Experiencing Poverty: Voices from the Bottom

Poverty continues to be a social problem of epidemic proportions in America.

Experiencing Poverty, Second Edition, reveals the realities of the lives of the impoverished.

D. Stanley Eitzen and Kelly Eitzen Smith have brought together a timely collection of readings that examine those who have lived in poverty, those who continue to live in poverty, and successful efforts by the poor to change social arrangements that impact them negatively.

Topics covered include:

• How people become poor
• Why the poor stay poor
• How the poor cope with acquiring the daily necessities of food, shelter, water, clothing, and medical care
• How the poor are treated by individuals and organizations in the community
• What consequences arise from the welfare-to-work federal legislation
• How human agency can create changes from the bottom up

A new section in this edition, “Poverty and Vulnerability,” focuses on how people living in poverty are extremely vulnerable in such situations as war, natural disasters, job loss, family disruption, and health problems.

This collection of readings provides the voice, the presence, and the perspective of the poor who live on the margins and are generally invisible to the middle and upper classes.

The goals of this reader are twofold:

(1) to bring the realities of the lives of the impoverished as close to the reader as possible

(2) to get the reader to listen carefully to these voices of the poor in order to enhance their understanding of:

• How the poor became poor.

• How the poor are treated by individuals and organizations in the community.

• What keeps the poor poor.

• How the poor manage day-to-day.

• What theory of causation best explains poverty.

• The consequences of the welfare-to-work federal legislation.

• The best solutions for ending poverty.

D. Stanley Eitzen (Ph.D., University of Kansas, 1968) is professor emeritus in sociology from Colorado State University. He is author or co-author of 17 books, many of which are in multiple editions. His books that fit with this book are: SOCIAL PROBLEMS, 8th Edition., (Allyn and Bacon, 2000); SOLUTIONS TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS: LESSONS FROM OTHER SOCIETIES, 2nd Edition., (Allyn and Bacon, 2001); PATHS TO HOMELESSNESS: EXTREME POVERTY AND THE URBAN HOUSING CRISIS (Westview, 1994); and THE RESHAPING OF AMERICA (Prentice-Hall, 1989). His major research interests are social problems, social inequality (race/class/gender/sexuality), families, power, and sport.

Kelly Eitzen Smith (Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1999) is adjunct professor of sociology and assistant director of the Center for Applied Sociology at the University of Arizona. Her dissertation, under the direction of David A. Snow, was an ethnography of homeless women. While a graduate student she was part of a large research project where she interviewed the homeless in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Tucson. She has done extensive volunteer work in homeless shelters in Tucson. Her sociological interests are gender, social inequality, and social movements.