty to
defining the poor themselves. While the trend could be identified in the 1990s, by the 2000s
the focus was on grouping the poor into discrete categories often linked to the poverty line.
This movement not only displays a semantic shift, but it suggests praxis implications. By
focusing concepts of poverty on the individual, the burden on development, at least from the
discursive point of view, is somewhat lifted. Indeed, rather than having to solve the
problems of the collective whole, for an intervention to be successful within this frame, it
simply has to relieve the burden of poverty from the individual involved. Given the lack of
specificity over who these individuals are or where they are located, it is likely that greater
levels of success may be claimed, as actors are under ever increasing pressure to
demonstrate MDG impacts.
Indeed, actors appeared keen to place themselves squarely on the side of the poor. Unlike in
other decades, where the actor remained the neutral outsider, one NGO actually framed itself
within the definition:
Together we work with and support the poorest and most vulnerable people to fight for and gain their
rights to shelter, food, work, basic health care, and a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.
Among them there are widows, disabled, orphans, homeless, people with aids, indigenous and
religious minorities. (Action Aid 2003, p. 1)
680
Table 10.
F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
Relations linking themes in the millennium.
Linking relations
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Expansion
Juxtaposition
Cause/effect
Contrasting
Total relations
Total number
53
14
13
3
83
However, when the relations were disaggregated, it was clear that the concepts had returned to
the descriptive mode of the early definitions of poverty offered in the 1970s (Table 10).
Thus, rather than trying to uncover the causes of poverty, recent definitions tend to list
criteria (juxtaposition) or expanded on the original definitions without ‘problematizing’ these
causes. From the discursive point of view, listing criteria and consequences without highlighting
the causes has the effect of representing poverty as a neutral fact or state. Within this perspective,
poverty needs to be ‘attacked’, but the root causes are not dealt with.
Discussion
The analysis revealed seven key themes that recurred across the definitions of poverty under study.
Not surprisingly, during the 1970s, the focus was on physical and material needs. Interestingly,
economic factors were explicitly mentioned in only a minority of definitions. However, Sumner
(2003, p. 5) argues that the 1970s were a time of great flux within conceptualizations of poverty:
Only towards the end of the decade [the 1960s] were there hints of the seismic shift at hand,
beginning what was to become a Kuhnian shift in the conceptualization of poverty. The publication
of Bauer’s Social Indicators (1966) and the Meaning of Development by Dudley Seers in 1969 led
the debate into basic needs.
Nevertheless, the ‘seismic shift’ as noted by the author was not apparent within the definitions.
Indeed, the use of juxtaposition and expansion relations across the definitions illustrated that
notions of poverty were largely uncontested.
Interestingly, during the 1980s, social factors declined, and economic factors rose. The rise in
the cause/effect and decline in expansion relations supports the notion that concepts of poverty
during this decade were in a state of change. By the 1990s, economic and institutional factors rose to
match those relating to physical and material needs, which had dominated the themes since the
1970s. The $1 a day cut-off point was introduced to the definitions during this time, as was the UN’s
notion of ‘human poverty’. Thus, during this time, two of the most powerful players produced two
opposing notions of development, both of which competed for legitimacy. Indeed, the UN’s notion
of human poverty was largely based upon Sen’s capability approach and directly acknowledged the
social dimension of poverty. Conversely, the World Bank offered a purely quantitative, money
metric measure that was easily translatable across cultures, actors and communities.
However, during the 2000s, the division became somewhat blurred. Indeed, definitions
tended to list criteria that included both social and more quantitative factors. Further, the focus of
the definitions became the poor rather than poverty in general. The heavy use of juxtaposition,
however, revealed that listing the features of poverty were more important than detailing the
causes. Thus, by the 2000s the definitions had returned to the descriptive and largely
unproblematic concepts of the 1970s.
