The Relation Between Consumerism and Poverty

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Edwina Jessel        SPS244        09/05/2007

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The Relation Between Consumerism and Poverty

The difficulty with poverty in countries such as Britain and the United States is that it can be seen as absurd to talk of poverty in present day advanced countries, “since those considered poor in the United States today have an income greater than the average per capita income of a hundred years ago, to say nothing of their being many times better off than the average Indian today.However, I would say that the poverty line depends on a particular society, on social conventions and the present-day living standards of a specific society, not on an unconditional criterion that can be applied to every country all the time.

In trying to analytically observe cultural justifications of poverty, we first of all need to be familiar with poverty. Poverty is in general understood to be the stage at which deprivation is to be expected. There are two ways by which poverty is defined; absolute and relative. The first is not having the fundamentals to stay alive; these people do not have enough food, water and shelter. A person is impecunious when their earnings are not enough to achieve the minimum requirement for the preservation of physical effectiveness. ‘Relative’ poverty is a standard of living which most people throughout the world tolerate. This is the line from which poverty is measured. As it is put, ‘the culture of poverty’, is an unavoidable trap for most people. They are resigned to their place in society and take on their own set of living standards which do not live up to the needed amount of nutrition for their diet, means that their living conditions are often unpleasant and they do not have access to the facilities and services that many citizens who are not poor can have. A straightforward definition for relative poverty given by Ravallion, a World Bank economist “ ‘Poverty’ can be said to exist in a given society when one or more persons do not attain a level of material well-being deemed to constitute a reasonable minimum by the standards of that society”

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One of the major problems encountered when attempting to distinguish the causes of poverty is how poverty is defined. Bauman states, "The way we define the poor is a reflection of the kind of society we live in." He goes on to make clear that society defines values, which all its members ought to attain, and those that do not, are defined as poor. Consumerism is argued to be a significant cause of poverty in both developed and underdeveloped countries, although not in the same way. These days, poverty is created by society and is something that could be prevented; ...

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