Materializing Poverty: How the Poor Transform Their Lives

By Erin B. Taylor

Poverty is generally defined as a lack of material resources. However, the relationships that poor people have with their possessions are not just about deprivation. Material things play a positive role in the lives of poor people: they help people to build social relationships, address inequalities, and fulfill emotional needs. In Materializing Poverty, anthropologist Erin Taylor explores how residents of a squatter settlement in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, use their material resources creatively to solve everyday problems and, over a few decades, radically transform the community. Their struggles show how these everyday engagements with materiality, rather than more dramatic efforts, generate social change and build futures.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0759124213
• ISBN13: 9780759124219
• Release Date: October 2013
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 to 22 years
• Grade Range: Postsecondary