The Relational Poverty Network

The Relational Poverty Network (RPN) innovates in poverty research as our members work together to create new ideas and approaches to understanding poverty and inequality.  The RPN aims to enliven and expand poverty research by bringing together scholars, students, activists and policy-makers from diverse theoretical and methodological traditions, disciplines and countries into new conversations.  This collaborative research network advances a relational approach to poverty: theorizing poverty as produced and addressed by economic, political and cultural relationships between social groups.  This open and evolving network of poverty scholars is connected by members’ commitment to:

• Focusing on new objects of study (such as middle class attitudes towards poverty, cross-class alliances)

• building collaborative research across national contexts and disciplines

• building resources for meaningful comparison across quantitative and qualitative studies

• fostering open conversations across different views of poverty

By posing new questions about social alliances in the face of vulnerability, the RPN opens a space for new understandings and new actions in poverty research and policy.

Goals:

• facilitate research collaborations on relational poverty

• create a dialogue between mainstream and relational poverty researchers

• engage think tanks and policy makers about relational poverty knowledge

• build a research design for comparative studies across countries

• compile and distribute relational poverty resources to researchers, teachers, policy-makers and community groups

Sarah Elwood

Victoria Lawson