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Hardship: Facts and Meanings

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Abstract

‘Poverty’ is the word most often used by pressure groups in Britain to describe the trends they deplore. That leads them to say that large and growing numbers of our people are poor. But these words are not much used in this country — and least of all by poor people themselves. Most of our fellow citizens use them to describe extreme hardships, and many of them believe these are now to be found only in third world countries, so they pay no attention to the arguments of the pressure groups. It’s a dialogue of the deaf. Can we find words which will at least enable us to talk to each other about these issues?

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Notes

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© 1998 David Donnison

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Donnison, D. (1998). Hardship: Facts and Meanings. In: Policies for a Just Society. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26058-4_1

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