Stigmatising poverty? The ‘Broken Society’ and reflections on anti-welfarism in the UK today

Mooney, Gerry (2011). Stigmatising poverty? The ‘Broken Society’ and reflections on anti-welfarism in the UK today. Oxfam, Oxford.

URL: http://www.oxfamblogs.org/ukpovertypost/wp-content...

Abstract

In the context of deep economic and financial crisis, and amidst rising inequalities, blame for several of the main social problems affecting the contemporary UK is being apportioned to some of the most disadvantaged sections of society.
This blaming is driven by a strong anti-welfarism that regards social welfare provision as among the key factors contributing to a social and moral crisis in the UK today.
The media also plays a key role in producing and reproducing anti-poor and anti-welfare ways of thinking, sensationalising some of the more negative aspects of life in disadvantaged communities. This representation of people experiencing poverty serves to set them as a group apart from ‘normal’ and ‘mainstream’ society.
Anti-poor narratives, together with media misrepresentations of poverty increasingly referred to as ‘poverty porn’, work to harden attitudes to social welfare in general and to people in poverty specifically.