Antipoverty Policy Perspectives: A Historical Examination of the Transference of Social Scientific Thought and a Situated Critique of the Clemente Course
Titel:
Antipoverty Policy Perspectives: A Historical Examination of the Transference of Social Scientific Thought and a Situated Critique of the Clemente Course
Auteur:
NG, JENNIFER
Verschenen in:
Educational studies
Paginering:
Jaargang 39 (2006) nr. 1 pagina's 41-60
Jaar:
2006-02-01
Inhoud:
Poor people have been described in a range of ways. This article begins by tracing the term "underclass" in its social and political context from the 1960s to present, examining its transference from academia to lay usage through analysis of widely accessible periodicals of the time. Next, it engages the work of Earl Shorris, a writer who devised a course in the humanities to be taught to poor people as a remedy for poverty. Shorris' Clemente Course is examined in both ideological design and policy-related intent, and it is concluded that although Shorris offers a new vocabulary for theorizing about poverty, his project reflects much of the traditional antipoverty discourse that is behaviorally based, is dehumanizing, and minimizes the reality of poverty's structural effects. By incorporating the work of Paulo Freire, I argue that any effective remedy to poverty must go beyond simply attributing the cause of poverty to the poor; rather, the role of affluent individuals and the interconnectedness of their privilege to those who are poor must be made explicit.
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