The great chain of poverty explanations, S.M.Miller Press Release Prepared by a group within the CROP network, this book has sprung out of an urgent need to know where poverty research stands in different regions of the world, to link discourses that have not been set in the same context before, and to broaden the intellectual discussion of poverty. The book provides a baseline for ongoing and future research, which will save researchers precious time and energy when engaging in poverty research in a new region. The book can also be seen as a cornucopia of ideas and reflections on poverty, poverty research, and poverty strategies. This is the first time an international overview of poverty research, including both developed and developing countries, has been published. Poverty research has been more or less confined within national borders, because poverty has been considered to be a national problem that should find its remedies within a national context.
Poverty is at the same time culture bound and universal.
The purpose of the book is to bring out both aspects. It is hoped that this will spur the sorting process whereby the culture bound causes and manifestations of poverty can be identified and marked as different from those causes and manifestations of poverty that seem to be universal, in the sense that they are part of a basic poverty producing process, independent of the culture where poverty is found. Such a sorting process is a necessary step towards a better theoretical understanding of the poverty phenomenon. Bringing together the uses of poverty concepts and poverty thinking from different cultures will help further this long overdue sorting process, which must take place on the micro, meso, and macro level. The book is also written to give support to all those poverty researchers who are weighed down by the conflicts surrounding their area of research.