Poverty as Biography in Motion
Agency, Emotion, and the Limits of Contemporary Poverty Theory
Dados Bibliográficos
| ID | 19213625 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Suzanne Butler (0000-0002-6925-002X, Newcastle University, autor correspondente) |
| Ano | 2026 |
| Data de publicação | 2026-05-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sim |
| Open Access | Sim |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Periódico | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores do periódico | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Editora | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-4446.70127 |
| PMID | 42143761 |
| OpenAlex | W7161493242 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referências citadas | 12 |
Despite extensive research, poverty remains theoretically under-explained. Dominant approaches oscillate between structural, resource-based models that conceptualise poverty as a measurable condition, and behavioural or responsibilisation accounts that locate persistence in individual conduct. Whilst often treated as opposing theses, this article argues that both rest on a shared theoretical error: the mis-specification of agency as either absent or over-moralised. As a result, poverty is rendered static, episodic, or behaviourally deficient, limiting the capacity of theory to explain endurance, stalling, and fragile change across lives. The article advances a different ontological starting point by reconceptualising poverty as a temporal, emotional, and biographical process. Drawing on feminist sociology, life-course theory, and narrative perspectives, it introduces the concept of poverty as biography in motion, alongside a trajectory-based analytic that theorises turbulence, stalling, and fragile progress as patterned temporal forms of constraint. Central to this framework is the treatment of emotion as a mediating mechanism through which structural conditions are lived, and agency is exercised over time. By reframing agency as situated, relational, and emotionally mediated, the article moves beyond entrenched binaries between structure and behaviour. It offers a theoretical grammar capable of explaining poverty's persistence and uneven movement without reverting to static or moralised accounts. In doing so, the article contributes to poverty theory by reorienting explanation toward lived process, duration, and mediation, and by foregrounding biography as a central site of sociological analysis
Agency (philosophy) · Biography · Cognitive reframing · Culture of poverty · Foregrounding · Narrative · Poverty · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · History of Emotions Research · Social and Cultural Dynamics
The Shame of Poverty
Poverty in the United Kingdom
Poverty in the United Kingdom
Living with and responding to the 'scrounger' narrative in the UK
Gender and poverty in Britain
The Dynamics of Poverty and Employment
Dealing with Difficult Differences
Children's subjective well-being
Insider Perspectives or Stealing the Words out of Women's Mouths
Plumbing the Depths
| Velocidade de citação | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | Não |