We heard some amazing stories from a few great folks, but I was really intrigued by Woody’s description of the narratives of the poor. Given that most of the political and policy-centric debates center around the two extreme narratives — “the poor as victims” and “the poor as burden” — it was great to hear […]

Prof. James Foster challenged the class to define poverty, both in terms of the conditions that make up poverty, as well as the qualifying limits that separate the have’s from the have-not’s. The broadest definition that he offered was from Amartya Sen’s book, Development as Freedom, where poverty is the:
Absence of basic freedoms, rights, capabilities […]