Conclusions
The diachronic analysis illustrated how concepts of poverty in the documents under study
changed over the decades both within and between development professionals. Along with
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681
fluctuations in the number of themes, changes were also apparent in the manner in which the
themes were organized. Most striking was the full-circle change in the relational composition of
the definitions under study. During the 1970s concepts of poverty were unproblematic and
descriptive, i.e. many presented poverty in terms of ‘lacks’ and thus as a neutral fact. By the
2000s similar elements had encroached upon the definitions. Thus, relational changes influenced
the overall orientation of the definitions as descriptive vs. problematic. Indeed, from the 1970s to
the 1990s the concepts explored the causality of poverty. However, this movement came to a
partial halt in the 2000s, where descriptive definitions again prevailed. As detailed above, the
Millennium Development Goals may be at least partially responsible for this change.
Implementation of the MDGs demands that development practitioners demonstrate impacts. By
altering conceptions of poverty, the discourse softens this requirement, at least rhetorically, to
better enable practitioners to meet these demands.
The rise and fall in the popularity of particular themes were clearly linked to related issues
within the different development discourses. Nonetheless, the notion of poverty is closely
entwined with the evolution and the tension of the different development discourses,4 and of the
negotiations of the various development actors (Brock et al. 2001). The notion – and
measurement – of poverty has been reflecting the tension between development understood as
economic growth and as a discourse on the human condition (Leftwich 2000; Sumner 2003).
Within the post-development paradigm, poverty is viewed as a representation, and as such
reflecting the perspective of the development actors, rather than the realities in which the poor
live (Nederveen Pieterse 2001).
Indeed, the influence of the MDGs in ‘deproblematizing’ the definition of poverty is simply
one of the most striking examples. With the advent of the MDGs, poverty clearly needed to be an
easily measured phenomenon, and thus definitions returned to a certain descriptive ‘safety’.
Similarly, during the 1970s the relational analysis revealed that the definitions were largely
uncontested, despite notions within the wider literature that ‘basic needs’ had created a
conceptual revolution (see Sumner 2003). Thus, poverty was variably framed across the decades
ranging from a ‘neutral’ fact to a highly contested state with little agreement over causes
and consequences. The findings clearly have implications for development practice:
development cannot simply provide what was missing, but rather must fundamentally address
the underlying causes.
The findings also raise the question regarding to what extent the discourse(s) on poverty
adheres to how the poor describe their own poverty. The issue is not new (Iliffe 1998; Anderson
and Broch-Due 1999). Indeed, for the poor, poverty is not only a matter of ‘lacks’ but also a
culturally and personally diverse experience (Anderson and Broch-Due 1999). In addition, the
poor recognize that poverty may have different causes, not least personal responsibility
(Misturelli and Heffernan 2001). However, personal responsibility does not feature in the poverty
definitions. Conversely, acknowledging agency may enable the development actors to better tailor
projects and interventions, as well as making them more acceptable to the target population.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to DFID for supporting this work.
Notes
1.
Poverty is one of the central development topics. Therefore, when investigating poverty discourse, the
focus is on identifying changes in the concept itself, as well as how these changes impacted on praxis.
Conversely, development discourse is concerned with the different paradigms that have influenced
development thinking over the decades. The paper focuses on the discourse of poverty.
682
2.
3.
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4.
F. Misturelli and C. Heffernan
The Oxford English Dictionary (2000) defines poverty as ‘the state of being extremely poor; the state of
being insufficient in amount; Lacking sufficient money to live a comfortable or normal standard’.
The authors make a distinction between the wider development discourse and the subset of this
discourse specifically relating to poverty.
‘Development’ is a very contested concept, which ranges from economic growth and modernization, to
the notion of human and participatory development. Nevertheless, it has been argued that two main
paradigms have dominated the arena: neo-Marxist and neoclassical economics (Kothari and Minogue
2002). Alternative discourses, such as anti-development and post-development, have been rapidly
absorbed into the mainstream discourse and consequently loose their subversive potential (Nederveen
Pieterse 2001; Kothari and Minogue 2002). As such, the dominant discourse remains within the
framework of neoclassical economics (Kothari and Minogue 2002).
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