Daniel Miller, UCL says of Erin B Taylor’s excellent new book “What is poverty? In answer, we need more than statistics, we need to understand what is experienced as poverty. Through scholarly and incredibly rich ethnography Taylor shows the consequence of appreciating that it is the poor rather than the rich whose experience is dominated by materiality. Materializing Poverty is an account that respects both the creativity and the constraints that may accompany poverty. People from all disciplines would be better educated in this essential issue by reading this empathetic engagement which goes beyond the meaning of poverty to how the poor create meaning.”
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Devising Consumption’s underlying argument is that the poor have, throughout history, consumed more rationally than policy debates suggest– it’s just that few understand the rationality. Key points include
- The financial services industries have played a vital role in enabling the poor to consume over the last 150 years
- The success of financial services targeted at the poor has long been controversial but much critique ignores the poor’s “voice” in the market
- The ‘silence’ of the poor is a problem that welfare policy design has to address
- How the financial industries captured, captivated and enticed poor consumers against considerable obstacles offers an object lesson for public administration and policy designers.
“To the extent that market providers devise techniques of sweeping up the mess of elements that make up public and private moods then incorporating them in products and marketing platforms that seem already to know all about us, they have the edge over government schemes designed only to appeal to our reason. This is not an anachronistic problem. The health insurance exchanges devised in the US to deliver the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that are currently striving to recruit enough healthy young men to create a sustainable pool of risk know precisely how much appeal matters.” Liz McFall (2014: 172)
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