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Article: Burning of popular fear: the way we define the poor is a reflection of the kind of society we live in, argues Zygmunt Bauman.
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- March 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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`THE poor will always be with us'; so insists popular wisdom, and there is no shortage of historical evidence to confirm this verdict. No society we know of was ever free of a category of people who were seen by the rest as incapable, for whatever reason, of eking out a living by their own efforts; incapable of living as the rest do. It is a social decision to classify people in such a way. Since it has little to do with who those people really are, or even what they do, the expectation that the `poor will always be with us' can hardly be faulted. Each society constitutes and perpetuates itself through setting and prompting certain standards it expects every member to ...