Reviews : Understanding Poverty Pete Alcock Macmillan, 1993; £12.99 pbk
| Author | Antony Whitehead |
| Published date | 01 October 1993 |
| Date | 01 October 1993 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455059304000315 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
159
in
employment
they
are
unhappy
with
fail
to
thrive.
And
this
is
the
key
message
of
the
book;
it
is
not
so
much
that
unemployment
is
damaging
but
more
that
the
young
unemployed
fail
to
gain
the
benefits
of
satisfactory
employment
and
the
development
of
an
occupational
identity.
Those
who
cope
best
with
unemployment
have
a
wiqe
range
of
social
contacts,
spend
their
time
in
constructive
activity
and
have
some
financial
security
in
the
form
of
relatively
easy
access
to
financial
help
if
needed.
The
recent
NAPO
study
reminds
us
(if
we
needed
reminding)
of
the
depth
of
unemployment
among
Probation
Service
clients
especially
in
cities
like
Liverpool
and
Birmingham
where
long-term
unemployment
among
clients
is
virtually
100%.
Understanding
the
psychological
impact
of
unemployment
is
a
key
issue.
This
book
is
a
valuable
compendium
of
high
quality
research
conducted
over
ten
years.
It
deserves
to
be
widely
read
not
just
for
its
findings
but
also
for
its
keen
attention
to
methodological
issues.
Martin
Roscoe
SPO,
Southampton
Understanding
Poverty
Pete
Alcock
Macmillan,
1993;
£12.99
pbk
Pete
Alcock
has
written
a
clear
and
succinct
review
of
current
discourses
on
the
nature
and
extent
of
poverty
in
Britain
in
the
1990s.
He
sets
out
his
intentions
in
the
preface.
’The
book
is
intended
as
a
textbook,
providing
for
students
of
social
policy,
sociology
and
related
disciplines
an
analysis
of
various
debates
which
have
been
conducted
in
Britain
and
beyond,
about
the
problems
of
poverty,
and
the
policies
which
have
been
developed
in
response
to
these’.
As
a
probation
officer
with
a
brief
to
work
on
poverty
issues,
I
found
that
his
work
illuminated
my
understanding
of
the
poverty-related
problems
suffered
by
the
bulk
of
Probation
Service
clients,
by
setting
poverty
in
the
context
of
failures
of
social
policy
which
produce
it.
Alcock’s
central
thesis
is
that
poverty
results
from
the
failure
of
governments
to
regulate
the
social
and
economic
forces
which
structure
the
production
and
distribution
of
resources.
His
analysis,
however,
is
not
entirely
Marxist,
in
that
he
argues
that
...
capital
is
not
the
only
structuring
feature
of
what
is
in
practice
a
complex
social
and
economic
order’.
In
this
light
he
analyses
the
social
as
well
as
economic
forces
which
produce
marked
inequalities
of
prosperity
within
the
groups
that
British
society
creates
and
disadvantages.
His
chapters
on
racism
and
gender
are
particularly
illuminating
in
this
respect,
in
that
they
highlight
the
distortion
of
the
conclusions
of
much
research
on
poverty,
which
has
relied
on
a
solely
arithmetical
and
absolutist
approach,
based
on
white
male
norms.
The
chapter
on
’The
Underclass’
is
of
particular
relevance
to
Probation
practice,
in
that
it
exposes
the
political
expediency
which
fuels
this
concept.
While
it
is
tempting
to
view
Probation
clients,
who
often
suffer
multiple
social
disadvantage,
as
belonging
to
an
identifiable
social
group,
it
is
salutary
to
be
reminded
that
the
concept
of
an
’underclass’
serves
the
function
of
distracting
attention
from
national
social
policy
failurs
which
create
disadvantage.
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