|
Abstract
This article considers the potential contribution of
social anthropology to understanding poverty as both
social relation and category of international development
practice. Despite its association with research in communities
and countries now considered poor anthropology has remained
disengaged from the current poverty agenda. This disengagement
is partly explained by the disciplinary starting point
of anthropology which explores the processes though
which categories come to have salience. It is accentuated
by the relationship of anthropology as a discipline
to the development policy and the research commissioned
to support it. An anthropological perspective on poverty
and inequality can shed light on the ways in which particular
social categories come to be situated as poor. It can
also reveal the social processes through which poverty
as policy objective becomes institutionalised in development
practice and in the social institutions established
to monitor, assess and address it.
|
