Poverty, the battle against stigmatization and the role of public sociology

The last fifty years have witnessed an unprecedented boom in studies of poverty throughout the social sciences. A blossoming of concepts, methods of measurement and field studies has been characterised by a fruitful exchange of ideas and opinions between sociologists, economic analysts and statisticians concerned with measuring the phenomenon of poverty, together with a number of psychological and anthropological analysts. Sociology has nevertheless made efforts to pursue its own lines of enquiry as well, and the present chapter aims to contribute in some way towards such efforts by adopting the viewpoint of public sociology. More specifically, it shows how new forms of blame and moral condemnation of the poor have emerged, together with public rhetoric based on the social representation of the poor as unable to provide for themselves and to self-organize, in need of “good” advice, or idle and dangerous people requiring explicit and implicit forms of workfare and punitive measures. The focus on these themes aims to shine some light on one aspect of poverty that is less commonly investigated (even by for public sociology), but which is of great importance, namely the lack of recognition, or the misrecognition of the poor. However, it do not intend to underestimate the broad question of economic inequality, given that for poor people to overcome the stigma of poverty and to recover their capacity to act and to make decisions, there must be a greater, more equitable distribution of resources.