Poverty and Power

“Vulnerability is not the same as poverty. It means not lack or want, but defenselessness, insecurity and exposure to risk, shocks and stress... vulnerability has remained curiously neglected in analysis and policy, perhaps because of its confusion with poverty. Yet vulnerability and its opposite, security, stand out as recurrent concerns of poor people which professional definitions of poverty overlook.” (Beck, T. 1989 in Moser, C. 1995, p.166)

In a time where, according to UN, poverty has been drastically diminished over the last half century, more than during the last five hundred years, still we find that the percentage of the world’s population is living in poverty conditions is above 25%. To analyze and understand what this data signifies, we must unpack the concept of poverty used to collect those figures. The measurement of poverty has been done traditionally based on a quantitative conceptualization of poverty, which only considers indicators of income and consumption, resulting in a flat and static perspective of poverty. Thus the measurements of poverty and its variations from one place to another and through time are based on statistical data. To sustain human life in society, people must have to access to basic needs and services, and deprivation of one of those is a sign that something is not working in a supposedly balanced society. Following this logic, the income necessary to obtain those basic goods is the indicator used to define poverty and separate poor from non-poor. However, poverty is not a straight linear process, it is attached to a specific and finite context, as it interacts with societies, politics, economies, culture, environments, class, gender.

Not dismissing the fact that this static data collec...

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... that create inequalities and only represent particular interest in detriment of the poor sectors. On the other hand, these groups in civil society can be weakened by powerful local sates, in retreat of social capital essential for democratisation. To find the balance between the role of local governments and the power of civic groups is one of the main challenges of good urban governance in the context of decentralisation.

In order to do so assure the true democratisation of the local level in decentralisation processes“…effective channels of political participation and representation must be developed that reinforce and support decentralized planning and administration, and that allow citizens, and especially the poor, to express their needs and demands and to press claims for national and local development resources.” (Beck, T. 1989 in Moser, C. 1995, p.166)