Wider Research Contexts
Research on Poverty and Economic Inequality in British Literature
Barbara Korte and Georg Zipp
Research on poverty has mainly taken place in sociology, economics, and history (a notable example is the work of Amartya Sen (1983). Since the late twentieth century, however, other disciplines in the humanities have joined the bandwagon: this is only logical since the ways in which poverty is perceived and approached in a society is not only a matter of figures but also of cultural figuration. Poverty is discussed in ethics and philosophy as well as theology, just as it is a matter of representation in the media and in the arts, which calls in scholars in media, literary and arts studies.
Current research understands poverty not in absolute but in relative terms (some definitions can be found here, here, here and here), i.e. in relation to spatial, temporal and social circumstances. Furthermore, poverty is no longer understood as material deprivation only, but also as a state of socio-cultural exclusion (from social roles, spaces, participation in social life), a lack of agency, opportunities and perspectives as well as of care and access to education, knowledge, traditions, rights and capabilities.
For Britain in particular, Peter Townsend (whose seminal 1979 study Poverty in the United Kingdom can be accessed here) has played a major role in shaping research on poverty in the post-World War II era. In recent years, several organisations and think tanks, such as the Fabian Society (founded in 1884), the New Policy Institute (founded in 1996), as well as the the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (founded in 1904) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (founded in 1969) have been important instigators for research on poverty in Britain, and have also published studies and fact sheets for the general public. Furthermore they play a role as speakers on behalf of the socially disadvantaged, as well as providers of care and concrete help. The IFS publishes up-to-date statistics and poverty indicators on a regular basis.
Since the mid-1990s, and under the influence of Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal study La Misère du Monde (1993, translated in 1999 as Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society), the social sciences in particular have been calling for literary studies to embrace poverty research since literature’s focus on singular cases offers the possibility to factor in the individual, and experiential, dimensions of poverty. Social scientists at the London School of Economics and at the Brooks World Poverty Institute have also called for the rediscovery of fiction as a generator of knowledge about and attitudes towards poverty and development issues, and as a medium of social self-reflexion. They argue that fictional accounts can sometimes reveal different sides to the experience of such issues and may even do a ‘better’ job of conveying their complexities than research-based accounts (Lewis, Rodgers and Woolcock 2005; see more in our 'links' section) Works of fiction can emphasise human aspects that are all too often either ignored or de-personalised within academic or policy accounts, without compromising either complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature is often accused of doing. It is obvious that literary works can have a stronger Geertzian ‘being there’ quality than many academic and policy works; they may also cover aspects that are often not made explicit in conventional academic accounts. It is also likely, of course, that works of literary fiction have a potential to reach a much larger and diverse audience than most academic texts and may therefore be more influential in shaping public knowledge and understanding of development issues. It contributes to the public imagination or the cultural and social imaginary of poverty, i.e. the ideas, knowledge, images and norms which are relevant for the ethical, and possible practical, confrontation with poverty. By paying attention to the aesthetic qualities of literature and the specifics of its social and cultural circulation, literary studies can make a substantial and idiosyncratic contribution to poverty studies, and it also contributes to the ethical and social turn that has been taking place in literary studies (and which was called for by Terry Eagleton in After Theory (2003)).