Getting into poverty research

I am trying to figure out things without having to resort to a blog lately but I think it will be helpful to put this down!! The thing that has been interesting me - I began this research thinking it was entirely open-ended "scope out the research" my professor suggested "look at it philosopically!" Well between the two of those it could take me forever! but for me, what I am interested in is the human dimensions - I guess justice and injustice and all that stuff. And I keep thinking my role is to highlight these things - to draw out what is hidden - not necessarily the brilliant things which are hidden, but the blind spots - the family skeletons, you know - those things. I'm learning. I was all on board last year - and this year had a profound change - skeptical, cynical, journalistic investigative? I don't know - critical? related to Foucault, to my sorrow studies, to my experiences in India. Actually this is NOT really that new - I was critical of gender things a while back and of individuals, but I was more confident about democratic systems than I am this year - perhaps that is the difference.
But now - to focus on "non-ideological" - on "neutral" territory was initially difficult for me to conceptualize in terms of social justice.... now it is very hard for me to abstract "economics" from "political". But I have now - not to turn this off, but to dispose myself differently - not that these projects are valueless, but that I have to extend my energies into thinking something else can be useful... Like... what if we established Henry George's land tax? I used to be brightly enthusiastic about Basic Income last year, but now this year I find even Sachs' to be naive just for being optimistic. On the one hand I don't want to folow Sr. Nirmala and say "The poor will always be with us" while on the other hand, I don't think that they will not be until human beings change. But this is where my professor helped, too, he said that George thinks wealth creation and cycles and inequailty creation (inequality and growth is not the same as poverty and growth - and yet how can you say industriailztaion without noting the other things that are going on...?) anyway - get into this kind of a framework. To work on a solution doesn't mean that I need to give up my critical - "ideological" standpoints insofar as thinking the most powerful persons only work for their own interest and that justice would have to coincide with interest in order for it to happen (of course there are countless examples in history of "underdogs" rising up - but I don't know... go a little further..) Anyway, I needn't become what seems to me at this point to be "naive" in order to work on something and not be what others might feel to be "ideological" or "non-neutral". I suspect my youth has someothing to do with it as does my experience... but i wonder - is it useful to bracket things? If we really will find an astonishingly simple way to redistribute, do the wealthiest people really want to go on it? Even before you get to the wealthy there are a host of other factors that interfere with reasonable solutions - but the only concerted one would be intentional. anyway... maybe I hsould work on my Aristotle for a bit. Both my classes have not been functioning well since the poverty thing! but now I know more what I am supposed to do - to find four or five main normative approaches that are on the pulse - at the cusp, etc.

Notes on Nussbaum - Frontiers of Justice

Introduction:

Theories of social justice should be:

a) abstract (generality and theoretical power reaching beyond political conflicts of their time, even if they originate from such conflicts).

b) also responsive to the world and its most urgent problems (open to changes and even structures in response to a new problem or to an old one that has been culpably ignored.

Notes historical flaws (inattentive to women's demands for equality - acknowledging family a political institution)

List 3 problems today - neglected in existing theories.

a) ppl with physical and mental impairments (education, health care, political rights and liberties and equal citizenship - urgent problem of justice)

b) all world citizens (accidents of birth and national origin do not warp people's lie chances pervasively and from the start).

c) treatment of nonhuman animals (pain and indignity at human hands - conceded to be ethical but not social justice).

Approaches to justice in Western tradition: social contract - developed in depth in Rawls (prob. strongest theories of justice we have - or at least Rawls made case that better than various forms of Utilitarianism). Rawls acknowledges in his theory these three problems especially difficult to solve.

She begins w/ conviction that they are indeed serious unsolved problems - argues the classical theory can't solve these - even in best form - focus therefore on Rawls

p. 4 - search for dif. type of theoretical structure - albeit in which major elements in Rawls's theory will survive.

Ideas that some citizens "pay their own way" and other's don't - that others are parasitic and others "normally productive" are the offshoots in the pplr imagination of the idea of society as a scheme of cooperation for mutual advantage. We could challenge those images in practical politics without identifying their source. It is actually quite helpful, however, to go to the root of th eproblem, so to speak (...) although this book engages w/ philosophical ideas in detail and with attention to the complexities and nuances of the theories in question, it's also intended as an essay in practical philosophy, which may guide us back to some richer ideas of social cooperation (old as well as new) that do not involve such difficulties.

Defends using philosophy even though it would work poliitcally - because it shows respect for the ppl one is criticizing and always helpful to go to the source - but you need detail...

Notes her work in Women and Human Development about method and justification and 2 particlar problems of religion and family.

She gives keys to the text (pages 7 and 8) to those who are interested in the general development of the capabilities approach:

a) Intuitive starting point - ch's 1, 3, and 5 (esp. example of education in 5.i).

b) Notion of human dignity (3iv, 3ix and 5iii).

c) Relationship between capabilities approach and Utilitarianism (ch1, 5ii, 6iii).

d) relationship between capabilities and rights (5iii) - made clear that the capabilities approach is one species of a human rights approach, and an improved account is given of why the language of capabilities seems superior to the (bare) language of human rights.

e) The relationship of the capabilities approach to issues of pluralism and cultural variety is discussed (again, but perhaps more concisely) in 5v and 1vi.

f) Role of the concept of equality in the capabilities approach is discussed in 5iv and 6ix. Because these arguments are both new and comp;lex, I do not attempt to summarize them here.

g) Rawlsian idea of "overlapping consensus," in rleation to the capbilities approach, is discussed in 3iv, 5vi, and 6xi. Addresses concerns about whether there can be an overlapping consensus among nations with diverse histories and traditions,a nd the even more difficult question whether we can expect an overlapping consensus on extending some basic rights to animals.

h) The relationship between capbailities as entitlements (rights) and duties to

secure those entitlements is discussed in 5.i.

Some books

Saturday, September 19, 2009

[BOOK] Resources, deprivation, and poverty
B Nolan, CT Whelan, B Nolan - 1996 - Clarendon Press New YorkCited by 311 - Related articles - Get at CISTI - All 2 versions
[BOOK] The economics of poverty and discrimination
BR Schiller - 2000 - Prentice HallCited by 263 - Related articles - Find in AMICUS - All 2 versions
[BOOK] Poverty: the facts
C Oppenheim - 1993 - Child Poverty Action GroupCited by 268 - Related articles - BL Direct

[BOOK] Poverty in the United Kingdom
P Townsend… - 1979 - Allen LaneCited by 1451 - Related articles
[BOOK] La vida: a Puerto Rican family in the culture of poverty-San Juan and New York
O Lewis - 1966 - tcrecord.org... La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty-San Juan and New York. ...Does all poverty lead to Professor Lewis' culture of poverty? ... Cited by 616 - Related articles - Find in AMICUS - All 4 versions

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One blogger's division

A good attempt to divide and briefly comment opinions on sources:

http://wandermythoughts.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/the-wealth-and-poverty-of-nations-3-schools-of-thought/