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Abstract
The value of a multi-disciplinary approach to the understanding
of poverty and the design of poverty-reduction strategies
is now widely accepted. However, this paper argues,
current expectations about the potential contribution
to poverty analysis from disciplines other than economics
remain rather too slanted towards what are presumed
to be the special strengths of PRA-based PPAs: capturing
poor people’s perceptions, identifying their priorities
and describing their coping strategies. Properly understood
as centring on the observation and interpretation of
behaviour, anthropological enquiry has relevant things
to say at all the three levels that concern a poverty
status report: 1) who are the poor? 2) why are they
poor? and 3) what can be done to reduce poverty?
Key findings under these headings
are: i) while anthropological work can help to enrich
statistical poverty profiles, a more important contribution
may be in documenting the variable, fluid, complex and
contested categorisations and relationships that constitute
the reality that poverty-reduction efforts must contend
with on the ground; ii) documented responses to structural
change are sufficiently diverse and affected by the
particularities of local structures, including notably
gender relations, that multiple paths of impoverishment
or dis-impoverishment remain more likely than homogeneous
national or regional trends; iii) anthropological studies
help to remind us that the primary stakeholders in anti-poverty
operations are, of necessity, active participants in
constructing their own future, while the activities
of states and development agencies are not always empowering
of poor people.
* Originally appeared
as “Background Paper No. 1(b)” for the World
Bank Poverty Status Report 1999.
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