ABSTRACT

States, and the NGOs that support them, have increasingly redefined their struggles for social justice from a welfare rights to a human rights social movement. The chapters in Part I of The Handbook of Poverty, “From the Production of Inequality to the Production of Destitution: The U.S. Political Economy of Poverty in the Era of Globalization,” examine how the reorientation of the U.S. economy towards the economic logic of neoliberal global capitalism has restructured the political economy of poverty. The chapters in this part explore the particular way in which poor communities under neoliberal economic policies are incorporated into the U.S. political economy in contrast to earlier periods. Particular attention is given to how neoliberal restructuring dispossesses populations of people and produces forms of destitution through uneven geographical development and the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of geographically defined poor communities. The chapters in this part will examine new emerging forms of “destitute poverty” experienced by the poor communities in the United States. The chapters will show how this emerging form of poverty in the United States is more consistent with the global processes and dynamics of the political economy of global poverty. The chapters in Part II, “Discourses of Poverty: From the ‘Culture of Poverty’ to ‘Surplus Population,’” examine how the globalizing of the U.S. political economy contributed significantly to the conditions that shifted the discourse about poverty in the United States from a “culture of poverty” discourse to one of “surplus population.” The chapters in this part investigate the discursive practices or the family of ideas, beliefs, and concepts that constitute discourses about U.S. poverty, their corresponding policies, as well as the historical circumstances and genealogical conditions that have given rise to the shift from a “culture of poverty” discourse to a discourse of “surplus population.” With the globalization of the U.S. economy new forms of poverty are emerging that render poor communities destitute and, as such, “surplus” or “redundant” populations. The term “surplus population” or similar terms like it to describe “destitute poverty” signify a change in the condition and experience of poverty and in particular how it is politically and ideologically represented in the United States. In which case, the chapters in this part are also attentive to the ways in which the ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism converged in the United States to discursively and politically structure and facilitate this shift in the discourse about poverty. In Part III, “From the Welfare State to the Neoliberal State-From Regulating to Imprisoning the Poor,” the chapters examine how globalization and its transformation of the state into a neoliberal state created the conditions for the dismantling of the welfare state in the United States. The chapters in Part III are divided into Section I: “Transformation of the Welfare State: Education”; Section II: “Transformation of the Welfare State: Cash Transfers, Housing, Nutrition, and Health”; and Section III: “Transformation of the Welfare State: Criminalizing the Poor.” Each of the chapters investigates how neoliberal globalization in the United States has restructured the state from a “benevolent” welfare state to a post-welfare punitive state. Particular attention will be given to how the disciplining functions of the state are being challenged and transformed, from regulating-that is, by expanding relief programs to absorb and control enough of the poor to restore order-to confining-by punishing and expanding the criminal justice system into every aspect of poor people’s lives or by disciplining the poor by inserting them into the market. While poverty may be a universal phenomenon, its experiences vary and are often conditioned by race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, and health and immigrant status. The chapters in Part IV, “Global Poverty and the Lived Experiences of Poor Communities in the United States,” explore the diverse experiences of poverty in the United States. Particular attention is given to how that diversity is part of the political, economic, and cultural processes of

globalization and global poverty. It is in this context that chapters in this part explore broader ecological and health issues related to poverty such as, for example, hunger, violence, displacement and homelessness, environmental destruction, and environmental racism and sexism, and how these issues shape the experiences of poverty in the United States. The helping professions, such as education, social work, health, and law, have been those professions that have defined their work as providing services and advocating for the poor in relationship to notions of social justice. In Part V, “Organizing to Resist Neoliberal Policies and Poverty: Activism and Advocacy,” the chapters examine the limitations of the concept of social justice as conventionally advanced by the helping professions in the United States, particularly in the era of neoliberal globalization, global poverty, and human rights. The neoliberal structural adjustment policies of the United States, the dominance of global financial institutions, and the transformation of the welfare state into a post-welfare state have given rise to extreme forms of poverty, or what some have called “destitute poverty” in the United States. These neoliberal policies have led to the emergence of forms of advocacy and activism that is focused on social and economic rights of the poor. The poverty experienced today in the United States is rendering more and more people and communities as surplus or redundant populations, which is necessitating a shifting of rights-based discourse from civil or welfare rights to human rights, but a human rights discourse and forms of advocacy and activism that address the inherent structural violence of neoliberal global capitalism in the context of the United States. Alternatives to the characteristic structural violence of the current neoliberal economic order are proposed by the authors included in Part VI, “Reframing Poverty in the Era of Globalization: Alternatives to a Neoliberal Economic Order.” Collectively, the authors call for a replacement of the self-reliance ideology and the values and practices associated with market fundamentalism with: a human rights, approach that strengthens the welfare rights-claims of U.S. citizens; community-based options of support outside of the formal market-based system; and a shift towards a post capitalist basic needs economy.