Ordinary Poverty: A Little Food and Cold Storage (Labor In Crisis) [Hardcover]

William DiFazio (Author)

Book Description

Series: Labor In Crisis | Publication Date: February 28, 2006

At St. John's Bread and Life, a soup kitchen in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, over a thousand people line up for food five days a week. In this trenchant and groundbreaking work, author Bill DiFazio breathes life into the stories of the poor who have, in the wake of welfare reform and neoliberal retreats from the caring state, now become a permanent part of our everyday life. No longer is poverty a "war" to be won, as DiFazio laments. In a mixture of storytelling and analysis, DiFazio takes the reader through the years before and after welfare reform to show how poverty has become "ordinary," a fact of life to millions of Americans and to the thousands of social workers, volunteers and everyday citizens who still think poverty ought to be eradicated.Arguing that only a true program of living wages, rather than permanent employment, is the solution to poverty, DiFazio also argues a case for a true poor people's movement that links the interests of all social movements with the interests of ending poverty.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a book written by a frustrated and angry man [who] spent nearly 20 years working as a volunteer in the Bread and Life soup kitchen.[it] is an attempt to make sense of that experience .. DiFazio does not have all the answers. But he asks the right questions and puts poverty and hardship back at the centre of discussion. He challenges us to face up to our responsibility to act. Inequality and low wages are key issues which have been ignored for too long-in Britain as in America." The Tribune "DiFazio has made a clear critique of current poverty theories, policies, and responses...this is a provocative and illuminating synthesis that urges students, scholars, researchers, advocates, activists, and policymakers to think and act outside our current poverty definitions, theories, and policies, the structure of our advocacy and helping organizations, and the overall national and global economy in which these are set." Contemporary Sociology "The book presents a cogent analysis of poverty gleaned in part from the author's work at St. John's Bread and Life soup kitchen in Brooklyn. His interviews, observations, and social analysis powerfully rebut those social theorists and politicians who argue that people are poor out of cultural or personal inferiority." - Socialism and Democracy "Ordinary Poverty is an astute book that stands out from most of the work that is published on poverty and anti-poverty activism. It is far better theoretically informed than most of that work and its dual emphasis...provides the likely demands for a rejuvenated anti-poverty movement headed by the poor." Labour/Le Travail "DiFazio offers an outraged exegesis of the exacerbation of poverty amid an economic boom that has increased the wealth of only the richest...His ethnographic contribution is strongest in his description of the travails of long-term social service provision in the late 1980s and into the 1990s." The American Journal of Sociology "This estimable book is at once an ethnographic account of the author's experiences from 1988 to 2001 as a volunteer field worker for the St. John's Bread and Life soup kitchen in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn... DiFazio's proposals for solving the problem of poverty in the United States are not new...but they acquire a fresh relevance... One of the strengths of this book is its vivid portraits of the people whose poverty has become 'ordinary' inasmuch as present-day capitalist America looks upon their existence as a normal part of the social fabric... Ordinary Poverty is an impassioned, politically engaged, intellectually challenging study of one of the central unresolved problems of American social and political life." Science & Society, April 2009

From the Publisher

A biting chronicle of the life of the working poor in the wake of welfare reform

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press; annotated edition edition (February 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592130143
• ISBN-13: 978-1592130146
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,199,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.