Featured article from Global Newsletter September 2026
Written by Rafael dos Santos da Silva.
Introduction
The approach to the social dynamics of poverty uses a structuralist lens to understand poverty from the perspective of social structures and their constitutive implications. This has made it possible to articulate a new concept of poverty which, as a phenomenon, can be observed as the dynamic process of deterioration which is composed of social, economic, environmental, and political stages, pushing/moving the collective toward disaffiliation. This movement is the result of political choices that affect society, impacting its structures. Such reality presupposes the political reason of the collectivity – hence the talk of citizenship – to support the idea that it is only possible to overcome poverty in a collective way.
Against this backdrop, the construction of the Social Dynamics of Poverty map articulated, in a single space, the distance provoked by inequality, the extent generated by social exclusion, and the depth established by the condition of hunger. These three cycles should, from this work onwards, be observed as expressions of the same process: poverty. “This made it possible to identify the main barriers to the exercise of citizenship within the cycle of inequality.”. In a second stage, the variables related to the cycle of social exclusion were analyzed. This is an environment in which other variables will negatively affect citizenship in the territories. The dimension of citizenship is understood here as the most powerful lefebvrian expression, insisting on the right to the city as something greater than simply accessing bureaucracies. It is intimately related to the task of revolutionizing the city by constructing elements capable of perceiving and acting upon material reality, which is why the notion of democracy, and the dimension of participation, becomes crucial.
The last dimension analyzed was absolute poverty, where hunger is the key characteristic. This dramatic zone depends exclusively on political decisions that establish the criteria for deciding who, where, and above all, when hunger will affect.
1 The Evolution of the Concepts of Poverty and the Poor
The urban environment today is the space that has most profoundly influenced the reconfiguration of poverty. Whereas poverty was previously associated with an individual's capacity to respond to hunger, the ability to confront poverty is now, for the first time, closely related to access to economic resources. This, however, raises a fundamental question: who determines what constitutes adequate economic resources? From this perspective, poverty is fundamentally a political process.
Historical records indicate that hunger was the primary expression of poverty until the Middle Ages. In its modern form, however, poverty manifests itself through two new dimensions which, despite their distinct characteristics, constitute different expressions of the same underlying reality: inequality and its consequences for income, and social exclusion, particularly in relation to access to the infrastructure necessary for the reproduction of modern life.
The transformation of poverty—from hunger to inequality and, subsequently, to social exclusion—was a process largely shaped within the urban context, which became a space marked by profound social inequalities. According to Gennari and Albuquerque, the direct consequences of the urban model contributed to the emergence of the “new poor.” This new profile includes both skilled and unskilled workers who were displaced from their jobs, as well as individuals who never entered formal employment because of “industrial or technological reconversions.”
This thesis is reinforced by Brisset, who observes: “l’essor urbain[...] fruit lui- même du dévoluppement de l’économie d’echanges, constituanit en contrepartie un stimulant aux progrés de la misère” (urban poverty itself, a product of the evolution of the exchange economy, constitutes, in turn, a stimulus to the progress of misery). For Brisset, the urban environment witnessed a revival of the trilogy that had disappeared in the eleventh century: “famine, plague, and war”. The author states: “les pauvre des villes soufrirent davantage” (the poor in cities suffer advantageously).
From this perspective, it is possible to argue that the evolution of poverty within urban space is a socially constructed phenomenon that has progressively acquired a pejorative character in relation to those experiencing it. Over time, the diversity of these subjects has been translated into a downward social trajectory, not only stigmatizing them but also contributing to the construction of the notion of “dangerous classes.”
As a sociological object, poverty assumes an inherently collective dimension. In an attempt to provide a structural interpretation of the concept, Professor Jaume Fernando of the Universidad Nacional de Misiones states that “poverty is a totally descriptive category.” In his view, “poor is the one that in comparison with other individuals from all society achieves, from a series of features taken as characterizing, the lowest levels.”
According to Jaume, a key to understanding the reality surrounding poverty lies in recognizing that “it is a category that allows us to qualify the concrete condition of existence of certain social groups, by contrast or comparison with other groups in the same society that are not poor.” However, he emphasizes that defining poverty solely through material contrasts ultimately restricts the researcher to a descriptive result, limiting the possibility of investigating the structural causes that produce and reproduce poverty.
From this perspective, the structural dimension of poverty, particularly in urban areas, becomes more meaningful. This is evident in the work of the renowned Brazilian professor Milton Santos, especially in Urban Poverty, where he argues that, when confronted with “a complex and dynamic object, the impossibility of conceptual definition is assumed.” For the author, “approaches to the subject can lead to real conceptual pitfalls, generating more confusion regarding objectives and theoretical formulations.”
Poverty, therefore, “almost always [remains] incomplete...” It continues: “poverty cannot be restricted to partial definitions,” because doing so would reduce the phenomenon to simplistic categories that may be easy to understand but lack the theoretical depth required to address it adequately. According to Milton Santos, “because it is a social problem...at once synthetic and complex, poverty cannot be studied in an isolated and fragmented way.” Poverty is a social reality and, as such, must be confronted in its full complexity; otherwise, humanity risks being trapped in a cycle from which there is no apparent return.
Confronting poverty requires the imperative of defining it, recognizing, in the words of the Brazilian professor, that “every measurement implies the elaboration of the concept of that which is measured.” Santos therefore emphasizes that only a contextualized examination of reality can produce a coherent understanding of social phenomena. In this context, the author argues that it is essential to understand the functioning of variables and the ways in which they interact and respond to one another in order to infer patterns when the general behavior of poverty is not yet fully understood.
To read more, check out the September edition of the Global Newsletter.
