On the cusp of mediating poverty: phenomenal experience and fear

Authors

Abstract

This paper presents some conceptual observations on how the condition of poverty is brought to public attention and discussed, i.e. on mediations of poverty. It is proposed that such mediation is largely monopolised by those who are not-poor, though attempts to describe the not-poor as a category call for circumspection. As such, mediations are based on preconceptions which are seldom examined carefully. These preconceptions are dubbed phenomenal bases here, and three are outlined in general terms: poverty as experience, visible poverty, and poverty in abstract. A final section considers ‘fear of poverty’ as a pervasive idea, and speculates on the possibility of approaching political economy accordingly.

Author Biography

Suman Gupta, The Open University Milton Keynes

É professor do Departamento de Inglês da Open University, reino Unido. Sua extensa produção bibliográfica engloba 16 livros autorais, 11 volumes organizados, 5 números de revistas editadas e mais de 70 artigos. Suas últimas publicações incluem Usurping Suicide: The Political Resonances of Individual Death (2017) com Milena Katsarska, Theodoros Spyros e Mike Hajimichael; Philology and Global English Studies: Retracings (2015); e Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education (2015), com Richard Allen, Subarno Chattarji, Supriya Chaudhuri.

References

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GENDLIN, Eugene. Experience and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1962.

HAUGHTON, Jonathan and Shahidur R. Khandker. Handbook on Poverty and Inequality. Washington: World Bank, 2009.

HIMMELFARB, Gertrude. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age. London: Faber and Faber, 1984.

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LOREY, Isabelle. State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. Trans. Aileen Derieg. London: Verso, 2016 [2012].

RAVALLION, Martin. The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement, and Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

SARTRE, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Methuen, 1956 [1943].

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Published

2019-10-23

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 3 (2019)

Section

Artigos

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