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Stock market euphoria and blind faith in the post-Cold War economy have driven the topic of poverty from popular and scholarly discussion in the United States. At the same time the gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. The New Poverty Studies critically examines the new war against the poor that has accompanied the rise of the New Economy in the past two decades, and details the myriad ways poor people have struggled against it.In updating the 1960s encounter between ethnography and U.S. poverty, The New Poverty Studies highlights the ways poverty is constructed across multiple scales and multiple axes of difference.Questioning the common wisdom that poverty persists because of the pathology, social isolation and welfare state "dependency" of the poor, the contributors to The New Poverty Studies point instead to economic restructuring and neoliberal policy "reforms" which have caused increased social inequality and economic polarization in the U.S.
About the author
Judith Goode is Professor of Anthropology at Temple University. She is author of
Urban Poverty in a Cross-Cultural Context,
Anthropology of the City, and coauthor of
Reshaping Ethnic and Racial Relations in Philadelphia: Immigrants in a Divided City.
Jeff Maskovsky is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Montclair State University.
Summary
Repudiating the fallacy of welfare state dependency, the contributors to these studies seek to reveal the true impact of neoliberal reforms to the US economy that have increased social inequality and economic polarization.
